#I’ve never been into DC stuff before. never read the comics & never really watched the shows or movies either!!

[lovelesslittleloser]

Every curse on my name only grows my power <3

Have a great day!! :D !!!

@lovelesslittleloser it is so very important to me that you know that every time I reblog a dcxdp post I curse your name

Have a good day

[angel-gidget]

Gidge's Guide to Amethyst

I did one of these a while back, but with reeaallly low-quality images. These days, there’s more Amethyst stuff out there, and that’s worth an update in its own right.

Amy’s first appearance was technically in Legion of Super-Heroes #298 which featured a “pull-out preview comic” to entice people into picking up the maxi-series. I’ve yet to get my mitts on it to confirm if it’s just sample art from the maxi-series, or has dialogue/art never seen anywhere else. Regardless, your best starting point is probably gonna be…

I. 1980’s 12-issue Maxi-Series (+ follow-up Annual)

High jump-through-portal fantasy. Fantastic creatures, creepy villains, magical royalty, intricate world building that explains some things and lets your brain fill in the gaps for others, and consistently gorgeous art. Can’t recommend enough.

The annual shown takes place after the maxi-series and sets the stage for the ongoing series that follows.

Get it by Patron methods: Dc Universe Series Page DC’s Showcase via Amazon or Abe Books (Note: no color art for showcase, only black & white)

Get it by Peasant methods: Over here. 💎

II. 1980’s 16-issue Ongoing Series (+ follow-up Annual)

While there is a lot of fantastic stuff going on with the ongoing series, it is more of a mixed bag.

While I am forever in love with cover of issue #11, I remember turning to page 1 and wondering what the heck happened to the inside art. It’s not bad, really. It just doesn’t meet the high bar of the covers (or earlier interiors). Looking back, I realized the art was getting less detailed well before that, but my reading was all over the place as a kid bc I’d just read whatever issues I could find.

This here, at issue #12, is actually a good place to stop. By which I mean, the next 4 issues + special reek of grimdark edge-lord bs that doesn’t even make sense without reading Crisis on Infinite Earths. However, if you wish to proceed…

The final issue of the ongoing is technically a cliffhanger, and the Special grants the writers the extra pages they need to finish wrapping up their whole Lords of Order & Chaos/Dr. Fate tie-in.

After this, someone in DC editorial raised their pencil and went “Hey! What if we made the Gemworld the origin for one of our Legion of Super-Heroes villains?” And thus…

Get it by Patron methods: Dc Universe Series Page DC’s Showcase via Amazon or Abe Books (Note: no color art for showcase, only black & white) (Also note: Showcase contains both Maxi and Ongoing series)

Get it by Peasant methods: Over here. ⚔️

III. 1980’s 4-issue Mini-Series

This thing is all kinds of whack, but it is gorgeous. I get the impression that when Kieth Giffen and Mindy Newell were assigned this sucker, they just read a summary of the OG series and winged it.

Probably not, since they technically wrote those final issues of the ongoing, but that’s how it feels. Despite this, it’s grown on me like a fungus, and the mind-blowing art by Esteban Moroto is, like, 98% of the reason why.

Amethyst is always at her weirdest when Dc is trying to tie her in with the rest of the DCU. In this case, the mini is supposed to explain how a Legion of Super-Heroes villain has origins that go back to the Gemworld. Why? Idk. But if I remember correctly, it was even part of the advertising for this series.

Get it by Patron methods: … you can’t. There are no re-prints of any kind and it’s tough to track down. If ye crave this treasure, best ye look to piracy, matey.

Get it by Peasant methods: Over here. 🔮

IV. 2012’s DC Nation Amethyst Cartoon Shorts

In hindsight, these may have been made as the advent of the Sword of Sorcery series, but they really were a charming sip of water after two decades of nothin’. A cute lil’ standalone series that turns the Gemworld into a video game. Amy is then, of course, sucked into it.

Fun fact: the producer, @briannedrouhard is on tumblr, and often posts art and further ideas she had for the series.

Watch it: Full Series is officially free on Youtube. 👸🏼

IV. 2013’s Sword of Sorcery: Amethyst

This New 52 eight-issue (9 included the ‘0’ issue, oy) series got my hopes up after all those years, but I gotta admit I was a bit disappointed by the completely new supporting cast. Apart from Amy herself, none of the original characters made it into the series.

It feels likely a completely different fantasy series with an “Amethyst” label slapped on it. That said, Aaron Lopresti’s art is beautiful, and this version of Amy—Amaya—eventually joined the New 52’s Justice League Dark and picked up a bit of a cult appreciation over there.

That said, I’ve had some spoilers for her time on JLDark, and the storyline is just a bit… too… dark for my tastes. So I’m quite content to see her nu52 series retconed, even though I did nearly collect all 9 issues.

Get it by Patron methods: Dc Universe Series Page TPB via Amazon or B&N

Get it by Peasant methods: Over here. 💜

V. 2019’s Wonder Comics - Young Justice: Gemworld

Remember how I said Amethyst always gets weird when she collides with the greater DCU? Yeah, forget I said that. Never mind. Most brilliant combo idea since peanut butter and jelly.

No, I’m not biased not at all bc I’m a big Young Justice fan. Nope. Ok. Maybe a lil’ bit. While the continuity here is it’s own thing, there are a lot of nods to the original Gemworld in the world-building.

Does this series fully explore the potential of all the ideas in it? Frankly, no. YJ fans complained a lot about the lack of breathing space in this series for a reason. But I’m still happy with it and happily re-reading it for the fun ideas it slaps together.

If you are reading this for the Amethyst, however, there isn’t much point in reading past issue 6, aka volume 1 of the trade. After that point, Amy stops getting much spotlight, though she remains on the team’s roster until the series’ end.

Get it by Patron methods: Dc Universe Series Page TPB via Amazon or B&N

Get it by Peasant methods: Over here. ✨

VI. 2020’s Wonder Comics - Amethyst Miniseries

The fact that both this series and the YJ one appear under the “Wonder Comics” label is a bit misleading. They do not share any continuity at all. However, the opening splash page of the first issue references multiple events from original Amethyst continuity!

Later world-building details make it clear that this is a different version of Amy and the Gemworld, but Amy Reeder’s affection for the original series remains apparent.

Get it by Patron methods: Dc Universe Series Page TPB via Amazon or B&N

Get it by Peasant methods: Over here. 👑

VII. 2021’s Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld by Shannon & Dean Hale

This one is actually a kid-oriented graphic novel. Again, with its own continuity and world-building. I think the thing that stands out to me the most about this take is that the Hales give Amy a kid brother and make him quite relevant to the plot.

It’s pretty stand-alone and not really marketed as a comic book per se, but it is charming and the art is quite cute.

Get it by Patron methods: Graphic novel via Amazon or B&N Get it by Peasant methods: Over here.

🏰

In Summary:

“Original” Amethyst Continuity (by Dan Mishkin & Gary Cohn and later Kieth Giffen & Mindy Newell ) is contained in Volumes 1-3. This is made of up the Maxi-series, Ongoing, and Mini-series from the 80's.

New52 Sword of Sorcery Continuity (by Christy Marx) is completely separate and self-contained.

Wonder Comics: Young Justice continuity (by Brian Michael-Bendis) is separate and self-contained, but has many nods to original continuity in it.

Wonder Comics: Amethyst mini-series continuity (by Amy Reeder) is mostly separate and self-contained, but implies that it shares events with the Volume 1 maxi-series.

Kid-friendly properties like Brianne Drouhard’s DC Nation shorts or Shannon and Dean Hale’s graphic novel make for fun additions, though they were not marketed as though they might tie in with any comics.

[shirefantasies]

Thank you for the follower acknowledgment! I just followed you in the past few days and had looked through your work more than anything else and when you thanked us I felt kinda bad because I thought it was so so so nice of you to do but I hadn’t put much thought in the person behind it. I was so wrapped up in learning about a new character from a universe I loved that I’ve never noticed before and I took an effing Tolkien humanities collage class. 😅😂

But yeah I had never heard of the elf Feren before you or at least paid attention to him in the hobbit movies I went back and rewatched them to find him 🤣 so thanks a lot man, smh, now I have a new hot elf mans to simp over (I’m joking it actually renewed my interest and I started looking at more backgroundish characters I hadn’t noticed before which is normally my forte being an Infp. I’ve been slacking man.)

Also hello fellow Libra ♎️ I also enjoy dnd I’ve never played but have read a few of the older books, read the Drizzt comics, and haven’t played but watched the play through a of Baldurs gate 3 (Astarion and Sorn Orlith omg 😳) Also have you heard of chuckles the clown? 😂 my favorite race from dnd is half-elves (I was a gifted adhd kid so I can relate to the being picked on and not fitting in) and Drow they fascinate me.

Also Star Wars (there’s a comic from like the 1970’s with a character called Taikotelai who was a one and one like feral so I’m writing a fic to fix that I love him he didn’t deserve to die. Harry Potter too (Ravenclaw is my house, my collage professor also did a Harry Potter humanities class and sorted us into houses and kept score. It was awesome especially since he dressed as snape one time since he’s the same personality type and a Slytherin. (Ravenclaw won, Hufflepuff in second, Slytherin, and Gryphandor had negative points 😂 they kept saying the name Voldemort and he penalized for that.)

Star Trek (depending on the series), transformers especially tfp and tfa prowl (he loves organic nature and quiet which I get). Bluey don’t judge me I’m 20-25 (not comfortable with publicly sharing true age) I’m allowed to like children’s shows and books with some adult themes occasionally, life doesn’t give us a happy ending why should fiction. 😂 marvel, some dc, A-team. MASH klinger is the original Disney Princess 🤣 change my mind if you don’t know who that is you must google him.

*sorry for the ramble 😅 I was just shocked at the amount we had in common the rest is me seeing if there’s anything else 😂 but yeah always up for discussions. And really thanks again for all the hard work and creativity you put into your writing! I know it’s a lot of times thankless but discovering your writing really brightened up my week. Especially getting back into the hobbit like that it was almost like seeing it anew because I made it my mission to notice things and characters I hadn’t paid attention to before. Also I can tell you put a lot of thought and care into the characterization of the different characters in each one shot, story, headcanons, you do and that’s awesome! I hope you have a great rest of your week!

(I’m doing anonymous cause I’m shy 😓 and some social anxiety sorry if this was weird. I can message you later if you want to know. Or you can ignore me, like I said I went on a rambling tangent it was cool to find out we had so much in common and I’m like ‘that’s why I’ve liked SO much of her writing and not a select few!’ that’s so cool!)

OMG IF YOU FEEL COMFORTABLE 🅱️LS 🅱️LS 🅱️LS MESSAGE MEEEEE!!! Among so much other cool stuff you mentioned one of my favorite fictional characters EVERRRRRRRRRRRRRR one Mr. Maxwell Q Klinger and my eyes just saw MASH Klinger and hyperzoomed and I got so excited that someone else loves this amazing guy I could talk about for hours!!! M*A*S*H is my favorite show E V E R!!! I don't have to google him, but maybe I will anyway just cuz I like lookin at him 😌 fun fact: My dad and I both share a birthday with a M*A*S*H and LoTR cast member! Dad's January 28th which is Alan Alda and Elijah Wood, while I (October 20th) have William Christopher and Viggo Mortensen! My dad also gets John Banner AKA Schultz from Hogan's Heroes! Have you seen HH too?

Don't worry you can clearly see I go on tangents too 😂 I totally get feeling shy and stuff, so up to you! Background characters are the BESSSST though I too have an obscure Star Wars blorbo who popped up in a handful of expanded universe novels (and the comic rendition) and I just love him even though he's nowhere near major. I am not familiar with Taikotelai yet but I wanna read that fic! SW is the best fandom for the coolest small time blorbos I swear! I'm the opposite of you because I've played D&D but never BG3 even though I post about it on my personal a lot 😅 (it's @spacemanxpaninis if you wanna chat there too! That's where you can see all my fandoms and insanity hehe) I just don't have anything that can run it so I have to live vicariously through the playthroughs too 💔

do NOT be worried about me judging you for anything that seems cringe to you, cartoons/animation is a big special interest for me and I love most things animated! I am almost 25 and have been wanting to watch Bluey myself! Comfort content FTW! I hate things that have no happy ending BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO 🍅🍅🍅 I don't pay to feel bad! Real life gives me enough negative emotions!!! 🍅🍅🍅 To help relieve any feelings of cringe: lemme let you in on a little secret: you know what I watch after the most heartrending draining breakdowns? Family Guy. I fucking watch Family Guy because it's the best turn your brain off mindless entertainment simple amusement with no big emotional stakes 9 times out of 10. If you ever feel bad about Bluey you can picture good ol shirefantasies sitting there post-breakdown tear-streaked watching Peter Griffin dance to Surfin Bird.

That class sounds like fun! Teachers bringing themes or fandoms into classes >>>> I need to watch more Star Trek! My dad started watching the original with my brother and I but we stopped because my brother didn't like it and bitched about 'every episode just being something getting on the ship' :( but I've also heard great things about Deep Space Nine and whichever the one with Patrick Stewart is (New Generation?????)! Love me some scifi. Usually I'm more of a Star Wars girlie but A. I don't discriminate B. I know how pretentious I sound specifying pre-2015 and expanded universe only even though it's true 💀

Bro (lmk if you don't like bring called 'bro' or 'girl' or either, I use those pretty indiscriminately of gender unless people don't like it or get confused, also feel free to tell me your pronouns and a name/nickname/even just emoji if you'd rather in your next ask or if you do message 🫶🏻) I will NEVER ignore you 😤 Legit this is the most exciting ask I've ever gotten on here because you're super cool and we have a lot in common and raaahhhh I wasn't that excited to get on here but E N E R G Y S U R G E I hope we can be friends!

[abisalli]

hi!! i was just wondering if you had any tips for someone who is super curious/into the dc stuff they see on their dash but has no idea where to start understanding stuff, and is super intimidated by comics. i wanna know who all these little guys are but there seems to be so many source materials and i'm a little bamboozled!!

Oh yeah we’ve all been there. Especially regarding comics; there’s just too many continuities, runs, specials… Where do you even start?

And I’m gonna say this right here at the beginning: everyone will tell you something different.

There’s no one correct way of getting into comics/superheroes and not one correct way to read them, too. Which can be pretty cool! Or really, really annoying, depending on what kind of person you are.

Some might tell you to just go into a store and pick out what you think looks or sounds interesting. Others will tell you that you definitely need to read Comic #734-67 first before you get into the MegaUltra Event and that is only when blah blah blah You get the idea.

Anyway here’s how I would recommend getting into DC if you’ve really never seen anything of it. (this got a little bit longer so more under the cut)

Watch any DC Cartoon there is. I’m not even kidding. Most of the time the cartoons are the best introductions to characters (imo)

Here are some recommendations <3

1. Batman the animated series 2. Justice League & Justice League: Unlimited 3. Justice League Action 4. Teen Titans (from 2003) 5. Batman Beyond 6. Static Shock 7. Young Justice

After that just pick the character you want to see more of (for example after watching BTAS: Tim Drake) and search for a recommended reading list on the internet.

Most of the time they look something like this and just go chronologically (release date):

Read Batman: A Lonely Place Of Dying

Batman #455 Batman #456 Batman #457

Robin #1 (1991) Robin #2 Robin #3 Robin #4 Robin #5

Detective Comics #618 Detective Comics #619 Detective Comics #620 Detective Comics #621

Robin Vol. 2 #1 (1991) Robin Vol. 2 #2 Robin Vol. 2 #3 Robin Vol. 2 #4

Etc. etc. etc.

These lists tend to be super long, so I would just recommend reading whatever you think sounds interesting. Or search for reading guides on tumblr (I’ve found a lot more compact ones on here)!

I also have put together my own list of comics I want to read/have read, so lmk if you'd be interested in seeing that!

Of course the most important part is to just have fun with it! If you watch/read anything you find boring, just put it away and try something else! <3

[roseworth]

I wasn’t calling you out in particular! Sorry if it came across like that haha. I’m guilty about being a hater too sometimes but it does come from a place of love like you said. Recently I got into Star Wars again and while the Star Wars fandom has A LOT of problems that I’m very vocal about, I really felt a disconnect between fandom there and fandom here. I’ve never once felt like someone who wrote a Star Wars fanfic never watched the movies or the tv shows and 99% of the time they are extremely knowledgeable about the franchise, yet half the time with DC I wonder if the person who wrote a fanfic even knows who Duke is lmao.

oh dw i didnt think you were calling me out i just wanted to use myself as an example bc im a bitch when it comes to things i enjoy and i know it hfdjkshfsfh

i think that a big difference with the star wars fandom and the dc fandom is that with star wars even though theres A Lot of different things, its a little more contained than comics, bc comics have so many different story lines and runs and it can get intimidating to new people, whereas with star wars its pretty easy to just sit down and watch the movies without 300 different conflicting timelines

its not as bad once you get started with comics bc once you know what character you want to read there are reading lists for all of them out there, but for the people just getting started or the people that have never read a comic it seems very intimidating to know that theres like 80+ years of history with all these characters and no good way to start

and i know that star wars has a lot of extended universe stuff (my roommate is a star wars nerd so i know a little bit about the other stuff despite only seeing the movies) but its still much easier to start with the movies and move on from there with star wars, but with dc the movies arent even in the same universe as the comics so its not like you can even start with a movie and understand whats going on in comics :( i actually just mentioned this to my roommate and he said "star wars is so much easier because every character has a clear start and end point, theyre born and eventually they die" whereas comics are just a neverending narrative

but i totally get what youre saying bc before dc ive never been in a fandom of people that just. didnt consume the source material. so its weird to think about fan content there where everything was related to canon, then compare it to dc where a lot of the people making fan content dont care at all about canon :/ especially when theyre excluding or mischaracterizing all the characters :/// things are bad, i never venture outside my immediate circle or lest i be exposed to the worst takes known to man

[meruz]

once again i am answering asks in a big compilation post. included is... gotham, patrick stump, tips about drawing backgrounds, tips about drawing in general, links to my faq, and infinity train

like.... the tv series? No... I’ve drawn dc comics fanart before, though. But it’s been years since I’ve been really into it. I like jumped ship like 10 years ago when the New 52 happened LOL.

AFJHDSLKGH I’m sorry I (probably) won’t do it again??

Actually full disclosure I have a truly cringe amount of p stump drawings/photo studies in my sketchbook right now LOL. He’s just fun to draw... hats, glasses, guitar, a good shape... but I don’t think I’ll rly post those until I can hide them in another big sketchbook pdf.. probably Jan 2022. Stay tuned........ (ominous) 

(ominous preview)

These are all sort of related to backgrounds/painting so I grouped them together even though they’re pretty much entirely separate questions.... ANYWAYS

a) How is it working as a BG artist? Is it hard? What show are you drawing for?

I think you’re the first person to ever ask me about my job! Being a background artist is great. It’s definitely labor intensive but I think that could describe pretty much any art job (If something were rote or easy to automate, you wouldn’t hire an artist to do it) and I hesitate to say whether its harder or easier than any other role in the animation pipeline. Plus, so much of what truly makes a job difficult varies from one production to the next, schedule, working environment, co-workers etc. But I will say that I think while BGs are generally a lot of work on the upfront, I think they’re subject to less scrutiny/revisions than something like character/props/effects design and you don’t have to pitch them to a room like boards. So I guess it’s good if you don’t like to talk to people? LOL

A lot of my previous projects + the show I’ve worked on the longest aren’t public yet so I can’t talk about em (but I assure you if/when the news does break I won’t shut up about it). But I’m currently working on Archer Season 12 LOL. I’m like 90% sure I’m allowed to say that.

b) ~~~THANK YOU!! ~~~

c) What exactly do you like to draw most [in a background]?

@kaitomiury​ Lots of stuff! I really like to draw clutter! Because it’s a great opportunity for environmental storytelling and also you can be kind of messy with it because the sheer mass will supersede any details LOL. 

I like to draw clouds... I like to draw grass but not trees lol,,, I like to draw anything that sells perspective really easily like tiled floors and ceilings, shelves, lamp posts on a street etc.

d) Do you have any tips on how to paint (observational)?

god there’s so much to say. painting is really a whole ass discipline like someone can paint their whole life and still discover new things about it. I guess if you’re really just starting out my best advice is that habit is more important than product. especially with traditional plein air painting, I find that the procedure of going outside and setting up your paints is almost harder than the actual painting. There’s a lot of artists who say “I want to do plein air sometime!!” and then never actually get around to doing it. A lot of people just end up working from google streetview or photos on their computer.

But going outside to paint is a really good challenge because it forces you to make and commit to lighting and composition decisions really quickly. And to work through your mistakes instead of against them via undo button.

My last tip is to check out James Gurney’s youtube channel because hes probably the best and most consistent resource on observational painting out there rn. There’s lots other artists doing the same thing (off the top of my head I know a lot of the Warrior Painters group has people regularly posting plein air stuff and lightbox expo had a Jesse Schmidt lecture abt it last year) but Gurney’s probably the most prolific poster and one of the best at explaining the more technical stuff - his books are great too.

e) Do you have tips for drawing cleanly on heavypaint?

@marigoldfool​ UMM LOL I LIKE ONLY USE THE FILL TOOL so maybe use the fill tool? Fill and rectangle are good for edge control as opposed to the rest of the heavy paint tools which can get sort of muddles. And also I use a stylus so maybe if you’re using your finger, find a stylus that works with your device instead. That’s all I’ve got, frankly I don’t think my drawings are particularly clean lol.

f) Tips on improving backgrounds/scenes making them more dynamic practicing etc?

Ive given some tips about backgrounds/scenes before so I’m not gonna re-tread those but here’s another thing that might be helpful...

I think a good way to approach backgrounds is to think of the specific story or even mood you want to convey with the background first. Thinking “I just need to put something behind this character” is going to lead you to drawing like... a green screen tourist photo backdrop. But if you think “I need this bg to make the characters feel small” or “I need this bg to make the world feel colorful” then it gives you requirements and cues to work off of.

If I know a character needs to feel overwhelmed and small, then I know I need to create environment elements that will cage them in and corner them. If a character needs to feel triumphant/on top of the world then I know I need to let the environment open up around them. etc. If I know my focal point/ where I want to draw attention, I can build the background around that.

Also, backgrounds like figure compositions will have focal points of their own and you can draw attention to it/ the relationship the characters have with the bg element via scale or directionality or color, any number of cues. I think of it almost as a second/third character in a scene.

Not every composition is gonna have something so obvious like this but it helps me to think about these because then the characters feel connected and integrated with the environment.

Some more general art questions

a) Do you have any process/tips to start drawing character/bodies/heads?

I tried to kind of draw something to answer this but honestly this is difficult for me to answer because I don’t think I’m that great at drawing characters LOL. Ok, I think I have two tips.

1) flip your canvas often. A lot about what makes human bodies look correct and believable is symmetry and balance. Even if someone has asymmetrical features, the body will often pull and push in a way to counterbalance it. we often have inherent biases to one side or another like dominant hands dominant eyes etc. you know how right-handed artists will often favor drawing characters facing 45 degrees facing (the artist’s) left? that’s part of it. so viewing your drawing flipped even just to evaluate it helps compensate for that bias and makes you more aware of balance.

2) draw the whole figure often. I feel like a lot of beginner artists (myself included for a long time) defer to just drawing headshots or busts because it’s easier, you dont have to think about posing limbs etc. But drawing a full body allows you to better gauge proportion, perspective, body language, everything that makes a character look believable and grounded.

Like if you (me) have that issue where you draw the head too big and then have to resize it to fit the proportions of the rest of the body, it’s probably because you (I) drew the head first and are treating the body as an afterthought/attachment. Sketching out the whole figure first or even just quick drawing guides for it will help you think of it more holistically. I learned this figure drawing in charcoal at art school LOL.

oh. third mini tip - try to draw people from life often! its the best study. if you can get into a figure drawing/nude drawing class EVEN BETTER and if you have a local college/art space/museum that hosts those for free TREASURE IT AND TAKE ADVANTAGE OF IT, that’s a huge boon that a lot of artists (me again) wish they had. though if youre not so lucky and youre sitting in a park trying to creeper draw people and they keep moving.. don’t let that stop you! that’s good practice because it’s forcing you to work fast to get the important stuff down LOL. its a challenge!

b) I’ve been pretty out of energy and have had no inspiration to draw but I have the desire to. Any advice?

Dude, take a walk or something.... Or a nap? Low energy is going to effect everything else so you gotta hit that problem at its source.

If you’re looking for inspiration though, I’d recommend stuff like watching a movie, reading a book, playing video games etc. Fill up your idea bank with content and then give yourself time/space to gestate it into new concepts. Sometimes looking at other art works but sometimes it can work against you because it’s too close. 

Also something that helps me is remembering that art doesn’t always have to be groundbreaking... like it’s okay to make something shitty and stupid that you don’t post online and only show to your friend. That’s all part of the process imo. If you want to hit a home run you gotta warm up first, right? Sports.

I should probably compile everytime i give tips on stuff like this but that’s getting dangerously close to being a social media artist who makes stupid boiled down art tutorials for clout which is the last thing i want to be... the thing I want to stress is that art is a whole visual language and there are widely agreed upon rules and customs but they exist in large part to be broken. Like there's an infinite number of ways to reach an infinite number of solutions and that’s actually what makes it really cool and personal for both the artist and the viewer. So when you make work you like or you find someone else’s work you like, take a step back and ask yourself what about it speaks for you, what about it works for you, what makes it effective, how to recreate that effect and how to break that effect completely, etc. And have a good time with it or else what’s the point.

for the first 2, I direct you to my FAQ

For the last one, I don’t actually believe I’ve ever addressed artwork as insp for stories/rp but I’ll say here and now yeah go ahead! As long as you’re not making profit or taking credit for my work then I’m normally ok with it. Especially anything thats private and purely recreational, that’s generally 100% green light go. I only ask that if you post it anywhere public that you please credit me.

(and I reserve the right to ask you to take it down if I see it and don’t approve of it’s use but I think that case is pretty rare.)

a) @lemuelzero101 Thank you!!! I haven’t played Life is Strange but actually  that series’ vis dev artist Edouard Caplain is one of my bigger art inspirations lately so that’s a really high compliment lol. And yeah I hope we get 5-8 too...!

b) Thank you for sticking around! I’ve been thinking about Digimon and Infinity Train in tandem lately, actually. They’re a little similar? Enter a dangerous alternate world and have wacky adventures with monsters/inanimate objects that have weird powers... there’s like weird engineers and mechanisms behind the scenes... also frontier literally starts with them getting on a train. Anyways if anyone else followed me for digimon... maybe you’d like Infinity Train? LOL

c) @king-wens-king I’M GLAD MY ART JUST HAS PINOY VIBES LOL I hope you are having a good day too :^)

a, b, c, d) yessss my Watch Infinity Train agenda is working....

e) aw thank you!! i think you should watch infinity train :)

[tania2199]

Farewell to Legends of tomorrow

I have never been a big fan of the superhero genre – it’s great, just not my cup of tea. Speaking of comics, I’d rather prefer some dark and semi-realistic DC and Vertigo stuff – you know, like Hellblazer for example. John Constantine is one of my favorite comic book characters, I’ve read all of the original Hellblazer run and most of the new stuff. I like the movie (not really true to the comics but it was fine). I loved the show – it had really great potential and Matt Ryan who was utterly perfect for this role. He is a phenomenal actor. He really was – he is John Constantine. I was really disappointed that the show got canceled.

So naturally I decided to watch Legends of tomorrow to get more content with my favorite character. I knew absolutely nothing about the show – never watched any other Arrowverse show, but I was willing to give it a shot. And let me tell you – I was not disappointed.

It’s absolutely ridiculous. It’s fantastically weird. It’s bonkers and over the top and so fucking crazy that you really start to wonder how the hell writers come up with all this shit.

So, you know – how could I not fall in love with it?

It has queer characters of all sorts. It has characters with different backgrounds and beliefs. It has superheroes (mostly C-list and that’s wonderful) and warlocks. It has found family. And time-travel. And aliens. And time-traveling aliens. And clones. Hell, even human AI with feelings.

And Beebo. How can you forget about Beebo?

Most importantly, it celebrates the outsiders and weirdos and not doing things the proper way. It celebrates f-ing everything up and learning how to fix it on the way. Screwings things up for the better. Celebrates being human.

It quickly became my comfort show – it made me feel safe and seen while also making me laugh. I forgot when was the last time I had that much fun while watching the show – it was like a fanfiction that came to life. Most modern shows feel the need to be mature and serious and clever – and honestly often feel like a burden to watch. I binged Legends of tomorrow. It rarely happened to me before – I always was a slow-watcher, but I just couldn’t get enough of this show.

It ended way to soon.

It surely was a wild ride and I am grateful for the amazing 7 seasons. I am really sad that it got canceled and didn’t have a proper closure. But you know – the finale was as crazy as the rest of the show and it kind of fits perfectly.

I am so grateful that this show exists and I surely will rewatch it again and again.

After all, they weren't just heroes. They were legends. And you know what they say: Once a legend - always a legend.

[taggingtim]

Why I love Pre-Boot Tim Drake and why the Reboot has ruined him

I love Tim Drake.  He is my favorite comic book character of all time.  I’ve been really upset the past few days about what DC has been doing with him lately, and I thought it would be cathartic for me to write something up about it.  (No, this isn’t a rant about Tim being bi/gay; it’s a much larger problem than that. But I’ll get to that in a bit.) Bear with me for a bit of history, first.

When I was a kid I loved the Batman Animated Series.  I know this will lose me a lot of internet cred, but I always preferred the fourth season. In particular, I loved Tim Drake. He was fun and funny and I absolutely adored him.  I used to beg my mom to take me to the mall so I could buy issues of Gotham Adventures. For my birthday one year my parents got me a subscription to the comic, and I was blown away by the idea that I could have comics MAILED to my HOUSE.

Around middle school I started collecting Marvel comics, mostly X-men stuff.  I loved them, but when I started college I quit the hobby for financial reasons.

 Fast forward a few years, and I felt I was financially stable enough to start buying comics again. Rather than going back to Marvel, I decided to give Batman comics a chance.  I had no idea where to start, and when I found out my beloved Tim had his own comic series, I thought it was a perfect entry point into the Batman universe. I bought the complete series from a local comic shop and dove in.

 Tim’s Robin series was exactly what I was looking for in a comic.  He was very different from little Timmy Todd from BtAS, but I loved him. I built the rest of my comic collection around him, grabbing up every book that he was featured in, from Young Justice to Teen Titans to Batman, Detective Comics, Nightwing, Red Robin, and many others.  I have random books from series like The Demon just because Tim was in them.

 So why did I like Tim so much?  What about this character made me so excited for more?  I found in Tim something that I had never seen in a comic book before: character growth.  Somehow, though he was written by many different authors over many different years, Tim managed to have a character arc that is consistent and makes sense. Sure, there were a few small bumps along the way, but on the whole Tim has always stayed true to his character, and he’s developed in a way that the big name characters, like Batman, never can.

 When we’re first introduced to Tim, he’s a young teen who has been neglected by his parents growing up. He’s smart, healthy, and strong, but he lacks so much self confidence and has little sense of self worth.  Tim notices Bruce’s increasing violence as he grieves for the loss of his son, and Tim knows he needs to step in and help.  Batman needs a Robin.

 For most characters, this would be the part where Tim put himself forward for the job.  But he doesn’t.  He seeks out Dick Grayson and begs him to come home instead.  It’s only when Batman and Nightwing are in danger and there is literally no one else to help that Tim steps up and dons the cape. And once he does, he’s constantly plagued by self-doubt, terrified he will screw up and leave Batman worse than ever before.

 From there, Tim undergoes intense training.  He never begs to be in the spotlight, doesn’t push to go out on the streets before he’s ready.  His goal is to help Bruce as much as possible.

 Here’s where I started to fall in love with him.  All that self-doubt, the constant need to be useful?  That’s exactly what you would expect to see from a child whose parents had ignored and neglected him.  He finally has a parental figure who sees him, who values him, and Tim does everything he can to make himself worthy in the hopes that Bruce will keep him around.

 This is the first example of character consistency that we see with Tim.  And it continues.  When his mom dies and his dad is put in a coma, you see Tim struggle to come to terms with losing the people he loves, but never had a relationship with.  Tim almost never mentions his mom after her death, because she just wasn’t present in his life.  When his dad recovers and decides to stick around, Tim struggles to build a relationship with him.  He’s plagued with guilt because he’s finally found the father figure he needed in Bruce, but he thinks that he’s supposed to feel that way for Jack.  It’s a running undercurrent in their relationship that creates distance between them for years.

 This is already so long, so I’m going to try to summarize a bit more.  We get to watch Tim grow up.  We see his awkward relationship with his first girlfriend, Ariana.  He doesn’t know how to treat her; he’s never had the opportunity to observe a healthy relationship.  But he tries so, so hard.  All of Tim’s relationships are awkward, because he’s never had a model of a good one. Steph is a great match for him, because she’s very vocal about what she wants and needs, and she isn’t afraid to call Tim out when he messes up, which is exactly what Tim needs.

 Big things happen to Tim. He’s stuck with Jean-Paul Valley, who slowly goes insane, leaving Tim to try to keep the city in one piece.  He’s infected with the Clench, a plague that sweeps over Gotham and kills everyone it touches, and barely escapes with his life. His girlfriend is sexually assaulted, leaving him to deal with the fallout.  His family moves out of Gotham, and he has to sneak back in during No Man’s Land to help.  His relationship with his dad has intense ups and downs, resulting in him being sent to boarding school, punished in a variety of ways, and generally caused a lot of trouble in his life.

 Then people start dying. Over the course of about a year in his life, Tim loses his girlfriend, his dad, a close friend, and his best friend, each of whom dies under tragic conditions.  Tim’s grief is intense, and he is understandably traumatized by the losses. We see fundamental changes in his character.  He changes his costume from something bright and cheerful to something darker that reflects his emotional state.  He’s more subdued, his adventures a little more serious.

 When Bruce first tries to adopt him, Tim literally creates an uncle and hires an actor to play him, just to avoid dealing with the situation.  Bruce has viewed Tim as a son for years, so to him the adoption is an obvious step.  For Tim, it feels like a betrayal of his father, and it takes a while before he’s ready to accept Bruce’s love, home, and a place in his family.  

 When Damian shows up on the scene, Tim really struggles with him, and not just because early Damian is a horrid brat who tries to kill Tim on multiple occasions.  Tim has always felt the need to earn his place with Bruce, and Damian constantly throws all of Tim’s biggest fears in his face—he’s not wanted or needed now that the “real” son is here, he’s not worthy of a place in the family, he’s not good enough.

 Tim tries to clone Conner, his best friend.  He’s lost so many people, and he’s desperate to get them back.  Conner was cloned to begin with and fully matured over a very short period of time; the technology clearly exists, so why can’t Tim use it to get his best friend back?  And if he can get Conner back, why not the others he’s lost?  He eventually gives up, but when he eventually gets access to a Lazarus Pit, he immediately wants to incorporate the waters into his process so he can revive his loved ones.  With Dick’s help, Tim eventually decides to let it go, but it’s such a poignant moment for the character.

 Then Bruce dies, and Dick takes Robin away.  Tim switches to the Red Robin persona as he travels the world, alone, trying to prove that he was right.  He has to deal with the trauma of losing another father, finds out that his girlfriend never died but let him hurt so much for so long.  His brother and the only close friend he has left both think his grief has overwhelmed his sense and that he’s gone crazy.  He’s utterly alone.

 The Red Robin series is such a great culmination for Tim.  He finds a place for himself as a hero, as a CEO.  He gets parts of his family back���Bruce, Steph, Bart, Conner.  He finally figures out who he wants to be and creates a place for himself.

 This overarching character development is what I love about Tim.  His many, many traumas impact his decisions, and you can clearly see how he changes over time as a result of them.  I didn’t even go into his development as a leader from his early fumbling with Young Justice to his strong leadership of the Teen Titans, or how his relationships with Conner, Bart, and Cassie develop so fluidly and realistically over the years.

 This is why I love Tim. Characters like Batman are static; nothing that happens to them will ever have a lasting impact, because in the end the character always returns to what they were.  Tim, on the other hand, has changed and developed A LOT since his initial appearance.  His growth has always been consistent and logical.

 When the reboot happened, all of that character growth was lost.  Tim was replaced with a jerk who betrayed his friends and cheated on his girlfriend.  DC has basically retconned all of this and tried to turn Tim back into who he was, but by taking away all of the things that have happened to him over the years, Tim has lost SO MUCH.

 I keep looking for my Tim in recent comics, and I just can’t find him.  It breaks my heart, because I love him so much, and it feels like he’s lost to me forever.  The most recent Young Justice comic series actually gave me hope; I felt like maybe, finally, someone was going to write Tim correctly.  He had his primary friendships back, his relationship with Steph was developing (even if they seem to have completely dropped all the development around Steph’s decision to let Tim think she was dead).  The actual book itself wasn’t fantastic, but it felt like they were headed in the right direction.

 Over the last few days, I read the Batman: Urban Legends books.  I actually read the Batman/Red Hood story first, which was fantastic.  I was really excited to read Tim’s story (though I already knew how it ended).  Jason’s character was handled so well, and he seemed to actually have some character development that will hopefully last.  I anticipated the same for Tim.

 But Tim’s story was awful. The plot was all over the place—kids are being kidnapped, so Tim has to join a pain cult to get them back?  He’s somehow helping Oracle with computer issues while simultaneously questioning witnesses?  He’s broken up with Steph, off camera, shortly after telling her how much he loves her, but Steph somehow thinks that they should have a caring relationship where Tim tells her what he’s feeling?  Bernard has somehow become a good enough fighter to stand side by side with Robin?  Tim STILL doesn’t have a code name?  Why is everyone suddenly hounding him about what he wants to do with his life?

 It’s just such a mess of a story.  If it didn’t end with Tim agreeing to go on a date with Bernard, no one would ever have even mentioned it.  There’s nothing particularly re-readable or enjoyable about it.

 I actually liked that they brought Bernard back. I really enjoyed him in the original Robin series. It’s been a while since I read that part of the series (I’m actually working my way back through it now).  I know Bernard always read as gay to me, yet somehow I felt like he was out of character in these books.

 And then, the climax of the story.  Tim is bi, or gay, or has at least agreed to go on a date with a boy.

 If this had happened in the pre-boot, when Tim was Red Robin and had an actual character arc, I honestly wouldn’t have had an issue with it.  I do think it would have needed a LOT more build up than it was given here.  Tim has always been a very introspective character, and we’ve been party to so much of his internal monologue over the years.  It seems very strange to me that such a huge thing just sneaks up on him out of nowhere when he’s never even thought about it before.

 But more than that, this story just feels like the final death blow for the Tim I loved.  The whole arc is about how Tim doesn’t know who he is or who he wants to be.  What will his hero name be?  Will he go to college?  What is he going to do with his life?  These are all great questions, and his answer to all of them is… date a boy?  

 Is this going to be his defining characteristic going forward?  From here will we just see Tim exploring and discovering his sexuality?  The Tim we have now doesn’t have a family, a team, a purpose, or even a code name.  Why was this the thing that DC decided to give us?  It feels like they wanted to make a gay Robin and decided it would be Tim because they didn’t know what else to do with him.

 It’s stupid, but I honestly feel like I’ve spent the past few days grieving the loss of a loved one. The Tim that DC is presenting now is just not the person that I knew.  Tim would never break up with Steph that abruptly for what he admits is no apparent reason.  He would never say “just call me Robin, since Damian’s out of town.”  Everything that I love about Tim seems to be gone, and in its place DC has given me a date with a boy.  

 Again, it’s not Tim being not-straight that I have an issue with.  I’ve never read the character that way, but it’s something I can live with. My issue is the way it was handled. Why not make Tim an actual person first, and then explore his sexuality?  Send him off to college!  He’s obviously thinking about it!  It’s the perfect opportunity to give him his own book.  He can move to a different city, choose a new name, and DC can introduce a whole new set of characters.  Figure out which parts of Tim’s backstory are still canon, and which have been dropped. Make him a person again, and then let him explore his sexuality.

 I know this post is all over the place, and I don’t have time right now to go back and edit it.  I just really needed an outlet for my frustration.  Right now it feels like there are so many people who are so excited about Tim being bi/gay, but they don’t know anything else about him.  I keep seeing people comment how DC has been “dropping hints for years!” with no evidence other than “he and Superboy were really close!”  I guess I’d just really like to have some dialogue with other people who are fans of Tim, rather than fans of Tim-as-bi/gay or fans of Tim-as-straight.

 Does anyone else feel this way?  I’d honestly like to have a dialogue about it with other long time fans.

[ectonurites]

can anybody please explain the appeal of tim drake because ive been into the batfamily for a while now and tbh im really confused on why people like his character so much compared to the other robins. like they all have their own thing going on and he just... doesnt?

Have you read his Robin solo? Because if not and you want to try to like him but just don’t understand why people do, that’s what I’d recommend. That and like, Young Justice 1998. 

Because Tim definitely... does have his own thing going on. Maybe not in the same way as the others, but like, there’s a reason he has a 183 issue long solo comic that ran for like 16 years: he was fun to read about!

But I will give some more specific thoughts on the subject as a Tim Drake Appreciator™ (this got long im sorry)

The appeal of Tim (especially early on Tim) is kinda the fact that he’s this more normal kid. For a while that is his ‘thing’. He was basically designed to be a self-insert (he definitely became more than that along the way, but from the start he was meant to be relatable) in a different way than how Dick and Jason had been before him. 

Like the role of Robin from the start was this way to create a character young readers could identify with more, could see themselves in more. And Dick and Jason did that, but they still had this element to their lives and stories that was more... unattainable for the average reader. Dick was a circus prodigy, Jason was either also a circus prodigy if we remember pre-crisis or if we go with his post-crisis story he’s this street-wise orphaned kid who had a really tough life but still went on to be a hero anyways. Obviously those lives are relatable for some people, but those’re definitely not as broadly recognized as common upbringings especially not by DC trying to market to the ‘average’ kid/young teen.

But the creation of Tim changed the game a bit. Dick and Jason were these aspirations a kid could look to like ‘wow I want to be cool like that!’ but Tim was a Robin designed for kids to look at and go ‘wow, his problems and civilian life are just like mine AND he’s a hero, I want to be cool like that!’, ya know? Tim was... just a clever kid with an average life who managed to connect some dots and had enough drive to want to fix things he saw were a problem, he didn’t have the same kind of heightened drama backstory the others did. The Robins that came after Tim definitely didn’t have this idea of relatability in mind the same way either. Unfortunately Steph’s time as Robin was much more of a marketing ploy than an actual like... decision to make her Robin, so it’s hard to really fit her into this conversation. But Damian from the start was first of all initially created not to be Robin but just as the son of Talia and Bruce back in the 80’s, but when he was later reimagined into the character that would become Robin he had the whole ‘raised by and is the heir to the league of assassins and is the son of batman’ thing going on still. He just was not supposed to be relatable that same way, he was a character designed with different things in mind.

I really think it was more just DC’s 90′s era younger-audience comics in general that tried to push that relatability thing (like in YJ how Cissie even after quitting the team stays a major character as a civilian throughout, and the civilian aspect that’s super present in Bart’s 90s solo too, etc), but later in the 2000’s that idea was definitely pushed to the side in favor of... putting in even more dramatic superhero-y stuff.

And the other thing that’s... such a more normal thing but it actually made him unique here, was that Tim’s dad was still alive until like 2004 (so 15 years into Tim being around as a character). This gave Tim a lot more typical ‘family school girlfriends normal life etc’ problems on top of/in contrast with his superhero problems. These just manifested in very different ways than they could with the other Robins because of that unique situation with a living civilian parent who doesn’t know about hero stuff (until he did find out which lead to that whole Unmasked thing, but there was only the brief time around War Games & Identity Crisis where Jack knew Tim was actively Robin and he was... still alive) Tim also had his life at school expanded way more than most other Robins, like, he had such an extended supporting cast of civilian friends which is a really interesting thing to read about (and the fact that he hasn’t had that stuff since the New 52 I think really hurts his character)

And then related to that loss of his dad... Personally another thing about Tim that really interests me is how a lot of things were more... his choice. if that makes sense. A lot of characters in the Batfamily were struck with tragedy/extreme trauma before they became heroes and that’s what spurred them into this life of becoming heroes. Tim’s situation wasn’t like that at all! When he first got involved in everything during Lonely Place of Dying, the only tragedy he’d experienced was watching Dick’s tragedy happen. Which sure yes traumatic obviously, but that’s not the same as how pretty much all the other Bats had gone through these very personal losses or other sorts of very first-hand personal traumas that served as motivators. Tim didn’t start to experience those things until after he got involved in the hero life, and aside from his Mom’s death which was more of just an unrelated incident (that technically happened before he was officially Robin but it was during his time training to become Robin), pretty much all these other tragedies and things... would not have happened or been experienced by him had he not become Robin. 

That’s not me placing blame on him or anything like that, because god no that’s not how that works, but it’s very interesting because from his point of view he definitely feels that guilt because he knows him being Robin played a role in a lot of it (Thinking specifically about in Adventure Comics #3 when Kon even says “I know what guilt does to you” to him like it’s... it’s a thing with him!). His dad was murdered because he was Robin. He only met Steph and started dating her through being Robin, and thus he would not have experienced the loss of his girlfriend dying like that had he not been Robin. Tim met both Conner and Bart through being Robin, and would not have had a personal connection to them when they died otherwise. The whole Bruce’s death thing after Final Crisis, like. I could go on honestly, that was only talking about losses not even his own experiences nearly getting killed, but yeah, all these personal tragedies were experienced by him specifically because he chose to bring himself into this life, which I think in turn plays into how throughout his comics you see him go from having this really optimistic view on things and being really hopeful to seeing him at that low point he reaches by the time of Red Robin. (thinking about that one post that points out how Tim started out in the 90′s as an optimist and Steph a cynic and by the time they were Red Robin and Batgirl in 2009 they had switched outlooks...) 

I also think that him having had such a great team book with the original Young Justice can help contribute to people liking him. His friendships with the rest of the core four and that team in general are really compelling. (and that’s something like again when looking at the other Robins, while Dick had the Titans ofc, Jason never really found footing with a team outside of like one mission with the Titans and then We All Know How Damian’s Teen Titans Stuff Went. Steph also only ever really worked with a team outside the batfam on very brief occasions) and even though I’m not as big of a fan of the 2003 Teen Titans run that came after YJ, people who read Young Justice and also that could follow and be attached to those same characters over a pretty decently long period of time. 

Idk man, I don’t really have an ultimate point here i’m just rambling. I can definitely understand not seeing the appeal to him right away (honestly i’ve been into Batfam since like 2013/2014 and Tim did not become one of my faves until 2020) especially if like... idk when you say ‘into the batfamily’ that can mean a lot of different things. If you’re reading more like the bigger events with the batfam sure Tim can kinda fade into the bg a bit, if you’re more talking about fanon the fanon version of him is prettyyyyy uhhhhh not really the same as how he was in pre New 52 canon, if you’re mainly reading New 52 era Batfam stuff then that Tim I also don’t understand the appeal of bc thats Not My Boy, if you’re interested in a different member primarily and only familiar with Tim when he shows up in things focused on that other character then it’s easy to not really understand the appeal right away bc he’s more there to support that character rather than shine in his own right. 

I think it’s also worth mentioning he’s just not everybody’s cup of tea, and that’s totally fine. Like, these are fictional characters and sometimes you just will vibe with a character and sometimes you won’t! idk if this helped at all or even made sense. but yeah. I just think he’s neat 😌

[superman86to99]

Superman #85 (January 1994)

Cat Grant in... "DARK RETRIBUTION"! Which is like normal retribution, but somehow darker. On the receiving end of Cat's darktribution is Winslow Schott, the Toyman, who suddenly changed his MO from "pestering Superman with wacky robots" to "murdering children" back on Superman #84, with one of his victims being Cat's young son Adam. Now Cat has a gun and intends to sneak it into prison to use it on Toyman. She's also pretty pissed at Superman for taking so long to find Toyman after Adam’s death (to be fair, Superman did lose several days being frozen in time by an S&M demon, as seen in Man of Steel #29).

So how did Superman find Toyman anyway? Basically, by spying on like 25% of Metropolis. After finding out from Inspector Turpin that the kids were killed near the docks, Superman goes there and focuses all of his super-senses to get "a quick glimpse of every person" until he sees a bald, robed man sitting on a giant crib, and goes "hmmm, yeah, that looks like someone who murders children." At first, Superman doesn't understand why Toyman would do such a horrible thing, but then Schott starts talking to his mommy in his head and the answer becomes clear: he watched Psycho too many times (or Dan Jurgens did, anyway).

Immediately after wondering why no one buys his toys, Toyman makes some machine guns spring out of his giant crib. I don't know, man, maybe it's because they're all full of explosives and stuff? Anyway, Toyman throws a bunch of exploding toys at Superman, including a robot duplicate of himself, but of course they do nothing. Superman takes him to jail so he can get the help he needs -- which, according to Cat, is a bullet to the face. Or so it seems, until she gets in front of him, pulls the trigger, and...

PSYCHE! It was one of those classic joke guns I’ve only ever seen in comics! Cat says she DID plan to bring a real gun, but then she saw one of these at a toy store and just couldn't resist. Superman, who was watching the whole thing, tells Cat she could get in trouble for this stunt, but he won't tell anyone because she's already been through enough. Then he asks her if she needs help getting home and she says no, because she wants to be more self-sufficient.

I think that's supposed to be an inspiring ending, but I don't know... Adam's eerie face floating in the background there makes me think she's gonna shave her head and climb into a giant crib any day, too. THE END!

Character-Watch:

Cat did become more self-sufficient after this, though. Up to now, all of her storylines seemed to revolve around other people: her ex-husband, Morgan Edge, José Delgado, Vinnie Edge, and finally Toyman. After this, I feel like there was a clear effort to turn her into a character that works by herself. I actually like what they did with Cat in the coming years, though I still don’t think they had to kill her poor kid to do that -- they could have sent him off to boarding school, or maybe to live with his dad. Or with José Delgado, over at Power of Shazam! I bet Jerry Ordway would have taken good care of him.

Plotline-Watch:

Wait, so can Superman just find anyone in Metropolis any time he wants? Not really: this is part of the ongoing storyline about his powers getting boosted after he came back from the dead, which sounds pretty useful now but is about to get very inconvenient.

Don Sparrow points out: "It is interesting that as Superman tries to capture Schott, he at one point instead captures a robot decoy, particularly knowing what Geoff Johns will retroactively do to this storyline in years to come, in Action Comics #865, as we mentioned in our review of Superman #84." Johns also explained that the robot thought he was hearing his mother's voice due to the real Toyman trying to contact him via radio, which I prefer to the "psycho talks to his dead mom" cliche.

Superman says "I never thought he'd get to the point where he'd KILL anyone -- especially children!" Agreed about the children part but, uh, did Superman already forget that Toyman murdered a whole bunch people on his very first appearance, in Superman #13? Or does Superman not count greedy toy company owners as people? Understandable, I guess.

There's a sequence about Cat starting a fire in a paper basket at the prison to sneak past the metal detector, but why do that if she had a toy gun all long? Other than to prevent smartass readers like us from saying "How did she get the gun into the prison?!" before the plot twist, that is.

Patreon-Watch:

Shout out to our patient Patreon patrons, Aaron, Murray Qualie, Chris “Ace” Hendrix, britneyspearsatemyshorts, Patrick D. Ryall, Bheki Latha, Mark Syp, Ryan Bush, Raphael Fischer, Dave Shevlin, and Kit! The latest Patreon-only article was about another episode of the 1988 Superman cartoon written by Marv Wolfman, this one co-starring Wonder Woman (to Lois' frustration).

Another Patreon perk is getting to read Don Sparrow's section early, because he usually finishes his side of these posts long before I do (he ALREADY finished the next one, for instance). But now this one can be posted in public! Take it away, Don:

Art-Watch (by @donsparrow​):

We begin with the cover, and it’s a good one— an ultra tight close up for Cat Grant firing a .38 calibre gun, with the titular Superman soaring in, perhaps too late.  An interesting thing to notice in this issue (and especially on the cover) is that the paper stock that DC used for their comics changed, so slightly more realistic shading was possible.  While it’s nowhere near the sophistication or gloss of the Image Comics stock of the time, there is an attempt at more realistic, airbrushy type shading in the colour.  It works well in places, like the muzzle flash, on on Cat Grant’s cheeks and knuckles, but less so in her hair, where the shadow looks a browny green on my copy.

The interior pages open with a pretty good bit of near-silent storytelling.  We are deftly shown, and not told the story—there are condolence cards and headlines, and the looming presence of a liquor bottle, until we are shown on the next page splash the real heart of the story, a revolver held aloft by Catherine Grant, bereaved mother, with her targeting in her mind the grim visage of the Toyman.

While their first few issues together meshed pretty well, it’s around  this issue that the pencil/inks team of Jurgens and Rubinstein starts to look a little rushed in places.  A few inkers who worked with Jurgens that I’ve spoken to have hinted that his pencils can vary in their level of detail, from very finished  to pretty loose, and in the latter case, it’s up to the inker to embellish where there’s a lack of detail.  Some inkers, like Brett Breeding, really lay down a heavier hand, where there’s quite a bit of actual drawing work in addition to adding value and weight to the lines.  I suspect some of the looseness in the figures, as well as empty  backgrounds reveals that these pencils were less detailed than we often  see from Jurgens.

There’s some weird body language in the tense exchange between Superman and Cat as she angrily confronts him about his lack of progress in capturing her son’s killer—Superman  looks a little too dynamic and pleased with himself for someone ostensibly apologizing. Superman taking flight to hunt down Toyman is classic Jurgens, though.

Another example of art weirdness comes on page 7, where Superman gets filled in on the progress of the Adam Morgan investigation.  Apparently Suicide Slum has some San Francisco-like hills, as that is one very steep sidewalk separating Superman and Turpin from some central-casting looking punks.

The  sequence of Superman concentrating his sight and hearing on the  waterfront area is well-drawn, and it’s always nice to see novel uses of his powers.  Tyler Hoechlin’s Superman does a similar trick quite often on the excellent first season of Superman & Lois.  The full-bleed splash of Superman breaking through the wall to capture Toyman is definitely panel-of-the-week material, as we really feel Superman’s rage and desperation to catch this child-killer.

Pretty much all the pages with Cat Grant confronting Winslow Schott are  well-done and tensely paced.  While sometimes I think the pupil-less  flare of the eye-glasses is a cop-out, it does lend an opaqueness and mystery to what Toyman is thinking.  Speaking of cop-outs, the gag gun twist ending really didn’t work for me.  I was glad that Cat didn’t lower herself to Schott’s level and become a killer, even for revenge, but the prank gun just felt too silly of a tonal shift for a storyline with this much gravitas.  The breakneck denouement that Cat is now depending only on herself didn’t get quite enough breathing room either.

While I appreciated that the ending of this issue avoided an overly simplistic, Death Wish style of justice, this issue extends this troubling but brief era of Superman comics. The casual chalk outlines of  yet two more dead children continues the high body count of the  previous handful of issues, and the tone remains jarring to me.  The issue is also self-aware enough to point out, again, that Schott is  generally an ally of children, and not someone who historically wishes  them harm, but that doesn’t stop the story from going there, in the most  violent of terms. In addition to being a radical change to the Toyman  character, it’s handled in a fashion more glib than we’re used to seeing  in these pages.  The mental health cliché of a matriarchal obsession, a la Norman Bates doesn’t elevate it either.  So, another rare misstep  from Jurgens the writer, in my opinion.   STRAY OBSERVATIONS:

I  had thought for sure that Romanove Vodka was a sly reference to a certain Russian Spy turned Marvel superhero, but it turns out there  actually is a Russian Vodka called that, minus the “E”, produced not in Russia, as one might think from the Czarist name, but rather, India.

While it made for an awkward exchange, I was glad that Cat pointed out how  her tragedy more or less sat on the shelf while Superman dealt with the "Spilled Blood" storyline.  A lesser book might not have acknowledged any  time had passed. Though I did find it odd for Superman to opine that he  wanted to find her son’s murderer even more than she wanted him to.  Huh?  How so?

I love the detail that Toyman hears the noise of Superman soaring to capture him, likening it to a train coming.

I  quibble, but there’s so much I don’t understand about the “new” Toyman.  If he’s truly regressing mentally, to an infant-like state, why does he wear this phantom of the opera style long cloak while he sits in his baby crib?  Why not go all the way, and wear footie pajamas, like the lost souls on TLC specials about “adult babies”?

I get that Cat Grant is in steely determination mode, but it seemed a little out of place that she had almost no reaction to the taunting she faced from her child’s killer.  She doesn’t shed a single tear in the entire issue, and no matter how focused she is on vengeance, that doesn’t seem realistic to me. [Max: That's because this is not just retribution, Don. It's dark retribution. We’ve been over this!]

[avaritia-apotheosis]

Phantom Children [DP x Batman Crossover] Ch. 1

Disclaimer: It's been a while since I watched DP and the only Batman/DC stuff I've interacted with are B:TAS, the JL cartoons, and what I got from fandom osmosis so don't expect any sort of canon compliance.

In Which: the author takes advantage of the passage of time in Nanda Parbat being wonky and Danny doesn't give up, per se, but is sort of resigned to being stuck with the League of Assassins until further notice.

AO3 | Prologue | [ 1 ] | 2 |

CW for descriptions of non-consensual drug use (if there's anything you guys would like me to tag, please tell me)

-----

WHEN SOMETHING WENT WRONG WITH DANNY’S LIFE, it was usually because of one or two things: Ghosts or Vlad. And considering their truce and how even Vlad wouldn’t go this far (at least, Danny hoped), Danny was kidnapped because of ghosts. Or his association with ghosts.

Though how an organization of ninja-assassins got wind of his ‘unique’ circumstance was beyond him. The shackles they slapped on his wrists were more a formality than anything after the second time he tried to escape them with intangibility. The only reason they managed to get him contained the entire trip from Amity Park to wherever the fuck Nanda Parbat lay was because of the cocktail of drugs they pumped into his system spiked with blood blossoms.

Danny had to give it to them. The League of Assassins might not have any anti-ecto weaponry, but they did their homework.

He barely remembered the trip. He catches flashes—blurry figures and words he couldn’t comprehend. A warm hand holding his, a thumb rubbing smooth circles on the back of his palm and calloused fingers running through his hair.

When he awoke, it was in a room bigger than his bedroom. His ankle was shackled to a bedpost, and the only door leading out was locked. There was a separate room for the bathroom off to the side and a shelf stacked with books decorating the otherwise bare walls, but other than that there wasn’t much else. Not even windows.

Intangibility, he learned, wasn’t an option. The blood blossoms in his bloodstream were still in circulation, rendering his transformation useless. If his nose was right, his captors were pumping blood blossoms from the vents. The sickly sweet of the flower was faint in the cool air, but the slight red haze that persisted in the room was unmistakable.

He tried, regardless. The rings barely made it half-way before his knees buckled and he started retching all over the floor. At least his stomach was empty.

-------

Danny doesn’t know how long he’s been in Nanda Parbat. Time moved differently here. Faster, he thought. He doesn’t really understand how or why, though sometimes he wondered what Clockwork thought of all of this.

(There are times, in the darkness and solitude of his cell, when Danny would call for Clockwork to rescue him. Quietly, so quietly, it was barely even a whisper. But Clockwork would hear it—Danny was sure he would. Clockwork helped him out before, so this time shouldn’t be all that different. But at the end of the night, nothingness would answer him. And Danny had to learn over and over again that even the Ghost of Time had his own rules to follow.)

It had taken a few days and Talia nearly biting the head off of the League’s physician for them to realize that blood blossoms would be an awful way to contain him. Effective at immobilizing him, yes, but the flowers left him about as helpless as Superman in a kryptonite cave.

“It all works out in the end,” Talia would say. “The blossoms were never going to become a long-term solution; you might end up developing an immunity to them given enough exposure.”

Though knowing now what Talia’s ‘long-term plan’ was for making sure Danny didn’t slip through the walls of the headquarters and fly across the ocean, Danny would rather take his chances with the blood blossoms.

Danny might not have been as smart as Vlad, but he was tricky and creative when he needed to be. He knows he’s powerful. And sure, he might forget some of his own abilities every now and then, but that doesn’t mean he can’t use them. In the time he’s been stuck in the Leage’s lair (and coherent), Danny had thought of a dozen escape plans, each one with a high chance of success. If he made an attempt, he could guarantee the League wouldn’t notice until he was a quarter-way across the globe.

Escaping wasn’t the problem. That would be the easy part.

His core burned at the thought of it. And it hurt—as if his entire being was dunked in a vat of dry ice and left to freeze. He hated how he was here and everything that he was protecting was far. Away.

Danny wanted to go home. Wanted to read comic books in his bed, play Doom with Tucker and Sam, sleep in class and make fun of the Box Ghost. He wants to eat his mom’s food, even if there’s a fifty-fifty chance that it would come alive and try to eat him instead. He wants to listen to Jazz try to psychoanalyze his problems. Wants to go fishing with his dad and eat his famous chocolate fudge. Wants to fly above the skies of Amity Park and touch what little he can of the universe before he’s called down again.

Amity Park is his haunt. His Home. The soft hum of the Ghost Portal in the basement a lullaby he’s listened to for so long that sleeping without it was next to impossible. Every fiber of his being craved to go back because how is he supposed to protect Amity if he isn’t there?

But to go back meant sacrificing everyone.

Danny doesn’t risk it.

(The—the last time was an accident. If Danny isn’t—if he isn’t careful, this time it may be an assassination. He refused to have his family’s death on his hands again.)

He has faith in Sam, Tucker, and Jazz to hold down the fort until he could find a way to escape. They’re smart. Smarter than him. They’ll work something out and—in a worst-case scenario, they’ll find a way to shut down the Ghost Portal to stop the ghosts from coming through.

Logic meant nothing to his ghost core, though. The next best thing to do was to drown out his worries with the League’s rigorous education.

Hand-to-hand and weapons combat. Geography. History. Dozens of foreign languages. Poisons and herbology and basic first-aid. His days are packed with new things to learn and to repeat until it’s drilled into his skull so deep he could recite the information in his sleep. (Hyosycamus niger, aka Henbane. Every part is highly toxic and can cause dizziness, stupor, insanity, and eventual death. It’s medicinal uses range from--)

The League demanded perfection. The Demon’s Head demanded even more than that.

Talia oversaw his education. Sometimes, there would be another, older, man by her side, observing his regimen with cold calculation. Whenever that man arrived, Danny’s instructors were always stricter.

His teachers made little effort to interact with him outside of their set schedule, and during his lessons they only ever answer pertinent questions. He supposed there would be other students of the League in Nanda Parbat, but he’s seen neither hide nor hair of them. His rooms (a bedroom + bathroom combo that led out into a large indoor space for training) are separate from everything else.

Danny slept alone, ate alone, and trained alone. And for a boy who has had his two best friends stuck to his side like glue for as long as he could remember, it’s a terribly lonely experience.

His shadow guards don’t count. They might as well be another piece of furniture. Another stone in the wall.

-------

Talia was the only one that broke his new mundane routine, as much as she was the cause of it. She was his only source of companionship in this hell hole; the only one who would really speak to him. And yeah, he knew why that was. Jazz had rambled on enough about Stockholm syndrome to know that this ‘arrangement’ was Talia’s attempts at forging a bond between them. But godit’s just so hard to be stuck inside your own mind all day when. It made him think too much. Worry. (Whatifwhatifwhatifwhatif).

And then—

And then.

Danny had asked Talia a multitude of questions, but only two did she ever answer. Both asked when he was still trying to flush the drug cocktail and the blood blossoms from his system.

The first was when he asked, “Why am I here?” She answered that it was because Ra’s al Ghul, her father, wanted him. He had knowledge the Demon’s Head wanted; powers that Ra’s could only ever dream of. The man was curious—though Talia assured him over and over again that Danny wouldn’t be vivisected and studied for science.

The second answer came right after when Danny asked her “How could you be so sure?”

Talia smiled. Lacquered fingers coming up to brush away the dark strands that fell over his face. Her hands traced the curve of his jaw, cupping his cheeks to raise his eyes to hers. “Because you are my son,” she said, voice honey sweet.

He jerked from her hold.

Burned by it.

“You’re lying,” he spat. “I’m already someone else’s son. Try again.”

Talia let her hands drop to her sides. “You are my son.” She took a step closer towards him. Steady. Firm. “That is why you are here.”

“I don’t believe you.”

A pitying smile. “Be that as it may, you cannot change the truth.” She approached him, slowly backing him against the wall before she reached out to tilt his chin upwards. Some traitorous part of Danny’s mind catalogued her features. Made connections that shouldn’t exist. “I have carried you in my womb, Daniel. You were a part of me for so very long and I loved you more with each passing day. You are of my body and of my blood—not matter how much you may deny it.”

“No.” He pushed her hands away and raked his hands over his hair. “You’re lying.” She must be. They don’t look alike. Not at all. Everyone always said he was his dad’s—Jack Fenton’s—exact copy. Black haired and blue eyed and sharp-jawed. Awkward but well-meaning and with a heart of gold, his mother said. It was once of the facts of life; Danny took after his dad, and Jazz took after their mom. Simple as that.

(There is a memory resurfacing from his early childhood that Danny is desperately trying to repress again. Memories of kids teasing him on the playground, innocently cruel in the way only children can be as they tried to convince him he was adopted. That his skin looked nothing like his parents’. Dusky where his parents and sister were fair. He went home crying to his parents that same day, and they soothed away his worries with hushed words and a well-timed distraction.)

He asked no more questions after that. Talia was lying to him for some reason, and no answer she could give would be trustworthy anyways. What little of him he could see in her was only a figment of his own imagination. His mind playing cruel tricks.

Then his hopes were dashed aside when Talia showed him a picture of his father a day later.

The man in the photo looked like him. Black haired and eyes the same shade of too-bright blue. There were differences, of course. The man in the photograph was fairer, unlike Danny. He was taller and broader where Danny was lean and lanky. But despite this and all the other minute differences, this man who was supposed to be Danny’s biological father looked like him.

The same slant of the brow. The same shape of the eyes. The way the man held himself with this sense of gravitas and power that Danny couldn’t yet do in his awkward teenage years but had seen before. In a monster another man.

Danny’s future self was terrifying in its inhumanity, but it didn’t take that much of an imagination to know that he looked almost exactly like the man in the picture.

[purplesurveys]

1391

survey by supremequeenstyles

Did you get enough rest last night? Yep, finally since it had been a Friday morning.

What was the last thing that kept you awake? Work. I’m constantly putting in overtime hours.

If you have pets, do they sleep in your bedroom at night? Kimi does as I’m his person and wants to be around me at all times, especially now that’s he’s a senior dog and is nearly completely blind. Cooper sleeps downstairs, in his pen.

Can you sleep with background noise or does it keep you up? It depends. The more anxious I feel about the next day, the more I need background noise so I’ll usually turn on a YouTube video and let autoplay do its thing. Sometimes though I’ll just be super exhausted and will fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow.

Do you ever take naps? Do you take long naps or little power naps? I rarely take naps. I can’t afford naps on weekdays because of work; then on weekends I’ll usually want to do a bunch of stuff to make up for the amount of work I did during the weekdays and I try to avoid naps because of it.

What helps when you have trouble sleeping? Lying down while watching videos does the trick.

Who was the last person to cook you a meal? What did they make? Mom made chicken fillet the other night.

Who was the last person you cooked a meal for? What did you make? I don’t cook but I did get my mom and sister cinnamon buns last night.

Who is your female celeb crush? (If applicable) It’s been a while since I’ve had a female celebrity crush, but I guess Kristen Stewart and Kate Winslet will always top my list.

Who is your male celeb crush? (If applicable) Kim Taehyung.

Tell me about an interesting article you've read recently. It was trying to plot together the current whereabouts of this once-massively-popular churros place that took over Philippine malls just a few years ago. That brand used to be huge and then it disappeared during Covid and it just...never came back. Its social media channels are still up but haven’t been updated since 2020, so no one knows if they still plan on coming back or if the owners just ran and abandoned the business altogether.

Do you have a favorite Marvel character? No, I don’t. Never been invested in the whole superhero scene.

Favorite DC character? I don’t have any.

Do you read comic books? Before. I tried getting into them, but it just wasn’t for me.

Who has been your favorite actor to play Batman (live action)? I’ve never seen a Batman movie.

Who has been your favorite live action Joker? ^ Same.

Has a horror film ever actually scared you? Which one(s)? The Ring gave me the heebie jeebies mostly because immediately after watching, like when the credits were rolling, the telephone started ringing. It turned out to be my grandma just checking up on us LOL BUT STILL.

What was the last horror movie you saw? Oh I’m just not sure; it’s been a while. I think it may have been Midsommar but I watched that with cousins all the way back in 2020.

What was the first horror movie you remember seeing? What did you think of it? That would be The Orphan, I think. I no longer remember the thoughts I had while watching it, but I remember fairly enjoying the movie.

Name a few historical figures you find interesting. Why? Claudette Colvin and the few other individuals who actually came before Rosa Parks when it came to the refusal of giving up bus seats. It becomes really eye-opening when you find out the reasons why those who came first weren’t chosen to be the face of the civil rights movement, e.g. because they were teenagers or because they were already pregnant, etc.

What is your favorite historical film and why? As in a movie about history? Hm...I’d go with Gone with the Wind. I admit I have yet to read up more on the Civil War for a better appreciation of the actual story, but I admire the film for its innovations in the film industry more than anything. A 4-hour film entirely in color in the 1930s? Astounding.

Do you usually enjoy historical films? Yes, as long as they’re accurate to an extent and don’t taint the legacy of whatever or whomever it is being portrayed. Like I’d enjoy GWTW and Schinder’s List and Waterloo Bridge, but I’d never give Grace of Monaco the time of day lol.

Name a sequel film (any franchise) you like better than the first film. Why is that? Shrek 2. It was the first movie in the franchise I was able to watch and I enjoyed it a lot, so much so that I just ended up being uninterested in the first and third (and I think they even had a fourth?) film.

Which do you find most interesting: Greek, Roman, or Norse mythology? Why? None of these. Mythology has never interested me except for that brief time I got into the Percy Jackson series.

Which tale from whichever mythology you listed above do you find most interesting? Just Percy Jackson, even though I’m sure it doesn’t count as a ‘tale’ per se.

Do you collect anything? What was the last item you added to that collection? Yeah, K-Pop merch but specifically for BTS. The last thing I got was an Army Bomb, aka their lightstick. It comes with photocards too so there’s more to add to my collection hehe yay.

Do you have any houseplants? My mom does, but I don’t.

How do you like your tea? Iced with lots of sugar.

Who is your favorite Muppet? I don’t have one.

What is your favorite type of bird? Penguins.

Which streaming platform do you use the most, if any? Spotify.

What is a skill or useful piece of knowledge you wish you'd learned sooner? Hahaha I have a good one. I wish people were more vocal about the fact that Covid swab tests actually involve both nostrils. I only ever see people having the swab things put up their noses once, so when I was finally required to get tested I was terrified when the nurse went back in for another swab. Anyway I panicked a lot in that testing center but at least it made my friends (and even the nurse) laugh.

What is your favorite vampire movie? THE TWILIGHT SAGA

Your favorite fictional couple? Monica and Chandler.

Do you have a favorite historical couple? Not really.

Have you received any good news recently? Hmm, not really. I’ve learned from a couple of acquaintances that they’ve been accepted in universities overseas though, and that’s great to hear!

Have you learned anything new recently? That Zoe Kravitz stars alongside Rob Pattinson in the new Batman movie.

[buggotbrain]

still processing the way i absolutely just fell in love with the Old Guard. it was like it was tailor made for me like wow i've never felt like that watching a movie before, is this how white boys feel?? i just want you guys to understand my perspective. i've been trying lately to consume content without knowing what's happening next. because i love comics, but i know so much about marvel & dc that literally nothing surprises me in the movies or tv anymore. so i've really been trying not to *read ahead* with stuff like Hanna, The Boys, The Witcher etc. like you get me.

and let me tell you. i had NO idea. none. that the Old Guard was directed by a Black woman, that it was based off a comic book, that it was Greg Rucka and he had creative freedom and that he pushed for Nicky & Joe's relationship to be strong in the film. that Nile was such an important part of the story. that there would be MORE. i had no clue, i literally (and purposely) came into this film without looking it up once.

but i knew i would like it as soon as they took out that strike team in Sudan because wow the fight choreography in this movie is phenomenal. as soon as Nile's female(!!) unit went in and everybody came out alive except her (kinda?). there was no sexual harassment or female death for the furthering of the plot. booker (and nobody else!) wasn't infatuated with Andromache or Nile, he didn't make his dumb decision because of anyone but himself. and the only romantic love you see is between Nicky and Joe, but it's not heavy handed or gimmicky, it's just there, natural.

what i mean is, i started out liking that movie because of it's immaculate fight sequences and then for it's lack of unnecessary sexualization and sexism, and because the PLOT. ohhh the plot was solid. because i didn't find out until after that it was directed by a Black woman, that i didn't realize until after that it had both poc and queer rep. that it was based off a comic or that the writer had freedom over his own creation. i know this is a rant and no one probably cares, but i just needed to say how much it means to me to have seen that movie. the Old Guard is my perfect film

[laurenhufflepuff2]

A list of fandoms I'm in (in no particular order, will probably be updated regularly. Some fandoms are more intense and some are more casual. Depending on the fandom, I could go on and on about fandom topics for HOURS. Let's get into it!)

Harry Potter, Disney, Marvel, DC comics, Miraculous Ladybug, Avatar: The Last Airbender/The Legend of Korra, Star Wars, Literature, Winx Club, Nintendo, Minecraft, Little Witch Academia, Voltron, Coraline

Details:

Harry Potter- I got into Harry Potter in 7th grade and now I am the resident expert in my family and in my friend group. I read all the books, watched all the movies (notably the British version), and I've seen the Fantastic Beasts films as well. I've also read Tales of Beedle the Bard (the Warlock's Hairy Heart was traumatizing) along with the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them textbook (plus an updated edition). I also read The Cursed Child script and while I mean no hate to anyone that liked it, I hated what it did to the canon. I am in Hufflepuff with some Ravenclaw tendencies (I took the Pottermore quiz 3 times, 2 out of 3 I got Hufflepuff, the other time was Ravenclaw). I had a pottermore account and I was so upset when it got converted to the Wizarding World page. I cosplayed Hermione in 7th grade complete with British accent and even monologued as her for a talent show (classmates and teachers would recognize me as the Hermione girl all the way through high school). I was obsessed and I still love it even if J.K. Rowling has gone off the deep end on Twitter... yeah... my favorite character is Hermione but I also relate to Luna

Disney- there's so much that goes into the Disney part of my fandom list. I'm excluding Marvel and Star Wars from this part as they were originally separate entities before Disney got the rights to them. I have seen almost every animated Disney film ever and often use random movie quotes in conversation. My favorite villain is Maleficent, my favorite princess is Ariel (followed by Belle, Rapunzel, and Anna). I relate to so many of the characters. I'm not sure who my favorite Pixar character is though (I love Violet, Sadness, Dory, and Piper (from the short)). My favorite Disney fairy is Fawn. My favorite characters overall are Ariel and Stitch. Disney is definitely on the list as one of my biggest obsessions. My favorite movies are Lilo and Stitch, the Little Mermaid, Inside Out, Alice in Wonderland (original), and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.

Marvel- I mostly get my Marvel exposure through the MCU, other movies, and animated TV shows. I have difficulty reading graphic novels so most of my comic book knowledge comes from friends, posts, or wikis. My favorite characters are Spider-Man, Captain America, Peggy Carter, and Scarlet Witch. I also like Gwenpool, Deadpool, Spider-Gwen/ Ghost-Spider, Venom, Squirrel Girl, Daredevil, Mantis, Gamora, Black Widow, Iron Man, Thor, Loki, Bucky, Black Panther, and most MCU characters. Out of the X-men I really like Professor X, Wolverine, Mystique, Magneto, Nightcrawler, and Quicksilver (either version- MCU or Fox).

DC- this was the franchise I was more familiar with growing up but again, graphic novels aren't easy for me to read so most of my knowledge comes from information pages about the comics or from tv/movies. My earliest experience with DC came from the 60s Batman series, with Catwoman and Robin being my favorites. I also watched the Wonder Woman series from the 70s and a handful of CW shows, my favorite of which being the Flash and Arrow. I also managed to watch all 5 seasons of the Teen Titans Cartoon Network series from 2003. With that being said, my favorite characters are Wonder Woman, Catwoman, Flash, Batman, Nightwing/Robin (Dick Grayson), Green Arrow, Starfire, Raven, Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, and Alfred. I also like most of the bat family, and when it comes to CW I LOVE Caitlin Snow/Killer Frost and Cisco.

Miraculous- this is one of my guilty fandoms but since this is Tumblr I'm not too worried about it. I love Marinette and I relate to her on an astoundingly deep level (minus the stalking and obsession with potential lovers, that's creepy). If I had a miraculous, I'd probably want the Ladybug one, but the Cat miraculous, fox miraculous, and snake miraculous are good too. My favorite character is Marinette/Ladybug.

Atla/Tlok- I jumped on the avatar bandwagon just when it was starting to get popular, so I managed to get through the series before the memes took over everything. Same with Tlok, although i couldn't completely avoid the spoilers for that when i started it. I've been wanting to get into the comics because of the short story comics I've read, they seem easier to read than superhero comics. My favorite characters are Aang, Katara, Ty Lee, Iroh, Korra, Jinora, Asami, Suki, Appa, Momo, Naga, and Pabu. I also like Sokka, Mai, Zuko, Lin, Kuvira, Varrick, Zhu Lee, and Azula. I feel really sorry for her and while I understand that a redemption arc would undermine the importance of her corruption arc, I still wish she could have one. I would love to be a waterbender or an airbender... maybe a waterbender raised in the air nation? Obviously, being the avatar itself would be awesome. The show has taught me a lot of great lessons and put a lot of stuff into perspective for me.

Star Wars- oh boy, talking about this one is dangerous. I've seen firsthand the horrors of the Star Wars fandom but then again no one will probably see this anyway so... I've seen all the movies and I remember watching the clone wars series with my brother when I was younger but we fell wayyy behind and it's taking us forever to get back into it. I've also seen the Mandalorian and quite enjoyed it. I like the prequels unironically, in fact, the prequels are some of my favorite movies. I especially like how they switched from lightsabers being heavy weapons to light weapons that can be used for all kinds of tricks that make for epic battles like the ones we see in Revenge of the Sith. The sequels were fun to watch but when I would analyze them along side their predecessors, I came to the conclusion that, for me, they were good to watch but did not do anything good for the rest of the franchise. My favorite characters are prequels/clone wars Obi Wan and Anakin, Padme, Ashoka, Leia, R2D2, BB-8, R4-P17, the Mandalorian (Din Djarin), and Grogu. If I had a lightsaber I'd want it to be blue, but when I was little I got a purple one like Mace Windu because it was closer to pink and I was into pink at the time. I still have that lightsaber and none of my friends have a purple one so it's one of my flexes. I feel like I wouldn't make a good jedi because of attachments being forbidden, so I'd probably become a grey jedi.

Literature- this is a broad term I use to cover all the random books and stories I liked reading and have studied. So we have Shakespeare (Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing, Romeo and Juliet), The Great Gatsby (bored while reading, loved to analyze), Grendel (HATED reading, loved to analyze, Grendel really needed a hug and a friend), The Crucible, Fahrenheit 451, Dark Life (+ the sequel Riptide, both are by Kat Falls good reads, sci-fi and kind of dystopian), The Once and Future King

Winx Club- I think the show is trashy but I still love watching it. I haven't been able to get through season 6 though and I hated what they did with season 8 and Fate: the Winx Saga. My favorite character is Bloom along with Stella and Flora. I prefer rai to nick. My favorite transformations are magic winx, enchantix, and harmonix. My favorite member of the Trix is Icy followed by Darcy. My favorite Pixies are Chatta and Lockette.

Nintendo- mainly Pokémon above all else, followed by Animal Crossing. I have also played (mostly as player 2 or just never beat or watched my brother play) mario games, legend of zelda, pikmin, and kirby. Games I haven't played but I just liked the characters/the lore and probably learned about through Super Smash Bros. are Fire Emblem (Lucina mostly), Metroid (Samus and baby metroid), and Kid Icarus. Pokémon is where I'm most knowledgeable but you'll most likely beat me in battle. I am however great at MarioKart and I always destroy my friends at it. Terrible at fighting games though.

Minecraft- I like playing this casually. Sure, I'll play for hours and hours on end for months, but I prefer to stay exclusively in peaceful when playing Survival mode and I don't make anything too ambitious in Creative mode. I like to write, so sometimes I'll make a rough layout of the settings of my stories in different worlds. I prefer interior design and decorating when building, and when in survival mode I focus more on mining and gathering while my brother works on ambitious building projects. I just bring him the raw materials and furnish the interior when he finishes the outside.

Little Witch Academia- this takes up a smaller portion of my fandom list because there were only 2 seasons and a couple movies and I watched the whole series years ago, but I still enjoy it. At one point I wanted to cosplay Akko, and I loved the nod at Twilight through the Nightfall series. And I especially liked the twist that Shiny Chariot was Ursula, which I suspected for some time. The blend between magic and technology was fun to see, but I was so sad that the series ended RIGHT when Akko finally showed signs of magic proficiency. Also, Shiny Chariot being the reason Akko couldn't do magic was heartbreaking.

Voltron- this takes up a much smaller portion of my fandom list mainly because I haven't even finished it. I know hardly anything about Transformers aside from the Bumblebee movie so to me I just watch it for fun. It reminds me of power rangers, star wars, and star trek, and then there's just a transformer insert. But I don't know anything about Transformers so maybe the show is more rooted in canon than I think.

Coraline- I am in a love-hate relationship with Coraline. I have watched the movie several times, I've read the book, I've watched hours of theories and analyses on youtube, I've watched behind the scenes videos by Laika, and I even wrote a script for a fan film parody. I am amazed at how original the story is and how impressive the stop motion animation is but I also have recurring nightmares from it and it scares me/creeps me out to the max. If anyone asks what my scariness limit is, it's definitely Coraline.

[longitudinalwaveme]

Len Snart’s Creepy/Pathetic Proposals, Part 3

For this post, we will be looking at Flash #140, “The Heat is On--For Captain Cold. It was published in November 1963, and was written by John Broome and drawn by the inimitable Carmine Infantino.

In addition to being another story where Captain Cold creeps on pretty women, this story also features the first appearance of his fellow Rogue Heat Wave, alias Mick Rory. 

The comic opens with Barry and Iris at the latter’s apartment, watching TV. Iris, being Silver Age Iris, suddenly turns off the television. “I didn’t like the way you were staring at that girl, Barry Allen!” (The program he was watching featured a celebrity named Dream Girl). 

Barry proceeds to lodge his foot firmly in his mouth. “I wasn’t staring! I was just waiting for Dream Girl to turn around!” He then has to quickly explain that the Flash “told” him that the Willens and Kohl Law Firm asked the Flash if he could find the heir of Mr. Varner, a wealthy mining magnate whose only child was believed lost in a shipwreck. 

The child in question had a diamond-shaped birthmark on the back of her neck. If she can be found, she gets a two million dollar trust fund (roughly $16 million in today’s money) and an additional $10,000,000 (roughly $80 million) will go to charity. If she can’t be found before the end of the next day, all the money will go to a couple of “ne’er-do-well” relatives of Mr. Varner’s. Why he didn’t just arrange for all the money to go to charity if she wasn’t found is anyone’s guess. But regardless, that’s why Barry wanted to see Dream Girl’s back. 

Iris, surprisingly, immediately accepts this explanation like a reasonable person and even turns on the TV again...but instead of Dream Girl’s program, they see an important news broadcast that reveals that Cold has broken out of prison (again). This time, he escaped by using “one of his fantastic cold guns, which he manufactured out of spare freezer parts in the prison workshop!” WHY WAS NO ONE SUPERVISING HIM TO MAKE SURE THIS DIDN’T HAPPEN? 

Barry leaves Iris and promptly changes into the Flash to go on the hunt for Captain Cold. 

We then cut to Captain Cold’s hideout in a cave. It’s decorated by a humongous picture of Dream Girl’s head and neck (seriously, it’s like as large as he is.) 

“There! It’s the largest picture of Dream Girl I could find! Of course, she’s everybody’s dream girl now, but soon things will be different...and she will be mine alone! I admit that at various times in the past I’ve--ah--thought myself attracted to other girls! But the feeling I had for them pales into insignificance compared to what I feel for Dream Girl!” 

Len Snart reads women’s magazines in prison. Make of this what you will. He also broke out of prison solely to woo her away from the Flash, who is currently her dream man. So, how is he going to do this? He’s going to commit crimes and fight the Flash, that’s how! 

“Why, I’ll make a sap out of the Flash! I’ll pull off crimes right under his nose! I’ll show him up for the stumblebum he is--compared to Captain Cold! And by doing that, I’ll prove to Dream Girl that I’m really the man she thought Flash was! I’ll become her dream man--and nobody else!” Len, that’s insane. 

Cold decides to get her attention by robbing the exiled government of Guanador (one of DC’s many fake countries), who are “arriving here in Central City with all the bank notes they could steal-I mean all they could carry away with them-from the Gauanadorian Treasury!” 

The next day at 8 AM, Cold strikes. “No criminal in his right mind would dare try anything here today--against all these forces of law and order. But as it so happens--I’m not in my right mind--I’m in love! Ha ha!” Unfortunately for him, the Flash pops up. “At last! My long night’s vigil has paid off! I’ve come across Captain Cold!” In other words, Barry ran across the city all night for almost no reason. Cold didn’t do anything until 8 AM the next day!

Before Flash can defeat his rival, however, he is shot in the back with a blast of intense heat. Heat Wave is on the scene!

“How about that hot reception, Flash? Allow me to introduce myself, the one enemy you will never conquer! Heat Wave--at your service!” Mick is perhaps a bit overconfident here. 

For some reason, instead of jumping into action, Flash stands around long enough for Heat Wave to blast him again, knocking him unconscious. (“That sizzling blast! Hitting me with the force of a pile-driver--uh!”) Cold and Heat Wave then team up and escape the scene of the crime. 

The two go to Captain Cold’s cave hideout, where Heat Wave explains that he used to be a fire-eater in the circus, but that he “lost his taste for the work”. 

“I created my own uniform--and my weapon--a heat gun!” Yes, this is all the explanation the comic is going to give you for this. Note that his gun isn’t technically a flamethrower at this point, either, so you can’t really handwave it away that way. 

And then the never-ending puns begin. “It sure is hot stuff, Heat Wave! You know, we should make a good team...and since you have no hideout of your own yet, you’re welcome to share mine!” The Flash Rogues have always been oddly chummy in this way; I’d believe that basically any of them would have made the same offer. 

Of course, things basically fall apart immediately thereafter when Heat Wave reveals that he’s also in love with Dream Girl. “She’s the reason I gave up fire-eating! I was determined to win her love! And I knew the only way to do it was to show up Flash--her dream man!” Heat Wave and Captain Cold are so similar they even share the same nonsensical logic...but man, at least Cold was already a crook. Heat Wave gave up an established career for this insanity!

The two shoot at each other (to basically no effect, since their blasts cancel each other out).

Cold: You!? You’re just a big nothin’! Dream Girl will be mine--and nobody else’s!” 

Heat Wave:  And you-you’re just a cold-hearted Romeo!

I think Cold won this round of insult-slinging, Heat Wave. Your insult didn’t even make sense.

However, instead of continuing to fight, the two instead decide that whoever commits the most spectacular crimes will win the girl. “As far as I’m concerned, Heat Wave, that bet is ice-cold!” The puns….the puns! Make them stop! 

Flash runs around looking for the pair of criminals, who have apparently been causing enormous damage to the city because of their confrontation. Note that the art completely fails to convey this. 

When the Flash shows up, the two crooks promptly call off their rivalry in the face of a bigger threat, planning to take it up again as soon as Flash is defeated. Each hits Flash from one side, creating the awesome-looking image from the cover. 

However, Flash isn’t down long, as he uses his control over all his molecules to conduct the cold to the side of his body being blasted by the heat gun and vice-versa. Sure, that makes sense. SCIENCE! 

Flash then creates a suction vacuum that knocks the two crooks together. Flash takes them back to prison, where both men explain their insane motivations for the crime spree that did a bunch of damage that we didn’t see. 

Flash then goes to meet with Dream Girl, who...shock! Surprise!...is actually Mr. Varner’s long-lost daughter. She has a picture of herself with the birthmark and had it removed only recently. Dream Girl also grew up in an orphanage and has a fear of water, which could be explained by the boat crash she survived. Dream Girl-real name Priscilla Varner-inherits the trust fund, charity gets a lot of money, and the day is saved. 

The issue ends with Barry and Iris on a moonlight drive, where Mean Silver Age Iris tears down her boyfriend. “Tell me, Barry, don’t you feel ashamed sometimes to be so slow-moving and lazy when the Flash--” Barry cuts her off here: “Gosh, Iris! We can’t all be the Flash!” WHY. ARE. THESE TWO. DATING?

Stay tuned for part 4! 

[senoritaimperfecta]

hi 💕 i hope you don’t mind me asking but do you have any tips on getting into the dc comics? i’ve always loved robin and all of the versions but i never know where to start or even how to

Hey there!!

Honestly I’ve been pretty uh slow getting into DC comics? Like before I would just get a bunch of Indie titles because they do feel less intimidating & I just in general like the cartoony art styles way more

I only started getting into DC comics because I honestly just loved watching DC cartoons & stuff & back in late 2019/early 2020 I was watching so so so so many of them. Watching DC Superhero Girls, Justice League Action, Batman the Brave & the Bold, Legion of Superheroes & my occasional rewatch Teen Titans. Like I was just so focused on watching them & I got attached to like different characters so that’s what gave me the push because I wanted to learn more about them

When I first started to actually get a couple comics it was because they had them in my university’s book store so I was like okay, sure, why not! My friend Robin told me like about Sam Alexander/Nova (he’s marvel not DC but STILL) because they thought I might like him so I was like I REALLY want to learn abt him so when I saw it at the book store I had too get it

But even after that like I said i was…super slow to get into comics. The only two characters I was trying to learn about at the time was Sam & Jaime which was late 2019 but I didn’t start activity reading comics until March 2020 & that was when I got attached to Kon and then by like extension the rest of the superfam

I feel like if you have a friend who’s into comics you could probably ask them for recommendations of something theyd think you like or like even just a character for like a starting point?? If I know someone who’s like super passionate abt a certain character I’ll ask them what comics they think are good stories.

& then there’s also reading lists!! There’s a couple of blogs I’ve followed where people just compile list of characters appearances in comics & which ones they think are like important to their characters!!