#Superman Year One

[wwprice1]

Art from the third issue of Superman Year One.

[small-screen-superman]

I have a Superman blog and I just published my first comic review :) You can also read it below!

Note: I do not recommend that young kids read either this review or the comic being discussed due to a reference to mature content.

Frank Miller is a controversial comic creator, but he’s still a talented one. I’m not that familiar with his work, honestly, but I have read one of his more recent creations, 2019’s 3-issue series Superman: Year One. It’s a retelling of Superman’s origins, but a rather unusual one in some ways.

Issue #1 is the one I’ll be reviewing here and the one I recommend the most. Interestingly, I actually feel like the individual issues of this series can stand alone for the most part, which is both a good and bad thing in some ways (though the bad part is irrelevant as far as the first issue is concerned). I will likely review the other two issues at a later date (though, as a preview of my thoughts, I’ll just say that I also recommend #2 but don’t recommend #3, as sadly there was a steep drop in quality). This review won’t be spoiler-free, but I also won’t give too many details of the plot away.

The first issue was the most “normal”, but it was also amazing. It’s the standard things you’d expect from a Superman origin, but done in an especially compelling way. Krypton’s destruction is brief but powerful – I actually teared up, which I’m not sure has ever happened before when going over this part of Superman’s origin. It was presented in a way that was poetic yet also very immediate with beautiful art depicting the destruction. The death of Krypton is often taken for granted, but something about the way it’s portrayed here made me feel the depth of loss as well as the suddenness of the catastrophe.

When we get to the Kents, the toddler Clark is depicted as having subtle psychic powers to nudge his adoptive father into taking him home, which I think is an interesting idea. Clark’s childhood has a wholesomeness and cuteness to it without abandoning the weirdness of his powers (I always prefer it when Clark has at least some powers in his childhood, so that’s a plus for me). I love moments that drive home the fact that Clark has to learn to handle people and everything around him gently.

When we get to him as a teenager, we see Clark deal with issues that are normal, but with the twist of he himself not being normal – stuff like bullies and his first relationship in the form of Lana Lang. It works incredibly well because the emotions surrounding these things feel so intense and accurate to how they feel in the moment, and the interaction with these things and Clark’s powers and formations of his values and desires is very interesting.

I like how the Kents are depicted. They don’t feel perfect or over-idealized, but they feel very loving and real. We get to see stuff like Martha worrying about losing track of Clark because of his powers and her deep sadness when he leaves the farm. We also see an interesting scene where Martha tries to teach Clark strict nonviolence, and Jonathan reluctantly agrees with her in front of Clark, but in private teaches him that it’s not so simple. I like seeing that the two have different viewpoints in a major way, and not wanting to fight in front of Clark is understandable and admirable. Another moment I love is when Clark is succeeding in football due to his powers and his parents look disapproving as they watch, but they don’t show them harping on it or anything.

The issue ends in a very interesting way. Clark thinks that the way to learn more about the world so that he can protect it is by seeing the world, and he decides to do that by joining the Navy. It’s a pretty unique twist, and as we see in the next issue, it actually works quite well. There’s a final scene where as Clark leaves Smallville, he hones in on Lana using his recently more fully realized super scences. It’s quite touching.

In general, issue #1 did an amazing job showing the intensity of a young person’s experience while also showing how Clark’s powers interact with it all. It was emotional, endearing, and even thought-provoking. Honestly, it might just be my favorite Superman origin.

I will say the art isn’t perfect – though the backgrounds and coloring are beautiful, the bodies and faces of people look a bit odd at times. (Funnily enough, I think the biggest example of this can be found on the cover itself – what’s going on with Superman’s leg, and why are his arms so dang long?) But they usually look good and even when they’re odd-looking, it’s not so distracting that it takes away from the story significantly.

Also, something that made me a bit uncomfortable and prevents me from recommending this story to younger readers is the fact that at one point, some teenage boys attack the teenage Lana and subtly threaten to sexually assault her, though they’re not able to even prepare to do so before Superman intervenes. It’s not inherently bad to depict bad people wanting to do bad things in a comic, but it just felt unnecessary and like it doesn’t really add anything to the story either.

Overall, Superman Year One #1 is a masterpiece. I don’t know how else to sum it up. I highly recommend giving it a try.

[spielzeugkaiser]

[MASTERPOST] - [prev] I just want you to imagine Jaskier, very early post trial, mostly nonverbal, not in control of his strength yet being just such a creepy kid sometimes. (His parents still love him obviously.) I also have a feeling that Jaskier is subconsciously 100% stressed at all times and wants to do his absolute best to please his parents and make zero mistakes so that they won't send him away again. (They didn't and he knows that, but he is just a traumatized child.)

[reunitedinterlude]

summer phantasy: the album

tracks 5-8 (x)

[t00thpasteface]

I love how you draw Superman, he's really just a Little Guy

he's a big guy who's also just a little guy yknow. like he's yuge but he's smol. yknow??? he's just a little guy and it's his birthday.

here's something from the archives i drew for my buddy:

[artemismoorea03]

DP x DC: Reaction Time

Based on the Danny Phantom Episode: Flirting With Disaster

(Another idea I've never seen anybody else use so I'm going to go with it)

When the United States sent up a new Satellite the Justice League had conflicting feelings about it all. Yes, it wasn't any danger to the Watchtower and was nothing more but a mild annoyance. Mostly because 'Axion Labs' had built the damn thing after constantly refusing to share their specs with any competitors and everybody was very tightly lipped about it. They had no idea if it were safe, what it was capable of, and it was ugly.

It turned out that the satellite was just the processing unit but that due to 'Secret Axion Labs technology' was able to access any and al devices to allow world wide alerts to go out in a matter of seconds. Which wouldn't have been a bad thing if A) The Justice League had even a glimps of what data they would be sending, B) Axion Labs could even be trusted - which they couldn't, and C) if the owner of Axion Labs wasn't also on Batman's personal "Watchlist" for a multitude of reasons one of which was blackmail and fraud.

Batman didn't trust it and specifically made any possible adjustment on their equipment that they could to prevent anybody from hacking into their systems or finding out their personal information.

For a few months things were fine until one day things suddenly changed.

It was a rare mid-day meeting to talk about the increasing number of Lazarus Pits popping up around the world when a sudden bright green laser shot out from the middle of Illinois and hit the ugly satellite.

In seconds every Justice League member was on their feet and at the window, watching the situation with wide eyes while Martian Manhunter multitasked and started trying to locate the source of the problem. Batman watched as he obnoxious round dome on the satellite suddenly morphed into something green and almost alive. It was glowing and face like as it laughed, it's voice echoing through space as it boomed.

"IT'S OVER, CHILD! YOU CAN'T STOP ME NOW!"

Batman was thankful that he had updated the security on the Watchtower and his stuff back in Gotham City but now he was left spiraling and concerned. What happened to the satellite? Why was it suddenly sentient?! WHAT THE HELL WAS HAPPENING?!

"There are two figures approaching the satellite." Superman said, "Without a ship."

"What?!" The collective comment formed as the satellite began to move on it's own and Batman pulled up the camera's from the outside while pulling up more information from earth.

The outside cameras showed what looked like two teenagers - one in a red suit that definitely wasn't meant to be a space suit and one in no suit at all just a helmet and what looked like some kind of jetpack!

Pink lasers shot out of the satilitte down the earth, making Batman fear the worst as news became flooded with a glowing green face of a man with long white hair in a mullet and a black and white suit of some kind. He was laughing wildly.

Suddenly earth was thrown into chaos.

Street signs changed, electronics came to life all over not just America but the entire planet as one by one areas were struck by pink lasers. The teenager with the mask flew at the satellite with glowing green energy shooting out of their hands as it effortlessly bounced off of the machine.

"Whoever that kid is, he seems to know what's going on." Flash said quickly, "We might be able to hack into the helmet and form some kind of communication."

"Maybe I should go out there." Superman suggested.

"Not yet, that glow could mean trouble." Batman grumbled and Superman deflated slightly, "Let's try to contact the kid." He said, getting to work on hacking into the kids helmet when the second kid in the red suit suddenly slammed into the one in the mask, trapping them in the middle of some kind of hoverboard.

Suddenly there was an explosion, a crack in the back of the jetpack as the kid tried to break free, firing a blast at the red one, throwing the two of them apart. The red one went limp while the green seemed surprised at their own actions before flying towards the satellite, flying in front of it. The teen pulled off the jetpack, turned it on, then let it go as the satellite opened what looked like it's mouth and swallowed the jetpack.

Which - understandably - exploded and destroyed the satellite in turn. The faces were yanked off of the news, all of the machines which had been powered up were suddenly shut down and fell harmlessly to the ground.

Disaster had been averted in a matter of minutes and just as quickly both teens vanished.

"What the hell just happened?" Gawked Superman.

"I don't know... but Axion Labs has a lot of explaining to do." Batman glared. "Let's find out as much as we can about the Illinois location."

"Amity Park Illinois." Flash said, already having information pulled up. "It's - oh."

"Oh?" Green Arrow repeated.

That was never good.

"Uh... yeah, looks like this isn't gonna be an 'on the way conversation'. Looks like we have a new meeting topic."

They learned about the kid they had seen, Ghosts, and half a dozen attacks that probably should have at least caught the attention of Justice League yet they had never even heard of these things.

They had never heard about Danny Phantom or the problems Amity Park was having but that was going to change from that moment on. They were taking a fieldtrip to Amity Park. To meet Danny Phantom, figure out what was happening, talk to Axion Labs, and figure out how the hell they hadn't heard about any of this.

[batfam-belfry]

a compilation of dc babes eating cereal <3

[daydreamerwonderkid]

The more I think about it, the more hilarious it is to me for MAWS Clark Kent to potentially run into Bruce Wayne.

Clark's Superman career is literally just starting, and if we're going by the general wishy-washy timeline that DC comics give us, that means Bruce has at least one year as Batman under his belt.

You got adorable babygirl Clark Kent out here trying to discover who he is while also struggling to juggle his personal life with the weight of responsibility he feels towards his powers. He's dipping his pinky toe into the massive ocean of absolute craziness that comes with being a superhero.

Fuck, he hasn't even met Lex Luthor yet, y'all.

Meanwhile, a few states away, you got Bruce leaning full hard into his "I am Vengeance. I am the Night" schtick. This motherfucker just got back from his batshit insane training world tour and Alfred is probably just happy that his son ward is at least coming home every night. Nevermind that he spends all of his time pouring over grainy video footage and case files while blasting his underground bunker with Nirvana's greatest hits. It's the small things.

I'm just asking y'all to picture this with me: Year One Batman running into Barely A Week Old Superman.

Bruce would eat Clark fucking alive.

[elizabethemerald]

DP X DC Prompt: The New King's Fright Knight

Clockwork tells the newly crowned High King Phantom that he needs to name a Fright Knight to serve and protect him. The title comes with responsibilities and benefits. The Fright Knight must defend the King and fight challenges by the King's side. If a challenger can't defeat the King's Fright Knight than they have no right to challenge the King.

Among the benefits of the Title are a custom weapon that can take any form the Knight desires and is capable of sending any injured by the weapon to a dimension under the Knight's control and design. It could be a realm of nightmares or a realm of cotton candy, or anything in between as the Knight desires.

Danny, of course, being some what infamous for saying the first thing on his mind immediately blurts out a name when Clockwork asks him to think of the person who makes him feel the safest.

The newly named Fright Knight gets immediately summoned into the Ghost Zones to be offered the job, no matter where they were or what they were doing.

[phoenixcatch7]

Open up

Based on this wonderful art of @puppetmaster13u for the dollhouse au!

It had been a long day, and was destined to be even longer.

The original plan had been bad enough; the league had a media conference planned for three o'clock, one that involved foreign presence and thus required pristine presentation.

Then, as all perfectly good plans that could have been left alone by the universe did, it was derailed by a villain attack or several. He said several because it seemed almost a dozen separate villains had individually had the bright idea of sabotaging the well publicised event. Though they'd failed, the accidental collaboration had done what each alone could not, and now the league was dragging themselves to base to hurriedly patch up the thankfully minor wounds and try and rush to meet the deadline.

Each league member on the list had a formal version of their usual super suit - flash's main change had been a bowtie before it met almost unanimous disapproval, and on the other end of the effort spectrum was Bruce. Not of his own will - he quite envied Flash's staunch faith in the single black bowtie - but he not only had been raised for the fast and critical world of the upper class, but was currently in a metal plated marionette held together by glue and screws and wires, which meant changing attire was more of a debacle than it would ordinarily be.

He flipped open the toolkit with the best approximation of a sigh the doll body could manage. The chest inflated and deflated, which was in fact a rather worrying sign because it wasn't supposed to be able to do that. He grabbed a screwdriver and a pit of tar glue and approached the mirror. He'd just have to go into the globally broadcast meeting stinking of sulphur... Perhaps he could borrow perfume from one of the girls, cologne combined dreadfully.

The chest cavity opened with little tugging, and he held one side in place as he attacked the bent hinges. An odd feeling, for sure. He took a hammer to the dent, imagining it was the penguin's face and praying Clark didn't decide now was the time to approach him on his self soothing metalworking hobby. He'd been entrusted with the override code for the door and Bruce was now quietly regretting that.

The chest cavity doors creaked back into place, which enabled him to finally pull out the costume change for the evening and dump it on the side.

Now for the leg, having been crushed under a tank penguin had smuggled into Gotham. It now bent the wrong way, and hiding it under his cloak had been a pain, but at least it hadn't come off -

There it went. Batman watched, almost despondent, as it toppled free of his body and crashed to the ground. The unhappy static that raced up his spine at the sight was expected - he'd be paying for the lack of care for the Patriarch Doll in nightmares tonight.

Joy.

He tipped into the nearby stool and kicked the lost limb closer with his remaining foot, squinting. Just a cracked screw and torn spring at the knee, thank goodness. He'd have it fully attached again within the hour.

But he was pretty sure he couldn't bend that far over without his jaw falling off, so face it was.

Hood off, wires unlaced under the chin, hidden screws loosened. The gas mask came off. The velcro on top of his head took good old fashioned yanking, but eventually peeled off with reluctant crackling, revealing the unpainted grey metal beneath.

As expected, his jaw was almost entirely loose, unable to close now without the structure of the mask. The nutcracker mouth in the lower jaw fell to tap against his throat, leaving either side of the actual lower jaw to hang in the air. Experimentally, he opened and closed his mouth, and watched all three parts swing and clink like a robot body horror wind-chime.

This was going to need a finer touch, and so he stripped off his gloves to access the sharp points of his talons - capped while with the league to keep the prick of steel rending claws to a mere suggestion.

He felt bared, now, all his top layer removed and abandoned, the door to his room at his back. He feels the paranoia to double check the lock, reassures himself that even if he'd somehow forgotten in his haste to hide away none of the members were mad enough to try and get in. Outside Superman, of course, but he always knocked.

Still, he hurried through repairs, running diagnostics in the back of his mind as he daubed glue into the cracks and set about restructuring his own jaw. Ears swivelled. Neck rolled. Glider snaps curled.

The jaw pieces were setting nicely when there was a noise at the door, and batman whipped around, cloak flaring behind him. The pliers dropped from suddenly weak fingers.

Captain marvel stood in the doorway, eyes wide as he took in the room, face pale as he saw Batman propped up in middle, bare of his many obfuscating layers. Black tar speckled his lap, wires hung free like veins, blank eyes glowed, his jaw gaping, skinless. Glinting claws and spikes in full view, a limb discarded on the floor like garbage. His chest a dark hole, void of organs, of machinery, of anything that could make him run. A decades old terror gripped his heart.

HE SAW!

Both froze. Time stretched interminably.

The captains chest heaved for a scream, and batman was moving before he knew it, grabbing his fallen leg and lunging.

Captain marvel fell with a crack. Batman caught himself on the door. Five seconds before short term memory entered long term, had he reacted in time?

Hm.

He considered the body of the champion of magic laid in front of him, idly rebalancing the eternal tally graph of potential energies the dolls might run on in the back of his head and as always coming up none the wiser. This was a very inconvenient place for a body. Perhaps he could nudge marvel into the hallway to wake up. He glanced up and down the empty corridor, staying out of view of the camera.

Maybe he had overreacted slightly.

Bonus:

Billy and Green Lantern sat in the monitor room, ostensibly on duty but really checking out the watchtower camera feeds of the day before. Lantern was pointing at the screen.

"Here," he said, with a glee Billy didn't honestly appreciate. "Look at that. You go down like a sack of bricks and then -" he clicked forward two frames, "- this silver hand thing appears on the door frame. Look at that, that's a proper horror movie hand curl. The claws! Just missing the glint of a blood covered axe appearing from the shadows."

Billy shuddered, but couldn't help moving closer.

"What do you think it was? Can't have been batman, right?"

"You were there, you tell me." Lantern patted him on the shoulder before he could retort. "I mean, doesn't look much like him. Doesn't really have claws and his are black anyway. Pretty sure his gloves are sewn into his skin at this point."

"I didn't need that mental image," Billy said, because he really didn't.

"Could be another Robin variant? Like that black bat thing?"

"Dunno. I mean, unlikely. Maybe it was batman. Maybe he can shapeshift a little."

"We've had that on the list of possible powers for ages, still nothing firm one way or the other."

"It probably is batman -"

"But the claws -"

They trailed off.

"We'll just add it to the list. I'll save the file, hang on. We can talk about it at the do next week - you're coming right?"

"Yeah, but I've got, uh... A diplomacy thing with the yetis at nine, so I'll have to bail then."

"You always have the weirdest personal missions. Hey, maybe you can ask them about batman, pffft. Maybe he's one of them."

[cyanide-sippy-cup]

I wanted to avoid posting about this cause I prefer not experiencing spoilers and experiencing it all for the first time when I watch it with mio fratello but I have so many thoughts up in my teeny lil brain I just gotta post em.

First: Hank's gonna be Cyborg Supes! That was pretty obvious seeing how random his death was in the finale but it's still cool. I like how he's got the Lexcorp symbol on his chest.

In the bottom left you can see a Kryptonian (Kara it looks like?) with three other individuals, one of whom seems to be bearded. They all have long trenchcoat jacket things. Also on the left is Intergang. I guess they just needed to fill the screen up, unless these guys just casually go back to fighting Clark in S3.

Gods I hope Conner is the one who makes Lex bald that would be so in-character and funny. But also we got a Conner of color! Thank you MAWS for making the cast diverse cause the longer I stare at an all-white cast the further they all look like Zac Efron to me. Although his origin may be different since both Clark and Lex are so mela-non I think a sunburn would actually just kill them. Maybe he'll be experimented on and given the powers (and then at that point you could do animal testing and give us Krypto? Please??). Maybe he just has a different skin tone and it's not that deep. Idk but I can't wait to find out.

Punk Conner I've missed you. The only people who think the leather jacket look is dated and should have died in the 90s are also folks unaware of the punk scene today. Punk menace Conner you will always be famous to me.

"GET YOUR FUCKING DOG BITCH"

"It don't bite :)"

"YES IT DO"

[batfleckgifs]

BEN AFFLECK COSTUME TESTS Batman v Superman : Dawn of Justice • 2016 Zack Snyder's Justice League • 2021

[whocaresaboutyourlonleysoul]

batfleck in batman vs superman is a version that desperately needs a robin.

[wwprice1]

Happy birthday to the legendary Frank Miller! What’s your favorite Frank Miller story?!

[andichoseyou]

a word that shows up on all 10 of taylor swift’s albums: a series

word of the week: away

[danothan]

i love you libraries. i can’t believe you can just go somewhere to get stuff without paying, why even bother w stores. i can read comics forever