#also going back to the original point about the edited panel... would marvel in its current state allow any of its characters to say f*g

[transxfiles]

the funny thing about having read the spider punk comics is going through the atsv tag noticing people saying things about hobie and then being like "it's canon from the comics!!" to justify things they literally just made up. girl i did the reading and i don't know how to tell you this but nothing you just said is true... you fell for the edited panels from twitter didn't you.

[gaknar]

Review: The Claremont Crossovers

Geez, I haven’t written a review for this blog since my Secret Wars review from like 17 years ago. How can that be? Well, I guess I used to work on this blog a lot more often and now I’ve gotten way more into Super Nintendo games and BDSM. Like a lot of people. But now that I finally finished reading Inferno, it is time once again to bookend my experience with an overly wordy wall of text filled with the worst kind of oblivious meninist butt humor jokes and pretentious sounding run-on sentences that are trying to sound smart but are always improperly ended with prepositions of. And lots of ridiculous comic book panels.

These are only the silliest panels from this reading that I could find after looking for about 25 seconds.

Bookeeping. This review covers everything that I have read since X-Factor #1. This includes Uncanny X-Men #204-243, X-Factor #1-39, New Mutants #38-73, along with a smattering of annuals, Daredevil, Power Pack, Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Excalibur, and X-Terminators comics that were all part of the Mutant Massacre, Fall of the Mutants, and Inferno crossovers. There were a lot of developments over the course of the 4 years these comics were published. Jean Grey was resurrected and the original members of the X-Men reformed under the moniker X-Factor.

Mr. Sinister formed his band of evil mutants, the Marauders, who would become the X-Men’s main antagonists, and their most devious act would include committing mutant genocide against the Morlocks in the New York City sewers while dealing critical wounds to main X-Men team members Kitty Pryde, Nightcrawler, and Colossus during the fight.

Later, the X-Men were seemingly killed in a struggle with the mystical being known as the Adversary, but in reality they went into hiding in their new Australian outback base.

Illyana Rasputin lost control of the hell dimension Limbo which led to a demon invasion of Manhattan.

And finally, perhaps most prominently, Cyclops left his wife Madelyne Pryor and their son to get back together with Jean Grey, an act that led Madelyne to become corrupted with Pheoenix Force power and to turn into the Goblin Queen.

This era of X-Men comics contains the first major crossovers between the main X-Men comic book and its spinoffs. These events would become common as Marvel found ways to use its more strongly published works to carry the weaker ones, and the ploy still works apparently since here I am 30 years later reading 500 page omnibus collections just because there are 4 or 5 absolutely killer X-Men comic books in them. I love the X-Men so much that I’m willing to wade through the unending buildup to get the most out of the climaxes.

Seriously this artwork.

However, I find that this style of editing leads to a peculiar trend in pacing that can be tough to recover from in-between the major storylines. As Mutant Massacre leads into Fall of the Mutants, which then leads into Inferno, the characters are faced with consistently increasing stakes. With each passing story line, casualties grow and become more grave, and the consequences are more lasting. Mutant Massacre starts with the genocide of a mutant community, and several main characters are critically wounded as the X-Men face the worst defeat they’ve ever experienced. Then a year later in Fall of the Mutants, just as the team is starting to recover, the entire team of X-Men is killed during their battle against the Adversary. They would immediately be resurrected as a reward for sacrificing themselves to save the world, but it is still a defeat that claims the lives of every member of the team, if only for a moment. By the time we get to Inferno, the world is literally ending. Demons are raining from the sky and regular people are straight up getting slaughtered in the streets and elevators as the X-Men are more or less helpless to stop the destruction.

Inferno is an amazing storyline, if only for all the scenes of inanimate objects coming to life and straight up eviscerating common folk who are just minding their own business. Look at this shit!!! How did the comics code of conduct ever approve this. A mob of people just packed themselves into a demon FOOD PROCESSOR and every inch of them was liquefied except their bones. Chilling. (And let’s just forget about how the writers retconned all this blood orgy stuff in the Inferno Epilogue).

This all works in a capitalistic sense. Constantly raise the stakes and don’t let up for a second because if you do, the reader will take their eyes off the page and you will lose money. But the problem is, you can’t do this forever. And if you try, eventually you are going to write yourself into a corner where you’ve raised the stakes so many times, and you’ve re-manufactured the drama so often, people will stop caring. I call this the Dragon Ball effect.

How many times have these characters become gods at this point? Like three movies ago, the most recent movie was literally called “Battle of Gods.” I’m not even watching Super. Once your characters get so far away from humanistic stories people can relate to, you are no longer creating art. You’re manufacturing sensationalism. And it gets boring. These guys are starting to look like different flavors of freezie pops.

Maybe this is why the X-Men comics that come after this, the comics that make up the last leg of writer Chris Claremont’s 17 year run on the series, become so weird. Because perhaps there was no way to continue to raise the stakes any higher. After this point, we don’t get any more big crossovers until X-Tinction Agenda, but even that story is small and quaint when compared to what is presented here. Wolverine completely disappears from the series, all our other favorite characters disappear into the Seige Perilous to be transformed into completely different versions of themselves, and we get a lot of surreal stories that don’t have any sort of climax in the way that we’ve been conditioned to expect. The series becomes murky and ambiguous, without a solid narrative arc, and I think that’s why people regard the end of Chris Claremont’s writing on the series to be the weakest part of his run.

I can’t wait to read the X-Men comics that are coming up next. Because I didn’t know what in the FUCK was going on in these comics when I was a kid and I’m hoping they make more sense now.

Anyway, I’ll be the judge of all that, once I get there. (I may even indulge in the Infinity Gauntlet omnibus because, you know, there’s a couple X-Men involved in that). But regardless of what comes after this, I think it’s also true that the crossovers presented in this reading are generally regarded with less respect than Chris Claremont’s earlier work on the series, such as the Dark Phoenix Saga and Days of Future Past. This I don’t agree with. While the stories in this reading do range in quality, with Fall of the Mutants definitely being the weakest of the three big crossovers, and even though the Uncanny X-Men portion of Inferno isn’t even the central story of that crossover (the critical story elements take place in the far inferior issues of New Mutants and <ugh> X-Terminators written by Louise Simonson), Claremont’s writing is still much stronger, more layered, and more elegant than anything else that is presented in these collections. These crossovers may not be as timeless or original as the most famous X-Men stories, but the writing here is still really darn good and engaging (at least in Uncanny X-Men), and in my opinion, does not represent a decline in aptitude on the part of the writer. It’s clear that Claremont’s writing has continued to mature and become more nuanced, so much so that when you compare it to the first issues he wrote for the series, it seems like he’s a completely different writer.

KALIDASCOPICALLY. Again, these were just the silliest panels I could find after looking for about 25 seconds.

Personally, I love this period of X-Men comics. Under Claremont’s executive control, no plot thread gets dropped. No minor detail goes disregarded. Characters continue to grow and develop at such a natural pace, sometimes it feels like my own life is developing right alongside theirs. This adds depth to these readings and I can’t describe how it feels to be a part of them, and I think it’s this element that is missing from so many other comic books written by so many other comic book writers, including nearly every X-Men story written after Chris Claremont left the series.

Case in point, there are so many minor recurring characters that appear in these stories, like Franklin Richards. (I seriously tear up every time I see these panels). This little guy bounces around the Power Pack, the X-Men, and the Fantastic Four like a ping pong ball. He’s a key character in the story line where Kitty Pryde finally recovers from the wounds she suffered during Mutant Massacre. And even though Kitty and Franklin have only met each other a few times, those meetings have meaning and they are remembered and called upon in the telling of the current story. All of the efforts made by the writers and editors to keep the narrative linked make these characters seem like real life people with weight and substance, rather than a thin layer of ink on a piece of paper. And it totally works.

Ugh, this review turned into another circle jerk about the writers of these comics, and especially about Chris Claremont. But what can I say. It’s because of the writers that we are here. Love or hate these comics, and I know Claremont’s wordy scripts are not everyone’s cup of tea, but these are the stories that make the X-Men what they are. It’s tough to be aware of these things when you’re in the middle of reading them, but I’m having the absolute best time writing this blog right now, and it is primarily because these are the comics that resonate with me the most. And when I’m finished with Claremont’s material and I’m slogging through some crap written by Chuck Austen, I bet I’m going to look back on these days with envy.

[innuendostudios]

Thoughts on The Witness

[no spoilers... this game would be nearly impossible to spoil in text]

Where do I even start?

I guess one thing to know about The Witness is that you can watch the famous 9-minute tracking shot from Nostalghia - where Oleg Yankovsky tries to walk a candle from one end of a drained pool to the other without extinguishing it - in its entirety. (I think it’s the entirety, I left before the clip was over; yeah, Jon, I get it.)

How do we interpret this? I haven’t watched Nostalghia, but I know that scene. Every film major knows that scene. Tony Zhou cited it in discussing lateral tracking shots, how they emphasize environment and create emotional distance from humans in the frame, and how Tarkovsky uses this to make the sequence lonely and arduous. Kyle Kallgren cited it in discussing how YouTube makes critique of certain types of art difficult, and Content ID essentially decides for us what film as a medium is even for.

Jon Blow plays the clip in full with no commentary - or, rather, the game itself is the commentary. There’s a sequence in Indie Game: The Movie where Jon Blow expresses some pain about how his game Braid was received, how he felt no one who played it ever really understood everything he was trying to say with it. That feeling might be ameliorated if he weren’t such a constituionally obtuse motherfucker.

Perhaps the scene is meant to draw parallels between Yankovsky’s dedication to a task that is simple yet difficult and the game’s puzzles, built, as they are, around complexity-through-simplicity. Except, Yankovsky’s Andrei has a personal investment carrying this candle, one Tarkovsky has spent the entire film setting up. I was about five hours into The Witness when I found this clip - more than twice the duration of Nostalghia - and I still didn’t know why I was solving the game’s puzzles or what they were trying to communicate.

Perhaps the scene is meant to draw parallels between the patience it encourages in its audience and the calm, meditative mode all The Witness’ allusions to Buddhism are seemingly on about, to give yourself over to the time investment the game demands of you. Except, Nostalghia asks you to spend nine minutes thinking about one thing; zen Buddhism encourages you to think of nothing; The Witness asks you to spend between fifteen and forty hours thinking about a zillion things. It is not a game about clearing your mind, it’s about filling your mind up. There is little continuity between the thoughtless peace of meditation or Yankovsky’s emotional collapse and the game’s intended “aha” moments.

But the ambiguity, the contextlessness of the scene’s inclusion, means you can’t be sure whether it’s contradictory. If we assume it’s about dedication, and we find a flaw in that worldview, maybe the problem is that we didn’t assume it was about meditation. And vice versa. If it fails to communicate, maybe the problem is us.

The only thing this scene communicates for sure is that Jon Blow wants me to know he watches Tarkovsky.

Jon Blow wants you to trust he knows what he’s doing. That the game is saying something. He also never, ever wants to tell you what it is. (If he could just tell you, he wouldn’t have spent eight years making it into a game, I suppose.) But this operates on completely opposite rules to the puzzles. Puzzles in The Witness are maze-drawing panels with increasing numbers of rules, all conveying their rules nonverbally, through gameplay. You see a symbol you don’t recognize, or a shape you don’t know how to draw, and you try things out, you make assumptions, you fail repeatedly, and then something works, the panel lights up, and you know you got it right. Now you understand what the symbol means.

The theming doesn’t work that way. Whatever theory you have as to what the game’s about, there will be no moment of clarification. Blow has an incredible talent, in fact, for constructing imagery that is hilariously blunt yet still ambiguous. As with Braid, where he crammed a straightforward narrative about memory and regret with allusions to quantum physics and the atomic bomb, The Witness references Einstein, the Buddha, Richard Feynman, romantic poetry, tech culture, game design, and - most of all - itself.

I realize I’m dancing around the subject here, because what the gameplay is (or isn’t) in service of is far easier to talk about than the gameplay itself. The Witness is a big island full of touch screens where you draw lines on grids. That’s it. The island is dense with structures and biomes, impossibly having a desert, a swamp, and three different kinds of forest which appear to be in four different seasons. What it doesn’t have is any reason why you’re there or a justification for solving ~600 line-drawing puzzles other than because Jon Blow wants you to. I was wrong in my video from 2015 to call The Witness narrative-based; the game contains narrative but it is not a narrative game. The island is very pretty, meticulously crafted, and not trying in the slightest to look like a real place. It is Myst minus everything people like about Myst.

Absent a reason for my character - if I’m even playing a “character” - to solve the puzzles, why am I, the player, solving them? The short answer is, “Because they’re there. You knew what you were buying. You solve the puzzles because it’s a puzzle game, do I gotta draw you a diagram?” (No, you need me to draw 600 diagrams.) That is unsatisfactory because the island is clearly more than an elaborate menu system.

Do I solve them because they’re interesting? I mean, they’re not bad, if you’re into Sudoku or, like... cereal boxes. In and of themselves, they’re not my cuppa. People told me about a repeated sense of epiphany the game provoked for them, but that’s not the way I experienced it. Every puzzle is so carefully tutorialized that I never felt I was making an intuitive leap. There is no lateral thinking in The Witness, it is strictly longitudinal. You get a row of puzzle panels, and you take them one by one (you are, in fact, prevented from jumping ahead), each one building on what it taught you. And they get hard, certainly, but each is the logical progression of the one before. And each is a marvel of nonverbal communication, but that’s more Jon being clever than it is me. This is not to judge people who did get a feeling of discovery; one person’s “aha” moment is another’s “yeah, Jon, I get it.”

(Aside: I did get a proper “aha” moment when I came to a panel that could be solved two ways. It controlled a moving platform; draw one line, the platform moves right, draw the other and it moves left. And I thought, “Huh, I guess I get it, but those shapes seem kind of arbitrary.” But then, while it was moving, I realized the platform itself mirrored what I had drawn; the two designs were what shape the platform would take when connected with each endpoint! And I went “oh fuck, oh fuck, that’s clever, that‘s really clever.” My first epiphany. It was the most Myst-like the game got, it was clearly not the kind of experience Jon Blow was interested in recreating much, and it took place 7 hours in.)

Do I solve them because I’m compelled? In the first play sessions, I asked myself several times, “Do I even like this?” The game is often tedious and frustrating and I regularly muttered “fuck off, Jon.” But I kept playing. I got annoyed when people interrupted me. I got a hideous case of Tetris effect. They’re not the kind of puzzles you can spend the day thinking through, like you would with Myst or Riven; they’re too abstract to visualize without them right in front of you. And the world is pretty but it’s not a place I wish I could visit, like I would with, again, Myst or Riven. But I kept going back. I solved puzzles less because I found pleasure in finishing them than I found displeasure in them being unfinished. Jon Blow has given talks on how game design focused on being “addictive” is basically evil - his word, not mine. And yet... it felt more like I was playing his game because I was hooked than because I was enjoying myself.

Do I solve them because I trust Jon Blow? Because I believe this will all amount to something? Jon certainly expects me to trust him. The game blares PROFUNDITY AHEAD constantly. (I remind you it quotes the Buddha.) But, in the years since Braid, I have grown less impressed with Jon Blow’s “art game genius” shtick. One fun bit about playing The Witness so late is finally reading all the discourse, and, well before finishing the game, I had read the thoughts of Andrew Plotkin, and Liz Ryerson, and Andi McClure - all of whom are brilliant - so I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting into. What’s surprised me is, having gotten to the first ending - not the secret ending - what the game is up to still isn’t clear. There are enough allusions to heady ideas that you can infer some stuff, but the default ending - while pretty enough - adds nothing and reveals nothing. And getting the True Ending means completing the In the Hall of the Mountain King section, something many will never find and precious few will ever complete. (Debating whether I’m going to even try.) If Jon Blow wants you to trust that he’s going somewhere with this, he makes you wait a long time before finding out if it’s worth it. [EDIT: turns out the secret ending comes after a different set of obscure puzzles than Hall of the Mountain King.]

Which leads me back to my original conclusion: I am solving the puzzles because Jon Blow told me to.

I suspect the arc Jon wants is for me to begin solving puzzles because I want to know what they’re in service of, what point Jon is trying to make, and then spend so long on them that I forget about the destination and just wrap myself up in the work, and, after dozens of hours on the hardest of the hard puzzles, Jon will finally reveal that the point he was making was about the labor I have just done. That he couldn’t tell me what it was for until I’d already done it. That the labor was its own reward. And how much you like The Witness is going to depend on whether or not you feel ripped off.

The overall impression The Witness left me with was less of meditation than discipline. (I have joked that playing The Witness feels like being in a D/s relationship with Jon Blow and not knowing the safe word.) Jon presents a simple concept and then expects you to solve every. single. permutation. of that concept. You do the work to find out what it’s about, and then what it’s about is the work. That game is about itself. The subject of The Witness is solving The Witness. It’s about purity of design, about simplicity, about slowly mastering a set of skills. (That these skills are neither inherently pleasurable to perform nor applicable in any other context seems not to matter; the point is, you learned them.) It’s hard not to read a game fixated on the beauty of its own design as all kinds of smug.

I allowed myself to be spoiled on the True Ending, and it seems, in the eleventh hour, if you draw lines til your fingers bleed, the game makes room for self-critique, questioning whether all this dedication to design actually is, in any way, meaningful or useful to us. Which, just a little bit, smacks of an artist spending two years making a sculpture of himself, chiseled to make him look a perfect Olympian beauty, only to label it “EGOISM.” Ooo. Make you think.

I suspect, in the end, I played it to (partial) completion because I was curious. I didn’t necessarily buy Jon Blow’s hype, but his hype is intriguing. As a portrait of a certain mindset, a monomaniacal obsession with design for design’s sake, the folk-religion of salvation through technology, and the critique of same, it is fascinating. I know people - smart people - who genuinely love this game, and, if the above is any indication, I clearly love talking about it. I have no regrets.

But, word of advice: if you don’t a) love the puzzles, or b) love the discourse, just walk away. Everything will be fine.

[ink-logging]

More Superhero Comics, Revealing My Reactionary and Facile Engagement with Art as Little More Than the  Accrual of Social Capital, Benefiting Nobody But Myself, 4/7/19

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol. 4: The Tempest #5 (of 6), Alan Moore, Kevin O’Neill, Ben Dimagmaliw, Todd Klein: This is an often very funny issue, set up like a pasted-together UK edition of old US pre-Code horror and crime comics, which, in addition to being funny, plumps up the page count as the plot moves maybe two or three tics forward in advance of the very-last-issue-of-LoEG-ever. The conservative in me wonders why we’re being this digressive in the penultimate number of the entire saga, but then -- at least since “The Black Dossier” -- this project has been more about positioning various strands of fiction and their accrued cultural baggage against one another than telling a propulsive adventure story. Anyway: the realm of Faerie, having easily survived an attempted nuclear strike on the collective imagination by a military-corporate black ops fiction squad comprised entirely of various revamps of James Bond, has brought in every character from every game, comic, cartoon, TV show, movie and book reality with everything for a HUGE apocalypse! 

Scenes of bedlam involve: the life story of Victorian painter and murderer Richard Dadd; cameos by Stardust the Super Wizard and David Britton’s Lord Horror; the oeuvre of musician Warren Zevon, brought to terrifying life; a Corbenesque image of a nude muscleman’s massive dick flapping into battle in 3-D; Mick Anglo’s Captain Universe, presented by Moore in unmistakable evocation of his own Marvelman/Miracleman stories of decades ago; a ghost wearing the word CRIME on his head a la Charles Biro’s Mr. Crime, the greatest American comic book horror host; at least one figure from the annals of racist caricature firing powerful sound waves from his mouth; a monster named Demogorgon, the leviathan of Populism, which the heroes allegorically cross as a footbridge en route to a safehouse named the Character Ark; a page-long parody of Batman (via the forgotten UK superhero playboy character the Flash Avenger), describing his origin as motivated entirely by hatred of the poor; a text feature telling of UK comics artist Denis McLoughlin, who worked consistently since the end of WWII, never made enough money to retire, and spent decades as an elderly man drawing for survival on titles he hated, eventually taking his own life in his 80s; and the secret of what happened to all the British superhero characters after the midcentury, which is that they were all eaten by Capitalism, pretty much. I laughed a bunch, but if you think LoEG is tedious shit, this probably won’t turn you around.         

*

Savage Dragon #242, Erik Larsen, Ferran Delgado, Nikos Koutsis, Mike Toris: The latest installment of the longest-running Image comic written and drawn by one of the Image founders, now deeply dove into problematic network tv drama stuff. The Dragon’s relationship with his partner Maxine is still strained in the wake of her sexual assault, a video of which the Dragon viewed in the police archives; meanwhile, the mother of one of the Dragon’s young children has been telling them all the truth about their parentage, further disrupting the peace of the household. Also, a formerly aggressive sex robot has joined the gang, dressed as an anime maid. And, the Dragon reluctantly teams up with the mid-’00s-vintage sexy heroine character Ant (which Larsen purchased from creator Mario Gully a few years ago) to foil a scheme by elderly elites to project themselves into the bodies of mythic gods in order to provoke the Rapture. Most interesting to me, however, is a bonus segment in which Larsen presents newly-lettered pages of his preliminary solo work on “Spawn” #266 (Oct. 2016), which would later be filled out by contributions from Todd McFarlane, colorist FCO Plascenscia, and letterer Tom Orzechowski. 

As usual, I prefer the ‘unfinished’ version (top) to the official release product (bottom).

*

Superman Giant #9, Erika Rothberg, ed. 

&

Batman Giant #9, Robin Wildman, ed.

These are two of those 100-page DC superhero packages they sell for five bucks exclusively at Walmart (for now; later this year they’re gonna have them in comic book stores too), which marry one new 12-page story per issue with three full-length reprint comic books from elsewhere in the 21st century. I just wanted to know what was inside them. Here is what I found:

-The new Batman comic is written by Brian Michael Bendis as a very conspicuously all-ages prospect, where the story is about nothing more than what it’s about, and the title character is presented as a serious-minded but inquisitive and compassionate man of adventure. This issue -- just in time for the remix of “Old Town Road” featuring Billy Ray Cyrus -- Batman and Green Lantern travel back to the Old West, trade in their superhero outfits for cowboy clothes, and meet up with Jonah Hex. Nick Derington draws the heroes smooth and squinting with Swanian sincerity, and Dave Stewart colors it all bright and sunny. This is not my thing at all, but it’s confident to the point of acting like almost a rebuke to the rest of the book, where literally everything else is chapter whatever of a nighttime doom ballad drawn by either Jim Lee or something trying very hard to look like him. 

-Like:

I can spot the differences, sure - if nothing else, reading superhero comics trains you to spot differences in otherwise similar things. But, there is absolutely an aesthetic at work. The top page is from an issue of “Nightwing” that tied into the 2012 “Night of the Owls” crossover in the Batman titles, produced by a seven-person drawing and coloring team fronted by pencillers Eddy Barrows & Andres Guinaldo. The writer, Kyle Higgins, has Dick Grayson fight his semi-immortal great-grandfather, who is an assassin for the Court of Owls: one of the more popular recent Batman organizations of villainy, presented here as a fascist group mediating society’s function through murder from the gray space between social classes. The Graysons, therefore, are the Gray Sons, but Nightwing resists the pull of destiny by winning a big fight, slinging the villain over his shoulder, and walking away toward a better future of just beating the shit out of bad people instead of killing them, I think. The Batgirl story -- from 2011, written by Gail Simone -- is comparatively orthodox, finding the character gripped with uncertainty about the superhero life and going about some downtime character-building activities, though most of it’s a big fight with a villain with a tragic past. The penciller, Ardian Syaf, kind of has trouble blocking the action so that characters’ movements are clear; I think Syaf is best known for having his contract with Marvel terminated in 2017 for slipping what were widely interpreted as anti-Christian and antisemitic references to Indonesian politics into an X-Men comic. 

-There is a whole lot of Jeph Loeb among the reprints. He is not a writer who has been in critical fashion for much the past two decades, but he has undoubtedly sold a lot of comics for DC, and they probably feel he can do it again. The Batman book is serializing (deep breath) “Hush”, a 2002-03 storyline notable for its extraordinarily easy-to-solve central mystery, and generally being a taped-together excuse for Jim Lee to draw as many popular Batman characters as possible across 12 issues; it sold like hot cakes. The highlight of chapter 9 is probably a bit where a three person fight ends in one panel, and then one of the characters leaves, and then a second character wakes up from unconsciousness and also leaves, and then the first character comes back and nurses the third (also unconscious) character back to health, and then Batman arrives, all in the transition between the aforementioned panel and the next, which takes place in the same room; such is the befuddling desire to race ahead to more spectacle. Jim Lee (with Scott Williams and Alex Sinclair) is indeed Jim Lee (et al.) throughout, though at one point the team drops a howler of a swordfighting panel where Batman’s blade appears to grows to JRPG length due to what I think is the colorist filling two whoosh lines with the same hue as the swords.      

Meanwhile, the Superman book is serializing a 2004 storyline from “Superman/Batman” -- the series where Loeb has Superman describe the action on the page with his own Superman-branded captions, and Batman does the same with Bat-captions, and Superman says tomayto and Batman says tomahto -- in which the late Michael Turner, one of the rock star 2nd generation Image artists, illustrates a new introduction for Supergirl. But this isn’t quite the same comic that was originally published... can YOU spot the difference?

Is this like how Walmart won’t sell CDs that have an explicit content sticker, but with teen superhero g-strings? It’s hard to explain to younger readers how the low-rise/thong panties combo forever sealed the horniness of a generation of het male superhero artists into the late 1990s, and maybe DC doesn’t want to face that. Or, they’re just leery of how Turner slipping some peekaboo glimpse of Supergirl’s underpants or bare thighs into virtually every panel in which she is depicted below the waist might affect the marketability of the comic in 2019 - although I guess it could have happened in an earlier reprint somewhere too.

-The new Superman comic is a series of 12 splash pages depicting a race between Superman and the Flash. There is very little sense of speed, because Andy Kubert (inked by Sandra Hope, colored by Brad Anderson) draws the characters as frozen in time in a way that prioritizes muscular tension in the manner of contemporary superhero cover art; at one point the two characters part the sea with the force of their bodies, and it looks to me like they’re gesticulating in front of a theatrical backdrop. And, anyway, the story pulls back almost every other page to depict Batman standing on a ledge, or Lex Luthor in a sinister chair -- or some birds flying next to a building, or the Earth as viewed from space with streaks on it -- as the race occurs deep in the background or off to one side. The point is not excitement, but reflection, as imposed upon us by the between 13 and 21 narrative captions and/or dialogue balloons pasted atop all but the first page. 

The writer is Tom King, whose “Mister Miracle” (with artist Mitch Gerads) gets a double-page advertisement later in the book, festooned with breathless blurbs from major media outlets. His narrator here is a little girl who is literally chained in captivity, clutching a Superman doll, and delivering her soliloquy in a manner of a superhero-themed TED talk with handclap repetitions on the nature of contradiction. Being faster than a speeding bullet is a CONTRADICTION. Being as strong as a locomotive is a CONTRADICTION. Leaping tall buildings in a single bound is a CONTRADICTION. Superman is about to lose the race, but then he wins, because to beat the Fastest Man Alive is... a contradiction. No wonder the GQ entertainment desk was blown away. DC comics do this kind of thing a lot, where they just have the writer tell you how great the characters are, and since you’re still reading superhero comics in the 21st century, you’re expected to pump your fists in recognition, because you and the writer and everyone at DC are just big ol’ fans... but I am not, because I am Jesus Christ, the only son of God. 

-Elsewhere in the Superman book is an issue of “Green Lantern” from 2006, drawn by Ethan Van Sciver (inked with Prentis Rollins, colored by Moose Baumann), who is known today mostly as a conservative ‘personality’ online. He also netted more than half a million dollars last July in a crowdfunding campaign to make a 48-page comic book which he has not yet finished; funny to see an American right-winger on the French schedule. Funnier still to see the kind of people (mostly guys of a certain age) who mill around such personalities croaking about how diversity is ruining comics, because ALMOST EVERY FUCKING STORY IN BOTH OF THESE 100-PAGE BOOKS IS DRAWN BY EITHER SOME DUDE FROM THE 1990s OR SOMEBODY WORKING EXPLICITLY IN THAT STYLE, but - I guess when you’ve been pampered for so long, every paper cut feels like a ripped limb. Speaking of dismemberment, the writer here is Geoff Johns, who is often pegged as a superhero traditionalist, though he also has a grasp of gory pomp which occasionally pushes the comics he writes into a Venn diagram set with loud youth manga... at least in terms of how the action plays out, all broad and pained. So, needless to say, he’s currently writing “Doomsday Clock”, which is DC’s present attempt to extend the publication life of the valuable “Watchmen” property, so that they needn’t return it to the original creators, per the original writer, Alan Moore.  

-To hear Alan Moore say it, the America’s Best Comics line was done on a work-for-hire basis as a means of ensuring prompt payment of the various creators from Jim Lee’s WildStorm, the original publisher. WildStorm was then acquired by DC (Jim Lee is now their co-publisher and chief creative officer), and Moore -- who has been (fairly) criticized in the past for taking ethical stances that cause financial harm to his artistic collaborators, who are in a less economically flexible position than writers in the comic book field -- allowed the line to continue under DC’s ownership, as to cancel everything would disadvantage everyone working on the titles. One of those titles, “Tom Strong”, was written by Moore and pencilled by Chris Sprouse for a while, and then there was a long line of guest creators, and then Moore and Sprouse came back when the ABC line wrapped, so that the concept could reach its logical termination point in an apocalyptic manner... Moore does love an apocalypse. The final story in the Superman book is a very recent, late 2018 issue of “The Terrifics”, in which we find an attempt to revive the DC-owned Tom Strong characters as players in broader DC stories. Jeff Lemire & José Luís are the primary creators. Jack Cole’s Plastic Man is there, as well as the John Ostrander/Tom Mandrake version of Mister Terrific. It’s a lot of offbeat characters; we even see Moore’s own parody of Hoppy the Marvel Bunny, because, I mean, Alan Moore does a lot of riffs on preexisting characters too, right? It’s a big blob of cartoon whimsy, filled with available characters running around. If they’re available, you might as well roll ‘em out, off the new releases rack and into a supermarket reprint package stacked in a box next to squeeze toys and discount Pokémon merchandise, which I bought, because it was really cheap.

-Jog                   

[eerythingisshaka]

I made this post on Monday, and just now got around to edit and post

I’m basically going through the whole plot of Endgame and how I felt, I just had to hammer it out.   If you haven’t seen it yet, please come back when you have! First things first, I did not cry!  I feel like I’m in the minority, and I swear I am a devoted MCU fan and love Tony and Cap and them, but I did not cry and I’m so disappointed with myself!  I got more emotional thinking about it in the days leading to the premiere than I did while viewing.  I think it was too entertaining for me to find it sad?  Not like movies I cry at aren’t entertaining but the action and substance was making my nerd heart pitter patter so much, I was over the moon and couldn’t come down.  I will say though, ever since watching Endgame, every past Marvel movie makes me somewhat emotional.  This whole thing is like a high school graduation, like I’m never gonna see my friends together again like this, an era is over!  All I have are memories, aaaaggghhhh!

That being said. the movie grips me from the beginning with the song Dear Mr. Fantasy by Traffic.  Marvel has some pretty good picks for songs to set the tone for their movies, to this day this song kinda pulls at my heart strings because of its message 

 Dear Mr. Fantasy play us a tune

Something to make us all happy

Do anything, take us out of this gloom

So of course, we all felt this way with the ending of Infinity War, having so many of our faves being sacrificed to dust for Thanos’ plan of rectifying what he saw as the decrepit state of the universe.  Walking away from part one with the villain winning was a fresh slap to my face and a year of agony to find out how the heroes pull this off in the end.  Take us out of our gloom Marvel! 

And the characters must feel the same, as the film opens with Clint and his daughter doing some archery in their yard as a very American lunch of mayo and mustard hot dogs are being served.  As his daughter Lilah is putting things away, Clint calls out to her only to see dust and turns again to his family with the same result.  So much for freedom from our gloom, right?  In case you somehow forgot, this little scene gives us a friendly reminder of what we were left with in 2018.  If that’s not enough, Nebula and Tony playing the little hand goal, paper flick game that is just darling to witness.  Nebula plays like a rehabilitated puppy still unsure about being around humans as Tony instructs her like a child on every development of the game.  Her little perk up when he announces her win is so cute as they shake hands, finally sealing her character development from ruthless, blood-thirsty appeaser of a sadistic father, to a more stoic, regretful soft spoken but hoarse matured version of herself.  All the while, Tony is beginning to starve from being malnourished and depleting oxygen.  Nebula sets him in a piloting chair as he drifts off, losing consciousness until the homie we have all assumed would be coming appears as a glow in his irises, Carol Danvers aka Captain Marvel.  

Carol flies the ship back to Tony’s compound where Cap, Rhodey, Natasha, and Pepper wait for him to descend.  We get a moment with him and Cap that is sweet as Cap walks him down, Tony tells him he lost Peter Parker, an obviously huge loss for this to be the first thing he mentions.  The warmth is lost quickly though as the next step of Tony’s grief comes afoot: anger and finger pointing.  Tony, on an IV and all, is relentless as he festers in bitterness while lashing out at Cap and company that the fight was lost and even encouraged by Cap because they were together.  This optimism is obviously not enough for Tony, who grows weary of Cap’s positivity, opting that he finish the work alone or that Danvers takes on the task herself before collapsing from exhaustion.

Carol, Thor and the gang have a slight dick measuring contest on kicking Thanos’ ass once and for all before Nebula offers to take them straight to him.  And where is he?  Why on a farm on a planet in the galaxy, nursing his wounds from the snap.   His entire right side is burned to a crisp due to the snap, and at the same time has obliterated the stones much to their dismay.  Thor wastes no time in chopping off Thanos’ head, a little too late but satisfying none the less.  However, in the end, the stones are nowhere to be found, the last person to have them is dead, and no one from the snaps is back yet.  Cue music!

So, the gloom we are supposed to be rescued from, when does that start right?  Not for another five years according to a time lapse card.  Our heroes have no means of figuring out the solution to the snap; Cap forms a support group for survivor’s, Natasha has grown out her blonde hair and is constantly checking in on happenings around the world, and universe since the snap, jumping at even the mention of an earthquake.  Rhodey briefs her on a terrible killing spree of gang members that appear to have a style that is well known to them as Clint Barton’s aka Hawkeye.  Despite Rhodey’s hesitance Natasha insists he keeps an eye on him, inferring that she may track him down eventually.  (Quick side note here, something to be seen as a possible plot flaw:  Hawkeye’s bloodlust and disregard for lives after losing his whole family in the snap isn’t dug into very deeply after this.  Rhodey said it’s so bad he didn’t even wanna find him!  But there wasn’t any in fighting or push back after that between them.  He has one instance of almost interacting with his family on a test run for time travel which is against the rules, but other than that he isn’t killing people recklessly or even triggered to tears or drinking incessantly over his loss.  But more on Thor in a minute). 

If it hadn’t been for that rat running across the panel in Scott Lang’s van to activate his return from the Quantum realm who knows how long, if ever, would they figure out the means of traveling back to get the stones.  I was so glad I watched Antman and Wasp right before seeing Endgame, so I knew the van, Cassie, and a little bit about the Quantum Realm.  I’m actually upset that I didn’t realize the realm could be used for their benefit because I was always betting on the Time Stone being the corrector in all this, but anyway.  Scott returns highly confused as he realizes the state of the world since his entrapment in the realm.  Seeing his baby girl become a young lady was a powerful scene to witness, and had my heart dent a little bit, but I held it together.  Soon after that, Scott makes his way to find Cap and Natasha, explaining how 5 years was really five hours for him, so time is different in the realm which could possibly mean something for them getting the dusted back.  At one point in the movie, I’m blanking on which comes first but for now I’ll dive into this bit, we are reintroduced to Bruce Banner as Hulk…as one person.  I completely forgot that we didn’t see Bruce in trailers, which is for this reason.  Comic book followers would know, but there is a iteration of Bruce Banner becoming Professor Hulk, so he functions as his normal scientist self, while also being a big green being.  Oddly enough, it does not take long for me to grow accustomed to The Bruce Hulk hybrid, he is hilarious and sweet and more confident even then he was as a regular man despite his appearance.  He has fans, people love him and this is a far cry from when we are introduced to him in the original Avengers as Nat tracks him down somewhere in Southeast Asia, a nervous wreck loner who is quick to anger.  I could see this Hulk being fanfic fodder, not my cup of tea, but he was just that damn appealing, I could see it.

But even with Bruce’s brain, time travel isn’t exactly hammered down as an absolute possibility so they reach out to another source on the matter.  Which brings me to my love/hate relationship with Tony.  I ADORE that he finally had a baby with Pepper, Morgan “Cussin Queen” Stark.  Tony is living his best life in the natural air in his log cabin, as off grid as he possibly can be before Black Widow, Cap, and Lang pull up to question the possibilities ahead of them.  The strength of his cold shoulder gave me an insatiable chill down my spine.  Tony is the King of Petty, but rarely passive so I was surprised by that moment of mean girl attitude from him.  But luckily he served up something to drink (I’m thinking it’s iced coffee or chocolate milk.  I’m still confused by what that held.)  Tony basically tells them they are crazy and hoping for nothing, because he’s good where he is.  He has his girls and no stress which is honestly what the Avengers always seem to guarantee for him since joining the group with SHIELD under Nick Fury’s insistence years ago.  I do wish I could remember the theories and scientific laws he said would be fucked up with their plan, just to see if they are real ones but also I love when Tony just spouts his knowledge like it’s IKEA instructions.  He makes it seem so simple until you have to break it down, and up until this point Scott seemed like the smartest one on the team but really Tony could’ve been figured this out if he wasn’t so granola now, which is great and happy for him, but he really did give up very quickly.  Once again, probably good reason, self-care.  But still.

Gotta say, I love a selfish Tony though.  Quick shoutout to Robert Downey Jr. in showing his chops by bringing the emotional fortitude to this Disney movie.  The man has been THROUGH IT and has had enough.  Tony only has so much optimism in him that the cheerleading squad can provide before his is completely done and baby was DONE.

But without Tony’s help they test run moving through the quantum realm only to discover what Tony says later, that time kept moving though Scott instead of him moving through time, making him a baby, and old man, a kid again, and back to an adult.  But with a fancy time GPS Tony doctor’s up on the fly after discovering that the group isn’t crazy about the time travel being an option, they are good to go like it’s day one!  (Another side note to Paul Rudd aka Scott Lang giving us much needed comic relief.  I have never laughed so hard at my precious baby trying to eat a taco in my life. Also, Cap’s yeehaw attire in this scene?  The checkered white shirt with his dark jeans pulled up?  Truly save the horse and ride the cowboy instead man.)  

Now at this point we have to check in on Thor, our sweet pirate angel.  How has he fared?  Him, Valkyrie, and the surviving Asgardians establish their own town  on Earth.  Thor and Rocket go to find him, with a preview from Valkyrie of what Thor’s mental state is by the piles of beer kegs outside.  So, when they enter his home, giving a wave to Korg and Miek playing video games on the couch, Thor tumbles out behind Thor and Rocket reaching for another cold on, camera to his back.  By now we can see his hair is overgrown and greasy, and his midsection has a new pair of love handles we aren’t used to seeing on our svelte, brutish god of thunder.  So when he turns around, audience erupts in the theaters, as do I, to see him now looking like a melted ice cream cone with a beer belly that somehow still has some toned abs on top if you look closely, paired with some man titties to complete all billowing over his pajama pants to complete his depression ensemble.  This was more shocking to me than the Hulk/Banner hybrid reveal.  We hadn’t seen an image of Thor outside of him giving Carol Danvers the Stormbreaker scare test in the previews, so thanks for another surprise.  Despite his crumbling emotional stability at even the mention of Thanos’ name (tip of the hat to Chris Hemsworth for making my heartache with every crack in his voice), I have to get on my soapbox and say Thor’s body is beautiful!  He is a supreme King, deliciously made who can still smash any pair of cheeks to ash and dust with the power Mjolnir in each thrust quicker than any counterfeit gauntlet.  Just watch him later on, you’ll see!  I’d have that belly slapping on top of me in a quantum realm millisecond after he takes a shower and attends therapy.  A lil pudge ain’t killed no part of his power, whew.  Don’t make me shout.

Back to plot, with the promise of beer, Thor the Dude tags along to start the plan of going back to retrieve infinity stones.  After a synopsis of each one and where they were located, the crew drums up the plan to retrieve each stone from the past, bring them back to the future to put into a new gauntlet  and snap the other half of life’s creatures back.  This part of the movie is so stellar because if you have watched past Marvel movies (the first Avengers, Gaurdians of the Galaxy, Captain America First Avenger, and Thor Dark World) you will recognize the scenes that are featured with their past selves going through their past-current scenes.  Natasha and Clint go to Vormir for the Soul stone, which I am surprised Nebula did not warn them that someone would have to die to retrieve it.  What if two characters that didn’t love each other went for the Soul stone, is it over and done?  But luckily, or unluckily, Clint and Natasha are able to get the stone with a sacrifice of Natasha’s life (who honestly sacrificed herself but it counted.  And I need so much more clarity on the specs of the soul stone, it ain’t even funny.  Will we ever see what the realm Gamora and Black Widow are in is like?)  These two characters have been last on my list always so the scene was crazy watching them battle back and forth for a chance at ending their lives but the end result didn’t hit my heart but still great.  I kinda would’ve wished little Gamora was there again to talk to us.  

Then Hulk has to go see Ancient One to retrieve the time stone, which she will not relinquish until Hulk says that Strange gave it up willingly.  On his word alone, she gives it to him, sensing the imminent danger that could come that is worse than the alternate reality she faces for not having the time stone with her.  Then Rhodey and Nebula go to Morag for the Power Stone.  So this is the first sign of overall trouble in their plan because apparently having two Nebula’s mix memory frequencies that reveal the whole entire plan to Thanos.  I thought for sure at some point that Nebula’s eye was gonna have to be dug out to ensure the completion of the mission but it winds up that Nebula and Gamora take her hostage before past Nebula takes current Nebula’s place with the crew going back with their stones, none the wiser.  Not even Rhodey gives her a check in like “why did you not come back with me when I jetted back to the future?  what happened?”  Nothing!  The death of Natasha kind of takes precedent over anything else and leave Nebula to finish off bringing Thanos back with her to wreak havoc.  

Lastly, Cap, Tony, and Scott are in New York circa Avengers number 1, fighting the space aliens and keeping Loki from the tesseract.  And I am not exaggerating when I say this part of movie is possibly the greatest cinematic feature I have ever seen, or will ever see my natural life.  You have Tony, creeping in the shadows to get Antman ready to help retrieve the tesseract, all the while admiring Cap’s ass!  He does it, critiquing that his outfit does nothing for his ass, when we all know nothing holds back them cheeks from making an appearance.  Scott, ever the voice of standom, downplays Tony’s critique and coins his rear end as “America’s Ass”.  I EXPLODED.  Ever since Captain America: the First Avenger, I have pined, no, thirsted, nay, LUSTED for that man in Marvel cinema.  He has the BAWDY to be Cap, and never slacks.  I have also always been a big fan of Tony and Cap having a torrid love affair that Marvel refused to implement but teases anytime they stare deeply into each other’s eyes or argue feistily until they are nose to nose, just get a room you two!  Ten points to Gryffindor for feeding the fans what they want!

So, New York is the only place that doesn’t go smoothly, as Cap retrieves the scepter containing the Mind Stone after a quick “Hail Hydra” to throw off the double agent SHIELD opponents from Winter Soldier.  All this time, Tony and Scott lose the tesseract in a freak incident that causes the case to fall into Loki’s vicinity, who picks up the cube and disappears to God knows where.  And it is never figured out where past Loki goes, or what timeline he creates for himself now that he has the tesseract at his disposal with no one to oppose him.  That is another thing I would love to know, all these alternate realities that have been constructed due to them tinkering with time, what happens?  What damage is done to the Ancient One without time?  What does Loki do with space?  How is Jane and Asgard without the reality stone ravaging her?  (Rocket got it btw as Thor got caught up talking to his mother, which was a very sweet scene and really amplified her character for me to love her more than I already had).  But at least Cap got the scepter until he is met with his past Cap, leading to my most favorite fight scene in the MCU.  Something about those two classic suits running at each other with the cacophony of the shields, and current Cap saying some choice expletives now and getting tired of the bullshit while past Cap still has all that giddy up and pure heart and “I can do this all day” attitude is an exceptional treat to be had.  I love Cap’s development, as much as he has stayed the same, he has changed, grown more into his age even, getting weary with the world but never losing his positive outlook, just shifting his focus gradually.  But to correct the tesseract blunder, Tony and Cap go back to 1970 to get the original tesseract from SHIELD in its infancy.  Both Tony and Cap have a soft moment.  Tony see’s his father who talks to him about his expecting wife (aka baby Tony) and Cap sees Peggy again in her youthful glory, panging our heartstrings.  But in the end, the supplies are collected and they move on.

So after they get the stones, they construct the gauntlet out of Tony’s suit Iron man material and it is decided that Hulk must do the snap since gamma radiation is part of the stones and so is he. It is not a simple easy thing as he writhes in pain and burns under the pressure of power but does the snap anyway and successfully brings back half the world.  This win is shortlived once Thanos bombards the compound and sends Nebula off to retrieve the stones.  This is the start of the longest game of flag football/hot potato/rugby adjacent.  Hawkeye has the gauntlet at first as everyone tries to pull themselves from the rubble (side note:  seeing Rocket so distressed shook me.  He is usually so cool and wily, getting out of so much bullshit that his helplessness when he couldn’t breathe almost sent me over).

So since they retrieved the stones, it’s not like they change their past, just create alternate realities.  Once they return them, things go back to normal again.  So Hulk uses the gauntlet to bring back the rest of the population again, we just don’t see them yet until later.  Past Nebula gets killed by current Nebula after Gamora helps current Nebula out to stop Thanos because as we know from Infinity War, Gamora never wanted Thanos to find them all.  Thor, Cap, and Tony all team up to spar with Thanos who was waiting patiently for the gauntlet to be brought to him.  Much to my dismay, the fight is very even, no side truly overpowers the other.  Thor really wants to put in work, but can’t quite get through until Cap does what I have been waiting for since Ultron: HE PICKS UP MJOLNIR!  (which Thor took back from Asgard in his time travel).  Wheew, I coulda passed out when I saw Cap wielding that thing like it’s his the star spangled banner itself, sending lightning down on Thanos, busting him upside his head and all!  I was spent and feeling aftershocks until Thanos gets the upperhand again and bombards his shield with that weak ass helicopter blade sword thing.  It breaks the shield up!  Which is made of vibranium!  THE STRONGEST METAL IN THE UNIVERSE!  This how I know Russo’s were just grasping at straws; the only thing I can say is since Tony made him that one after the snap, he probably used bootleg vibranium because obviously nobody called Wakanda for input on a damn thing to make this mission happen which is a rant I can say on a completely separate post.  Sure, take T’Challa and Shuri in the snap, it’s not like the whole country isn’t composed of melanated geniuses that could give y’all a lesson on quantum physics that would make your central nervous system dry out.  No, don’t call Wakanda to make vibranium anything for y’all to help in the fight, it’s cool cuz y’all didn’t try and clean up anything after shit hit the fan!  I wanted a 10 minute Wakanda clean up scene: I got DUST.  The underutilization of such a great people while at the same time using them frivilously is a *blink blink* mindfuck.  But I digress again!

Once Cap seems to be against the wall, he tightens his shield band around his arm and says slap me bitch.  But before it continues,  Sam gives him a quick “on your left” signaling the return of everyone, with first none other than our Wakandan royalty: T’Challa, Okoye, and Shuri.  Dr. Strange’s portals open up as populations come to join the fight from Gaurdians and Asgard, Wakanda and other Marvel movies.  The fight scene that begins I can’t wait to own at home becuase I know I have to pause and slow motion to capture everything.  Someone said Howard the Duck is in the fight which I HAVE to see. Can you imagine getting your ass impaled by a cartoon space duck? 

The game of keep the gauntlet from Thanos continues as Spiderman, T’Challa, and others all have a go at running the guantlet away from Thanos.  This is a part that I kind of have to think to remember.  I know that Antman and Wasp had to spark up the quantum realm van and I think the plan was to send the gauntlet into it, but I’m not sure.  Eventually Tony is alerted by Strange that the one in 14 million chance at winning is upon them and Tony goes ham to get the gauntlet from Thanos, who nearly succeeds but Tony yeets them off the glove and onto his suit, proclaiming himself as Iron Man one last time before snapping the bad half of the population into obliteration.  All the bad aliens and Thanos dust away, leaving the original population the watch them float away.  However Tony’s sacrifice is his life as he dies after goodbyes from Peter, Pepper and Rhodey.  

The funeral occurs with everyone there, even the kid from Iron Man 3.  This is a really emotional scene, especially seeing Tony left a last message in case of his demise, ending it with telling Morgan “I Said What I Said” Stark that he loves her 3000.  Once again, I almost got choked up there, but it just wouldn’t happen. One thing that took me out were Wakanda’s outfits at the funeral.  All black everything, but the fit and the make of Okoye and Shuri’s dresses?  With the gold accessories????  I can’t mourn when all that beauty is in my face!

And in the end, Cap goes back in time to send the stones back to where they belong but stays in the past to reunite with Peggy, finally bust her open and returns as an old man to give his shield to Falcon and that is it!

I almost got choked up just now thinking about that last scene but I still didn’t cry.  A tear came down when the end credits showed the actors pictures and their signatures of the original Avengers though.  There will never be a better Cap or Iron Man bruh, taking that to my grave.

 I’ve been in this MCU life for just about the whole length of it; watching these amazing superhero action flicks for the fun of it before recognizing the structure of each film forming towards an ending so grand. “You see where you’re going? Now let’s focus on how you get there.” This is a statement that is about to be my mantra for life! This is a huge project for a studio to put together properly, having all of our superheroes in one place, sewn together with the journey of the infinity stones to take out the big purple meanie Thanos who is hellbent on controlling the universe the easy way (50% of all living creatures annihilated) or the hard way (100% gone, starting from scratch).

But Marvel has given me so much great entertainment to look forward to.  Ever since I graduated high school, it’s been the May or November of each year, what’s Marvel putting out next? And it’s gonna be tough not expecting an Avengers film anymore, but I’ll be here for the new build up of superheroes, supporting Black Panther still of course as well.  I will miss the Cap thirst, wardrobe really did their part in this one with the Black sweater, the grey Henley, the yeehaw outfit previously mentioned and EVERY CAP UNIFORM HE HAS WORN!  I love this fucking fandom.  

And now I just wonder where past Gamora went, because she came to the present and “present” Gamora died at Vormir so we have a Gamora alive now but she went MIA, or did she get snapped back when Tony snapped all the henchmen back?  Thor at the end joins the GOTG  or Asgardians of the Galaxy, so I can’t wait to see how they fair in I assume GOTG 3.  How will Falcon do as the new Cap?  What does Bucky do now??  He was the original ride or die for Cap until he became Winter Soldier, but Cap was very forgiving of him in all that.  Yet, his closure seems open for anything, he got no special stuff in the end so maybe more for him?  How is Spiderman and the whole teenage snap population going back to school when it is five years in the future but they are the same age?  Where did Valkyrie keep her Pegasus this entire time?  When Cap went back to Vormir, what was his reunion with Red Skull like?  And what did Thanos do with the stones before they were destroyed?  They said he used them again and that’s how they found him at the beginning but on what? Answer these questions for me please!  

If you made it this far, I love ya 3000 and I owe you cheeseburgers (oh God TONY!!!)

[thewadapan]

I rewrote an obscure Transformers comic from the 1980s.

Creator’s Commentary

It’s 1984. Marvel’s four-issue Transformers miniseries has been a smash hit, and they’re already expanding it into a full monthly ongoing. Marvel’s UK branch is looking to import the book, but they have a problem - the newsagents want weekly issues, and there simply isn’t enough comic to fill those pages.

To meet demand, they bring on Simon Furman to write extra comics weaving into the US material. Because he’s the only one with any idea what's going on, he continues to churn out Transformers stories for almost ten years - with only occasional contributions from other authors.

“Peace” is one such interloper.

Written by letterer/editor Richard Starkings under his “Richard Alan” pseudonym for the 1989 Transformers Annual (which was actually published in 1988), it presents one of Cybertron’s alternate futures. Its exact placement in continuity was contentious - even within the comics’ own letters pages, where the editors (writing in-character as Transformers) gave several contradictory answers to questions regarding its canonicity.

The comic opens when the final Decepticon is killed by the Wreckers - an elite group of Autobot shock-troopers. With the war over, the very-very-tired Autobot leader Rodimus Prime announces that he’s going to step down - letting the Wreckers’ leader, Springer, take his place.

Unbeknownst to the Autobots, not all of the Decepticons are dead after all - the double agent Triton still hides amongst their ranks. In an attempt to incite conflict, Triton suggests that Ultra Magnus would make a better leader. The Technobot combiner team agrees, and an argument breaks out between them and the Wreckers. Whirl argues with Triton, Triton punches Whirl, Roadbuster pulls a gun on Triton, Scattorshot shoots Roadbuster, Sandstorm shoots Triton, and the war begins again.

It’s a grimly interesting story, one forever doomed to remain a footnote in Transformers history. Fittingly for a bot of subterfuge, Triton’s alternate mode was a submarine - at least according to Dreadwind in the letters pages. Marvel UK fanboy-turned-creator Nick Roche much later reinvented him as a member of Squadron X - sworn enemies of the Wreckers in IDW Publishing’s Transformers continuity.

In its most recent reprint as part of the twenty-second volume of The Definitive G1 Collection, “Peace” was left stranded as an afterthought alongside Regeneration One - with the rest of the UK strips being collected across the first twenty volumes alongside their contemporary US material. That partwork was curated by Simon Furman, who still writes Transformers stories to this day - despite pleas from some corners of the fandom for him to just call it quits already.

Richard Starkings, meanwhile, went on to found Comicraft - bringing lettering into the 21st century by pioneering the use of digital fonts in comic books.

I wasn’t alive when most of that happened. My first brush with Transformers - at least, as far as I remember - came when I saw Transformers: Armada’s Land Military Mini-Con Team on the shelves of my local Woolworths (a much-loved now-defunct chain of British department stores). I didn’t get it at the time, but when our birthdays rolled around (or maybe Christmas? I was young; I barely remember any of this and neither do my parents) my brother and I got a bunch of Mini-Cons. Our first brush with Generation 1 would come much later, when we found a knackered Strafe at a car boot sale.

For a long time, my only experience with Transformers fiction came in the form of the cartoons - they didn’t show Armada on Freeview so I missed most of that, but Energon and Cybertron both aired in their entirety on CITV. I had the pack-in comics, and the Armada and Energon annuals - which basically just collected random Dreamwave comics without context. All of which is to say that, at the time, I felt pretty starved for good Transformers stories.

Finding the 1989 Annual in a secondhand bookshop, then, was like finding the holy grail.

I won’t lie. I had basically no idea who any of these characters were, or what was going on. But damn if I didn’t pore over every inch of those pages trying to work it out. And I sure as hell was gonna sign the thing, lest those abominable Firecons paid me a visit to finally incinerate what was presumably the only Annual they’d missed back in 1988.

Years passed. Some movies came out. I drifted away from Transformers for a while after my parents said “aren’t you a little too old for these” one time too many. Well, it was either that or the hordes of overpriced Bumblebees clogging the shelves at the time.

Eventually, though, I was drawn back to the franchise. A Humble Bundle of IDW’s comics and Thrilling 30 Sandstorm was all it took.

For some reason, at some point I decided to start a meme page. I don’t know why. Please don’t look at it. I don’t want to talk about it. Most of the edits I made were atrocious, although I’ll admit there’s a few I still find pretty funny. I actually referenced Transformers a bunch of times. There was this whole thing where I tried to work in a plot, so really the whole thing was much closer to a terrible webcomic than an actual meme page.

Perhaps the most involved reference to the franchise came in the form of a relettering of “The Night the Transformers Saved Christmas”, a 4-page comic originally published in a 1985 issue of Women’s Day. Why did I make that thing? I don’t know. Maybe a little more context would help.

Y’see, waaay back when the first Armada toys hit shelves, fans weren’t too impressed - to say the least. They’d seen pictures of highly-articulated prototypes, only to find that articulation completely absent in the finalised figures. To make matters worse, the first pack-in comic was pretty lacklustre - thanks to the trilingual dialogue squeezed into its speech bubbles.

One enterprising fan (Yartek, now better known as Blueshift) expressed their dissatisfaction by completely rewriting that pack-in comic’s dialogue - reimagining Hot Shot as a deranged, jam-obsessed cannibal. It was an idle joke, but one that tapped into the collective consciousness of the fandom at the time. Its popularity grew to the point where it was even referenced on the license plate of a later Hot Shot figure.

By Blueshift’s own admission, the comic isn’t all that great. Nowadays, the atmosphere surrounding Armada’s launch is but a hazy memory for most of the fandom - leaving the comic’s depiction of Hot Shot looking more like an uncomfortably ableist caricature than anything approximating a real parody.

But I digress. I was barely aware of Transformers when all of this happened. My point is that JaAm was like an abridged series, only presented as a comic, and I thought that was a neat idea. I was looking to make a post that was a little bit different for Christmas Day, and remembered the existence of that old Women’s Day comic. Thus was born “its christmas... so what??”

My process for that one was pretty straightforward. After reading the comic once to get a broad sense of its plot, I went through it again panel-by-panel - blocking out each narration box with an autoshape and adding my own text. Mustard features pretty heavily in it... I guess as a reference to jam? Honestly, I was writing this thing entirely by the seat of my pants and - with the exception of the choice panels I’m including here - it’s pretty unfunny as a result. I’m not proud of it. Even at the time, I felt like I could’ve done better. So, half a year later, I did.

When the mood eventually took me, there was only one option in my head - Richard Starkings’ “Peace”. This time, I took a moment to plan the whole thing out in my head before diving in.

I think my idea for the plot came about simply as a result of Rodimus’ body language and expressions on the second page. I reckon I looked at them and thought, “man, he looks like he’s just caught a whiff of something pretty nasty.” From there, my mind jumped to Triton... the culprit, naturally.

When you go back and read some of the early Marvel stuff, there’s a bit of dissonance between the Furman-esque galaxy-spanning conflicts and the more offbeat “the Transformers crash a wrestling match / concert / car wash” stories written by US author Bob Budiansky. At times, the Transformers could be figures of real gravitas - and at others, they were almost like children.

For both “its christmas” and “PASS” I tried to lean into the latter interpretation as much as possible. As a reflection of that, the dialogue and narration - both written in Times New Roman - are completely devoid of punctuation, capital letters, or special formatting. Well, mostly...

There’s a few instances in “its christmas” where capital letters are used for emphasis.

Roadbuster’s dialogue gets to keep its punctuation, and is written in (I think) Arial, because he’s supposed to be more mature than the rest.

Each comic had one panel which retained some of its original dialogue - the fourth on the first page of “its christmas”, and the fourth on the fourth page of “PASS”.

There’s a couple of instances in the comic where characters use swear words, only the wrong letter’s censored - “sh*t” became “*hit”, “f*ck” became “*uck”. That’s simply an artefact of the comic’s origins in my old meme page, where that was a running joke.

In addition to changing the text, I also made a few visual edits...

I changed the comic’s title from “PEACE” to “PASS” (as in, to pass gas) by chopping up and rotating bits of it.

I changed the credits for “RICHARD ALAN” (writer) and “GLIB” (letterer) to “ME” and “ME AGAIN”.

On the fifth page, I rotated Springer’s, Ultra Magnus’ and Sandstorm’s mouths by 180 degrees - changing them from horrified grimaces to jaunty smirks. That’s why they’re kind of lopsided relative to the rest of their expressions! Honestly, the original version looks pretty strange to me now.

I likewise modified Sandstorm’s and Ultra Magnus’ expressions in the first panel of the final page, and Nosecone’s in the second panel.

I scribbled out the question mark in the little “THE END?” box on the final page. This is the definitely the end; no need to beat around the bush.

The idea to make Roadbuster a butt monkey stemmed from the fact that he was the only non-triple-changer to appear on the first page. I saw that panel with the four of them together and thought “one of these guys is not like the others.” And of course, I knew that he’d be dead in a few more pages.

Once I’d established Springer as a bully, I started to get a sense for what life was like amongst the Autobots - but there were still things I wanted to leave open to interpretation...

Why does Roadbuster hang around with the other Autobots so persistently, when all he receives is abuse?

Is Triton’s fixation on “cred” overblown, or is it the only reason he’s survived as long as he has?

Is Rodimus really past his Prime?

Who’s really the coolest Autobot?

Are the Autobots inherently bad people, or simply products of their environment?

If they’re the latter, does that excuse their actions?

If these are the Autobots... then what were the Decepticons like?

Here’s some other miscellaneous notes...

There’s a single speech bubble on the fourth page where the speaker’s off-panel. In the original comic it belonged to Triton, shouting “HEY!” Here, I like to think it’s Whirl speaking.

In the narration of the second panel, I refer to the Transformers as “car robots” - a nod to the Japanese name of the Transformers: Robots in Disguise series.

Rodimus’ “light their darkest hour” line is, of course, a quote from the 1986 animated Transformers movie. Yes, I’m as tired of those references as you are, but no, I couldn’t resist.

I can’t remember if it was deliberate, but I’m pretty sure “if you catch my drift” was a nod to The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye - where original character Drift stars as Rodimus’ third-in-command.

Speaking of More than Meets the Eye - when it was relaunched as Lost Light, Rodimus got a brand new purple colour scheme. In “Pass”, Rodimus agonises over whether or not to get that same paint job.

“Mucho cred” is kind of a memetic phrase amongst readers of the superhero web serial Worm. I feel like “cred” is one of those inherently funny words (along with “cahoots”), so that was enough to justify its inclusion here. If you’ve somehow made it this far into this post, trust me when I say that Worm is a rabbit hole well worth tumbling down.

“Peace” has a very strong atmosphere. It’s about a group of individuals - who’ve known nothing but conflict for thousands of years - suddenly finding themselves with nobody to point their guns at. That exact same scenario played out decades later in IDW Publishing’s Transformers continuity, where it was explored in much greater depth - but in just six standalone pages, “Peace” presents its broad themes with impressive clarity.

I think we’re very much invited to root for Triton - he’s a real worm, but he’s also an underdog. When characters are created whole cloth in Transformers stories, they’re marked for death.

“Pass”, on the other hand, is about a group of kids who’ve lost all sense of perspective. The most important thing to each of the group’s members is how they are perceived by the rest. They’ve been living under ever-increasing social pressure, and things are finally reaching a boiling point - and people die as a result.

And I say “kids”, but the truth is that I still see these dynamics amongst grown adults today - admittedly without the death. For any given subculture, you’re going to find ingroups, outgroups, and the awkward middle ground between them. If I thought there was a clear-cut solution, I would’ve put it in the comic. But oftentimes - like I said in the closing panels - there isn’t really anyone at fault.

If you fart in public, don’t stress about it too much. Nobody really minds. Just own up. And whatever you do, don’t try to pass the blame - or else...

As one final nod to Marvel UK’s Transformers comics... here are some short AtoZ profiles for the entire cast!

You can follow me on twitter if you want to see more of my Transformers ramblings. The rest of my writing can be found right here on this blog - I recommend starting with Everything Is Red Now, a dumb comic about Spider-Man.

[brevoorthistoryofcomics]

In January of 1977, I turned ten-years-old. And around that time, I would up getting my second book collection of vintage comic book stories--a book that, up until that point I didn’t even know existed. We found it in the remaindered section at Two Guys, a regional low-rent department store chain, kind of like the K-Mart of its day. And because I had money that had been given to me for my birthday, I was able to buy it. By that point, it was twelve years old and had gone through several printings--it was, in fact, the very first collection of vintage comic book stories ever published, coming out in 1965 just ahead of the Batman TV show craze.

THE GREAT COMIC BOOK HEROES began life as an article that Jules Feiffer had written for Playboy magazine, of all places. It was a nostalgic look back, warts and all, at the comic books that were a part of his youth and the state of the industry a few years later when he was able to get into the business working for Will Eisner. From there, Feiffer went on to be a successful syndicated cartoonist, his strip primarily appearing in the Village Voice, as well as an accomplished playwright. He was so well-regarded, in fact, that he was able to convince a number of publishers to reprint stories from their back catalog in this hardcover collection--publishers who, up to this point, has never really worked in concert before. 

As no good reproduction materials existed, Feiffer worked in concert with DC’s Jack Adler to pioneered a process by which old comic books could be photographed under certain conditions to create a usable black line image, and then recolored. This same process was later used on many of DC’s reprints, in particular the FAMOUS 1st EDITION treasuries--I gather that the reason its use wasn’t more widespread is that it was more costly and time-consuming than was considered worthwhile for a regular comic book release.

Feiffer was also enough of a bigwig in 1965 that he was able to negotiate a minor detente in the legal agreement between DC/national Periodicals and Fawcett Publications, enough to allow him to reprint a single page’s worth of Captain Marvel. In 1977 when I read this book, I didn’t understand why this was a big deal (and in fact I had read this same story twice before already.) I believe it was the one and only exception ever granted, at least up until the point where DC began licensing the rights to Captain Marvel from Fawcett in 1973.

I will confess that, when I first bought this volume, I didn’t read any of Feiffer’s text. That seemed like work to me, who needed it? It was the stories that I was here for! I was hypnotized by the reproduction of one of the comic books that Feiffer had made and sold on the neighborhood street when he was a kid. I had begun to make my own comic books before this, and so this was a very primal point of connection for me--I think I may have read the text of just that one “chapter” (they were all short enough that they were only three or four pages long.)

I also didn’t read the stories featuring the Human Torch, the Sub-Mariner and Captain America that were included in the volume. Why would I? I had learned from past experience that I adamantly disliked Marvel comics, decried them whenever I was asked about them, so there was no need to investigate these stories. It would literally be months, not until the summer of 1977, when, on one dull day with nothing better to do, I finally cracked and read through both Feiffer’s full text and the three Marvel stories. And they (along with the write-ups on Timely in the Steranko History of Comics, coming soon) were enough to compel me to give Marvel another chance. But we’ll get to that in due time.

The one disappointing aspect of Feiffer’s book to me, coming to it twelve years later, is that there were already a number of stories in it that I’d read already. Because Feiffer tried to hit all of the mainstays of the big comic book houses in his reprints, and as often as possible, the opening or origin installments. The only times he varied from this approach was when there was some other aspect of the character or the strip that he was trying to highlight--a number of these series took a little while to completely crystallize in their final forms, and Feiffer took that into account when choosing his stories.

So what was reprinted in this volume? It opened with a two-page origin of Superman, taken not from ACTION COMICS #1 but rather from the more expanded version first shown in SUPERMAN #1. Thereafter, he ran a story that he sourced from SUPERMAN #3 but which was first published in ACTION COMICS #5. It’s really the first full story in which all of the quintessential elements of the Superman series coalesce: the Lois-Clark-Superman relationship in particular. There are several pages in the middle of it that were clearly reworked from newspaper strip samples, panels extended and reformatted into comic book pages haphazardly. 

Following the single page of Captain Marvel he could show, Feiffer then reprints the origin of Batman, from BATMAN #1 (which I’d read), as well as the first story featuring the Joker (likewise). This was about a year in, by which point Robin had been introduced, and wit the debut of the Joker all of the elements were in place. But not new to me. Next was a relatively late Human Torch story from MARVEL MYSTERY COMICS #20--like Batman, by this point the Torch’s young partner Toro had come into the series, and it had settled down into typical super-heroics. But I didn’t read it, not yet.

A pair of stories that I’d already experienced came next: the first adventure of the Flash (my third copy of it!) from FLASH COMICS #1 and the first installment of Green lantern from ALL-AMERICAN COMICS #16. Next came a solo Spectre story from ALL-STAR COMICS #1. I was familiar with this early version of the Spectre from the FAMOUS 1st EDITION reprint of ALL-STAR #3, but he wasn’t especially interesting to me. Because he was already dead and could do literally anything, there wasn’t a lot of drama to be found in his stories. Even as a kid, this deficit was apparent to me. Superman, at least, had to struggle to accomplish whatever his goal was.

Next came an adventure of Hawkman, sourced from FLASH COMICS #5. Here, Feiffer skipped the earliest adventures of the winged wonder so as to showcase the work of Shelly Moldoff on the strip (and in particular how often he was swiping Flash Gordon panels by Alex Raymond, which happened everywhere.) This was followed by a Wonder Woman story from WONDER WOMAN #2--actually, it was a single chapter of a four-chapter larger story, but I wouldn’t discover this for decades. Feiffer chose it as a good example of some of the strange sexuality that was operating under the hood of what at first glance appeared to be a patriotic heroine series. This was the stuff that really made Wonder Woman sizzle, and the lack of which one of the reasons why her series had such a lack of pop in the 60s and 70s.

Then came a Sub-Mariner adventure from MARVEL MYSTERY COMICS #7, by which point creator Bill Everett had worked out the bugs. I didn’t read it for several months, but essentially it’s an orgy of destruction, as Namor returns to Manhattan to carve out vengeance for his undersea race by wrecking and destroying his way across the city--he even at one point accosts Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. There isn’t much plot, only carnage--and it ends with Namor’s friend Berry Dean warning him that the Human Torch would be on his trail. But that historic meeting wasn’t included.

I also skipped the origin of Captain America, from CAPTAIN AMERICA COMICS #1. It’s a pretty crude piece of work, like most of what was reprinted in this volume. There are only hints of the explosiveness that Jack Kirby would bring to the comic book page in the next few issues, to say nothing of the next few decades. The pages were a little bit more jigsaw puzzle-y, but only a little bit. That would change as Kirby got going on Cap.

Next came the first Plastic Man adventure, from POLICE COMICS #1, and which I’d read a few weeks earlier in SECRET ORIGINS OF THE SUPER DC HEROES. It was still a fun tale, but one that only hinted at the inventiveness that Jack Cole would bring to the character and to the page. I felt the same way about the Spirit based on the story that Feiffer reprinted here. He spent a lot of time talking up how innovative and impressive a series it was, but from this sampling, I just couldn’t see it. Part of that, no doubt, is that most scholars consider the best period of Eisner’s Spirit to run from around 1946-1950 or so. But Feiffer was working for Eisner for most of that period--he wrote several of the most memorable tales--and so his interest was in the earliest Spirit adventures, the ones he read as a kid.

So it was a highly-enjoyable volume, and one that would have a greater impact on me over the course of time, but also slightly disappointing. But I was glad to have it, in particular because its existence came as a total surprise to me. At this point in time, there were precious few compilations of old comic book stories, so each one was like a treasured gem.

[sussex-nature-lover]

Petworth House Collection

Part 2 of our visit to the property - the inside

As I wrote in Part 1, I was sadly underwhelmed by our visit to Petworth, although that doesn’t take away in any part from some of the fabulous works of art and decor which are real treasures.

It’s very difficult times for any kind of ‘attraction’ or museum and I did try to curtail the flat feeling I had with appreciation of being able to go inside the house at all and to see such things. It’s just that I really like to come away from visits with a real sense of who the people were who lived in and shaped the futures of, these historic homes.

One thing I have just discovered is a video they’ve made about the kitchens which, as you read in the last blog, I really wanted to see for myself.

Credit Petworth NT Twitter

As I said before, only downstairs rooms are open.

Side Note: alterations to the property were carried out in the 1870s by Anthony Salvin, architect, who was also involved in Scotney Castle local to us, which is why the name rang a very loud bell.

The way the house tour is arranged now, you first encounter The Chapel. You’ve got to marvel at anything that dates back to approx 1300.

Pietà after Michelangelo Buonarroti

It may just be us. It might be the times, but I didn’t get much of a feeling of peace or of history. The Chapel, despite its ornate decorations seemed dull and dusty and, oh I don’t know, I feel churlish, but it didn’t give me what I expected, or any inspiration. The stained glass is impressive though with all the Percy family commemorations. 

I’ve taken a few photos from Trip Advisor which hopefully show things in a different light.

The Chapel at Christmas

Of course, the main attraction at Petworth is the purpose built North Gallery. Here are some of my photos and an indication of what it would usually look like.

Wander around and take your pick

There have previously been sign boards with lots of information 

Now, there’s nothing, so it seems more like ‘and here’s another statue’ or ‘here’s another landscape’

St Michael Slaying Satan  John Flaxman RA

Carved from a single piece of marble apart from the spear.

One thing I learned from the guide is demonstrated here by the middle statue, look carefully below.

The body of a male with the face of a female - when art works and statues were all but plundered from Continental Europe, the authorities decreed that only damaged and broken statues were permitted to be exported, hence the practice of combining parts to make a whole. I wonder if anyone does a double take?

I can’t really work out why at least some of the information boards can’t be displayed because of Covid procedures. Knowing what you’re looking at makes such a difference.

My favourite piece in the whole house - I’m not exaggerating to say that it blew me away. There’s no sign or information so I’ll put good money on it being overlooked by most visitors.

I enquired and found out that this piece, which is approximately 10x12″ is attributed to Lady Jane Grey

Lady Jane Grey, also known as Lady Jane Dudley (after marriage) and as "the Nine Days' Queen", was an English noblewoman and de facto Queen of England and Ireland from 10 July until 19 July 1553. Jane was the great-granddaughter of Henry VII through his younger daughter Mary, and was a first cousin once removed of Edward VI

History of John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland for anyone who wants to brush up on their history.

Lady Jane Grey embroidered panel

The colours on this work have held up well considering it must be AT LEAST 467 years old and more likely 470. Lady Jane Grey was only, what? 16 or 17 when she was executed, so this piece of work is reputedly the work of a teenager. It’s so accomplished, so fine, so magnificent that it almost leaves me speechless in awe and these pictures simply can’t do it justice. Frankly, despite my whinging about the visit, this item was worth the journey all by itself. What makes me feel sad about it is that people will walk by and perhaps not even know what it is or why it’s on display. 

These are my photographs of the Molyneux Globe, a priceless treasure, which I believe has previously been on display in the North Gallery. Below is a Trip Advisor photo of the information you would usually see.

Emery Molyneux (/ˈɛməri ˈmɒlɪnoʊ/ EM-ər-ee MOL-in-oh; died June 1598) was an English Elizabethan maker of globes, mathematical instruments and ordnance. His terrestrial and celestial globes, first published in 1592, were the first to be made in England and the first to be made by an Englishman.

Molyneux was known as a mathematician and maker of mathematical instruments such as compasses and hourglasses. He became acquainted with many prominent men of the day, including the writer Richard Hakluyt and the mathematicians Robert Hues and Edward Wright. He also knew the explorers Thomas Cavendish, Francis Drake, Walter Raleigh and John Davis. Davis probably introduced Molyneux to his own patron, the London merchant William Sanderson, who largely financed the construction of the globes. When completed, the globes were presented to Elizabeth I. Larger globes were acquired by royalty, noblemen and academic institutions, while smaller ones were purchased as practical navigation aids for sailors and students. The globes were the first to be made in such a way that they were unaffected by the humidity at sea, and they came into general use on ships.

Molyneux emigrated to Amsterdam with his wife in 1596 or 1597. He succeeded in interesting the States-General, the parliament of the United Provinces, in a cannon he had invented, but he died suddenly in June 1598, apparently in poverty. The globe-making industry in England died with him.

Only six of his globes are believed still to be in existence. Three are in England, of which one pair consisting of a terrestrial and a celestial globe is owned by Middle Temple and displayed in its library, while a terrestrial globe is at Petworth House in Petworth, West Sussex.

Wikipedia

That’s interesting because I only associated the name Molyneux with the football stadium in Wolverhampton 😊 We live and learn.

Bespoke locks and door plates - I have a particular interest in these wherever we visit - the craftsmanship and attention to detail is fabulous and I do like a marble floor as well.

Lovely large windows giving views down to the lake

Apparently this was originally an entrance to the house - which is now the back of the house. Personally I’d expected a larger porch area and perhaps some kind of covered outer porch. Get me and my critique.

Below is my photograph of the carved hall. It’s not as per the original because two rooms were later knocked through into one with the carvings both modified and also supplemented (from elsewhere in the house and by new additions) Portraits were moved. At a later point in time the base panels were painted over. Every generation makes its own mark I suppose. Having just watched some TV footage of felling ancient woodland in Buckinghamshire to make way for HS2, I have to say, oftentimes things are better off left or preserved.

Read that and weep - in my case, literally.

Points to note are that when the lower level paintings were installed this was so that diners had good viewing from their seated position - clearly that effect is lost on us now and also, the large portraits beyond Henry VIII were originally on the demolished dividing wall and were hung here incorrectly i.e. not complying with the original intention of the artist’s composition of the family.

The Duke is pointing to his left which indicates his wife and child portrait should be hung to the viewer’s right side as we look at the scene. Originally they were hung on the (now removed) dividing wall

*Short Video about the Carved Room at Petworth House at the end of the Blog

Carved work by Grinling Gibbons

Apparently the carved sheet music is Henry Purcell’s Fairy Queen and can actually be played.

I’ve just discovered a You Tube documentary about Gibbons, which I’ll watch tomorrow. LINK.

So, so many photos. Well, if you’re unlikely to get a chance to visit for yourself, this is a mini tour. I’ve got a separate entry of some artwork snaps. 

  The smaller dining rooms are no longer presented as such but there are some information stands of Turner watercolours from his time at the house. I think other originals are in the Tate Britain collection. Shame as they look charming studies and at the risk of stating the obvious, very at home in this setting. I hadn’t realised how accomplished Turner was or how young he was when he started his studies. His youth was very challenging. A guide recommended the film Mr Turner, which starred Timothy Spall. That’s probably one for the long Winter nights.

*Note the blue monitoring device

The Square Dining Room dressed for Christmas

Weighing Scales

check out that link!

Sanitise your hands and exit to the front Courtyard and the Servants’ Quarters opposite.

♦ As always I’m not responsible for the content of outside links, in bold type which are not affiliated to my Blog

[hellyeahheroes]

Some relevant news from Marvel NYCC:

- Venom and X-Men: Blue will have a crossover Poison X, a sequel to Venomverse, in April. Making it third Venom crossover after Venomverse and upcoming Venom X. I guess Marvel decided to compensate for lack of big events by oversaturating the market with small ones.

- New 5-issue miniseries about Legion will launch in February.

- Marvel assures us there is a place for Laura and Old Man Logan even with Wolverine back to life. But it came from Nick Lowe, so....

- At the end they addressed complaints about changes and legacy characters by saying they care for both new and returning characters and “ there will continue to be characters that appeal to all readers of Marvel Comics “

Sadly it all went to shit thanks to a bunch of angry machildren because wuite frankly I cannot find better words to describe this:

An exchange between direct market retailers and Marvel Comics editors became heated in the closing minutes of Marvel’s Retailer-Only panel at New York Comic Con 2017, starting after a unidentified retailer expressed concern about Marvel’s lenticular variants not selling well in his store.

Marvel executive editors Tom Brevoort and Nick Lowe fielded the question, thanking the obviously upset retailer for his feedback. However, the retailer cut Lowe short to express his distaste for Marvel’s recent trend of replacing or altering its existing characters.

The retailer speficially cited examples such as characters that don’t reflect the ethnicity, gender, or sexuality of their predecessors – specifically expressing his distaste for Iceman “kissing other men,” and Thor “becoming a woman.” The retailer’s complaints sparked an outcry among the other retailers present in the room, some echoing his frustration, with multiple attendees raising their voices to speak over each other.

The original speaker called for “creating new characters and not messing with the old guys. The old guys are solid,” while a second said that Marvel has “never replaced its characters like this.”

Lowe pointed out that the changing nature of the identities of characters was engrained in Marvel’s history, pointing out examples from James Rhodes to Frog Thor. The retailer responded that Marvel has “never replaced them all at once before,” going on to say that he has had Marvel Cinematic Universe fans come into his store to find Avengers comic books only to leave “when they see that Thor is a woman and Captain America is a black man.”

Lowe reiterated that Marvel is bringing many of its recently-absent characters including Steve Rogers back to the forefront in its “Legacy” initiative, and that Marvel would continue to focus on creating characters and stories that reflect “the world outside your window,” a longtime Marvel adage. He also stated that Marvel will continue to publish characters that fans of all backgrounds can connect to, before closing the panel at the planned time.

This seemed to do little to calm down the increasingly heated retailers, who congregated around Marvel Senior Vice President of Marketing David Gabriel in the hall outside the panel, continuing to vociferously express their frustration and anger over these issues.

Here is a word from me to retailers:

Maybe Marvel would create new heroes if it wasn’t a 100% certainty at this point that YOU ASSHOLES WON’T ORDER ANYTHING THATDOESN’T HAVE THE BIG BRAND SUPERHERO NAME ON THE COVER! You regularly kill new New Warriors and Runaways books because you don’t order them thinking they won’t sell, you killed Mosaic that way and despite DC trying their damnest, you killed Gotham Academy that way. I bet you will kill Dark Matter as well because you only care to order your Spider-Man and Batman.

And as for removing the “old guys”, explain to me this: Why not? I mean, what else is there to do with them? With exception of Superior Iron Man, where he is on purpose his exact opposite when was the last time Iron Man had a good run? Knaufs? Warren Ellis? Where you can even take original Thor where he hasn’t been already five times and left beer bottles everywhere? You keep demanding more of the same and everybody got sick of it. Your customer bases are shrinking and you do nothing to seek new customers and when it starts hurting the publishers and they try to seek new fanbases, you act like a bunch of spoiled manchildren.

I have no sympathy for these people.

EDIT: Fittingly, Stan Lee himself went and spoke out against bigotry. 

- Admin

[collaborativedocumenteditingsoft]

The No. 1 Question Everyone Working in premire 'collaborative video editing Should Know How to Answer

If you want to strike that same balance on your video project, this tool might be useful. For instance, video teams can use Workzone to access a range of reports that outline the progress they have made on a given project. General video production software can often be a great choice, given that these tools strongly emphasize usability. As an added bonus, these tools can be adjusted to fit your exact needs. Your team members will work very hard on your project, and their time will often be limited.

How do I export Premiere Pro to mp4?

MP4 is a file container format, while H. 264 is actually a video compression codec that requires a video container to host the encoded video. Most of the time, H. 264 refers to MP4 file encoded with H.

Tags: Editing, File Management, Organization, Premiere Pro, Productivity

This development further boosts workflow efficiency for media professionals, allowing them to work within one interface without the need for jumping from one UI to the other, which takes extra time and stifles the creative process. Axle 2016.2 is the latest edition of axle’s award-winning media management software, now optimized for media libraries with up to 1 million assets. Simply point axle at the media files you want to manage and it automatically creates low-bandwidth proxies you can then access from any web browser. There’s no need to move your media files or change your system setup. Our new plug-in panel for Adobe Premiere® Pro CC, included with every axle 2016 system, enables editors to search, see previews and begin working on footage without leaving their favorite NLE software.

Production, without the stress

But the Digital Asset Manager is more than just a big geek overseeing information and data in all its forms. While the role requires sharp analytical skills, it is the crossover skills tied to people and how they interact with digital technologies that are equally important. Metadata for an asset can include its packaging, encoding, provenance, ownership and access rights, and location of original creation. It is used to provide hints to the tools and systems used to work on, or with, the asset about how it should be handled and displayed. For example, DAM helps organizations reduce asset-request time by making media requests self-serving.

For whatever reason, it’s always nice to be able to work off of a version of your project that is linked to proxy media (meaning low-res versions of your clips). In the past, it was critical that editors would plan for a proxy workflow before they would start editing, and generate proxy files to be ingested into their NLE when first setting up their session.

Limelight Video Platform is the fastest and most intuitive way to manage and distribute online video to media devices everywhere. The power and simplicity of Limelight Video Platform lets you manage, publish, syndicate, measure, and monetize web video with ease.

How does digital asset management work?

Mid-range systems, supporting multiple users and 50-300GB of storage, have entry-level products in the range of $2,300 - $15,000 per annum. These can be hosted, cloud-based or installed on your own infrastructure.

How To Edit Vocals On Neva 7 Post Production Software?

How does a digital asset management system work?

A much better way to use illustrations is to employ visual assets — photos, charts, visual representations of concepts, comics or annotated screenshots used to make a point. Visual assets complement a story rather than telling the story entirely like an infographic does.

You can also subscribe to my Premiere Gal YouTube channel for weekly video editing and production tutorials to help you create better video. Both Adobe Premiere vs Final Cut Pro offers almost the same kind of video editing but still, they differ in a lot of ways. Because Adobe Premiere comes as part of Adobe’s Creative Cloud, which is a Marvel’s Avengers-esque suite of tools to support your video making.

Support for ProRes on macOS and Windows streamlines video production and simplifies final output, including server-based remote rendering with Adobe Media Encoder. Adobe Premiere Pro supports several audio and video formats, making your post-production workflows compatible with the latest broadcast formats. Over time, these cache files can not only fill up your disk space, but also slow down your drive and your video editing workflow.

Some filename extensions—such as MOV, AVI, and MXF denote container file formats rather than denoting specific audio, video, or image data formats. Container files can contain data encoded using various compression and encoding schemes. Premiere Pro can import these container files, but the ability to import the data that they contain depends on the codecs (specifically, decoders) installed. Learn about the latest video, audio, and still-image formats that are supported by Adobe Premiere Pro.

Now when you load a timeline from the Media Browser it automatically opens a sequences tab called Name (Source Monitor) that is read only. Premiere has always had a Project Manager but what it was never able to do is transcode and what it wasn’t very good at was truncating clips to collect only what was used in the edit. I have had only partial success with the Project Manager over the years and with some formats it would never work properly with Premiere copying the entire clip instead of just the media used with handles specified.

Depending on the clips you have and the types of metadata you are working with, you might want to display or hide different kinds of information. On one hand, this is great – you get updates to the software as soon as they’re pushed out, and the $20/month annual subscription fee beats paying hundreds of dollars up front. Regardless of how deep you want to go into the video editing rabbit hole, the best reason to get Premiere Pro CC are its time-saving features. JKL trimming is the most noteworthy as it lets you watch a clip and edit it in real time just by using three keyboard shortcuts!

What editing software do Youtubers use?

Many effects and plugins for Premiere Pro CC require GPU projective post production editing acceleration for rendering and playback. If you don't have this on, you will either get a warning or experience higher render times and very slow playback. To make sure you do have this on, go to File > Project Settings > General.

The footage is stunning, and I find myself wanting to work on it right away, but before I can do that I must back it up, but before I can even touch it I must make sure I have the contracts for each drive that is coming in. We work with and commission many different videographers and photographers so I need to know which office the drive came from and who it belongs to, what the rights are, etc…that is something I highly recommend. I have a folder labeled contract/release forms on our internal server so I know which contract goes to which hard drive/footage. One of the first things I do now, is label a drive since we are working with so many, I need to know what footage is on what drive. Once I get the drives and back up the footage, I then create stories depending on the project and I will also create b-roll packages.

[x0401x]

Violet Evergarden World Tour Interview

Los Angeles Anime Expo 2017 Edition with Director Ishidate Taichi

← Event Report || Index || Next →

——At last, the worldwide premiere in which the anime “Violet Evergarden” can be watched in advance has started. How was the first one at Anime Expo 2017 in America’s Los Angeles?

Ishidate: It’s a large-scale event where hardcore American fans gather, several of whom became interested in “Violet Evergarden” (“Violet” for short) out of the works that would be displayed in it, so being able to directly witness the responses of the people that had walked all the way to the screening hall was a trite but also very valuable experience. Amongst the guests, there were many who already knew the name of the “Kyoto Animation” company and the original literary piece of “Violet”.

I had somewhat imagined it would be a Comic Event like the ones in Japan, so while I had been wondering, “Would there be many adults?”, it turned out that lots of families with children attended, which surprised me. One more thing that had me shocked was that screenings and exhibits were happening all night long. It was upright in the good sense; an event with an American-like freedom to it.

——In the stage event that was the premiere’s screening, the first episode of the TV anime “Violet Evergarden” was run. How was everyone’s reaction?

Ishidate: Compared to the Japanese, American people’s expressions are richer in emotions, so although I had imagined it would be something lively like, “Oh, my God!”, it was extremely quiet as a whole, and gave off a feeling that everyone was very focused in the video.

One thing that wasn’t expected was when they laughed while clapping their hands at scenes that would make one think, “You’re laughing at that!?” (lol). “So this is the reaction of people from a different culture~?” I thought, and it was refreshing.

In addition, we got a “Nice!” and a thumbs-up from a local staff member who was in the backstage of the screening. After that person had left, they came back to show us the screen of their phone. In it was written “that’s a truly good anime” in Japanese, which made me happy. Another local staff member courteously commented something like, “Your event was the best!”, and made me think that they had probably enjoyed it.

—— After the premiere screening, a panel discussion was held to answer questions from the audience. Were there any remarkable ones?

Ishidate: I, Ishikawa Yui-san, who plays the role of Violet, and TRUE-san, who is in charge of the OP theme “Sincerely”, went up on stage for this. Perhaps because many of the people who had come to the venue had interest in the creators, there were several questions about the production.

Something funny was when we were suddenly asked, “When does the second season start?” (lol). “You only just watched the first episode, though!?” is what I thought, but my answer was, “If we receive everyone’s support...” (lol). Also, there was a question like, “This story seems to be set in a fictional continent, so will various countries and places appear from now on?”, which showed how they were consistently watching the main story. Maybe some have read the novels.

——TRUE-san, who had come up the stage with you, did the world’s first live show of the opening song “Sincerely”. How did you like listening to it?

Ishidate: I watched the live from a corner of the stage, but I think it really was good. I thought it was an even more wonderful song than when listening to it through a sound generator, and it earnestly gave me courage like, “I also have to do my best even more!”. Once again, I was able to take in the thoughts and stance towards the original work that TRUE-san put into the song, and it gave me feelings that tensed my spirit, so after the live, I ended up saying, “I’ll seriously do my best!” to TRUE-san without thinking.

While listening to the song, I thought to myself, “I have to hurry and write down... the art contents of the opening...” (lol).

——With what kind of perspective did you tackle the TV anime “Violet Evergarden”?

Ishidate: The TV anime “Violet” is a work made from a novel that won first place at the fifth “Kyoto Animation Grand Prize”. It was selected to be published as a two-volume literary collection of the KA Esuma Bunko, and its composition as a novel was arranged anew. Back when I read its manuscript for the “Kyoto Animation Grand Prize”, I was strongly drawn to this work and thought, “It’d be great if it were animated someday”.

The novel is a compilation of stories, and was pictured firstly as independent chapters about Violet’s relationship with the clients of her job as amanuensis, clearly morphing into an opus about Violet’s own personal backstory little by little. The media diverges from novel to anime, and it’s exactly because it’s a novel that it’s difficult to find a method of applying its life depictions into a TV series, so we are formulating the story as such. In order to make it into an interesting work with a continuous storyline, I talked with the story composer and scriptwriter Yoshida Reiko-san, and we decided to write the story of the girl named Violet in chronological order.

In the anime, we wrote about the figure of “Violet, who is an existence as innocent as a baby”, getting to know precious things little by little after meeting with many people. I think those who will watch it should see with their own eyes the growth of Violet as if she were watching over their own small daughter.

——What would be the charm of Violet as an individual?

Ishidate: I think Violet’s charm is her beauty as a primitive human being. I believe humans become more or less distorted as they turn into adults. There are societal responsibilities and various situations we must face, so we can’t forever remain only with feelings as untainted as those of children. But I think it’s marvelous – and even admire it – when one is always able to purely express non-rational sentiments, such as “this is beautiful” or “I want to do that”.

In order to validate this condition of primitive human being of Violet’s, we wrote about her with an ideal of “humans are supposed to be beautiful at first”. It’s not that I want to insist out loud that bare-plain humans are beautiful, but I’d be happy if we made people think, “Somehow, Violet’s lifestyle isn’t so bad”.

——After finishing the production of one episode, the first premiere screening also ended successfully. What’s the feedback?

Ishidate: The feedback... honestly, it’s hard for me to say anything myself. It’s up to those who watched it to say whether it was fun or not, so I think it’s not my place to say anything about that. As someone who is in the production, I’m like, “I wonder if people will think it’s interesting if we do this...” all the while making it through trial and error, but by the time we’d finished writing the contents of the first episode, we came to the conclusion of, “It’s a somber story, but with this, it will be fun!”. That impression didn’t change even after seeing the completed animation. It wasn’t easy to produce it, but I was happy when the art director said, “I’m satisfied”.

——Evan Call-san is the one working on the soundtrack. What sort of interchanges do you have?

Ishidate: The sound director, Tsuruoka Youta-san, said that “(the pieces Evan-san composes) are mischievous~ (lol)” and told us that he had this kind of funny reputation (lol). That’s why I’d been looking forward to working together with him. Evan-san joined the production from the second commercial of the original literary work, accepting the invitation of our music producer, and firstly attempted to make an image song as a trial. Rather than something concrete, it conveyed only the image of the production, and leaving it to Evan-san’s own sense as he freely created a tune, it turned out perfectly matching the image of this work.

——In what kinds of points did you feel that?

Ishidate: It was all very challenging. While the noises of typing on typewriters, the rustling sounds of fountain pens and paper, etc. are incorporated in the tracks, the indication that he could come up with a pretty good “trial song” was brilliantly integrated in it, and what’s more, it had a nice feeling to it. I felt he was a person with an artistic vigor and sense. To tell the truth, while some of the background music of the first episode that he made are orthodox, there are also tracks that seem to contain musical elements similar to that of Celtic nations, and I think that the astoundingly detached moderation and good discordancy that come not only from this midst fit the world building of “Violet”.

——Under what circumstances did you choose Ishikawa Yui-san as the role of Violet?

Ishidate: The first time I heard Ishikawa-san’s voice was in a live-action movie, in which she was performing as actress. The impression that she had an unpretentious type of voice remained within me, and at first, we had her give her name as an audition member, but I thought that Ishikawa-san’s voice really matched the image of Violet in comparison to the others. Ishikawa-san surely had acting skills, but she’s also an actress that has the adaptability to accurately surmise the scene directions, and as she was able to promptly correspond to our directions after recording episode one, I thought, “As expected!”. She acts out Violet’s accumulation of delicate emotions rather carefully.

——At the moment, you’re in the middle of producing episode 2 onward. How is that going?

Ishidate: It’s... hard (giggle). The first episode was still easy to write because Violet was “at zero”, but from now on, she will change little by little upon meeting with people. This change is not something symbolic, and I wonder what I should do to properly convey to the spectators that it’s a truly light and subtle thing... moreover, we’re making this production while keeping the multiple stories concurrent, so it’s really a hassle. While checking on episode 6, I got questions regarding episode 3. We, who are in the making of it, almost want status charts for the growth of Violet in each episode, like “kindness: 5” or “level of understanding towards others: 4” (lol). For the production itself, it feels like “the race is only just starting!”.

——From now on, as part of the “World Tour” premiere screening assemblies, screenings will be held throughout the world, including Germany and Singapore. I would like to ask about Los Angeles, which you stopped by this time. Is this director Ishidate’s first time visiting Los Angeles?

Ishidate: Yes. For starters, I hadn’t gone abroad ever since high school when I went to Thailand, so it started with me having to get a new passport (lol). Although I could not afford to enjoy sightseeing in Los Angeles, as I went by car from the airport the Los Angeles Convention Center, I took a freeway that was used for the scenes of a certain movie. At that time, I didn’t really realize this, but after I returned to Japan, I watched a preview of that movie and got excited like, “Ah! I had passed by this place!” (lol).

Also, I’d wanted to see the “Hollywood Sign” since I had come all the way to LA, but it seems that it was a bit far from the venue of Anime Expo, so unfortunately, my wish did not come true... In addition, there were apparently many people who visited LA for “Anime Expo 2017” at the occasion, and when some noticed I was Japanese, they got excited and came to talk to me a lot (lol)...

——Were there any remarkable happenings during your stay?

Ishidate: There were! While I was in the vicinity of the entrance of the hotel I was lodged at, perhaps because she saw that I was wearing an “Anime Expo” pass around my neck and thought that I was part of it, a young woman came to ask me, “Are you an animator?”. I answered, “YES!” and from that, a conversation splurged, up to a point where she told me that her daughter was an anime fan and a cosplayer. We chatted for a while; maybe about an hour (lol).

——Did your words get through?

Ishidate: Unfortunately, I can hardly speak English, so there were many moments in which the talk didn’t get through. No, probably most of what I said wasn’t understood. Whenever the conversation didn’t get through, she would be like “oh, boy~” as if asking the heavens for help (lol), but with the atmosphere and gestures of that moment, I was somehow able to communicate and had a good time. The fact that I could talk naturally with a foreign person about animation became an incredibly wonderful memory.

——Next, you will visit Manheim in Germany to attend “AnimagiC”, which will be held there. Please leave a message for the fans who are looking forward to the upcoming screenings and worldwide airing in January 2018!

Ishidate: I plan to make this into something that will make many people think at least for a little bit, “This was an interesting work”, and every day, we are doing our best as a united staff and, so while we try not to bring our hopes up too much, we still end up having expectations (lol). I’d be the happiest if everyone could warmly watch over the TV anime “Violet Evergarden”! We’ll be in your care!

[wildstormoralhistory]

Director’s Cut Material #9- Kurt Busiek

Kurt Busiek's acclaimed series Astro City- an anthology series that looks at the varied population of the super powered city was a long standing fixture of WildStorm's publishing history. After its initial series was published by Image Comics, it moved to Jim Lee's boutique imprint, Homage Comics. In addition to Astro City, Busiek also released many other very interesting titles through WildStorm like the Cliffhanger World War I fantasy title Arrowsmith with artist Carlos Pacheco and the ambitious crossover of the early Image Comics creations, Shattered Image which turned out to be quite the challenge.

Kurt Busiek (Writer): Originally, my thought was we were going to do Astro City on what I called, “The Sandman Plan” where Sandman early on, it was originally drawn by Sam Kieth and Sam dropped out after like six issues or so. And then they had Mike Dringenberg and they had different artists for different arcs. I thought, “That seems like a good way to do it.” I want to tell stories of all these different characters so we can get a guy who can draw great super team action for one story or we can get a guy who can do movie noir detective stuff for another story and I guy who can do a great romance story for another story and we’ll bring in guys as we need them.          What I didn’t realize is the reason that was “The Sandman Plan” was they started with Sam Kieth and then Sam left. They never intended to do it this way. It’s just how it worked out. They went on with Mike and then Mike left. They brought in other guys as needed but it was never really the intent. It’s an editorial headache to do a book like that because you need to line people up months in advance so that they’re waiting for a script while the script was being written, blah, blah, blah.          But that was my thought. I went to World Con, a Science Fiction convention in San Francisco that year. I wound up on a panel. We were talking about the comics and a guy in the audience was asking me questions. I thought, “Man, these are really specific questions. I like this guy.” After the panel, I was introduced to Brent Anderson and I thought, “Man, I’m happy to meet him.” He’s a terrific artist and since I’m planning on doing this Astro City thing, I asked him if he’d be interested in doing one of the initial six stories. He said, “Sure, I’d be happy to do it.”          I went home and thought about it and realized that after the first six issues, our intent was issues seven to twelve was going to be the Confessor story that ultimately was issues four through nine of the second series. That was a moody, dark, horror, vigilante-type story and maybe Brent would be even better at that. So I called him and asked if he’d be up to do this six-parter. He said sure.          At that time, we were negotiating with a company and they were interested in doing Astro City but they loved the idea of doing the series with rotating artists. Their thought was, “We’ll do a special or mini-series every time we can get a hot artist, we’ll do another Astro City project.” I said, “Whoa. Now, you’re making the series all about the artist. We don’t even publish it unless we get a hot guy?” I wanted to do the series ongoing and we’ll find the right guys, whether they’re hot or not. I didn’t make that deal and I thought, “You know, maybe I need a regular artist.” You know, this Brent Anderson guy, he can draw anything. He can draw super teams like Neal Adams and he can draw spooky stuff and he can draw mysteries and he can draw Kazaar-jungle action. There’s nothing that’s going to happen in the series that he can’t draw well. I called him up and asked if he’d be interested in doing the book regularly. He said, “Yes, sure.” He eased in to the series. First, doing an issue, then doing an arc and then, doing the whole thing. I kept asking him to do more. He decided he’ll do the book, I forgot whether he promised me five years or ten years. We’re coming up on 20 and he hasn’t quit on me yet so things look good on that front.

Re: The Wizard's Tale

        The Wizard’s Tale was a project I did at Eclipse in the early ‘80s. It was going to be a three-issue, square-bound mini-series that we were doing because Eclipse had [done] The Hobbit adaptation and they wanted to do a Lord of the Rings adaptation. While they were negotiating for the rights to The Lord of the Rings, they needed to keep the artist Dave Wenzel busy. I was asked to maybe step in and do a project with Dave while they were working out these rights. Dave had these characters and I had a story idea. They kind of meshed together and we were able to take this one thing that he wanted to do for years and this other thing that I wanted to do for years and braid it together into the same story.          We did that and three weeks before the first issue was supposed to come out, Eclipse went bankrupt. The book never came out through Eclipse. When I brought Astro City over to WildStorm, I said, “I had this other project too, The Wizard’s Tale.” At the time, the problem was that we had the rights back to the material but we didn’t have the art back, because the last two issues worth of art had been sent to Hong Kong for color separation. This was way back in the primitive days, this was color separation where you actually would ship full painted art to a place in Hong Kong and they’d do the scanning and the separation. Because Eclipse went bankrupt, the color separator in Hong Kong didn’t get paid for everything. They wanted their money so they didn’t want to return the art they had. We had kind of a nightmare going, “We can’t pay you for color separation because we’re not the publisher. You have to deal with the bankruptcy courts for that. But Eclipse doesn’t own this art, Dave Wenzel owns this art and you need to give it back to him.”          Finally, I think what we did was this was going to be a co-publication between Eclipse and Harper-Collins and Eclipse didn’t exist anymore but Harper-Collins did. Dave visited Harper-Collins in New York and I was at a convention in London. I visited Harper-Collins in London which is where the editor who’s going to be working on the line was anyway. Eventually, we got Harper-Collins to tell the color separator, “Give them back their art.” We got the art back and I just told Jim and Scott Dunbier and John Nee, “I had this other project,” and I sent them some of the art and they said, “Yes, we want to publish that.” It took awhile because there were color separation issues but not the same ones. But eventually, we published that as a graphic novel though WildStorm. I think Eclipse had gotten the first issue lettered by somebody but the lettering had long been lost. We started over again and I rewrote the script a little.          Instead of doing it as a three-issue mini-series, we did it as a graphic novel. It went through a hardcover printing and two soft cover printings at WildStorm before they figured that it had sold as much as it was going to and eventually, we got the rights to it back. That currently is in print from IDW with Scott Dunbier again.

Re: Arrowsmith

          Carlos and I did Avengers Forever together. Carlos had specifically requested, when he was renewing his Marvel contract, “I want to do an Avengers project and I want Kurt Busiek to write it,” which was very flattering to me because Carlos was a fantastic artist. We had a very good time working together and around the time we were finishing Avengers Forever, I was involved with Mark Waid, Karl Kesel and other people in starting up Gorilla Comics, which ultimately published through Image.           I talked to Carlos about being one of the Gorilla partners and we talked through ideas for what we could do for a book for Gorilla. We came up with Arrowsmith. My thinking had been that Carlos did such a good job, he gave the future technology of Kang the Conqueror [to] look so specific, building a culturally-cohesive world and giving him another world to design where it could be full of interesting weaponry and vehicle design, it would be a great way to make use of his talent. Doing this alternate world, World War I with fantasy grew out of that.           In the end, Carlos wasn’t able to make the jump to Gorilla because we were all essentially working without the financial security net of Marvel or DC and Carlos needed that. We still wanted to do Arrowsmith [and] a few years later, Carlos was invited to do a book for Cliffhanger which was one of the other WildStorm imprints. Carlos said, “Oh, I could do this Arrowsmith that Kurt and I talked about for Gorilla.” He called me up and said, “Do you want to do this?” I said, “You betcha.”          We made the deal with Cliffhanger and did a six-issue Arrowsmith series and that, we did directly with Scott [Dunbier]. It’s funny, I sometimes poke fun at Scott for it saying, “As far as I can tell, he never even read the plot.” He’ll glare at me and say, “Of course I read the plot. There’s nothing wrong with them.” He’d bug me about schedules and he talked to Carlos when things are coming in and things like that. I’d write up a plot and I send it to Scott and he’d send it to Carlos. I wouldn’t hear back from him. Carlos would draw the pages and I’d write the dialogue for pages and send it in. I wouldn’t hear back from Scott. The point at which I’d hear back from Scott was when we were going over final proofs, proofreading the lettering and making sure that the colors were right and text was right and things like that. Scott comes out of an original art background. He was an original art dealer. I think that he’s extremely focused on, “I want this book to print well and I want it to look great and I want to show off the beautiful art.”          But in terms of what the story was, I don’t know. As far as I could tell, I was sending him the plot and he was sending them to Carlos like it didn’t matter. Now, he tells me, of course he read it and it was fine but I didn’t get any edits from him. I have no evidence that he read it. He swears to me that he has. I will take him at his word because he’s a fine man [laughs].

Re: Shattered Image

          It was a nightmare. I honestly don’t remember a lot of the details so if somebody else says, “Kurt’s wrong about that,” take them at their word. My memory of it is Image wanted to do this crossover and I think the starting point for it was Jim Valentino. Jim wanted to do something that crossed everybody over and involved everybody. Or else, Image wanted to do it and Jim was tasked to make it happen. Jim offered it to me because I’d been writing Shadowhawk for him and I was the guy who had written more stuff. There were all different guys who’d written for Image but they generally wrote for one studio or another. I’d written at least something for most of them.          Jim thought I’d be a good choice because I worked with him and I’d been talking about a project with Eric [Stephensen], even though it had never come up, and I’d worked for Marc [Silvestri] and I’d worked for Jim Lee and I’d worked for Rob. At the time I was busy, I didn’t have much time so I think that’s why we brought in Barbara Kesel as co-writer. I knew Barbara. Barbara lived locally [and] was looking for writing work and I thought, “This is something we can do together easily and have fun with it.”          We co-plotted everything together and I did the first half of dialogue on issues one and three and she did two and four or the other way around. Then, we worked at each other’s stuff. But what I mostly remember is that we were doing this big crossover and during the middle of it, [Marc Silvestri's studio] Top Cow quit Image and we had to write all the Top Cow characters out. And then Extreme, Rob Liefeld’s group, they quit Image or got kicked out of Image so we had to write all those characters out. And then, Top Cow came back because part of the thing that Top Cow was angry about was a dispute with Rob and so when Rob got kicked out of Image, that solved the problem and Marc was willing to come back. As a result, I think in issue three, all the Top Cow characters disappear from the world. We’d gotten an okay that we could still publish issue three as long as we wrote them out. In issue four, we had to get rid of all the Youngblood characters. And then we got the word that the Top Cow characters were coming back. I may be remembering this wrong, but I think that on the last page of the last issue, there’s a long shot of planet Earth from space and a word balloon was coming from the planet saying, “We’re back.”          Literally, that’s how we had the Top Cow characters reappear because we were messing around the timelines being broken and shattered and things like that. I’m sure that the story reads like a mess because the original place we were going with it was so derailed by partners leaving Image and coming back in and so forth so we were just hanging on by our fingernails going, “Okay, we've got to do this and we've got three pages left. There are three pages that haven’t been penciled so we’ve got that much room to make all the Extreme characters go away and all the Top Cow characters come back.”         We can re-dialogue the earlier stuff but we can’t have it redrawn because there’s not time [laughs]. That’s how that happened.

[renaroo]

Wednesday Roundups 7/6/17

Wow I had a lot to read and I still managed to turn it out faster than I turn out about 90% of these which I’m not sure if it’s a reflection on my reading and writing skills getting better or if I was stressing out over doing these way too much in the past. 

Regardless, we have quite a variety this week and still seem to be celebrating Wonder Joy so let’s just get into it~

DC’s Batman, Creator Owned CBLDF Defender, Marvel’s Spider-Man/Deadpool, DC’s Superman, IDW’s Transformers: Lost Light, DC’s Wonder Woman FCBD, DC’s Wonder Woman: Steve Trevor, Viz’s Yona of the Dawn

DC’s Batman (2016-present) #24 Tom King, David Finch, Danny Miki, Clay Mann, Seth Mann, Jordie Bellaire

Okay, so I follow Batman at a distance because I’ll be completely honest: Tom King absolutely lost me with the Gotham and Gotham Girl plot because I just could not get into it, and it annoyed me, so I’ve been hands off with the title for the most part, a decision I only double downed on with the Catwoman debacle and my correct assumption in King really relying too heavily on TWISTS. a

.... 

But I absolutely picked up this issue because even if nothing in my thinking brain believes, at all, that this will be allowed to change the status quo between Bruce and Selina...

I love BatCat so much you guys.

He proposed. And I bought it purely for those pages.

I have to emphasize it was for those pages alone because I could not have cared less about Claire and Bruce’s conversation because I’m just so tired of how many people there are in Gotham and how this conversation would have been so much more meaningful if it came from Kate or Dick or Tim or Cass or Duke or Harper or Damian or Julia or Luke or Jean Paul or Leslie or -- THERE ARE SO MANY BAT CHARACTERS THAT ARE NOT BEING USED TO THEIR FULL POTENTIAL RIGHT NOW DAMMIT.

The conversation itself is kinda stuff we’ve heard before, and while I like how it tied in thematically it just wasn’t in me to not criticize the fact that it’s coming from the current OC of the Day. 

Anyway. 

I came for the BatCat and I was happy for it even if it was basically only three issues and I had to deal with grown artists making Gotham GIrl’s skirt incredibly short while she was in weird positions for most of it. 

So. That’s my take on that.

Now I can write 3 million fics about how this could be wonderful and that Helena Wayne gets to grow up with all her siblings and be loved by the world. byyyyeeeeeeee

Creator Owned CBLDF Defender Vol. 2 #2 Marc Adreyko, Gene Luen Yang

So this is mostly just an addition at the last minute both because it’s free and because it’s, well, an information brochure about uniting to subscribe or pledge money to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund for all those who have been encouraged into activism thanks to recent events and the collective consciousness surrounding events like last year’s Pulse nightclub shooting.

It’s a good idea and it’s pro-community messaging speaks to me. I’d like to spread awareness for people that these voices are out there and that if you’re interested in providing support you can check out this particular brochure on Comixology for free or google at your leisure.

Marvel’s Spider-Man/Deadpool Vol. 2: Side Pieces Scott Aukerman, Gerry Duggan, Penn Jillette, Nick Giovannetti, Paul Scheer, Joshua Corin, Reilly Brown, Scott Koblish, Todd Nauck, Tigh Walker

Okay, so... I like Spider-Man/Deadpool’s first arc... but it’s pretty much exactly like Trinity over at DC and it’s spiritual predecessors Batman/Superman and Superman/Batman in that, outside of what’s honestly a pretty stellar initial premise, there is not a whole lot of plan behind where the comic wants to go for the future. 

So you get a whole lot of different creative teams and no cohesive narrative or direction for the comic to go. 

But I guess that really brings into question what makes ongoing comics work and whether or not th idea of “hilarious monthly team ups of Spider-Man and Deadpool without a point, and assumedly without continuity consequences” is enough to work. 

And as someone who honestly really enjoys one-shot one-and-dones, that’s honestly a pass for me. 

But at the same tim... I mean there’s a reason I have both Spider-Man/Deadpool and Trinity on trade wait status now. 

The whole is not equivalent to the sum of its parts, but honestly it’s got some genuinely funny and worthwhile parts as it stands. And I appreciate that. 

DC’s Superman (2016-present) #24 Patrick Gleason, Peter J. Tomasi, Doug Mahnke, Jaime Mendoza, Mick Gray, Joe Prado, Wil Quintana, John Kalisz

You know, sometimes being a comic fan is kind of like reading the newspaper more than reading a narrative story. 

For me that’s kinda what this issue felt more like, I was getting information on where all the characters had moved since last time, the motivations, some backstories. Slight progress and movement in the form of an update on what happened to Lois and getting to see her still kicking Clark’s ass in gear despite his concern for her injury, which I liked, but overall this issue mostly felt like filler for the final moment where we see Jon fall completely into the control of Manchester Black. 

Who... is a big whooping plot hole I am stil waiting to be addressed. Clark remembers Manchester Black from the New Earth continuity still and the “What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice, and the American Way?” and knows about the Elite, but do they know about him? Or are they completely different from the Super Elite we knew? Are we going to get a Justice League Elite mention (which good god please spare me, though I’ll take Sister Superior). 

This is one of those cases where I feel like my overly extensive knowledge of things in continuity actually puts me at a disadvantage to actually like... reading and taken things for granted. 

I want things to make sense, or I want enjoyable Kent family shenanigans. 

But this issue did have Krypto so, I automatically add a star to it. Sorry, I don’t make the rules. 

IDW’s Transformers: Lost Light (2016-present) #6 James Roberts, Jack Lawrence, Joanna Lafuente

Look, sometimes I think it’s important for critics, reviewers, readers, what have you, to bea ble to say that they’re confused and don’t know what emotion to feel or whether or not the comic accomplished exactly what it wanted to and I’m just. Like. 

Yes that is my emotion at the moment.

A lot of stuff happened in this issue. Like lots of crazy, out there, amazing stuff was packed into a single issue and it’s like, there were panels where you’d blink and you’d miss important character development notes -- like Ratchet hugging their Rung once they got back. Like there’s so much good -- Rodimus had a lot of amazing moments throughout and I love the range of humor to anger to disappointment that he showed. Like his trust and faith in others is already pretty shattered at the moment and to feel Megatron’s apparent betrayal adding onto that is like a million times more stuff. I fear he’s nearing a very dangerous ledge, which is bad because this issue also tells us that Rodimus’ death wish and lowkey desire to put himself in dangerous positions to die heroically is still as prominent as ever. 

Someone hug my trash fire of a son, please.

And then magical girlfriend romance bringing back her girlfriend as a baby and it’s kinda weird like is it still going to be the same Lug? Does Anode acknowledge that it’s weird? Is anyone going to point out that they could feasibly use protoform matter now to resurrect anyone whose spark remnants are available now? Including Skids and Ravage?

what is going on

Anyway. 

There’s a lot packed into this issue which is why I am honestly kind of happy that next issue’s description is a “fallout” from this because holy shit, I need room to breathe and think through things.

Also. Dat smile when Megatron heard Optimus’ voice in the epilogue-ish finale. I like. Maybe had a fangirl moment. Just maybe. 

Anyway. I’m shrug emoji right now until I can get my emotional state sorted out because wow there’s a lot at the moment. Like a lot. A lot a lot.

DC’s Wonder Woman FCBD 2017 Special Edition (2017-present) #1 Greg Rucka, Nicola Scott, Romulo Fajarado Jr.

Like last week’s Wondy special, this is a reprint, but it’s a reprint of the first issue of “Year One” which still holds up as the far superior of the two starting Wonder Woman titles from Rucka last year and is amazingly well held up...

...save of course for the exact same criticisms as the last time I went over the issue which is Dead Bro Walking trope and a whole lot of Rucka Why???? that comes attached to the really bizarre treatment of race in the first arcs of the series. It’s just so bizarre.

But honestly, again, these moves are meant to attract the new, excited audience after the box office smash that has been the Wonder Woman movie -- an audience that has been largely female of all ages. And if there’s one free comic I’m glad will show up immediately on their google searches this Wednesday, I’m very glad it’s going to be the start of what has quickly become my favorite standard bearer of Wonder Woman’s origin story. 

Something I appreciate even more after having finally read the entirety of Azzarrello’s Wondy run which. Eck. Wash my mouth out. 

DC’s Wonder Woman: Steve Trevor (2017) #1 Tim Seeley, Christian Duce, Allen Passalaqua

So this addition to my pull was kind of unexpected in that I had no idea that it was coming out this week and thought “why not” because I’m literally still so Wonderfully Pumped Up a the moment and as far as I can see, the more proceeds DC and WB can see attributed to Wonder Woman the better.

That being said, Tim Seeley really dug into his Grayson roots in this one because that’s about the only thing I really got from this issue is that Steve Trevor’s a badass secret agent with secrets and a deep seeded guilt thing. Which kinda felt like a harsher toned take on his Dick Grayson more than anything else. Which is fine.

Part of the problem here is that I did not read the New52 short term published book that was A.R.G.U.S. or whatever where Steve starred during the weird interim where Steve was not allowed around Diana and Lois wasn’t allowed around Clark but DC still wants to make money from fans anyway.

idk. And since those kinds of spy books are rarely my cup of tea, I don’t think this issue sold me on renigging on that instinct.

Still it was cute and Diana and Steve’s interactions, while minimal, are really the driving portion of his narrative which I think is always good.

But, just like the Annual, I’m left just sitting here going “why don’t we use this opportunity to show off the upcoming Wonder Woman creative team, DC????”

And I get no answer bc DC actually doesn’t care about some weirdo random blogger on the internet constantly screaming at them.

Viz’s Yona of the Dawn (2009-present) Vol. 6 Mizuho Kusanagi

I have actually been very interested in Akatsuki no Yona since I saw its anime show up in my Crunchyroll feed, and as with most anime I can’t help but immediately try to find the manga instead because I am impatient and want Answers Now. As I understand it, the Viz official translations are far behind the current run of the manga (makes sense, as the manga series has been ongoing since 2009 in Japan), and is only catching up to where the anime left off so far, but that’s more than okay for me right now.

Because oh my gosh, it’s so amazing to read such a beautiful story about the growth, empowerment, and pure will of a female character as told by a female author and artist. I’m not the biggest fan of Shoujo as a style of art, but having Yona strike a balance between beautiful and cutesy visuals with what is ultimately a fairly action driven plot with intense moral posturing and constant detail put into the grayness of life’s choices makes Yona of the Dawn honestly unlike just about any Shoujo I’ve read before. 

Yona is one of the most compelling heroines I’ve ever seen, and her intensity of spirit and her meaningful examination of her kingdom makes this fairy tale story really unlike anything else out there. 

And while I’ve really enjoyed Yona to this point, I have to say it is an amazing relief to reach Volume 6 an finally get more female characters than just Yona. I like the reverse harem appeal of the cast as it has been so far, and I have affection for several of the boys, but man is it so much more meaningful to have a few more compelling female characters backing up Yona in the representation department.

Especially since some of Yona’s crew still feel... a little bland to me. It’s usually not a good sign in a massive cast when the traits that come immediately to mind for me are purely character design. 

I’m excited for what’s to come and to see how our Princess fully realizes her potential as the Crimson Dragon. 

Also I should note some skeevy parts of this. One I don’t mind but am sure other people might, there’s the fact that Yona’s current storyline is dealing with Yona taking down a ring of human traffickers and slavers, which brings up the question of autonomy both for Yona as a woman in this honestly pretty traditionally sexist kingdom but also for the Dragons themselves and how their “service” to Yona is framed as a question of their own will. But it’s still a story about human trafficking and that could bother a lot of people. Another thing in this volume, which has bothered me in the previous volumes but really came to a head this time around, is Hak’s... weirdly possessive outbursts toward Yona. I get that they are meant as... idk protective and romantic to some and that we’re supposed to be compelled by his struggle to not show his affection for Yona, but honestly I’m just kinda... naw hoss. Like Hak’s a fine character and I like his relationship and history with Yona most of the time, but like.. the weird pushing her against walls and... licking honey off of her wrists and just. idk. We’re lost in translation here or something bc I’m not a fan.

I’m also not a fan of Viz’s weird changes in the font randomly throughout the book? Like just stop. It’s bad when your translations look lazier than the fan translations I’ve seen floating around on tumblr.

I’ll be honest, as high quality as I consider almost all of these comics this week, I would say the good majority of them did not give me a fully emotional experience or really captivate me in a way that satisfied me from start to finish. And I’m sure in the follow up issues to come there’ll be a lot for me to question into why that might be for the majority of them, but that time is not now. So, as much as it may feel like cheating to pick a volumed book over single issues, I can’t help but say that Yona of the Dawn by far is my pick of the week. It delighted, it changed up its structure and storytelling, built out its world and has started spending more time on the titular characters where before it often felt like we were just taking for granted that there was a dragon gained every volume. And Yona herself is just one of the most satisfying characters to see grow into their own. 

But that’s just my opinion, I’d love to hear what you all think. Agree? Disagree? Think I missed a great comic this week? Please let me know!

[kierongillen]

Writer Notes: The Wicked + the Divine 25

Spoilers, obv.

Let's just dive in, eh?

Jamie's Cover

One of the interesting things about comics is the solicitation process. As such, a sub-section of the fandom will be aware of a cover before it comes out (or the month before it comes out if it's a comic which puts a NEXT MONTH cover in the back). So for the hardcore readers, this will actually be the first image they see of Minerva's new look.

So yeah, good debut, Mini.

This arc we're clearly not doing quite what we did on previous ones – the link from the cover star to the interior one is much more tangential than the first two years. Let's not make it too easy.

Emi Lenox's Cover

Emi is one of our favourite people in the whole world, let alone comics. Her co-written with Jeff Lemire (and drawn by her) of Plutona was one of our favourite minis of last year too. I believe Emi wanted to do another god, and then read the latest issues and I WANT TO DO PERSEPHONE!

Which has been a running theme this arc, actually. We've had to encourage other gods for the B-sides later on. Persephone, you're more than a superstar, but you're not our only coverstyle.

Very much a continuation of our Wide Variety Of Styles On Cover theme. This is about art.

Page 1

Compared to many of the issues this arc, this is a less demanding one for the artist than usual. I don't do it unless I have to, and I knew there's horrible stuff ahead. That said, the world fell apart during the production of this issue, and we lost a week. So it was hard anyway. Comics!

Anyway – we start slow. Three panels. Establish location, establish situation, establish key character. This is aimed towards being reserved, clear and efficient.

First swearing of Cass in the issue. And not the last.

The cliffhanger last time is an unusual one for us, as I believe I said (I totally don't re-read these notes after writing them. When we come to edit them for the hardback, it's always a thrill. Hey C! Sorry about all the typos.) It's a mid-action cliff-hanger. Normally we're in a “reveal of important new information” or “completion of surprising action” place when we cliffhanger, and half the time we don't even do that. This is a “half way through action” cliffhanger.  As such, it's about “How does this action complete?”

Structurally speaking, I tend to think that these tend to risk creating false drama. If you don't go through with an action in any meaningful way, that's what it is – a raising of expectations and a quashing of them, which – to use the technical writing term – is total bullshit. If you do go through with it... well, why didn't you do it to end the previous issue? Then you have a “completion of surprising action” cliffhanger, which is much more honest.

So the main way to resolve them, for me, is that what DOES happen has to be at least as interesting as what didn't happen.

So that's where we try to go, as Persephone is totally going to torture Woden.

(In my original synopsis the previous episode ended with Woden's reveal, with Persephone raising her fingers at the start of this. I made this call when writing both issues.)

That was a lot of words.

In other notes: I would really like Persephone's trousers here.

Page 2

Anyway – this whole sequence is about Jamie again. The push and pull of Persephone's reactions here is key.

Obviously the most important expression closes the page – we lose the skull eyes and have a push and pull of responses which caused me to pretty much instantly tear up. There's lots of ways to read this, and none of them good.

Page 3

Cassandra, voice of reason once more. “Go on a bender” makes me smile too.

Steady angle on the hands puts an unusual pressure on things – steady shots, in profile are something which tend to be most used in comedy. But it's all about the hands and the emotion. Also compare and contrast to the one over the page...

Page 4

Oh no, Persephone!

And this is very much about the scene as comedy. Breaking a scene into individual moments – decompressing, to use a much maligned and mis-used term – is all about increasing the effect. It is paramount in comedy.

Page 5 From the Hobbit. Bilbo and Smeagol. You can probably guess who's Smeagol in this metaphor, except not.

Page 6-7

The first page was written in a standard format – once more, using the very basic structure of establish/scene/character beat set up of the first page – and then moved into Marvel Method for the rest of the sequence. It's the first “real” performance sequence since issue 20s, so has been a while.

This sequence brought to mind the movie adaptation of UNDER THE SKIN when I was writing it, and that's not an inaccurate comparison, I suspect.

What's to look at here is Matt's purples, which are just lovely.

And black.

All that black.

And...

Page 8-11

EVEN MORE BLACK! Doing try printing scans of our pages at home, as your printer will hate us.

Obviously reminiscent of issue 3's performance sequence, and I love what they did with the tumbling sequence. Persephone's voice, caption-box less, dropped on the backdrop too.

At script, there was originally a couple of lines on the second spread. It was questioned by C, in terms of “He's a long way away – I don't think we can hear two beats like that” which is right, but also got me thinking about time operating in comics. The second you add dialogue to a page, it becomes a period of time. When you remove all dialogue, it gets a timeless quality. As in, you have no idea how long it's been like this. Seconds? Hours? Years? We don't know.

And that certainly adds to the effect of the sequence.

Page 12

Heh. I'm reading this as we put issue 26 to bed, having just passed Jamie the script for 27 earlier today. They are... somewhat denser. It's going to be a while until we have a three panel sequence like this.

Page 13-16

Oh, hello again, eight-panel grid structure, old friend. We'll be seeing you again soon.

The dumbest “I should have realised this in the script” mistake was that Cass didn't have a line in the first panel of this. That adds time to the sequence, and a repsonse to the appearance of Cass.

I remember the thinking on this for me. Okay, Persephone has dragged Woden away. What does Cass do? Try and free the Valkyries. Like, obviously.

Anyway – what we get instead of Woden being killed is this. Giving up the Valkyries. Dragged to be essentially Cass' helper. Working the level of reluctance and ego back and forth is key.

The Harry Potter line was probably the most closely debated line in the issue. C and I basically had a bunch of conversations trying to unpack the meaning, what Woden was trying to say about it exactly, what Woden thought he was saying, etc.

Whole sequence clearly important as it's stating a selection of the various mysteries in the book, signalling to the reader than them not knowing answers is not accidental, and making the characte's direction clear. “Direction” is tricky in Imperial Phase, which is kind of the point. Showing that we do have an idea what we're doing is probably a necessary tell.

The steady angle on the last two panels – once more, for comedy – makes me smile. The “Enigmatic Wankery” made think of a friend. I asked C who she thought would most likely actually say “Enigmatic Wankery.” She answered the same friend. So let's conclusively say “Enigmatic Wankery” is the line most likely to be said by author and punmeister supreme, Si Spurrier.

Page 15 – which, without saying it, where Cass implicitly agrees to working with Woden – is where I realised how good Woden and Cass are to have in the same room, in terms of pushing information around.

(Perhaps too much – Persephone is definitely an observer in these four pages)

Page 17

Text conversations are fun, just as how much you can get into it, as a piece of character work. That Cass hasn't updated her phone to change Laura's name ever since meeting her is certainly one thing, but also says a lot about various other bits and pieces.

Three golden expressions on the page., You can trust Jamie McKelvie to deliver on such thing – the specific annoyance and the somewhat enigmatic sadness of Persephone. And the... peevishly frustrated nature of Cass.

Also, easy panels! See, I'm not just a monster.

(Says the man who's just sent Jamie a script with a whole middle section sub-titled “ FUCKING HORRIBLE BEYOND ALL HUMAN BELIEF”)

Page 18

The quote's from Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Page 19

Ananke's speech from issue 5 of WicDiv, being broadcast. Fun juxtaposition. And god, that's a hard mask to draw.

And honestly, this page – which you should recognise in its structure – so upset me when I thought of it, I knew it had to go in. The more I think about it, the worse it gets.

The copy of Pantheon  monthly on the table especially makes me grin. I think that was Jamie's idea. Or maybe Katie?

Page 20-21

Persephone and Baal have been going out for three issues now. This sequence is the first time we've seen them in the same panel. Plus first time to see Baal in his guardian role. As such, wanting to live with them, albeit briefly, felt necessary. For a book that's often about death, we have to show life.

(The lightning-to-make-toast is the apex of that. The Mundane + The Divine may be an alternate title for WicDiv, or at least our aesthetic and interests.)

Also, let Minerva – ahem – continue to stretch her wings. Last time we got the human intelligence side of it. Now we get a more analytical mind.

And yes, Baal self-correcting himself is cute. You're trying, Baal.

Everyone's hair game is on point here. Minerva's fringe (aka Bangs, but we're in the UK, guys) is wonderful, but the winner is Persephone's braids.

On a really minor craft note? It's standard to say you end the page on a cliffhanger – an unanswered question, an reason to turn the page. The “Was Ananke right?” is a pretty good example of that, I think. Even mentioning Ananke changes the tone. The question is pointed, both in story and not. And, most of all, who's saying it?

Page 22

Oh, it's Amaterasu. Hi, Amaterasu.

This is very much catching balls we threw into the air, earlier. In terms of Amaterasu's actions, this is how the cast see it. Or at least, this part of the cast.

The third panel of this page makes me optimistic we're going to get away with an issue down the line. That's a lot of wonderful acting inside a tiny panel from Jamie.

I wasn't sure if “Li'l flower” was too much, but decided, no, it was the right amount of much.

Page 23-24

Yeah, this is a swing back to action-mode comics earlier than I suspect people were expecting it.

Kept really basic, leaving room for Jamie and Matt to do their thing. The tendrils whirling around, use of space, etc. Also, let's nod towards Matt's hot pink in the last panel.

Page 25

And hello what we can only presume is the Darkness, Great, which I probably better not say more about until next month. It was certainly a design conversation, but probably best to work in there. Clearly we wanted something interesting.

Yeah, that's enough for now, I think. We'll talk the nature of Cliffhangers again next time.

Page 26

I had a string of names for this one, before ending up here. I liked most of them enough to make me suspect they'll end up being used elsewhere.

Right – issue has just headed off to Image, so we'll see you in a month.

Thanks for reading.

[myhahnestopinion]

Marvel Ranked: Part 2 (33-23)

Hello, everybody! This weekend sees the release of Spider-Man: Homecoming, and, as the sixteenth entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the third cinematic interpretation of the wall-crawler, it reminds us that Marvel Comics has had quite a history on the big screen. So, in celebration of that fact and anticipation of the new film, I have teamed up with my good friend and fellow co-host on the Reboot Already Underway podcast, Jacob Lacy, for a collaborative effort: our definitive ranking of all the Marvel movies since 1998′s Blade. Join us in remembering the best and the worst of Marvel’s theatrical films!

Yesterday, Jacob posted Part 1 of this ranking onto his own blog (jakelace.tumblr.com), covering our thoughts on entries 44-34 of the list, the absolute worst films Marvel has made. Check that out on his blog here: https://tmblr.co/Zfi-mh2NRL3Hr

This is Part 2 of the ranking, covering entries 33-23, where we look at some Marvel films that are deeply flawed, but still kinda charming.

33. THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2

“You’re too late, Spider-Man. I designed this power grid. Now I’m gonna take back what is rightfully mine. I will control everything. And I will be like a god to them.”

“A god named Sparkles?”

Aaron:  Amazing Spider-Man 2 is when Sony’s greedy, desperate meddling with the Spider-Man franchise came to a head. The film is overstuffed, with three corny versions of classic Spider-Man foes, and a dull conspiracy theory subplot surrounding the death of Peter’s parents. There’s some decent Spider-Man action within, at least when the CGI doesn’t make the whole thing look like a video game, but character motivations are weak across the board, making the plot a frustrating mess. Trying to shove a rushed version of one of Spider-Man’s most iconic stories and convoluted set-up for a planned Sinister Six film into a film with the horribly campy tone of Batman and Robin caused a swift end for the Amazing Spider-Man series. Here’s hoping Sony learned from their mistakes for Spider-Man: Homecoming.

Jacob: Well, here comes the first of a couple Marvel confessions I’ll have on this list (most of them involving Spider-Men of some sort): I actually kind of like this movie. Don’t get me wrong, I realize that it is outrageously bad, but there’s something about that web-head that makes it near impossible for me to outright hate his films. Sure Peter is a bit (read: a lot) of a stalker, and sure Paul Giamatti’s Rhino is groan inducing, but I just can’t find it in me to condemn this film altogether. Marc Webb just handles the Gwen Stacy stuff so well (besides the aforementioned stalking) that it keeps me coming back to jam-packed mess of a film.

32. HULK

“And don’t worry about the dogs. You’ll be fine… just don’t look ‘em in the eyes.”

Jacob: Ang Lee’s directorial take on the Incredible Hulk is an interesting one for me. On one hand, it’s a bit of a bore to get through and contains some of the strangest and dumbest plot twists I’ve seen put to film, but on the other, this was actually the first film on this list that I had seen. I suppose in that way I will always feel a connection to it. It’s just too bad that connection had to be made with a film that has Hulk poodles, and a climactic fight with a cloud man. Although, I will give this movie extra points for the bonkers comic book editing style.

Aaron: For years, this film soured me on the name Ang Lee, but after Life of Pi came out and showed me he was actually a great director, I decided to go back for a reevaluation. I discovered a newfound appreciation for what Lee was going for with his darker character study of the hero, and the comic-book panel style editing is indeed inventive. However, I agree with Lacy that the film is ultimately undone by its slow-moving plot and lack of action. More “Hulk Smash!” would have been nice, even if that Hulk is a neon green Shrek-looking piece of dated special effects. 

31. X-MEN: THE LAST STAND

“I do not know if victory is possible. I only know that great sacrifice will be required. And because the fate of many will depend on a few, we must make the last stand.”

Aaron: While my child self like X-Men: Origins: Wolverine on first watch, I have always disliked The Last Stand since seeing it in theaters for the first time. The rushed deaths of several major characters was the wrong way to give the conclusion of the X-Men trilogy an epic feel, made more irksome by the inconsistent characterization of the returning heroes. There’s a noticeable step-down from Bryan Singer’s direction to Brett Ratner, who show little understanding or respect for the source material, as illustrated by the complete mishandling of the iconic Dark Phoenix storyline. Still, there are some positive new additions, like the pitch-perfect casting of Kelsey Grammer as Beast, and the climax has some powerful pathos. Fox seems to have made the wise move of retaining these great elements, while erasing the rest from continuity.

Jacob: I defended this movie for far longer than I should have. There were always those small elements I wanted to love in this movie, like you mentioned, but one day something just broke in me and I couldn’t do it anymore. The Last Stand is a really bad movie. Killing Cyclops off in one of the quickest and least emotional deaths in the series was one of the worst moves they could have pulled, and I really can’t get over that absolutely horribly written Juggernaut line (you know the one). Even Jackman’s Wolverine can’t save this movie from the hole it digs itself, though he certainly tries.

30. X-MEN: APOCALYPSE

“Well, at least we can all agree the third one’s always the worst.”

Jacob: Why, oh why did this happen, FOX? I thought we were in the clear after seeing how great First Class and Days of Future Past were, but leave it to the X-Men to disappoint us once again. My major problem with this film is its complete lack of focus. It is Batman v Superman levels of scatterbrained and you’re never given any time to catch up with our returning characters, let alone know anything about the newcomers. We get some great scenes from this for sure (the mansion explosion and Magneto’s family spring to mind), but I can never shake the feeling that shaving off a few characters would have made this film much better.

Aaron: It was probably naïve of us to assume FOX wouldn’t screw up another X-Men movie, especially considering how this one was rushed into production. I agree that there are a lot of high points (Beyond those mentioned, I’m a particular fan of its campy opening scene), but it ultimately tries to juggle too much, including a unnecessary Wolverine cameo that derails the second act. It doesn’t help that the film’s interpretation of the famous X-Men foe is a mix of dull motivations, an inconsistent performance, and a goofy ability to make fancy costumes for his friends. Here’s hoping the X-Men franchise can make a speedier second recovery.

29. THOR: THE DARK WORLD

“Well done, you just decapitated your grandfather!”

Aaron: One of the most impressive elements of the MCU is its fairly consistent level of quality, but Thor: The Dark World definitely represents the lowest point thus far for the universe. It’s not necessarily a bad film. It has a lot of enjoyable elements, such a solid cast, including breakout MCU star Loki, played by Tom Hiddleston, its whirlwind tour of the nine realms that expands the scope of the franchise, and some amusing comedic beats. Still, director Alan Taylor brings no unique personality to his vision, and this bland nature of the movie is exacerbated by its poorly developed, instantly forgettable villain. It’s not necessarily a bad film, and certainly not bad enough to label it a failure for the MCU, but it is by far the universe’s weakest, least-rewatchable entry.

Jacob: There are two or three scenes in this film that are legitimately great. Unfortunately, it feels like the ideas for these scenes were there and then they just kind of phoned in all of the build-up to them. It also doesn’t help that all of those legitimately great scenes, like the escape from Asgard and any of the jail cell scenes, all revolve around Loki. I love Hiddleston’s Loki, don’t get me wrong, but when no one else is given any material with which to shine as brightly as he does, the entire picture feels unbalanced and shaky at best. And oh yeah, who was the villain again? Something about an elf? Wait, really?

28. BLADE

“There are worse things out tonight than vampires. Like me.”

Jacob: When I first saw Blade, I enjoyed it. It provided me that same sort of new superhero fun that allows a lot of people to look past a film’s flaws. On a re-watch though I found that feeling to fade fast. Now, that’s not to say there aren’t parts I enjoy, because that opening fight scene is still really great, but the entire experience is lessened now by the fact that this film is filled with obvious twists, horrible dialogue, uninteresting villains, and a vampire blood fetish that’s way too present in this film to not find unnerving.

Aaron: As the earliest film on this list, and the one often credited with kick starting the modern superhero craze, I think Blade deserves a lot of respect. It’s familiar, but it plays its tropes well, crafting a solid, enjoyable template for a superhero movie that many future films would draw inspiration from. Wesley Snipes is great in the stylish action scenes, even if his dialogue is abysmal (What was that about skating uphill again?) There’s only so much forgiveness that can be given to the film though, and ultimately, I agree that the film’s strengths are countered by its bland villains and limp plot. It’s worthy of some respect, but ultimately is just an okay movie on its own merits.

27. THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

“Yeah, but those are the best kinds.”

Aaron: Upon first release, The Amazing Spider-Man became the biggest source of contention in my and Lacy’s friendship, one of the few films we radically disagreed on. Since then, I think we both have mellowed out a little on it, with me conceding that its better than my initial disdain, and Lacy conceding it was worse than his initial praise. Many of its problems stem from being a too-soon reboot for the character, with many alterations to his origin story becoming annoying changes-for-the-sake-of-change. It also lacks the passionate pulse of Raimi’s films, with its biggest attempt at sentimentality being the infamously groan-worthy crane sequence. Andrew Garfield’s Peter Parker is too cool, and the Lizard has inconsistent motivations. Nevertheless, the chemistry between Garfield and Emma Stone is undeniable, and the Spider-Man action is thrilling. I could nitpick this film to death, but I’m content to point to the quick collapse of the franchise as proof of my accuracy on the film’s lackluster quality.

Jacob: Hey, man. Don’t act like I won’t defend this film’s honor, because I will…and then as I argue for it I will slowly sour on it until I end up agreeing it’s pretty bad. That’s pretty much how this always goes. The Amazing Spider-Man hit me at just the right time. Being roughly the same age as Peter Parker is in this movie when I first saw it, I was able to identify with him and his struggles. I had seen the Maguire films before, but was not a huge fan in my youth, so in a way Andrew Garfield became MY Spider-Man. While that’s not any sort of statement on the quality of the film, it is one of the reasons I came out of that showing so high on this. Yes, the series fell apart, yes the Lizard is a worse version of Doc Oct, and yes the film has music placement just as bad as its sequel, but there’s a certain magic to it that I’ll never be able to shake entirely.

26. BLADE II

“You’re human?”

“Barely. I’m a lawyer.”

Jacob: How do you fix Blade’s cinematic problems (or really any cinematic problem really)? Throw Guilliermo del Toro into the ring of course! Blade II is an improvement from the original in almost every department. The story is still that cheesy B-movie type shlock, but it this one I actually felt like the crew was having fun with it. Del Toro also brings a level of finesse to the table with his direction that Stephen Norrington’s original could never match. Blade II is still flawed though and while Wesley Snipes is great as Blade, the film still gives me no reason to actually care about him or his adventures, even if they can be oddly fun.

Aaron: Del Toro is one of my favorite directors of all time, and while Blade 2 is by far the weakest film he has ever made, his touch still elevates the material into something special. His affinity for crafting grand mythologies around monsters, complex creature designs, and Gothic visual splendor are perfectly suited for Blade II’s superhero-horror blend. Like its predecessor, it’s still light on plot, but the action scenes are gory, excellently choreographed fun (even with some dated CGI work). It is a bit too similar to the first film as well, but that extra little del Toro magic is enough for me to give the edge to this one.

25. SPIDER-MAN 3

“Now dig on this.”

Aaron: Controversial Opinion: I like Spider-Man 3. I fought hard to get it placed this highly on the list, and personally, I’d still put it higher. It’s only real flaw is Sony’s misguided desire to shove Venom into the movie, disrupting Sam Raimi’s marvelous vision. Without that, you have a visually impressive version of Sandman, played by Thomas Haden Church, who is yet another perfectly cast iconic Spider-Man villain for the trilogy. Sandman’s beautifully tragic origin scene, set to the powerful score by Christopher Young, is perhaps the most affecting scene of any superhero movie ever, illustrating the heart that Raimi brought to the series. Beyond Sandman, you have fantastic, dynamic action scenes, and great character moments that help bring the trilogy full circle. Okay, there’s flaws. It’s overstuffed, and a bit hokey. However, it has a personality that makes it far superior to many other superhero films out there. And that infamous scene of symbiote-influenced Peter Parker going clothes shopping? That scene is an absolute masterpiece of tenderhearted comedic genius. That is a hill I am willing to die on.

Jacob: Uncontroversial opinion: I don’t like Spider-Man 3, at least as a whole. There are good moments, I’ll give you that. I really liked the Spider-Man action that is in here, and I mean, James Franco is in this movie, so it has to have at least one good part, am I right? But I remember feeling like this was such a slog to get through even ten years ago. I don’t care about Eddie Brock (especially not the Topher Grace version), I don’t care about symbiote Spider-Man, I don’t care about the weird relationship drama between Peter and Mary Jane, and I definitely don’t care about Peter Parker trying to make out with Elizabeth Banks in the middle of the Daily Bugle! Seriously, what the hell, Peter? There have to be, like, SEVERAL rules against that. But symbiote Spider-Man doesn’t follow the rules on how to be good, just like Sony when they were making this movie.

24. IRON MAN 2

“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to exit the donut.”

Jacob: What do I like about Iron Man 2? Well…I like the Mark V armor Tony uses when he first meets Whiplash, but other than that? Hmm…not much. Iron Man was simply never going to be an easy film to follow-up, and while Robert Downey Jr. plays Tony Stark just as charmingly and bitingly as he did in the original, there isn’t much else here to justify this being a film. There are decent action scenes and Don Cheadle makes a great War Machine, but more than anything this film feels just too much like an advertisement for The Avengers, which it basically is. There is that cool shot of him eating a donut in a giant donut though, so…I’ll take it I guess.

Aaron: I can find a few more things to praise about Iron Man 2. There’s Sam Rockwell’s perfectly irritating performance as Justin Hammer, the introduction of Scarlett Johansson’s Black Window to the MCU, that amusing scene of Tony Stark before Congress, and some solid emotional beats. Beyond that? Well, there’s not much that isn’t tied up in an overstuffed, convoluted plot, and the less said about Mickey Rourke’s Whiplash, the better. Marvel’s quality control and Robert Downey Jr.’s presence is enough to hold the film together, even if its rushed attempt at universe building is only slightly more graceful than Batman V Superman’s.  

23. THE INCREDIBLE HULK

“Don’t make me… hungry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m… hungry.”

Aaron: The Incredible Hulk has essentially become the black sheep of the MCU family, but I don’t understand why, especially considering it is far superior to Thor: The Dark World. It does an excellent job of capturing the “man or monster” tension that is central to the character, while, unlike Ang Lee’s Hulk, not skimping on the action scenes. Bruce Banner’s fugitive escapes, fueled by the great pulse-pounding score by Craig Armstrong, and the gleefully destructive climactic Harlem battle are thrilling. While he’s no Mark Ruffalo, Edward Norton has a wonderfully nervous, yet humorous performance. The film does drag a little in the middle, and there is a feeling that Marvel hadn’t quite figured this whole Cinematic Universe business out yet, but overall, The Incredible Hulk is an underrated superhero film.

Jacob: I can fully get behind a campaign to get this movie recognized as an underrated work in the MCU’s filmography. While you’re right that he is no Mark Ruffalo, I really love Edward Norton in this movie. Even if it weren’t for the fun action and good humor, his performance alone would be reason enough to give this movie a watch. However, there is quite a bit in this movie that is dumbfounding, like that Ty Burrell is in this movie for some reason. He doesn’t really have any real sense of purpose in the film, but he’s here. And we can’t forget the Tim Blake Nelson character who is also essentially pointless besides a teaser for an upcoming movie that hasn’t happened yet and (probably) never will. However, there is enough here to make it a recommend if you haven’t taken the time to watch it yet.

That’s it for Part 2 of this ranking. Join us again tomorrow for Part 3 of this list, covering entries 22-12, which will once again be posted on Jacob’s blog (jakelace.tumblr.com). Then, come back here on Friday when we’ll release the fourth and final installment, listing the absolute best Marvel films of all time.

[m3n4ce2soci3ty-blog]

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