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maxwell-grant · 14 days ago

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Any thoughts on Namor? I was going to ask about whether he counts as villain, but given that part of Namor's whole Thing is wrapped around the fact that he hops back and forth over that line all the time, I'm not sure it's a question that can be answered.

He was made king before he was even born; it was something that he didn’t have a choice in, it was destiny. - Ryan Coogler

"HE IS THE PENDULUM THAT SWINGS BETWEEN THE POLARITIES OF DEVIANT AND ETERNAL, X-51. HIS IS THE SECOND FACE OF MAN." - Earth X #0

I've spoken before on Namor and his Weird Tales pulp horror debut story, and I can't really get into how I feel about Namor as an F4 villain without giving thoughts on Namor himself. The short version is I think Namor rules, and in a better world, Bill Everett would be better remembered as a foundational creative force for the entirety of the Marvel Universe, just based on the creation of Namor. I think he's the Rosetta Stone by which the core of the Marvel Universe is first seen and is subsequently translated and reiterated, and I think it's also extremely self-evident why he got so many revivals and why he gets to stick around in ways guys like Jim Hammond and Ka-Zar didn't.

Not just for the history of Marvel but for the comic book superhero as a concept, he is tremendously significant as well as very compelling, and in the context of Lee-Kirby F4, in large part because he already ruled as a character beforehand, he makes for a really dynamic villain/anti-hero/force of nature who consistently made for some of their most fun stories. The problem here is that the influence of said villain run ended up affecting Namor for the worse in ways that seriously drag him down as a character, to the point he is very consistently at his absolute worst and most limited whenever he has to share a story with them. He's FAR from the worst Fantastic Four villain, not even close, but I can't think of a character I'd like to see lees as a F4 villain than him. It truly pains me to say I'd sooner have another Blastaar or Psycho-Man F4 story than a Namor F4 story, and to get into why we have to talk about Namor's history.

See, as much as I like discovering and doing pop culture paleonthology, I'm generally not in favor of propping up characters mainly through what historical importance or possible influence they had, because that, on it's own, just doesn't make an interesting character, and in fact usually marks a character as having failed to retain relevance or popularity, when all that matters about them can only be spoken about via the past tense and not what they do or mean now (Wonder Woman, and her inarguable decline of popularity, is unfortunately a relevant example of this). I think it's often one of the sadder ways to try and prop up any old character you like, and I bring this up mainly for context's sake.

I don't think this is truly applicable to Namor - his historical significance has always taken a backseat to his mercurial alliances and troubled personality and that other thing and all that's usually defined him since the 60s up to his modern appearences, and it's certainly not the thing most writers use him for anyway, for better or worse. But in his case, it is absolutely necessary to bring up because of how significant it was to his comeback, and to understand why I argue Namor is one of the most important characters for the Marvel Universe as a project and shared story. In the Sub-Mariner, introduced as an "Ultra-Man of the Deep", we have one of the first and most significant responses to Superman.

(Excerpt taken from Bill Everett: Fire & Water)

Timely's big innovation, which was to serve the embryonic Marvel well and help to distinguish it from DC, was to come down from Olympus and give voice to the elements themselves by personifying the forces of nature as heroes.

Prince Namor of Atlantis, the Sub-Mariner, was the creation of seventeen-year-old Bill Everett. Superman sometimes flouted the law, but decent people had nothing to fear from the essentially upstanding Man of Steel. Prince Namor was different: This half-human terrorist was prepared to inundate the just and unjust alike as he rode on whaleback at the foaming apocalyptic crest of the devastating mega-tsunami that he unleashed on New York in his first adventure.

Namor was the face of JD insolence, awaiting rock 'n' roll, Marlon Brando, and James Dean to ratify his power. Driven by passions and brief allegiances, Namor faced the entire world with a fuck-you snarl, committing acts of high anarchy on a scale undreamed of by terrorists in the real world. There was no shortage of sea stories, tales of Atlantis, storms, piracy, dynastic succession, and imperial vengeance from which to draw inspiration for Namor's fertile new fantasy playground. - Supergods, by Grant Morrison

Even all the way back in 1939 in his murderous beginnings, Namor already felt like a Marvel character in every way that matters, the forerunner to all the tools Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko would use to revolutionize the superhero. Bill Everett just doesn't get enough credit for how profoundly he beat everyone to the punch, all the Wolverines and Hulks and Venoms and Magnetos, descendants of Marvel's primordial super menace. Everett would eventually look back on these early Namor stories as too raw and unpolished, describing them as mostly the ventings of an angry young man, and sure enough the Sub-Mariner would quickly team up with the Torch and join the fight against the Nazis and transition into superheroics proper. But even as Namor gained solo titles, even as he became more of a household name, that unpredictability and edge to the character still remained. Namor was always a character of intriguing extremes and an irreconcilable duality, from his birth in-universe as well as out of it, up to everything that would define him for the following 80+ years.

When Everett is happy, Namor will save kids whose yacht sunk and cooperate with police while receiving accolades from the public as if he’s freakin’ Superman. When Everett is pissed about something, Namor will contemplate stealing world-destroying weapons from the villains so he can wipe out the human race himself! Sometimes Namor will be perfectly friendly initially, but be falsely blamed by humans, join up with the villains, then turn his back on them at the last minute.

Just like the gods of Greece, Namor can be mankind’s friend in some stories, in others; he can be its worst enemy over something petty. Everett may not have thought much of it, but he was doing something unique among superhero comics: Creating a character that the reader is fascinated by not so much because of the question of what others will do to him, but because of what he’ll do to others, and because watching Namor rage at the humans allows the reader (and his creator) to blow off some steam of their (his) own - Outofthequicksand

And speaking of said duality, it's also important to highlight the extent to which Namor was indeed, from day one, coded as biracial and placed in opposition to the "white race", particularly in his earliest comics that openly placed him at war with "the white man". I'll defer here to the resident Namor expert @imperiuswrecked, who has covered this aspect of Namor more extensively. This will come into relevance later.

It's important to establish the history and significance that Namor had prior to the 60s, that he was Marvel's first star character (Captain America has a much, much spottier track record until his proper comeback) but one without a consistent title to be in, because it's that very same history and significance that caused him to be brought back and remain an inviolate mainstay of the universe from the moment there was a universe for him to live in and return to. When Timely becomes Marvel, when the Fantastic Four revolutionize the superhero and begin the building blocks of the new shared universe, Namor can enter right out of the gate to add history and intrigue and turmoil to this new universe.

DC’s heroes were authoritarian in character and concept. They were authority figures, whether formally or informally. They were solidly in favor of established authority. Marvel’s heroes, however, were the opposites of DC’s characters. They rejected consensus and conformity. They were usually alienated from society and felt themselves to be men and women apart. They were the products of tragic beginnings, but unlike DC’s characters, the Marvel superheroes were never allowed to forget the tragedies that birthed them. They had uneasy relationships with the public, who often turned on them. They had uneasy relationships with the forces of authority.

Even Marvel’s villains were granted two dimensions, leaving them villainous but flawed in recognizable and understandable ways. Marvel’s heroes, villains, and stories were often ambiguous, and ambiguity was an entirely new concept in superhero comics - The Evolution of the Costumed Avenger, by Jess Nevins

Marvel can now repurpose it's old comics and it's oldest icon for texture in the new ones - we can discover that the Fantastic Four are entering a world that already beheld the Sub-Mariner, "the world's most unusual character", and forgot about him, that saw the mighty war hero enter a hypnotized slumber and, once awakened, find himself in the world of the atom bomb and the destruction it wrought upon his old life and people. Now, all the might of the former superheroic Namor is turned against "humanity", and with him an endless oceanic bestiary under his command, and a mandate to reconnect with what's left of his people and let nothing in the world get in his way.

And thus Namor takes on a newfound role - on top of being their first continuity deep cut, he is now the complicated/sympathetic/nuanced baddie who can become an ally, the first ambiguous villain of Marvel. The first of it's villains who displays a capacity to become an ally or reform, soon to be followed by the likes of Hawkeye, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch and Black Widow. And the moment a bigger menace enters the scene via Doctor Doom, the new greatest villain of their world, Namor can now be an opposing force of conflicting alliances and loyalties, assisting Doom and turning against him on the same story.

For the rest of the Lee-Kirby run, he will go on to become arguably the 2nd greatest Fantastic Four villain of the time, one reserved for special occasions in the same way Doom is, but one who demands entirely different considerations writing-wise because he is, fundamentally, not a true monster or villain, just an opposing force of mercurial allegiances but unwavering commitment. Traits that in the past made him a game-changing but inconsistent hero, here make him into a unique but difficult villain, one who unfortunately often does fall into routine as he is simply not built for the kind of long-term commitment to direct antagonism that Doom or the others are. But at his best in the Lee-Kirby run, he is incredibly fun to read about.

I simply do not get tired ever of all the weird animals and monsters and contraptions and underwater set pieces that Namor as a villain in this era brings with him in every appearence, he appeals really strongly to the ocean nerd in me and the palenthology nerd also, because Kirby absolutely was cracking open the picture books for reference, I was not expecting a Dunkleosteus and a Xenacanthus to show up when I started this run. I was so happy to find them in here, and wait you mean to tell me that Namor was piloting a fucking Mosasaurus??? Why isn't he doing that more often??? There is just a consistently enjoyable unpredictability to Namor's arsenal in this era, whether it's the monsters he summons or him pulling new weird powers related to sea creatures. Him having "the powers of all creatures who live beneath the sea" is one of those typically over-the-top early Marvel developments (like the Lizard having the powers of all the lizards on Earth) that I DEARLY miss and wish would come back, because they promise infinitely wilder possibilites than anyone's ever taken advantage of.

With the Marvel Universe underway and his newfound role, Namor now exists in a dual-role: He grows away from being a full-time Fantastic Four villain and rejoins his kingdom and ostensibly returns to something akin to his original role, but the world has now changed and changed Namor with it. Away from Everett's hands and from Lee-Kirby's vision, there are now significant competing ideas of The Sub-Mariner, and the following decades will be defined by this push and pull. He reattains a solo title, but only sporadically. He joins the Defenders, a team with fellow self-contained weirdos who defy superhero convention, and go on adventures to map out the weird corners of Marvel. He retroactively forms the Invaders, defining the vision of 1940s Marvel with Cap and Hammond, and his flooding of New York would go on to become a formative catastrophe in the history of this world. Subsequent Fantastic Four writers will drag him back again and again to diminishing results, he fights the Avengers and joins the Avengers, he gets pulled into the X-Men orbit because of his mutant connections, and when the 2000s mega-arc initiates, he is tapped to join the Illuminati, where he now must adjust to the rest of the Marvel Universe playing in his pool and worse, fucking in it.

As the Illuminati forms, as events like Civil War and Secret Invasion and Dark Reign proceed to twist and darken the universe and all of it's heroes, as the Marvel Universe starts to reckon more and more with it's nature as The Bastardverse it has always fundamentally been, the primordial bastard must step in to respond accordingly. When representatives of the world convene in the shadows to steer it, Namor has to be invited, even if only to clash against them. When the mutants go to war with the Avengers and attain godhood, they bring him in, so he can be goaded into going on a rampage and do what they all were always going to do. And when the Illuminati has to turn truly monstrous for the sake of saving the multiverse, when it's time for Reed Richards and T'challa to drown their doubts and principles and commit to monstrosity for the sake of saving their worlds, there they must bring in Namor again, because he has been doing it longer than any of them. Because amidst everyone else grappling with moral complications and tough choices, he is the only one who is perfectly fine with who he is and what he's doing and what needs to be done. His new job is to give these people a license, and the warning that comes with it.

He gives the Illuminati a license to be villainous in the name of a greater good (surely, they can never be worse than Namor, they all think), and he warns them of the path this will inevitably lead to. He gives them a warning about how justified the Hulk will be when he comes after them all. He gives the Phoenix Five a license to drop the Miracleman act and go to war, and the early shot that warns them all of what's to come next. He gives T'Challa a license to be the monster he needs to be to save the world, and when that fails, avenge his people by taking him down. He gives the Cabal a license to pick up where the Illuminati left off and, to his horror, show Namor what real shameless monstrosity looks like, and at the end of everything, he's there to help T'Challa in his last stand, putting everything aside to distract Doom even at the cost of his own life.

And as a result of his antagonistic dynamic towards Black Panther and Wakanda culminating in this arc, Namor's deal became significantly informed by his status as a pseudo-Black Panther villain, and thus we, at last, reach the latest and most significant development regarding Namor: his role in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

Ryan Coogler and Tenoch Huerta to me granted the character an emotional context here that clarifies everything he is, and all that shapes his thought. He’s not angry at the surface world and its clownshit in abstract. It’s not just the anger of a distant warrior-king of the oceans. It’s the anger of the colonized, of the Othered.

What Ryan Coogler and Tenoch Huerta did is give him specificity. He’s not just a broad-strokes figure in White hands, for White writers to write as an archetypal broad-strokes morally murky angry bastard guy. No, there’s a specific history to this guy, there’s a cultural specificity and context to his very existence.

I like this Namor a lot. The character finally makes an emotional sense, to me. I understand him. I relate to his rage, as I'm sure plenty of people do. - Ryan Coogler’s Namor and Specificity

Namor in Wakanda Forever has been touted as a complete reinvention of the character, which isn't quite true: while many of the Mesoamerican traits and specific signifiers are indeed new, and certainly do a LOT to recontextualize and breathe new life into every facet of his character, Wakanda Forever Namor is less a reinvention of Namor as much as it is a synthesis of Namor. It is all the prior Namors we have discussed here unified and blended into one: He is the avenging villain/troubled anti-hero who has incredibly justified reasons to wage war on humanity for the sake of his people, he is the emburdened child king of a wronged underground civilization, he is the noble but troubled romantic figure who swings between monster and savior on a dime, he is the fun over-the-top supervillain with an endless supply of underwater trickery who will go on a rampage if he feels spurned or betrayed, he is the folk demigod who floods the great noble city in a life-shattering calamity, and he is the righteous bastard here to stake his ground on these new political backstabbing games that superheroes engage with now, dragged away from his kingdom and people so he can play the primordial shadow the righteous bastard anti-heroes of new must defeat or work with and, at minimum, recognize within themselves.

And he is, at last and once more, the righteous fury of The Other. He is no longer just coded as a POC character or implied to be, and he can now fully resume his original aims. He can now once again be at war against "the white man", against the colonial forces that have ravaged his home and people, and this no longer has to be subtext. He can fully embody a power fantasy of retribution against your oppressors without having to be allegorical about it, but because he is no longer alone in being such, he can now clash against and be in dialogue with another character who also represents such a power fantasy. He can bestow upon Shuri the hunting license to be like Killmonger, but he is no mere oppressor, and even if he himself deserves vengeance, he is what he is to protect something greater than himself, and for the sake of their people, they must sacrifice even their own vendettas. He warns that they must hang together, or be hanged separately.

And so Namor achieved this new form, and funny enough, one that ties him into the greatest legacy of the Fantastic Four. Where as he was once the 2nd or 3rd greatest/most popular Fantastic Four villain, he is now the 2nd or 3rd greatest/most popular Black Panther villain. Outside of these specific stories that can afford him a clear arc to work with, does he work as a reocurring Black Panther villain? No, not really. But he was T'Challa's most personal enemy on the biggest story either of them were ever a part of up until that point, and then his MCU debut that revitalized and redefined the character happened with him as the villain in the Black Panther sequel, so he's undeniably already there. Although as much as I throughly loved Wakanda Forever and what it did with Namor, I have absolutely zero desire to see him come back for anything unless it's the same team at the helm (I am not optimistic and indifferent towards Avengers: Doomsday for a variety of self-evident reasons, and unfortunately he is one of them).

Yes I was supposed to be talking about Namor as a Fantastic Four villain, guess it's time to ruin the fun and shoot the elephant in the room: In the context of Lee-Kirby F4, I actually think Namor and Sue's thing is mostly fine. Not good, but fine, for what it is at the time. I think there's a lot of things that I give Lee-Kirby F4 a pass for that I otherwise wouldn't on other comics and not simply because of goodwill, but because even a lot of it's problematic / outdated elements I think are useful signifiers, interesting points of contrast and discussion, or thematically relevant for the time period and what F4's aims were, although that's certainly not a blanket pass for everthing (there are good reasons why nobody has bothered to textually address how misogynistic Reed was to Sue in that era). Namor and Sue's thing, from day one, existed in the service of an exoticized "romance with the alien monster/foreigner" pulp trope that was already outdated and problematic then, but doing a 60s superhero/sci-fi take on the pulp tropes and cliches that Lee and Kirby grew up reading about was central to the whole thing, Sue's complicated feelings about Namor made it a shlocky pseudo love triangle instead of a one-sided creep obsession, the kid-friendly tone meant that things hardly ever got too uncomfortable or like actual assault (although still a little too close).

Fantastic Four was built atop their prior experience with monster comics and romance comics, a monster romance was kind of inevitable, and when Reed and Sue properly got together and married, while Namor's subsequent appearences still brought it up, it would get gradually phased out as the Sub-Mariner drifted more into uneasy ally/heroic status. That, in itself, should have been the end of it, but evidently it was not. Every decade, someone decides to reiterate this plotline, and every decade, it reflects worse on them. On Sue, it was a misogynistic reputation as someone who deep down wanted to cheat on Reed, it was being known as a character who had nothing exciting going on with her life besides the horny fishman, and on Namor's end, it's a pop culture reputation as a sleaze and a womanizer and a creep who revolves around his obsession with a married woman who does not want him. That was the thing Namor was and is known for, the main joke of every pastiche, and unfortunately it seems like not even Wakanda Forever was able to change that in the long run. I'm not sure what could, at this point.

I'm gonna be upfront here, part of the problem is that Sue Storm has always gotten the short end of the stick, and as a result has always been considerably less developed than the other 3. In the Lee-Kirby F4 era, unfortunately is is true that Namor was the only thing Sue had going on until she and Reed got married, and then the marriage was the only thing she had going on. Her lack of foundation is the original sin of Lee-Kirby F4, and things only got worse for her when said foundation was later provided by John Byrne, a putrid man who left everything he ever touched toxic for generations after to deal with. To this day, Sue Storm functionally does not have a foundation the way the other 3 have, and that's why the default with her still exists defined around either Reed, or Namor. Even Hickman couldn't think of much of anything for Sue to do other than to beat up Namor and get involved with Atlantean politics, on the one part of the book she got to have her own adventures. It's a problem that goes beyond whatever tiresome shtick she and Namor have, and it drags them both down.

And it's not like Namor playing the heel is a bad thing, that's been inseparable to his deal since day one. But it was already lame enough in the comics when he was a cool compelling versatile character constantly reduced to a shlocky trope or a creep. It's infinitely worse now that Marvel has, in the wake of Wakanda Forever, a clear interest in acknowledging Namor as not-white, in making him more explicitly indigenous or latino, in having him exist as a principled rival/enemy within the Black Panther side of the world. I think having him be that, and doing the Sue thing, is just a complete fucking misfire on every level, just an unthinkably bad idea to combine the two, taking the allegorical exotic pulp racism of the 60s dynamic and doing it without the allegory / feeding into extremely dangerous and bigoted stereotypes against indigenous and latino men, really just shooting out the character's knees and making him too detestable for anyone to even want to see him be anything but a prop to be knocked down. I'm certainly not saying I want him and Sue to be magically chaste friends (although, again, that is a dynamic Namor can have just fine with other characters), I just don't think there's any redeeming this even if he goes back to looking like a white Dwayne Johnson. I think the best case scenario is him never interacting with the Fantastic Four again or at least until they figure out what they want out of him.

So yes, I think Namor absolutely does count as a villain - he is not just a villain, but being a villain, being able to play the villain and play the hero in varying measures, is a core part of what he is and does. Namor is a character that I think will probably never be particularly or especially popular again for similar reasons as to why some of the pulp characters I talk about or Captain Marvel or, shit even the Fantastic Four, face difficulties in that regard - their deal has been replicated endlessly and absorbed into what everyone else around them does, and even if they remain unique and dynamic characters, their cultural import and significance will never truly translate to them being a thing most non-comics people have reasons to know or care about. But even if Namor will never be a particularly important character for the Marvel Universe on an ongoing basis, I do think he is an extremely important character for understanding the Marvel Universe and how it works. Even past whatever he means for Marvel - in many ways, I'd still argue he is The Marvel Superman - the purer, more primal or powerful strain of what the others are trying to be and do.

Whether he is hero or villain, whether he leads the charge or takes a backseat, whether he is right or wrong, he is The Guy. The universe comes from him and around him, if not in-universe then outside of it. The universe is shaped like him. He comes to tear down the order of things and brawl with whoever tries to stop him, to meet brothers in arms and war against new enemies and guide his monstrous children to their futures. The DC heroes aspire to be like Superman, the man from the stars who wants others to rise and meet him there, while the Marvel heroes deny the Namor within them, the man from the depths who beckons them to the abyss where he lives. Because the truth of the Marvel Universe is not joining hands in the sun as the people of tomorrow, it's the avenging sons and children without love flooding New York City and fighting each other atop the ruins.

Rather than slap a symbol on an altruistic strongman’s chest, like so many other characters in Superman’s wake, Everett eschewed those impulses, pulling instead from legend and literature to craft a unique character. In an odd way, this gives Namor and Superman a deeper kinship than his caped imitators, as the Last Son of Krypton was also inspired by mythos, literature, and, some theorize, profound personal heartbreak.

Superman is the immigrant who never knew his destroyed homeland, and fights so that his new homeland does not suffer the same fate, while the Sub-Mariner is the product of two races, and cannot find peace within himself until his peoples find peace with each other

It is appropriate Superman came from another star; he is a kind of unsullied messiah. Namor, however, is a demigod, fully in tune with his sometimes visceral passions, and fully aware that sometimes that leads to trouble. But he is alive, and this is his nature.

a bastard son, a half-breed prince his underwater race never fully trusted, and a super-powered anomaly the human race always feared, leaving Namor forever at odds with both worlds. He has all the power and uses it for vengeance – although sometimes, reluctantly, for a common cause, as well.

Fighting between self-interest and emotional nobility, he is a reflection of us. - The Brilliance of Bill Everett’s Sub-Mariner, Marvel’s Superman

#replies tag #superheroes #namor #the sub-mariner #marvel #marvel comics #bill everett #fantastic four #f4 #wakanda forever #comic books #mcu

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tawked · 15 days ago

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I know we're all real big "read the comics" fans here but, considering the show is now 32 years old and many people in the Batman fandom might not know about it -

if you do not want to read the comics, might I recommend the massively acclaimed Batman animated series from the 90s instead?

Seriously, room-temperature take: it's better than what was going on in the comics at the time.

DCAU Batman: kind, empathetic but still troubled and a little self-centered at times. He understands even scary dangerous mentally ill people are not beyond help and that what they really need is support and care. He actively tries to resolve every conflict with a minimal of violence and brutality, with stories often focusing on detective work in a pulpy noir atmosphere, or the clever use of a tactic relevant to a bad man's gimmick. Every character is consistent and has a clear, coherent vision. There is exactly one profoundly stupid retcon and it's in an extremely skippable bottle episode of another show (Justice League Unlimited, and the retcon relates to Batman Beyond, the Wise Man's Favourite Batman). Respects women (here to take back the night, for her). Loves his gay sons and daughter. Does not turn his car into a murder tank to shoot people with.

90s comics Batman: violent asshole who is mean to everybody because idk Denny O'Neil thinks that's what autism or PTSD or whatever is. Makes absurdly stupid fucking decisions that later need to be retconned into making sense and even then they rely on everybody else being an inconsistent nonsense character. Launches into monologues about how it'd be super easy if he could just kill people, especially those incurable freak scoundrels at the crazy people prison more often than you would think. Truly horribly mean to women (Huntress and Spoiler especially) in a way that is simply beyond the norm of the genre at the time. Relentlessly weird and abusive in "my dad never hugged me" ways toward his ever-growing collection of sometimes dead children. Constantly turning his car into a murder tank to shoot people with.

This show is not an adaptation of the comics (though some individual issues are adapted or reworked), but if you just specify you're writing about or discussing DCAU Batman, people are pretty chill and in my experience will actively tell you about specific issues or TPBs that relate to the show. Other than that, it's just an extremely solid, accessible version of Batman, and the version of the character most people remember / care about when they criticize mean asshole comic book Batman for being "out of character" (even though comic book Batman has kinda sorta been that way since Crisis).

The same is basically true of Superman. His DCAU series has less of a reputation but is honestly crazy underrated. Best version of Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen.

The Justice League cartoon, a sequel to both series, will also introduce you to a bunch of mainstay DC characters, albeit usually pretty far-removed from their own stories and exclusively in a team context. The only major outliers are The Question, Wonder Woman (kinda) and Martian Manhunter, who were basically 100% rewritten for the show. Even then if you just specify you mean the DCAU versions of these characters people will get it, the shows used to be more popular than the comics in the 90s.

This will also sneakily onboard you to the Zeta Project and you will learn, albeit indirectly, who the most insufferable kids in like 2002 were. Seriously, I sound insane telling children this now, but Ro's design was like... the rosetta stone for shit Deviantart anime OCs for a whole five years or so.

The watching order I'd recommend is:

Batman: Mask of the Phantasm.

Batman: The Animated Series.

Superman: The Animated Series.

Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero.

The New Batman Adventures.

Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman.

Justice League.

Justice League Unlimited.

Batman Beyond.

Batman: Return of the Joker (the only Tim Drake story I like lol).

The Zeta Project (severely optional).

I'd place Static Shock somewhere before Justice League Unlimited, personally, but you can move that one around as you please. There's some jank to it because it wasn't originally going to be part of the DCAU, but then come season two they started incorporating little crossovers and nods.

Batman & Harley Quinn and Justice League vs. the Furious Five are also in continuity but I pretend I do not see the Harley Quinn farts in the batmobile and fucks Nightwing movie, and have not actually seen the Furious Five movie.

Easy, simple, no fuss no muss. Batman is the only character to appear in every single show (albeit not every episode, obviously), so he serves as kind of a connecting throughline for the "Timmverse."

A lot of these shows are on Netflix and I mean, y'know, just pirate them, it's not like Warner Bros. needs more money lol.

Other recommendations:

Super Friends - no bullshit. It's aged pretty horribly, especially the animation, but I kid you not, this show genuinely captures what golden age superhero stories and especially Batman feels like. Not at all remotely character-driven (but neither were 90% of the comics), instead centered 100% around very badly animated action. I fucking love it. It will teach you how the idea of Batman worked before he was Gotham's dark moody emo prince. I don't recommend watching all of Super Friends, there is a lot of it, but there's value in just blasting through a couple eps. The benefit here is that they tinker with the format and line-up every season so if you do find yourself enjoying that 1970s American cartoon style of storytelling, they do keep it kind of fresh.

The Batman - that is, the 2004 series. Hated on arrival for not being more Timmverse DCAU stuff. Some of the most creative direction in villain and action design the franchise has ever had, but like, everybody in this show is a kung fu fighter when that is extremely not the case in the comics lol. Will demonstrate Batman as a pulp scifi detective, and how his stories can work when he's an isolated character. Plays hard into the idea of empathy for some villains, and provides most villains with pretty human motives. Downplays Batman as mentally ill and makes his Bruce Wayne persona, uh... more "relatable" to kids in the mid-2000s lol. Doesn't really supplement comic book canon but if you want to see how concepts can be stretched and adapted for fanfiction purposes, this is an invaluable show.

Batman - The Brave & The Bold. Captures the vibe of the wider DC universe during the 1950s - 1970s, with a lot of fun modern characters reworked into a silver age vibe and aesthetic. Very lighthearted and silly, but feels like if Gardner Fox were around today he'd fuck with it hard. Not a replacement for comics that people actually read and discuss in the tumblr fandom, but will introduce you to a range of characters, some of whom are actually pretty obscure, in an extremely digestible format. Has a bad, Teen Titans Go esque habit of responding to reddit fan criticisms in the Bat-Mite episodes, but those are paradoxically some of the most solid shit in the show.

#comics #dc comics #dc #batman #superman #justice league #dcau #timmverse

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grobot-bongo · 4 months ago

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i just remembered i made a 17776 fancomic for a school project in literature and im so terribly embarassed by it but honestly why not ill share it please dont laugh at me i know like the canon and everything is kinda off i didnt actually care that much about lore while writing this starring hubble and rosetta from the esa might delete this actually idk whatever

#17776 #17776 football #fan comic #really not good #whyd i even do this man i couldve been a normal and done like a comic voice over instead

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pastryland · 4 months ago

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carcar completed fic recommendations

If any of the authors of the fics mentioned here or are tagged and don't want their fics to be here, please let me know and I'll remove it!

Will update this list periodically

❤️ = favorite

⭐️ = I love fics by this author in general

🔗 = part of a series (will usually only put fav from series on here)

❌ = triggering themes

🔥 = explicit

the better half of a good time - 4k - 🔥

“Most guys, they look at the date.” He manages to make it sound both admiring and chiding. Oscar is very quickly losing control of this conversation. “Do you make a habit of just giving your license out? To every stranger you meet?” “Only those I really like.”

The So-Called Narrative - 10k - 🔥

“It’s annoying. Whatever. They��re not going to stop.” “Not if you keep hating on me.” “I don’t hate you,” Oscar says, a little too hastily. “Hating on me.” Carlos’ lopsided smile is amused, too knowing for comfort. “They’re two different things.”

Stars Are Blind - 19k - 🔥

“Not so bad for a virgin. Right?” Alex says to Oscar as they shake hands after the match. His face immediately scrunches up. Their palms stay connected over the net as they stare at each other. They are both deer caught in the headlights. The cringiest longest handshake of Oscar's life. “What?” “What.” Alex answers, not like a question, just a statement.

It ain't a scene, it's a goddamn arms race - 38k - ❤️ 🔗 🔥

He waits on the line for way too long before Carlos’ voice finally seeps through his speakers, a deadpanned “What?” accompanied by a loud background noise almost covering it completely. “It’s Oscar.” He says, tapping his knee nervously. “I know, I can read my screen, Piastri. I was just hoping it wouldn’t actually be you.” Carlos snorts. Initially, Oscar had been slightly ashamed of having to hunt down their old group chat to find Carlos’ number, especially when he had noticed it was the only one not saved in his contacts. Now, though, he can't find it in himself to feel guilty at all. “I see that the venom in your coffee tasted amazing this morning.” “It always does.” Or: Carlos, Oscar and a project.

take it or leave it - 6k - ❤️ ⭐️ 🔥

r/relationships: My (22M) coworker (29M) keeps irritating me at work

Old Habits Die Hard - 15k - ❌ 🔥 + Carlandoscar, Landoscar, Carlando

The downside of Oscar's job is that he's always in danger. And the pros? None. Well, unless one counts having a massive crush on his employer, who has the sex drive of a rabbit and is practically always half-naked. But the fact that his employer is literally part of the mafia is definitely off-putting. Oh, and he's married.

rosetta stone - 7k - ⭐️ 🔥

Maybe it’s just Carlos’s competitive nature at play here, mistaking a desire to win for–desire.

masterpost for all completed fic rec lists

#fic rec #fic rec list #f1 fic rec #f1 fic rec list #carlos sainz #carlos sainz jr #oscar piastri #carcar

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mg549 · 2 months ago

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redesigned 8 characters from the Pixie Hollow movie series in honor of Faebruary! watch the video on my process here!

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kedreeva · 1 month ago

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I forget why I followed you (I feel like it was for art reasons but I honestly forget whether or not I've seen you post art recently) but I definitely stuck around for the birds. Any big plans this year you're super excited about?

considering I don't do art I have to believe it wasn't for art! Maybe for writing, or stranger things stuff.

There's actually a lot I'm super excited about!

The MOST exciting is the European violet project. If all things go according to plan (hahahasobs), Earl will produce a handful of european violet hens for me this year! This will be very exciting, as I've dreamed of having EV for years.

Sometime in April, I am hopping a ride with another peafowl keeper that's heading to kansas to pick up birds from a friend of mine. She wanted to go anyway but doesn't like driving, so I'll be driving and she'll be paying the way! It means a chance to see Bill again, and maybe get some photos of certain mutations for the calculator project (particularly the hens, I am missing a lot of Hen colors). I like to see all the different colors in person, and I love hanging out with other peafowl folks.

The calculator project is going.... better than my wildest dreams could have hoped. I'm still a bit dazed and starry eyed it's going at all, but there's a rough UI now, and at least one artist working on the colors (the same artist did the lineart already, it's just a matter of making color layers for all the colors now... "just" i say, like that doesn't take SO much work). I've been working on getting the genetics pages finished on my website so that this can be a part of that section of the site.

The quail are also moving right along.... My goal is wild type celadons, and I'm coming at that problem from 2 different angles to hopefully get it done as thoroughly as possible. I've got roughly 8 more weeks before the second WT line I ordered in will be laying, and then I will be doing crosses with that one and the first one. I've got the WT x Celadon group that's all (currently) rosetta roux birds. That group is producing eggs like you would not believe, and their offspring should have A FEW roux birds in pharaoh pattern. They should produce 25% tibetan (homo EB), 50% rosetta (het EB), and 25% pharaoh (wild type pattern). Of those 25%, only 25% will be full celadons, and only half of those will be hens. So. It will be slow going getting the birds I need from that group, but I'm vibrating with anticipation all the same.

Luckily, summer is a good time for moving babies out! I've got several reptile expos, and several bird swaps. At the end of April there's the first MBGBA swap meet, and I will be staying later than usual in order to attend the association's board meeting, so that I can watch them kick Spicer out answer questions they have about the website, and make suggestions about how to run the club going forward, in order to bring in newer folks that want to get into birds and breeding. I may end up having to take a position on the board if there's no one else to do it, which I don't really want to do BUT I don't want to continue letting that asshole try to run it into the ground on purpose either. The amount of joy it will bring me to see him gone cannot be overstated.

So, it will be a busy year for me, and I will get to work on a bunch of stuff I'm really excited to work on!

#asks #anon asks #celadon quail #my pets #peafowl

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whencyclopedia · 2 months ago

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Hatshepsut

Hatshepsut (r. 1479-1458 BCE) was the first female ruler of ancient Egypt to reign as a male with the full authority of pharaoh. Her name means "Foremost of Noble Women" or "She is First Among Noble Women". She began her reign as regent to her stepson Thutmose III (r. 1458-1425 BCE) who would succeed her.

Initially, she ruled as a woman as depicted in statuary but, at around the seventh year of her reign, she chose to be depicted as a male pharaoh in statuary and reliefs though still referring to herself as female in her inscriptions. She was the fifth pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty during the period known as the New Kingdom (c. 1570 to c. 1069 BCE) and regarded as one of the most prosperous and the era of the Egyptian Empire.

Although she is sometimes cited as the first female ruler of Egypt, or the only one, there were women who reigned before her such as Merneith (r. c. 3000 BCE) in the Early Dynastic Period (probably as regent) and Sobeknefru (r. c. 1807-1802 BCE) in the Middle Kingdom and Twosret (r. 1191-1190 BCE) after her toward the end of the 19th Dynasty. Hatshepsut, though not the first or last, is undoubtedly the best-known female ruler of ancient Egypt after Cleopatra VII (r. c. 69-30 BCE) and one of the most successful monarchs in Egyptian history.Historian Marc van de Mieroop expresses the conventional view of Hatshepsut when he notes how she "has become one of the most celebrated and controversial women of Egypt and the ancient world in general" (172). She is celebrated as a powerful female ruler whose reign was extremely successful and this is the same reason for the controversy: according to Egyptian tradition, no woman should have been able to assume the full power of pharaoh.

Further, her name was erased from her monuments following her death which strongly suggests that someone, most likely Thutmose III, wanted to remove all evidence of her from history. Later scribes never mention her and her many temples and monuments were often claimed to be the works of later pharaohs.

Her existence only came to light fairly recently in history when the orientalist Jean-Francois Champollion (l. 1790-1832 CE), most famous for deciphering the Rosetta Stone, found he could not reconcile hieroglyphics indicating a female ruler with statuary obviously depicting a male. These hieroglyphics were found in the inner chambers of Hatshepsut's temple at Deir el-Bahri; all public recognition of her had been erased.

Since the Egyptians believed that erasing one's name from history hampered one's afterlife, it is believed that whoever removed her from public knowledge did not wish her ill after death and so preserved her name in more secluded areas. It has also been suggested that her name was simply overlooked in some places out of the public eye. Hatshepsut's building projects were numerous, after all, and it is certainly possible that those responsible for blotting her name out simply missed some. Efforts to erase Hatshepsut from memory were ultimately unsuccessful, however, as she is well known today as one of the greatest pharaohs of ancient Egypt.

Early Life & Rise to Power

Hatshepsut was the daughter of Thutmose I (r. 1520-1492 BCE) by his Great Wife Ahmose. Thutmose I also fathered Thutmose II by his secondary wife Mutnofret. In keeping with Egyptian royal tradition, Thutmose II was married to Hatshepsut at some point before she was 20 years old. During this same time, Hatshepsut was elevated to the position of God's Wife of Amun, the highest honor a woman could attain in Egypt after the position of queen and, actually, bestowing far more power than most queens ever knew.

The position of God's Wife of Amun at Thebes began as an honorary title for a woman of the upper class who assisted the high priest in his duties at the Great Temple of Amun at Karnak. The title is first mentioned in the Middle Kingdom (2040-1782 BCE) as an honorific bestowed on a king's wife or daughter. By the time of the New Kingdom, however, a woman holding the title of God's Wife of Amun was powerful enough to dictate policy (though not as powerful as she would become later in the Third Intermediate Period).

Amun was the most popular god at Thebes and, in time, came to be seen as the creator god and king of the gods. In her role as this god's wife, Hatshepsut would have been considered his consort and would have presided over his festivals. This would have essentially elevated her to the status of a divine being in that it would have been her role to sing and dance for the god at the beginning of festivals to arouse him for the creative act; by engaging directly with the god, she would have taken on an elevated status. The details of the exact duties of the God's Wife of Amun are unclear but it is certain that it was a very powerful office which would only become more so later in Egypt's history.

Hatshepsut and Thutmose II had a daughter, Neferu-Ra, while Thutmose II fathered a son with his lesser wife Isis. This son was Thutmose III who was named his father's successor. Thutmose II died while Thutmose III was still a child and so Hatshepsut became regent, controlling the affairs of state until he came of age. In the seventh year of her regency, though, she changed the rules and had herself crowned pharaoh of Egypt. She took on all the royal titles and names which she had inscribed using the feminine grammatical form but had herself depicted as a male pharaoh. Van de Mieroop writes:

Whereas she had been represented as a woman in earlier statues and relief sculptures, after her coronation as king she appeared with male dress and gradually became represented with male physique. Her breasts did not show and she stood in a traditional man's posture rather than a woman's. Some reliefs were even re-carved to adjust her representation to appear more like a man. (172)

Her statuary showed her in all her royal grandeur in the forefront with Thutmose III rendered on a smaller scale behind or below her to indicate his lower status. She still referred to her stepson as the king but he was so in name only. Hatshepsut clearly felt she had as much right to rule Egypt as any man and her depiction in art stressed this. Historians Bob Brier and Hoyt Hobbs comment on this:

Her male garb was not intended to fool the citizens into believing their pharaoh was male. Statues unequivocally portray a female, whose sex, in any case, would have been obvious to any Egyptian from her name, "She is First Among Noble Women". Rather than denying her femininity, she was proclaiming that she was also a pharaoh, an office that traditionally had been held by a man. (30)

Recognizing that she was in uncharted waters, Hatshepsut took steps to legitimize her reign quickly. If her position as pharaoh were to be challenged, she was not going to allow herself to simply disappear.

#History #Ahmose #Amun #Deirel-Bahri #WHE #[#]

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