#INTERACTIONS / FLASHBACK

[puppyeared]

OK OK as much as I like shadowpeach starting as friends consider… hate at first sight <3

[idiotsyncratic0]

Lil bro get the FUCK away from that man

[queen-slayer-13]

If I had chosen to go with you too... then would you have cared for me the same way?

Sako doesn't know because he was passed out at the time, but Hiragi held him as carefully as he held Kaji.

[seagreenstardust]

If you need me I will be recovering from the one-hit k-o that is the reconfirmation that Katsuki Bakugo literally only ever has Izuku Midoriya on the brain, and that Shigaraki is so aware of this that he thinks Katsuki is the Princess Zelda to Izuku’s Link

[bunniebi]

Seven @ the diner (+ my mc)

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Playdate in peril, the homosexual thoughts be upon ye.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[star-farer]

Just realized that the new Bad Batch comics releasing means there's a chance we'll get to see Commander Cody.

[wishesofeternity]

My problem with The Dragon Prince is that while it preaches about "breaking the cycle" and "choosing love", it repeatedly does so in a way that echoes the age-old idea of telling victims to passively accept their lot in life and the injustices inflicted upon them while their perpetrators never have to acknowledge their wrongs or face consequences for their actions. This is the kind of narrative they follow on both a personal and systematic axis, and it's exactly why the show will always frustrate me.

[lunar-beauty]

cielizzy x orpheus/eurydice parallels

[silverwhittlingknife]

hi Silver! o/ because that fanart made me wonder - would you happen to know when/where Dick's stuffed elephant plush Zitka turns up in the comics?

GREETINGS CAM <3333 THAT ART WAS SO CUTE

Yeah, I think your instincts are right - it's a truly adorable bit of transformative fandom, but I'm 95% percent sure it's not comics canon. Barbara has canon plushies, but I don't think anyone else does.

I got kinda invested in the investigation (it's hard to prove a negative!) and I ended up typing out an entire History of Elinore/Zitka, so, uh, if you're curious, meet me below the cut for:

Where does Elinore / Zitka - the animal - appear in comics?

Did Dick ever have a stuffed elephant toy in comics?

Where does Elinore / Zitka appear in comics?

We're gonna go in chronological order!

Dick's circus elephant friend was first created for practical reasons: in Batman 436, Marv Wolfman does a big expanded flashback to Dick's circus backstory as a way to subtly show us Tim before officially introducing him (so that we can have a technically-solvable mystery-of-Tim's-identity in LPoD). In this comic, there's an elephant named Elinore who loves Dick:

Aww. Such a cute elephant!

Batman 436 comes out in August 1989. New Titans 60 comes out a few months later, in November, and guess what? When Dick visits the circus, he is suddenly surprised by an unexpected blast from the past! It turns out that even though it's been years, Elinore still remembers him!

Here's the part where Elinore remembers Dick:

SUCH a cute elephant. I love her.

(Guess who else still remembers Dick even though it was so long ago. Guess which other character is about to be an unexpected blast from the past. Guess which character Elinore is directly paralleling guess guess guess sorry everything is about Dick and Tim in my mind but I can focus I swear)

Four years later, in 1993, Batman: The Animated Series retells Dick's origin story. They like and keep Wolfman's elephant, but they change her name to Zitka:

Wolfman doesn't return to the elephant beyond those two appearances, and a few years down the line, New Titans gets cancelled and Wolfman's not writing Dick anymore anyway. So the animal gets abandoned for a while, until Devin Grayson, a fan of both Wolfman and B:tAS, revives the Wolfman-era Titans team in JLA/Titans and then the ongoing series Titans 1999.

Grayson then brings back the elephant in a flashback to Dick's past in Titans 16 (Jun 2000), where she imports the B:tAS name. Sometimes I'm skeptical of TV-to-comics imports, but honestly, I endorse this one. You lose the alliteration, which is a shame, but IMO Zitka is a better elephant name than Elinore.

Here's Dick with the newly-christened Zitka in Titans 16:

Grayson also briefly references the elephant in Gotham Knights 20 and - in a final angsty callback - in Nightwing 88 (Feb 2004), where Zitka tries futilely to comfort Dick in the midst of his trauma conga line:

... And... honestly, I think that's it for comic appearances? The two Wolfman comics plus the three Grayson comics.

Both Wolfman and Grayson are writing multiple titles - Batman, New Titans, Titans, Gotham Knights, and Nightwing between the two of them, spanning a big chunk of Dick's post-Crisis canon - and both writers use the elephant for heartwarming moments of nostalgia, which means if you're doing a post-Crisis readthrough for Dick, Elinore/Zitka feels memorable. But I don't think she actually shows up that much.

For post-2011, I am not as well-informed - throwing this out to the dash? anyone know? - but I feel like Zitka the heartwarming symbol of Dick's heartwarming circus past is, uh, thematically very at odds with the Court of Owls evil!circus vibes, so my instinct is that this story element was almost certainly dropped in the reboot.

Did Dick ever have a stuffed elephant toy in comics?

In WFA, yes; in main comics continuity, no. Technically, I have not read every comic ever published, so I could be wrong!! But I don't think so.

Below, find my rambling reasoning on the tonal vibes of pre-Crisis, post-Crisis, and post-2011, and why this particular story element doesn't seem right to me for the first two.

Pre-Crisis (...okay, mostly the Silver Age): stuffed animal, yes or no?

tl;dr no, requires too much background knowledge on the part of the reader, plus the elephant wasn't a thing until later

Elinore doesn't get created until post-Crisis, but also just generally, pre-Crisis callbacks are more along the lines of this reference in Batman 129 (published in 1960), where, wow, Batman and Robin are hunting jewel thieves - and it turns out Robin recognized this strongman! BUT HOW?!

The comic goes on to recap Dick's entire origin story in flashback, on the assumption that you may not know it.

(BTW, if you'd like to know more about Haly's Circus throughout the years, nightwingology has a great post here summarizing a lot of fun plotlines and characters!)

Basically: Silver Age comics are very self-consciously episodic and kid-friendly; they're not generally gonna do overly-elaborate callbacks because they don't know what comics their kid readers may have randomly picked up or remember.

By the time of post-Crisis, comic books were being written for an adult audience buying from the direct market, i.e. readers who are collecting whole runs & don't need or want Dick's origin story to be recapped to us in full every time it's referenced. That's why in post-Crisis, we get stuff like "hey, neat, this particular soda brand is getting mentioned in several different books!!" or "in order to understand this story arc, buy SIXTEEN DIFFERENT COMICS in FIVE DIFFERENT RUNS and read them ALL ACCORDING TO A NUMBERED ORDER and also you better be following the individual plotlines and recognize these five minor characters who we don't bother to introduce!! Good luck!!" But the elaborate post-Crisis plotlines - and subtler worldbuilding like a stuffed animal callback to Dick's backstory - don't make a lot of story sense UNLESS you're imagining your readers as completionist adult fans.

So IMO a stuffed animal wouldn't be a pre-Crisis thing unless it was The Episodic Story Of the Week, and I don't think a stuffed animal is action-adventure-y enough for the fast-paced storytelling of the Silver Age. (Unless it, like, came to life and tried to eat you or something.)

Post-Crisis: stuffed animals, yes or no?

tl;dr: no, Dick's a manly tough guy, he's not gonna have a stuffed animal, that'd be lame, like something Tim might do

Part of the edgy grimdark adult vibes in 80s/90s comics is that some characters who used to be kinda silly & goofy & lighthearted - like Batman and Robin - get reimagined as Serious and Angsty and Edgy in a Tough Cool Manly Brooding Way. This massively affects characterization for Bruce, Dick, and Bruce and Dick's relationship.

(I obviously love this change & love the tense Bruce-and-Dick interactions, but plenty of fans of the earlier fluffy comics really disliked the edgy retcons of Miller / Wolfman / Starlin / et al.)

The upshot is that post-Crisis is a period when you could have a recurring reference like a stuffed elephant, but you wouldn't have a stuffed elephant, not for Dick. I think a toy like that would be too cutesy / childish / effeminate to give a male character in post-Crisis, unless you were poking fun at him.

Now, you could probably let Tim have a stuffed animal, because Tim is sometimes cool but also sometimes a tryhard loser who is faking being cool and not entirely pulling it off (see e.g. the Robin comic where he practices tough-guy faces in the mirror, or the Teen Titans comic where Conner discovers his cringy Enya CD, or when he's fanboying over Connor and it's awkward, etc etc.). A stuffed animal would be deeply embarrassing, and you'd have to be careful to compensate by having Tim do something cool afterward - but Tim's character concept allows for "he's kind of a loser sometimes."

But Dick isn't!! In post-Crisis, Dick's a tough / impressive / "cool guy" character, the kind of guy anyone would want to be, even in the flashbacks where he's Robin, and even in the stories where he's more lighthearted than angsty. It'd be kinda lame for Dick to have a stuffed elephant, so he wouldn't. I feel like Dick would be more likely to poke fun at it if someone had one, like when he's making fun of Wally for liking the Hardy Boys. Dick could have a Batman action figure, at most, and if he had one he would have it ironically.

Basically: in post-Crisis, a male character hugging a stuffed elephant feels more likely to be a punchline to me, not something poignant. (Even with Tim, Tim could have an embarrassing stuffed animal, but he couldn't hug it when sad - that's too far. Maybe Booster Gold might do this. Probably he wouldn't, but spiritually, he would. Sorry Booster ilu! <3)

Instead, Dick instinctively deals with his inner turmoil like the TORTURED ACTION HERO he is: by punching things and brooding and yelling and joining the mob and sleeping on rooftops and going on obsessive secret missions and acquiring Angsty Stubble!! Just like Batman!

(Technically I don't know if Bruce ever joined the mob but you know he would.)

Anyway as you know this is my favorite continuity and I am poking fun affectionately, but uh, yeah sdfsfdsfs. No stuffed animals.

Post-2011 / Infinite Frontier / Wayne Family Adventures: stuffed animals, yes or no?

tl;dr it's in WFA! Probably not anywhere else, but it could be.

Post-2011 stuff tends to be cutesier overall, most of all in the current Infinite Frontier era. So I don't feel like this would be tonally out-of-line with IF comics. Taylor tends to go for more meme-y references rather than fanfic references, though.

So the obvious best fit is WFA, which is aiming for a rough approximation of Silver Age family-friendly vibes - wholesome, episodic plots, Teaching Good Moral Lessons For The Youth, etc. - plus lots of Easter eggs for fanfic readers and some comic references.

And look, here we are:

Aww.

Whew - that's everything I could find!

Anyway as you can probably tell, I LOVE the elephant, so this was a very entertaining rabbit hole to go down, thank you <3

[uranium235s]

i'll show you who my sweetheart's never met

[dcdreamblog]

Is it true that the Martian Manhunter has admitted to having other superhero identities before he revealed he was actually an alien? I've heard of something called.... it was either the Justice Experiement or Experience

Yes and that's a tragic series of events all its own.

(The one living image of all 6 members of the Justice Experience in the same place, annotated by an early Web 1.0 memorial site)

They were really the biggest attempt to recapture the superheroic ideal in between the retirement of the Justice Society and the appearance of Superman. Mostly active between the 70s and 80s. They had a few high profile cases for their time but were mostly never given the recognition they deserved. The culture at large, and especially the American establishment were hostile to the idea of superheroes even still and so they were hounded and harassed by "legitimate" authorities who refused to work with them on more than the most broad and situational of bases. It probably cost them their lives.

When their greatest enemy, Dr. Trap began to target their families and then the heroes themselves they had no wider support system to fall back on and police response to the violence was muted at best. As if they were just waiting for these people to die quietly so the world could go back to pretending they didn't exist.

The man we now know as the Martian Manhunter was the only survivor of the Justice Expirience, in his title as the Bronze Wraith. He assisted the Justice Society in bringing Trap in (one of only a handful of cases that pulled the Society out of retirement before the foundation of the JLA)

I'll comment more on these events tomorrow, in another ask J'onzz has rarely commented publically on his time as the Wraith, only to comment that he did it in order to make himself feel safer as he adjusted to Earth before the idea of aliens among us became common knowledge, and acknowledging the Experience's members as kind, brave people that he remembers often. J'onzz and those the Experience left behind are known to hold a private vigil every year not on the day the Experience died but on the day they assembled, as to better remember them for their bravery of deed above all.

[daily-suyao]

[alexalblondo]

No but what if Lord Debling asks her to marry him at the ball in front of the Queen and the whole ton while Colin is a bit away talking to Eloise and everyone stops to listen and Pen and Colin make eye contact and she tries to answer. To say yes. But there is no sound coming out of her mouth and Colin starts pushing through the people and Pen cannot speak. There is no sound. And she panics and she turns around and rushes out toward her carriage and Lord Debling stands there dumbfounded with everyone else while Colin starts running and he catches up with Penelope when she‘s already in the carriage and he jumps in as it starts driving and they sit there and just staring at each other and he‘s breathing so heavily. And she‘s breathing so heavily. And his eyes are wet. And her eyes are wet. And she looks at his mouth. And she licks her lips. And he looks at her mouth. And he surges forward. And she surges forward. And the episode ends.

(Bridgerton returns June 13th)

[caramelpenguin]

Wilmon

Is it someone I know?

Wille:

is it someone I know?

Simon:

mayyybe

i cant just tell u

wayyy to easy

Wille:

simon 🥺🥺🥺🥺

Simon:

what id like to know

is why felice couldnt stop giggling whenever she looked at me

for ALL of last week

Wille:

idk whyy

Simon:

well the first few times she was looking at me AND you

Wille:

oh

thats interesting

Simon:

very

Wille:

ur trying to change the subject

Simon:

subject?

Wille:

whoooo do you like??

Simon:

ok here's the deal

i give you clues about my crush

and you give me clues about your crush

Wille:

im in

[theteapotofdoom]

Do Jeff Ward and Peter Gadiot know about shuggy?

And by that I mean:

Do Jeff Ward and Peter Gadiot know that they could literally just take a selfie together one day, even without costume or makeup, post or online, and a very significant part of the fandom would be in complete shambles?

Do they know the power they have?