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thecomicsnexus · 5 years

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THE WILD STORM #13-18 JULY - DECEMBER 2018 BY WARREN ELLIS, JON DAVIS-HUNT AND STEVE BUCCELLATO

SYNOPSIS (FROM DC DATABASE AND COMIC VINE)

It is raining in New York when Jacklyn King arrives in the alley, summoned by Director Miles Craven and Deputy Director Ivana Baiul. She is surprised to find a crimescene - and horrified to find the victim is Mitch Saunders, her subordinate. Baiul rattles off the timeline - forensics puts the time of death almost immediately after when they know he let IO headquarters yesterday. Baiul is condescending to Jacklyn, but offers to contact Henry Bendix, head of Skywatch, whose computers they just hacked, and who had both motive and means to order such an assassination.

Craven demurs on a diplomatic solution, ordering the mobilization of three CATs (covert action teams) and the beginning of a plan to kill everyone Skywatch Ground Division in New York. War between the agencies may have already begun.

On the Skywatch satellite headquarters, Henry Bendix and his XO Lauren Pennington are wondering if Craven will back off after what they did. Bendix admits that if it doesn't, they could target the families of agents - and also start disabling research facilities. Pennington interjects that wasn't productive when they did it last time, so Bendix gives her an order: he wants two sets of plans, one where they stealthily disable a research site, and one where they leave a public pile of corpses.

In Levin's Diner, in the desert, John Lynch is being watched. Looking up from his greasy breakfast, he locks eyes with a distracted man at the counter, who states that "they all know" what he did, and that he doesn't know what grew from his actions. Musing, Lynch leaves the diner immediately.

That night, he arrives at a farmstead in the middle of nowhere. Musing that the man he seeks used to like being around people, he almost doesn't notice the field of stakes behind the barn, each one topped by a crude arrow, all pointing at the same area of the night sky. Entering the residence via the back door, he sees his target is watching an adventure show on the television, but is also aware of his entrance. Lynch introduces himself, and identifies the man as Colonel Marc Slayton.

In shadows, Slayton tells him there is beer in the fridge. Lynch takes two cans, and throws one to Slayton. He wonders what drew Slayton here. Grinning, Marc explains he looked up his surname. It comes from the Norse word sletta, meaning "level field", and the Old English word tun, meaning a farm. So, he went to be a farmer on a level field, hunting and planting.

Lynch cuts to the point - IO is looking into Project Thunderbook. He tried to destroy all the files, but he left an index that he could watch, so that he could tell if someone ever came looking - and he might not have gotten all the files. So, he has come to warn Marc Slayton.

Slayton accuses him of not knowing what was done to the Thunderbook subjects. Lynch rattles off a potted history of the project - how IO found corpses in ancient burial sites which contained active genetic material they identified as alien. How their gen/active samples were found to plug easily into human DNA. How he went to his best and brightest, and offered them a place in a project to use the gen/active samples to become human enhanciles. And how, despite the unknown factors, despite the dangers, Marc Slayton had been the first to volunteer, stating his desire to push the possible forward and improve the world.

Slayton lashes back verbally, saying his position has changed. As his wrist starts to glow, he explains that the sample he was bonded to turned out to be a genetic engine that grew an organic computer inside of him. It grew other things, too, he says, as a glowing barbed tendril emerges from his wrist. And he has been feeding it. Feeding it enough that he has started to hear it talk to him, hear it pull him towards... something, possibly the other Thunderbook subjects, possibly beings far stranger. It wants to eat people. It can tell there is something unusual about Lynch. And it occurs to him that whatever IO knows, the only person who definitely knows his location... is Lynch.

Slayton strikes out with his barbed tendril, but Lynch dodges right. Firing wildly, Lynch punctures Slayton's beercan, which distracts Slayton, Slayton lashes out again, but Lynch tricks him into burying his tendril in the fridge, then knocks over the fridge and shoots rapidly into it as he runs. The resulting explosion wrecks the kitchen, giving Lynch the space to escape to his car, at which point, he considers Slayton warned, and drives away at high speed.

In the doorway of a closed-down music shop, the homeless man known as "the mayor" is trying to sleep when he is shaken awake by two women, who introduce themselves as Shen Li-Men and Jenny Mei Sparks. Opening a portal, Li-Men tries to recruit him by letting him sleep on Jenny's couch.

At his farm, Marc Slayton is bandaging small cuts in his face. He has decided that he does not like John Lynch, who always escapes the fallout of whatever the situation is, only to return and judge others. Slayton turns to self-pity, remarking he has "hunted" so many humans and "planted" them so that their souls could be launched to the world his alien implant came from. In the mirror, an alien creature with six glowing eyes seeks to calm him, saying he has done so much for it, and that to save himself, he should of course flee John Lynch or IO or whatever authorities they can summon and hit the open road. Crying tears of gratitude, Slayton identifies this being as "the Carer".

In her home, the popstar known as Voodoo sleeps drugged and deeply. A being emerges from the shadows, and placing one massive hand on her head, it orders her to "dream of the world as it truly is".

On the Skywatch satellite, a mission to Mars is undocking. With its drive running and its stealth systems operating, it will be at Mars in a week. On the control deck, Bendix and Pennington are making small talk, when Pennington says that Bendix and Craven have exactly one thing in common. They are afraid of a public scrap. A public scrap would reveal the power games both agencies have been playing. So, while she has compiled a list of people it would be useful to assassinate, and a list of facilities that could be destroyed or disabled, she has also written up a plan to break IO's control on Earth, radically destabilizing life and making it impossible for another polity to take their place.

It is night in New York, and John Colt is recording a video on his smartphone. Though he does not know his birthday by the reckoning of his home, he picked tomorrow as his birthday, long ago, and he makes a point of alerting Jacob Marlowe of its arrival every year, so that he starts the day angry. And he does this because when arrived here, on their spaceship from the homeworld, Khera, Jacob made them assume human shapes, to an unknown end. And then, for a reason he never explained to John, Jacob trashed the expedition by blowing up the spaceship, stranding the survivors here.

As he holds the camera, John marks his birthday as he always does - by temporarily shedding his human disguise to appear in his true form. Holding the phone in one hand and a glass of champagne in the other, John holds the camera to expertly frame his monstrous six-eyed face, and raises a toast to his own continued good health.

In New York, Lucy Blaze - Skywatch Ground Division, codename "Zealot" - is arriving five minutes late to work. However, before her co-workers can reassure her that this is fine, their office is attacked by a pair of I.O. covert action teams (C.A.T.s), who spray bullets across the office. Thinking fast, Lucy directs the last other survivor to the elevator banks to escape, then throws a desk at the attackers using superhuman strength. Using this as an opening, she proceeds to kill all six attackers using a silenced pistol. In the ensuing silence, she radios security for advice.

In a garage in the desert, John Lynch pulls in and addresses the lone employee by name: Alexandra Fairchild. Alexandra is suspicious, so John comes clean - someone in I.O. has started looking into Project Thunderbook, and he is warning all the project subjects so they can properly prepare. Accepting this, Alexandra brews him a pot of coffee and explains that she originally moved here because it is down the road from a town full of nice people who keep to themselves.

John asks if there is anyone around to eavesdrop, which gets Alexandra talking - about how she's been merrily surviving since she got out of the service, armed with nothing but some fake IDs, the "severance pay" that John gave everyone, and her skills as a mechanic who fixes things. How she tried to live with humans - mostly men, some women - and tried to fix them, before giving up in resignation. The tipping point was when she told her then-boyfriend that she was pregnant with their child, and he tried to kick the fetus to death, so she broke his neck with her bare hands.

The alien genetic implant that she got as part of Project Thunderbook wants her to fight. When she fights, it feeds on her anger, making her stronger and tougher every time. And realising the damage she could do to that child, she gave the baby up for adoption and vanished.

At this point, a plume of dust is visible on the road, and Alexandra mentions the other detail - the town down the road contains a family of ne'er-do-wells who like to mess with people. Recently, they stepped over the line, and Alexandra had asked them to stop. When they responded by targeting her, she killed the family matriarch. They are coming for her now. Today she will either die by violence, or vanish in the chaos - and she's not sure she can die. As Alexandra prepares to heft a pickup truck as a melee weapon, John Lynch asks what her daughter's name is.

Alexandra says her daughter should be in the system under the name "Caitlin Fairchild". She thanks him for warning her, and says that John ought to leave before the fighting starts.

As John Lynch drives away, he sees the garage explode behind him, and regrets that his life has led him here.

In New York, Miles Craven is having a video-call with Henry Bendix. Bendix is furious that I.O. would send C.A.T.s against his territory, and vows that Craven will atone. Craven responds that he took no pleasure from the attack, which was a punitive measure in response to the attack on I.O.'s Hightower facility and the subsequent hack on I.O.'s server - actions for which Craven will hold Skywatch responsible. Then Craven hangs up on him.

In Jenny Mei Sparks' London flat, Jenny and Shen Li-Men are explaining the world to the vagrant known as "the mayor", using Jenny's full-wall mind-map. The mayor is visibly agitated, and accuses them of talking about him as though he were not present. Li-Men thinks she has a solution to his predicament, and hands him a pill, saying it is medicine. The mayor responds with paranoia, but Jenny zaps him with electricity from her fingers - he is eating the damn pill.

Once he has swallowed the pill, Li-Men asks him his name. In amazement, the mayor says his name is Jack Hawksmoor.

On a country road with nearby foliage, Marc Slayton is experiencing car trouble. He flags down a passing motorist, who seems helpful, but Slayton undercuts him by asking which secret agency he works for. The man in the car demonstrates glowing eyes and says he works for Skywatch, prompting Slayton to tear the car apart with his whip appendage. Taking his attacker's spines, she starts singing.

In Skywatch Headquarters, Henry Bendix is fuming at the outcome of his last conversation with with Miles Craven. Skywatch has been blamed for an attack on an I.O. installation. Faced with the news from Pennington that their organization is not responsible, Bendix orders the deployment of the Little Stick - an experimental weapon developed in the Eighties, a foot-long diamond rod, which, when dropped from orbit, achieves sufficient velocity to strike the target with the force of a tactical nuclear device.

In London, Li-Men Shen is having a vision - a man, pinioned, his mouth in a gaping, silent scream, while science is perpetrated on his body: skin removed and reattached, treads on his feet, wires in his brain, bugs in his guts. Snapping out of this vision, she names the perpetrators as Skywatch, the secret space agency. The victim, the homeless man known as "the mayor", introduces himself as Jack Hawksmoor. He is still recovering from the drug Shen gave him, but he has a theory - Skywatch kidnapped and experimented on him, to make him into something that could survive and labor in a toxic city. And that he doesn't think he was the only one.

In orbit, a diamond rod - the Little Stick - breaks atmosphere, landing on the Hightower facility with a colossal boom.

In a gas station bathroom, Marc Slayton is having doubts. He regards his work for the being he calls the Carer as holy, but still he feels ill at the necessary killing. The being appears in a nearby mirror, and announce itself as "the Khera", and explains that it is what is necessary. Crying in gratitude and repentance, Slayton exits the bathroom, returning to the scene of three gruesome murders, and pausing only to craft an arrow to launch their souls as the Carer told him, he moves on.

In a small bar, John Lynch enters. Talking briefly to the barman, he sits down with a shy-looking man of Chinese descent in a corner table, and identifies him as Andrew Kwok. The shy man demurs, introducing himself as Philip Chang. John pulls out a scanner, insisting that this device identifies the shy man as Kwok - and that he came to warn Kwok that I.O. is looking into Project Thunderbook. At this, the shy man stops smiling. He explains that while Lynch gave him a new fake identity, he didn't trust Lynch to crack under torture, so he used his money to get plastic surgery and a new fake ID, and moved on with his life. He has a wife now, and two children - Hector & Percival, both named for their mother's love of Arthurian myth.

At this point, John Lynch starts to bleed from his good eye, as Chang explains that he will kill Lynch in the most painless way he can find, and then hide the body. Lynch responds by shooting him in the face, but Chang is able to slow the bullet in midair. Chang boasts that a single bullet will not be enough - so Lynch fires six more. As Chang sweats from holding all of them, Lynch explains that while Chang's ability to hyperfocus made him a great assassin, it left him unable to multitask, which is why he's about to die. Pausing to shoot the barman, who has pulled out his shotgun in response to the noise, Lynch questions why, despite the respect he has tried to show them by giving a fair warning, all the Thunderbook enhanciles have done is boast of their offspring, or try to kill him. As he struggles against the bullets, Chang stutters that this may be because the alien enhancements they have mean that the agents are no longer strictly human, but are driven by goals of conquest or colonization. Lynch muses, says he will see that Chang's kids are cared for, and then shoots Chang in the head. Pausing only to throw a grenade which starts a fire and covers his tracks, he flees the scene.

In New York, Miles Craven is having a videophone conversation with Henry Bendix. Bendix shows footage of the remains of Hightower, and insists that he does not care enough about I.O. to cover his tracks when he attacks them. That he truly believes that the Earth would be best used as a resource supply center for the space-based civilization Skywatch is building. And that if I.O. touches his people again, he will use one of the Little Sticks on I.O.'s New York headquarters, and leave Craven to bury the dead and explain the damage.

Craven responds by saying he will relinquish control of the Skywatch Ground Division offices, but that the surviving agent, Lucy Blaze, is officially barred from New York, on pain of death. With a gesture of contempt, he ends the transmission.

Walking back to his office, Miles Craven meets his head of Analysis, Jackie King, who explains that forensics on Mitch Saunders' phone showed the presence of spyware - spyware that Skywatch specifically tried to erase. Skywatch knows what they did, but not how they did it. But Skywatch's reliance on hardware leaves them vulnerable to basic electronic weaknesses - by deploying countermeasures against the recent bot attack, Skywatch showed where their space station was. Should I.O. require, they can just nuke them.

Miles asks Jackie if she wants a war, and Jackie responds in the negative - she wants an execution, and if Miles will not give the order, she will pursue her goal by other means.

Going to her office, Jackie throws a computer monitor through a glass divider in frustration.

In a Skywatch safehouse, Lauren Pennington is congratulating Lucy Blaze on her recent actions, and his informing her of a new, roving brief, where she covers cases all over America. Lucy wonders if this is a punishment for her actions during the I.O. attack on the New York offices, but Pennington insists - this is all good news.

Besides, says Pennington as she raises a glass of wine, given the current détente between Skywatch and I.O., New York might not be around long enough for Lucy to properly miss.

In Jacob Marlowe's safehouse, Angie Spica has "found" a copy of the machine telepathy data the wild CAT brought back from the Hightower blacksite, and has used it to change how she interacts with her implanted technology. Unprepared, she wonders if she can use it to access the internet... and her technology responds by logging her onto the internet, visualised as a set off central hubs with individual nodes splitting off them in neat patterns.

Angie is amazed at this scene, but is even more surprised when she is greeted by Jenny Mei Sparks, who immediately imposes herself on Angie's electronic view and introduces herself, saying that she is the person who lives here.

The two introduce themselves - Angie as a woman who built a robot suit into herself and is on the run from IO, and who has been taken in by the tech mogul Jacob Marlowe, but is also stealing from him; and Jenny as a woman who is over a century old, not entirely human, distrusts IO and Skywatch, can live inside communications systems, and carries a lot of electricity.

Jenny decides that she likes Angie, and that if Angie ever needs to escape from Jacob Marlowe, she only needs to call, and Jenny will come and help - her and every friend she can bring. With a lazy wave, Jenny Mei Sparks vanishes - leaving Angie's world a little stranger and a little nicer.

Somewhere west of there, John Lynch parks his car in a driveway. He walks a path through rocky grounds in a red twilight, towards a minimalist two-story house with a hexagonal tower sticking out of it. Seeing the front door ajar, he remembers the danger he faced at his previous stops, so he pulls out his gun and moves carefully through the building.

He finds nothing on the ground floor, moving through a spacious and expertly-cleaned house, before checking in the hexagonal tower. And there, a floating woman with glowing red eyes advises him to put his gun away before she makes him have an accident. John recognises her at once: Gloria Spaulding, the woman he came here to see. He compliments her on her house and warns her that IO may be looking into Project Thunderbook, the program which gave her an alien genetic implant, and that she should be careful for a bit, but that considering the obvious costly nature of her house, the care she has taken to protect herself, and her untroubled status, he thinks she will be fine.

Curious, he asks her if she has had a child since they last saw, like Kwok, like Fairchild. Gloria admits she felt a great compulsion to have a baby, but once she had given birth, her normal detached nature reasserted itself, and she abandoned the child with Gloria's mother.

Gloria's detachment always served her well in her IO role as a black bag operative specialising in retrieving items or data. It served her well in the private sector, where her skills have earned her money, and the trust of "all kinds of interesting and spooky friends". But her Thunderbook implant, in addition to granting her superhuman power, also worked to calm her anxieties, to the point where now she feels... nothing, neither positive emotions or negative.

Gloria says that Lynch needs to leave, as she has to pack up and go into hiding, but in thanks for the warning, she leaves him with one in turn: Marc Slayton's implant can remember where it came from.

As the floor tiles starts to float loose, Lynch runs for the door. He makes it to his car as the house disassembles, and as he drives away, in the rearview mirror, he sees a feminine silhouette against the red moon, dragging the substance of the house into the twilight sky behind it.

In Jacob Marlowe's fortress warehouse, Angie Spica is asking Cole Cash for help, as he knows more about guns than she does. Cole wonders aloud what she would do with such information - whereupon, Angie uses her implants to create an object the same size and shape as a handgun bullet cartridge. Without Cole's training, she can only create prop. With Cole's help, she can safely pull apart bullets and guns, scan them all - and she will never be unarmed again!

Stephen Rainmaker was the most dangerous man John Lynch knew even before he was inducted into the Thunderbook program. So much so that nobody could quite define how Thunderbook changed him. On his trip around America to warn his old team, Lynch left Rainmaker until last— for a reason. This is the visit that Lynch always knew could kill him. Meanwhile, Marc Slayton is discovering new things about America, IO and Skywatch.

Miles Craven needs a minute, but Jackie King, who has an appointment with him, insists that he do his job as the head of International Operations. Based on the data her team recovered from their illegal hack on the computers of Skywatch, Cole Cash—the former IO operative they presumed dead but who showed up as part of a wild CAT who interfered with an assassination—is not working for Skywatch, but they now have a positive ID on one other member of the wild CAT, who was an astronaut who died decades ago. She thinks they can investigate more.

Miles Craven lists off his problems: Jacob Marlowe, the tech billionaire whose death he ordered, is still alive. Angie Spica, the rogue IO engineer whose capture he ordered, is missing. Mitch Saunders, the IO office worker who was the victim of a Skywatch phone bug, is dead, and when he attacked the Skywatch office in New York in retaliation, the two heavily-armed teams he sent were singlehandedly shot to death by Skywatch agent Lucy Blaze. Michael Cray, the IO assassin who he ordered to be "retired", is alive and working for a San Francisco division of Skywatch. Hightower, the IO research station, was hacked by parties unknown, and then destroyed from orbit by Skywatch as a show of strength. Craven is left feeling like someone is pulling a con on him, and that they are winning at his expense.

Angry, Jackie responds that Craven only feels like this because he is weak. Craven is angered by this, but becomes defensive, saying he has to be proportionate in his actions. Jackie recites the speech he gave when he took control of IO, about how the agency was beholden to a mission to save the world from chaos and anarchy, and in the service of that mission, they would do great and terrible things. Now chaotic events are assailing the world... and Miles Craven is sleeping in his office and complaining to her. If he cannot be equal to the burden of the times, she says, he should give the job to someone else.

On Skywatch's satellite, Henry Bendix, the agency's head, is talking to Dr Ragnar Helspont, the head of the agency's posthuman experimental reseach office. Helspont has good news—Christine Trelane sent him the medical readouts about Michael Cray, who Skywatch secretly implanted with something years ago which activated recently due to a surge of electromagnetism he received while trying to assassinate Jacob Marlowe.

Helspont boasts that he has been watching all the people Skywatch perpetrated posthuman research on, and says that his mind-control implants will perfectly when the time comes. Helspont wonders why Bendix does not keep these slave posthumans on this space station, to be teleported to Earth on his whim, but Bendix shoots down the idea, saying that if one got free, they could easily rupture the hull and kill everyone.

Helspont mentions that he used to work as part of Project Thunderbook, but left with all his research when John Lynch shuttered the program. Defecting to Skywatch, he was able to create fascinating—and controllable—human variants. Skywatch's previous subjects were prone to neural damage, but Helspont is confident in his work. "Everything in Heaven is fine"

In Jenny Mei Sparks' London flat, Shen Li-Men has recovered from trying to treat Jack Hawksmoor, who is in the shower with a shaving kit and a bag of new clothes. She says he has neural damage which is causing his amnesia and his eccentric actions, and while she can treat the symptoms, she needs to find the cause. Jenny says she just needs to know if Jack is able for the vigilante actions she plans to start, or if he needs to be somewhere quiet, to recover. Jack, clean-shaven, emerges from the shower and defends himself—though he may never fully recover, he is absolutely ready to get revenge on the people who gave him amnesia.

On a country backroad, John Lynch is driving. When he comes across Marc Slayton with, he responds fast, firing a flashbang from a grenade launcher to stun Slayton, and then another to further incapacitate him. Exiting the car, he spells out his position—the whole time Slayton has been trying to track him, Lynch had a tracking device on Slayton's car. Before, Slayton was able to surprise him, but that advantage is gone now.

Lych pulls out his handgun, and explains how fearsome his bullets are. Slayton pulls out his coils, and prepares to lash back, but Lynch fires first—and shoots a hole in Slayton's car's, from the engine to the license plate. As Slayton pauses in confusion, Lynch spells out his position—he does not want to kill Slayton. He does not care about Slayton. But if IO is coming for Project Thunderbook, then they will strike at him from their New York headquarters, and the only way for Slayton to defend himself is with an offense against IO and its head, Miles Craven. Confused, Slayton looks to "the Carer", the hallucinatory embodiment of his alien implant, and it agrees with Lynch. Wishing Slayton good fortune, Lynch gets back in his car and drives away.

In the wild CAT's safehouse, Angie is writing a goodbye letter, explaining her respect for Adri, how she is leaving all her data on Kenesha's computer, and how she hopes to meet them again but will not come looking for more favors. That done, she puts out a message just as Jenny Sparks told her... and Shen appears appears and invite to walk through a doorway in space. Perplexed, Jenny complies and finds herself in Jenny's London apartment. Shen introduces Jack, who Angie immediately recognizes as the New York homeless man known as "the mayor". Angie explains that what finally convinced her to join Jenny's gang was a phantasmagorial visitation from a being whose likeness she produces—who Shen recognizes from her magical knowledge—and who referred to Jenny as having "the authority". Jenny accepts this news without blinking.

On a train somewhere in America, Michael Cray is explaining to a fellow passenger that his former employers were all jerks and he is travelling to New York by train to give one in particular a piece of his mind. She accepts this information at face value, but in the reflection of the window, the face that represents Michael's superhuman implant is smiling.

In the wild CAT's safehouse, Jacob Marlowe, the team's patron, is reading Angie's letter in mild frustration, but before the team can read it, Kenesha bursts in and informs them that an IO research station has just trapped a cosmic particle of immense power, and they need to raid the facility at once to stop any research.

At an open air cocktail bar in Los Angeles, a pair of aliens whose faces resemble the true face of John Colt—and the faces of Slayton & Cray's implants—are ordering drinks and complaining about how difficult it is to manage Earth. They are both glad that nobody else can perceive as as strange—especially when Lucy Blaze walks into the bar and orders a water. The aliens recognize her as "Zannah of the Khera", a former underling of Emp, the rebel who sabotaged the Kheran mission to convert Earth into a slave state. Zannah in turn rebelled against Emp, and so today, the two aliens have to balance Emp & Zannah's agendas, and IO's, and Skywatch's, all in secret, just to give the humans a chance at evolving naturally. And for this thankless job, they have rewarded themselves by choosing to get drunk on this, their night off.

On the Skywatch satellite, Bendix and Pennington are looking out over a view of Earth and a backdrop of stars. Bendix is considering giving Helspont a higher budget. And doing something radical to make Earth more "useful". And killing Miles Craven. As he considers, he sings a children's song and grins maniacally.

REVIEW

By an annoying mistake, there are two issues #13. It will surely bug people forever.

As I said before, this story is too decompressed. Had it been bi-weekly, it would have been acceptable. But it took a bit more than two years to complete and it’s nothing but a big long prologue.

But I’ll tell you why that is great instead. Unlike DCU and MCU... and even the early Image Universe, the world of WorldStorm is cohesive. Everything was designed from the same world. It’s not a panache of properties, all banding together in the same universe. I feel like that is the strongest appeal of Wildstorm, well at least the properties around StormWatch. In these issues we are kind of seeing the groups forming (WildCATS, Authority, Gen13), but as I also said before, I do not know if these properties will take off anytime soon. But at least they are better now than at the beginning of the New 52 (Although StormWatch/Demon Knights was quite good).

Ellis and David-Hunt are also perfect for this title. It’s their work together that delivers amazing action sequences with some mind-bending graphics. Sure, it is pretty violent, but that was to be expected from WildStorm.

One of the moments that gave me the most pleasure, was seeing Apollo and Midnighter, even though, we do not actually see them, it is very obvious it’s them. They have history in the DCU as well, very recently, so I guess that may have... gone away.

Do you think Sam Elliott is too old to play Lynch?

I give these issues a score of 9.

#jon davis-hunt #the wild storm #wildstorm #dc comics #comics #review #2018 #post modern age #the authority #gen13 #stormwatch #wildcats

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gospelofthechosen · 5 years

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story: Dean had started it. Or maybe Kat had. In the end, it didn’t matter who had started it. Only who got the final word. Because Sam was right: This prank stuff is stupid, and it always escalates. summary: Someone’s been messing with Sam’s laptop... word count: 2.3k warnings: language, alcohol, references to porn a/n: Happy anniversary to Gospel of the Chosen! This is a short mini series between Act I and Act II. Love and miss my kids, love and miss all of you.

Kat was on top of the world. After a week on lockdown at Bobby’s, two days trapped in the car with the Winchesters, weeks under Ellen’s watchful eye at the Roadhouse, and days crammed in the Impala before that, she was finally, finally alone in her own car.

After their faux-family dinner, they’d stayed at Bobby’s for a few days. Kat would never admit it, but she’d been a little nervous. She’d been to the house on more than one occasion, and spent enough time talking to Bobby to feel comfortable with him. At least, she was pretty sure that he’d dropped the threat of kicking her into next week for hurting the boys. But spending downtime at Bobby’s felt different.

Singer Salvage was clearly home to Sam and Dean. Sam helped himself to any books in the library, and Dean spent most of his time out in the yard working on his car. At night, they all drank beer and watched old cowboy movies on Bobby’s crappy TV. Kat excused herself as politely as she could. She could still hear their laughter and light-hearted arguing from the spare bedroom where she stayed curled up with her laptop. She might’ve learned all the ins and outs of Bobby’s linen cabinets and kitchen drawers, but she didn’t belong here. She desperately wanted to escape out on a case, but that wasn’t exactly the deal she’d made with Castiel. Sam and Dean were her bodyguards now. So she just had to suck it up and deal until their batteries were recharged and they were ready to hit the road.

Sam had obviously picked up on her discomfort. He tried to bribe her with bagels and burgers, whiskey and wings. Most afternoons she’d sit with him in the library just so he’d stop annoying her. All of Bobby’s manuscripts and notes were very interesting, of course. But it wasn’t exactly her idea of light reading. She wasn’t interested in diving into thousands of accounts of pain and misery without an objective. She just wanted something to do.

Bobby had been the one who’d come to her rescue.

“Here,” he’d said on day four, shoving one of his duct-taped phones into her hands. “Answer it, deal with it, make a note of it. Aliases are labeled on the wall, so just make sure you don’t mix ‘em up.”

“Mike Kaiser?” Kat asked, peering at the note over the FBI receiver. “I’m not a bad actress, Bobby, but I don’t think I’m that good.”

“Just say you’re my secretary and take a message. Or better yet, tell them DC has jurisdiction and they can shove their complaints right up their own ass.”

Kat raised an eyebrow at him.

“Usually works for me,” he offered with a shrug.

It wasn’t exactly a shocker that it didn’t work for Kat. Men in high government positions didn’t take kindly to being told to go fuck themselves by an uppity secretary. Kat didn’t have a real job she was worried about losing, but the last thing she needed was for some fed to file an HR complaint about a woman who didn’t exist and blow some hunter’s cover. So she used her most polite tone for as long as she could, and practiced drawing devil’s traps from memory while the bureaucrats droned on about stolen cases and career integrity.

“Of course, Agent Sadusky,” she said sweetly, on one of their final afternoons. “I’ll pass on the message. And if Assistant Director Kaiser thinks it’s worth a response, he’ll give you a call.”

She hung up before the man could reply.

“Don’t hold your breath, asshole.”

“You good?” chuckled Sam as he wandered into the kitchen. “You look uh…”

“Murderous?”

“Frustrated.”

“Yeah, well that’s not a surprise,” Kat groaned, wiping her eyes. “I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but sometimes I’m glad we’re not actually working for the federal government.”

“I’ll drink to that.” He passed her a beer from the fridge, which she took gratefully. “Which one’s worse? Working for the feds or working for Ellen?”

“Ha. Tough call. Hunters tip, but only if you let them brag. At least the feds can’t see me rolling my eyes over the phone. They also can’t grope me, which means I don’t need to assault someone every couple hours.”

“That’s a downside?” Sam asked cheekily. “But you love kicking the crap out of guys.”

Kat frowned thoughtfully, but gave it to him.

“What about you?” she asked, returning the phone to the hook. “What are you up to?”

“About to make a supply run. You need anything?”

“Nah, I’m good. But if you’re going out, can I borrow your laptop? I got a call about some bodies in Florida. Might be a case.”

“Hey, knock yourself out. Just don’t work too hard.”

He jogged out the front of the house without a second thought. Kat waited until she was certain he was gone. Then she wrapped up her notes from the phone and moved into the library.

She settled herself behind Bobby’s desk, feeling even more out of place than she did in the rest of the house. She tried not to think about how ornate the desk was, or how old the papers and books on top were. All she needed was Sam’s laptop, and her tiny case notebook.

The call she’d gotten hadn’t been from a hunter. It was something more of a tip line Bobby had set up, where feds and cops he’d worked with in the past could call with their questions. Kat had spoken to a very concerned deputy who had was dealing with a pile of bodies. All women, all heartless, all buried in shallow graves in a park. Kat would have assumed werewolf, if it weren’t for the graves. They didn’t often double back to hide their victims. It very well could be a run of the mill serial killer, but she wanted to do some research before she passed on the case. And possibly take the asshole out anyway.

It was an hour or two before anyone interrupted her.

“What’s the word, Tinkerbell?”

“Beer,” Kat said without looking up. “Gonna need another word.”

“Please.”

The fridge clinked, and a few seconds later a bottle dropped into her vision. She accepted it wordlessly, still scanning the crime scene pictures in front of her. There had to be something she missed.

“Whatcha working on?” Dean asked, peering over her shoulder. “Yeowch. Eat your heart out.”

“It’s not a werewolf,” she muttered, more to herself than him. “Wrong part of the lunar cycle, no blind kills. But it’s still just the hearts.”

“Could be a skinwalker,” he suggested. “Or just about anything else that eats long pig. Just because some monsters can eat anything don’t mean they don’t have preferences.”

“A monster with standards and taste. Just what I need.”

She took a couple more notes, but closed out the pictures. She didn’t want to look at their faces without any solutions.

Dean was still hovering behind her. His ring made a clinking noise against the glass as he tapped his fingers on the bottle. “So uh…you wrapping up soon?”

“I guess. Why?”

“Nothing, nothing. Just wanted to hop on the computer.”

“Alright. I’ll let you know when I’m done.”

“Uh huh…Could I just borrow it for a hot sec? Give it back in ten minutes?”

Kat cut her eyes to him suspiciously. “Why?”

“None of your business,” he said stoutly. When she continued to glare at him, his frown turned into a familiar, leering smirk. “Look, a guy’s got needs. I need to do some stuff I’m not proud of…well, actually I’m really proud of, but you’re not invited.”

“God, you’re disgusting,” she sighed, pushing back from the desk. “Take it.”

“Thank you!” he said in a singsong voice, snatching it up and hightailing out of the room.

“Just sanitize it for the love of God! And if Sam asks, I didn’t see this!”

He didn’t answer her. Just slammed the door to the bathroom. She slipped on some headphones and did her best not to think about the conversation she’d just had.

The next day, they were packing their bags. Sam had agreed that her find was interesting enough to merit a visit to Florida. Bobby passed off a few of his more helpful books, and then they hit the road. Kat hadn’t realized how much she’d missed it until they hit the interstate. She could sit back in her Prius and enjoy the silence. She didn’t have to tune out the shitty cassettes or put up with the smell of stale beer and fast food wrappers. There were no annoying side glances or pervy jokes. Just her and the open road and the wind in her hair.

They drove until nightfall and stopped at a motel in Tennessee. Sam and Dean took care of the rooms, and Kat volunteered to pick up dinner. By the time she was strolling up to the Winchesters’ room with their takeout, the screaming had already started.

“Dean, how many times do I have to tell you not to touch my stuff? It’s my one thing! You have your own laptop! So use your own damn laptop!”

“How many times do I gotta say I didn’t do it? Cool your jets, man, it wasn’t me.”

“Oh, right! And I guess my computer searched Busty Asian Beauties on its own?”

“Maybe it did. Your laptop’s got better taste than you.”

Kat let herself in, trying very hard to keep her face impassive. “Grub’s up. What’s going on?”

Dean made a beeline for the food, while Sam rested his hands on his hips like a suburban mother.

“Someone messed with my laptop,” he said snidely, “and now I can’t get it to work.”

“It’s frozen?”

“No, it’s—I have no idea what’s wrong with it. I’m typing and none of the right letters are coming up. I can’t write emails, can’t search online. All I can do is click.”

“You think it’s a virus?” she asked, passing him his food.

“Ha, probably. Considering my browser history is full of porn sites.”

“Oh, gross.”

“Hey,” Dean interrupted defensively, a few noodles hanging loose from his lips. “Watch your step, man. Last time you accused me of fucking with your stuff, it was the Trickster.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Sam laughed. “When the bodies start dropping I’ll be sure to issue a full apology.”

“I’m just saying, man. Might not be me. Kat, you like bustyasianbeauties.com?”

“Uh, no,” he chuckled, plopping down on a free bed with her rice. “Not exactly bookmarked on my homepage.”

“Well then, we’ve got our answer. It was Bobby.”

He smiled proudly. Kat smothered her laughter with more rice. And Sam looked positively on edge of breaking something in half. He closed his laptop with an incredible amount of self-control. Then he grabbed the closest thing—a half-empty water bottle—and hurled it across the room at Dean’s face. It hit the mark with a thunk, and Dean yelped while Kat burst into laughter. Sam stormed into the bathroom and slammed the door behind him.

“Fuck,” Dean groaned, rubbing at his head. “Not funny, Kat.”

“Of course it is,” she giggled. “You sound like a startled pigeon.”

“Alright, yeah. Laugh it up. Guess this was you, right?”

“Uh, no? You were the one defiling Sam’s computer, remember?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t download any viruses,” he defended. “I’ve been surfing porn sites long enough to know how to avoid the dodgy stuff. And if I didn’t do it, then it must’ve been you.”

“I wish. But I don’t know anything about computers, just like I don’t know anything about cars. I figured it was you.”

Dean frowned at her for a few seconds, but ultimately shrugged and went back to his food. “Huh. Maybe it was.”

Kat gaped at him. “You…don’t even remember?”

“Nah. It was heat of the moment, you know. And I’m uh—usually less discerning when I’m on someone else’s laptop. So you uh, might wanna throw a password on yours.”

She wrinkled her nose, and Dean smirked. Kat threw a napkin at him.

“Laugh now, Dean. But if you infected Sam’s computer, it means he’s out of service. Which means you and I are gonna be on research duty.”

That made him groan, and he slunk down in his chair. “Damn it. The price I pay for getting off.”

He grumbled into his food, grabbing the paper so he could start reviewing the details of the case they were heading toward. Kat speared one of her dumplings and kept her smile to herself. This prank war was going to get messy.

#supernatural fanfiction #supernatural #ocappreciation #fyeahspnocs #fyeahsupernaturalocs #prank wars #prompt #prompts

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studydreamrepeat · 7 years

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I’m a very goal driven person. Without a clear goal in mind I begin to flounder and struggle, uncertain of where I should redirect my efforts. So, as I reconsider my career goals and relationship with academic research, I thought some reflection might be useful.

I entered college with a very specific career goal in mind. I wanted to be a pharmaceutical researcher, working for a (large, well-paying) corporation on developing drugs for clinical trials and/or consumer use. Chemistry and biology were my favorite subjects in high school; lab experiments were my favorite part. I had an amazing experience during HS where I spent a year doing community outreach for a grassroots air quality organization. The experience had been so amazing because they were actually measuring the levels of air pollutants in the air with the help of graduate students at a local university, and I got to help them measure the levels of nitrous oxides in the air. I reported my results to city officials and even presented at a youth conference in DC, where I spoke to my local and state representatives as well as EPA officials. Doing real-world lab techniques, learning about the chemistry and the biological effects, and seeing my results be used in real life outreach and legislation had enraptured me. I was sold. I wanted to do something similar with my life, but in pharmaceutical research I saw a better connection to my interest in disease, better pay/job security, and more real-life influence by developing medications. It seemed perfect. Three years later, I have no idea where that enthusiasm went–but it’s totally gone. I’m now changing my major. Again. A B.S. in Biology is what I’m switching to, making it my third chance. I entered college pursuing a B.S. in Biochemistry & Biophysics, as there was no plain biochemistry degree (which seemed ideal, with biology and chemistry being my favorite subjects)–but switched out within the year. Following a poor first term (C’s across the board, with the exception of a history course), my adviser scared me out of the program by convincing me that I would never survive the rigor of the remaining calculus and advanced chemistry classes I would have to take. If I couldn’t excel in general chemistry right out the gate, how would I survive the school’s advanced physical chemistry series where straight-A students were known to struggle for passing grades? That seemed like a fair criticism. I switched majors that spring. I aced the rest of my self-written gen chem labs and went on to ace organic chemistry as well, driven by pettiness to deliver a subtle “fuck you” to that particular adviser.

There were other, more valid reasons for my leaving the department, but the success I forced myself towards out of sheer bitterness has always entertained me. I switched to a unique degree after biochemistry, pursuing a B.S. in Biological Research. I loved the department, adviser, and coursework. I got to customize the classes I was taking and elected to focus on toxicology. The other great thing about the degree was that it required nearly 20 credits of thesis research experience. I tacked on a chemistry minor and a certificate in medical humanities, thinking I was set for the next three years.

Within two weeks of joining the department, my adviser had been contacted by a doctoral candidate looking for an undergraduate to work with him. He was a program alumni needing extra hands for his natural resource isolation research in a pharmaceutical sciences lab. On paper it seemed like a great fit. I jumped on board even though natural resource isolation wasn’t my real interest. I was willing to learn about anything, and for the first few weeks natural curiosity carried me. I’d heard horror stories of how difficult it was to get a proper thesis project, and was relieved to have it seemingly handed to me. In person, it was more of a disaster.

Of the four other undergraduates already affiliated with the lab, three of which were also women, I was the only one who regularly came in. It didn’t take long to find out why. A majority of the researchers (not that there were many) came from cultures that are known for poor treatment of women. I was, after a few months when I finally thought to ask, told it had been quite some time since there had been a post-doctoral or other faculty researcher in the lab, and that the last one had not stayed particularly long. I consider myself a friendly person–I make eye contact, smile, and exchange pleasantries when it seems opportune. I was now in a setting where I was actively ignored. I was largely expected to learn by just doing what I was told. Questions were rarely answered, and trust me–when you’re holding a bottle with a giant label declaring CARCINOGEN for the first time, you’re going to have questions about how to proceed.

I was isolated from everyone but the other undergrads and my mentor–when he was gone, I could occasionally convince one of our post-docs to help me find the right compounds, before he would return to his bench where he would scroll through FB for a majority of the day. My PI rarely spoke to me, and he was often gone from the country for weeks at a time. With only general chemistry under my belt, I didn’t know enough to really appreciate what I was doing. I struggled. Things got better and I started to understand, only to get lost again when our project shifted in another direction, then back, then back again. My mentor was surprisingly patient through all of my confusion–far and away, he is the only reason I even survived a year in that lab.

Paperwork caught up with me. My depression returned, worse than ever. This time I struggled with anxiety symptoms that I had somehow evaded in all my previous experiences with mental illness. My grades started looking like the long end of a bell curve. I gave up part of my Christmas break to stay in town to work in the lab, only to spend those days working on an unrelated project.

Halfway through the school year, I was casually told my thesis project would be changed to something involving gene operons. I would be working with a lot of bacteria, rather than the genetically modified yeast cultures I had been working on in my resource isolation. I hadn’t taken general microbiology yet, much less bacterial genetics or any other relevant class. I was just starting a class in cellular biology and barely knew what a gene operon was. My opinion had never once been asked through this process. It was never once suggested that my mentor and PI had been thinking of switching my project. They decided without me or any input from me, and when I was told it hadn’t been a proposition or question–they were very honest in telling me the decision had, somehow, already been made. Had they asked me, I would have been happy to go along with it. That my opinion on what I would be spending the next two years working on was regarded as unimportant was very frustrating.

I was starting from square one again. To this day, I still don’t understand a lot of the techniques I used or data I generated. The only thing I understood was that I was getting damn good at electrophoresis. I had no funding, so I continued to put in my hours without pay. For most of the year my efforts were considered null even though I was in the lab logging more hours and generating more data than many of the paid researchers. It seemed I had gotten my acknowledgement when funding finally came that June, nine months after I had started. It turned out that the grant had actually been secured for me by my adviser who knew I was staying in town for the summer to continue my research. Now four months into this new project, I still didn’t understand the basis for most of my experiments, didn’t understand how to analyze whatever data I was continuously generating, and generally didn’t know what was happening. The lab was becoming emptier. On occasions I would arrive and find the lab was just closed for the day, lights off and doors locked. My mentor was busy with his prelims. There was no support or acknowledgement of my frustrations. I remember one day where I repeatedly asked for clarification, followed the directions I was given, and was then told I had done it incorrectly and had to redo it. I messed it up again because the numbers I had been given was wrong. I remember tearing up in the lab and managed to excuse myself for the evening, then crying out of sheer frustration in the women’s bathroom.

I wasn’t the only one frustrated. One of the other undergrads left the lab, citing the lack of support and poor treatment, including some degree of sexism, from the professional researchers. The lab was falling apart at the seams. Water occasionally dripped from pipelines running above our workbenches. The equipment was all older than I was, and the bigger equipment was twice my age. Our fridges wouldn’t maintain their temperatures. Experiments would frequently be delayed for a day or two while my mentor tinkered with equipment, trying to fix things that someone else had broken. Someone had broken a rubber ring on the fermenter and tried to replace it with a ring of parafilm. We had two HPLCs, and one of them was broken the entire year I was there. When questioned, I was told fixing it would be pointless because if we had a second working one then someone would break it knowing there was still the second. When we started having weekly lab group presentations, sharing our data and progress, it devolved immediately. One person would present, and the rest would sit around the table finding the most useless and particular questions to ask in an attempt to one-up the presentation. We stopped having meetings again as our PI flew in and out of the US. The problem with the lab wasn’t that we were complacent or poked fun at each other and each other’s research, or asked legitimate questions to encourage growth. It was openly hostile. Asking for help accomplished nothing. Undergraduates were not encouraged to ask questions in the lab or ask for help. We also weren’t allowed to work without someone else in the lab, because it was well understood that we didn’t know what we were doing and were a danger to ourselves.

There’s no way of explaining how exhausted or ill working in that specific setting had made me. It was a collection of small things. The inherent frustration of research–constant failure and constant redesign–barely registered through the entire experience. The frustration of not being able to express myself, being isolated, lacking financial/intellectual/mental support, and not having working equipment built up to become hair-pulling. I stopped wanting to come to lab. Then I stopped wanting to go to school. For a while I entertained just dropping out completely and fulfilling my life’s dream of becoming a subsistence potato farmer in rural Idaho. My partner patiently reminded me my life goals were bigger than potatoes. My friends reminded me my life goals were more than potatoes. My family wanted me to have more than potatoes. Everyone severely underestimates potatoes. All the meanwhile my family life devolved in the background. There were three months where at any given point I had a family member in a hospital. I was constantly on the edge of a mental breakdown.

I left at the end of August for a week’s vacation, which extended into a month because of a medical emergency. Away from the lab–even with other major stresses–my anxiety receded. I was coping better with my depression. I resolved not to go back and I didn’t. I withdrew from the lab, citing family responsibilities and health problems. I was, and am, completely disenchanted with lab-based research. My career goals had been decimated because I don’t believe I have the discipline or willpower to pursue a PhD. I am skeptical of the quality of any letter of recommendation or reference I could get from that lab because of how my PI rarely interacted with me and the way I suddenly made my exit, abandoning a lot of responsibilities. Exhausted by research, never mind a full thesis, I am switching majors to a good and simple Biology degree and taking my minor and certificate with me. I’m not sure what my new career goal will be. MD, PharmD, JD focusing in health law, or maybe a MS or PhD in a different field.

Despite the frustrations and discrimination my peers and I dealt with in that lab, I learned so so so much and am very grateful to have gotten the opportunity. I learned a lot of lab techniques and shortcuts. I learned how to present and communicate my research, how to interact with vendors, how to get funding (alternatively: how not to get grants), and saw a lot about graduate school and what it really took to get a lab-based research degree at the doctoral level. I saw my mentor’s frustrations, even with his decade of experience, and how it was shaping his career and effecting his family life. My scientific writing improved. I pushed myself to new limits and, optimistically, I’d like to say I grew as a person. I also learned some things that I’m glad I haven’t taken for granted, which is what I don’t want to do with my life. I learned how to put myself and my health first, even if it means giving up on amazing opportunities. I learned how to tell when something was becoming too much for me to handle or deal with. I learned where my breaking point was, which is at an 18 credit term with 20 hours a week of research (orgo chem, physics, cell bio, and tech writing made for a pretty brutal term).

Even with the disastrous experience I went through with academic pharma research, I still want to have more research experience–just in a completely different field. I’m going to pick research that I am interested in and because it’s what I want to learn more about, not because I need research experience to fill a requirement or to bolster my resume (although that’s a bonus). I’m looking at PIs who are focused in health literacy, or quantifying legislative effects, or nanotoxicology.

If you want to do research, it ought to be something you genuinely care about or are interested in. Sure, you can do it if you’re indifferent or if you’ve scrounged up some everyday curiosity for it, but after a couple hundred hours you’ll be pretty goddamn miserable. No matter what it is you’re doing, if you’re going to put hundreds of hours into something, make sure you care about it. Those are hours you will never get back. Even in labs where there is support and people act like decent human beings, research is still not an easy task. I’d like to think we call it research because you have to constantly be searching for reasons to continue.

There are reasons worth continuing. There are reasons to keep pushing forward and hunting down the answers to your questions. Your discoveries may be small at first. History is made by small discoveries and a random spattering of luck. But your discoveries, no matter how revolutionary or mundane, are still discoveries. Your work can lead to a cure. To a difference in the way we interact with other species. To a difference in the way we interact with each other. You can change the way we use certain materials, or the way we use the world. You can change the world.

#this took a much more autobiographical turn than i was intending it to #idk man i just wish i had someone who had told me this when i was starting as an eager young stem major #proofreading your own post is for the weak #it's nearly 2am i'm going to bed guys #studydreamrepeat #long read more is long

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helenawaynehuntress · 7 years

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Women's Bodies Are Not Tools For Male Agency - An Open Letter To Peter Tomasi And Patrick Gleason

Dear Peter Tomasi and Patrick Gleason,

Last Wednesday, Superman #23 hit stores. For the most part, Superman and Action Comics have been among the bright spots of DC's Rebirth initiative. Lois and Clark are back together again, the super couple have a new addition to their small family, and their personalities are back to where they need to be.

Superman is once again embodying the hope and optimism that have been staple to his character for all of his publication history. Lois Lane is once again his co-star, and she is once again the "top-of-her game", pulitzer-winning, badass journalist that's she's always been. The first woman of comics is once again the superhero we all need her to be: the ordinary human who uses all of her resources to dig up the truth and expose crime and corruption through her own super power: journalism.

Lois is very much an action girl. She just doesn't come with weapons, a costume, and special gadgets to get the job done. Even when situations get dangerous, she doesn't stand by and wait to be rescued. She gets creative. She uses everything that is available to her to make her escape before Superman even arrives at the scene. She embodies everything most people love about Bruce Wayne, minus the toxic masculinity and his need to dress up like a giant bat (complete with bat-themed gadgets, vehicles, and an actual bat cave) to intimidate criminals every night.

All that I've described above is what I've loved about Lois Lane ever since I saw her portrayed by Teri Hatcher in Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman when I was 07 years old. When I started reading the character in various DC books (not just the Superman books) at the age of 20, I was very happy to see that comic book Lois was every bit as awesome as the versions of her I saw on the telly as a kid. I am 30 now.

I think we can all agree at this point that the idea behind the New 52 was a good one in the sense that it came from a place of DC wanting to expand its readership by giving everyone a new starting point. It was especially done invite new readers to these characters, which was one of the high points of the initiative. Where it misfired was in its execution. Too much of what people loved about these characters for decades got jettisoned and replaced with wholly unrecognisable versions of these characters.

The wholesale jettisoning of character growth in favour of establishing "darker characters" is a big part of what I feel drove away many longtime readers, resulting in lower sales for DC in the span of five years. Rebirth has been a tremendous blessing in carefully reinstating what's been missing from these characters without another reboot, and sales are back up. You and Dan Jurgens have played an important role in bringing Lois and Clark back to their core, for which I am most grateful. But this now brings us back to Superman #23 and the unnecessary dismemberment of Lois Lane in a story arc that frankly did not require it.

Aside from this being another standard fridging for shock value and manpain, what was most infuriating about your decision to dismember Lois is that it continued a long standing problem in mainstream superhero comics to use women's bodies as tools for male agency. Even if this gets retconned before the story arc concludes (and I'm sure it will), the fact is it's still a dehumanising plot device that reduces a woman's importance to how she is valued by the men in her life.

Lois' dismemberment was not about Lois making a heroic sacrifice for what she believes in or protecting the people she loves. Her mutilation was ALL about shocking and traumatising the most important men in her life: her husband and son. It was both gratuitous and traumatising for me to see. It actually made me physically nauseous and caused my heart to palpitate when I read it on Wednesday. Literally. That is not what I expected to get from a Superman comic last Wednesday--a comic that I feel should be accessible to everyone.

When DC launched Rebirth last year, Geoff Johns did so with the promise of confronting the legacy of Watchmen, and with the promise of restoring hope and optimism to the DC Universe. I was very grateful to hear those words, because while I feel Watchmen is being scapegoated here, DC--with some exceptions-- has collectively not embodied that idea in the last 30 years. It's as if Crisis on Infinite Earths did more than just jettison the last 50 years of DC continuity in favour of a completely new direction. It also did away with the idea of heroes being good people who did what they did out of a strong desire to make their world a better place, and not because of a tragic event in their lives that set them on that path. It especially fared worse for the women characters who thrived during the Bronze Age as characters with agency and meaningful storylines.

The tragic origin story became the norm in superhero narratives and the "darkening" of superheroes became the recurring trend. That tragic event in the lives of many iconic male superheroes almost always centred on the death or violent fridging of a woman in their lives, whether that'd be their mother, daughter, sister, friend, or romantic partner. If it was a female superhero, her origin story would almost always be tied to a violent past involving abuse from men--including sexual abuse--or an actual fridging like in the case of Barbara Gordon. If it wasn't a dark origin story, eventually a story arc would come along where a male villain would brutalise a woman as a way of raising the stakes for the affected male hero.

Notice how much of this darkening of the DC Universe in the last 30 years has involved normalising violence against women? This disturbing trend became so prominent within the first decade of the post-Crisis universe alone, a whole website got made around that same time frame to document all the instances in which female characters have been "depowered, raped, and cut up" in a mainstream superhero comic.

This wasn't the sort of thing that just happened in elseworlds stories anymore. It literally became mainstream DC continuity, ironically, often inspired by elseworlds stories. This is what the last 30 years of DC storylines consisted of, I would almost argue the New 52 was actually the culmination of this style of storytelling for so long. Is it really surprising that women don't stay quiet anymore whenever we see violent misogyny used casually in the stories we're invested in, especially against the female characters we identify with for shock value and manpain? Is it really surprising we respond with anger when fridging is used over and over and over again against the same heroine as a plot device? Can you understand how dismembering Lois this past Wednesday cheapens her character and continues this disturbing trend of the last 30 years, especially given the promise of Rebirth?

When it comes to the representation of women in superhero comics, our anger towards the use of violent misogyny in stories to give them a gritty texture goes way beyond our investment in the characters themselves. It is also very personal to us because it helps to normalise real life misogyny. Normalisation of misogyny in comics is what invites men with toxic attitudes towards women to these characters, and helps to foster a comics community that is actively hostile to women. It especially fosters a community where male harassment of women in comic spaces is very common place, even for being invested these stories and characters. Some of these men even become future writers and editors for comics publishers to the point where it limits women's opportunities to work for these publishers.

When given the privilege to write iconic DC characters in particular, women are rarely afforded the opportunity to develop their stories as creators and editors except in small doses. When men are given the privilege to write and edit these characters, they rarely write and edit them with women and other diverse fans in mind as part of the larger DC reading audience. We're rarely seen as an audience worth connecting with at best (even though we've always been here), and we are seen as "bad for business" at worst. That last one is especially true in the case of female fans and creators who are vocal about these ongoing problems and would like for them to change so that they are no longer a problem.

I realise that as a customer it is not my place to tell you what types of stories to write, and I am more than aware that I don't have to invest money in anything I don't want to support. All of that is true. But here's the thing: I'm not a casual customer. I am a DC Comics fan who wants to invest in these characters and books just like every other fan. They have been my heroes since I was a kid and they still mean a lot to me as an adult.

This may sound like a naive thing to say, but I believe strongly in DC's potential to be a publisher that is inclusive of everyone, given the diversity of intellectual properties and the fans they invite. I strongly believe that Rebirth is worth supporting because it's seeking to make DC less divisive and more inviting of various groups of people, older fans and newer fans alike. I strongly believe that if the quality of the stories Rebirth is pumping out continues to inspire and invite diverse audiences and creative talents to the fold, we could get to a point where we don’t need to keep having this conversation about representation in comics. It would be a thing of the past. For real!

In the same way that you wouldn't make creative choices that would offend and alienate male fans of any DC property you work on, I ask that you afford women and other marginalised communities that same respect by being more thoughtful of the way you use women and marginalised communities in your stories. To be more aware of the ongoing problems with diverse representation so that you are not unwittingly repeating these same problems in the otherwise good stories you're writing. If Rebirth is about restoring hope and optimism to the DC Universe, please honour that promise by representing women's heroes better. Specifically by writing them as characters with agency and their own storylines, and not as tools for male character development. That is all I want to see happen.

Thank you for your time, and have a wonderful rest of your week.

Sincerely,

Diane Darcy

#Lois Lane #Superman #Rebirth #Women In Refrigerators

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igetfoxdevilswild · 7 years

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My Wonder Woman Review

It’s super duper long and rambling because I don’t have a platform with amazing editors anymore so that’s just how it’s gonna be. TLDR version: awesome, loved it, go see it, 8/10. Spoilers below the cut.

I admit, I somehow never got into Wonder Woman before. I got into comics by way of Batman (well, Archie actually but if we’re talking the big 2), and while WW is with him in DC’s golden trio, I just never went further into DC than Batman and by the time my fledgeling feminist heart had thrown off its “trying to be one of the guys” shackles, I had moved on to Marvel. Lynda Carter’s portrayal was hovering somewhere in my mind (even though I have never seen a single episode, thanks to the collective pop culture psyche that also means I know most of the original Pokemon names without ever having seen a single episode of that either), and I knew vaguely of the character’s background, but other than that I was going into this movie “fresh”.

I am grateful that this means that I can, in a way, share part of the experience with young girls whose perhaps first foray into superheroes will be this movie, because girl oh girl is this a GREAT movie for little girls to see and is Diana a great hero for little girls to love.

Rather than the dark and gritty ventures that were so desperate to show comics are for grown-ups too they were willing to take them away from children to prove it, Patty Jenkins has directed a fantastic movie for DC that dips into the same pool that has been making Marvel (especially Guardians of the Galaxy) so successful with all ages: love can save us.

While I personally could have done without the actual romantic plot line itself, what it gave the movie was relevant (and for once a male character is “fridged” for a woman’s character development in a frankly welcome role reversal). Diana’s ultimate victory is not with the phallic weapon which in fact is destroyed before she has a chance to kill the enemy, but with the Bracelets of Submission. The Bracelets have a complicated mythos that I will be learning about in my newfound interest in WW but from my limited understanding they symbolise the Amazons submission to Aphrodite i.e. love, humanity, and altruism. The movie shows this by having Diana discover that humans are capable of evil and “do not deserve her”, but then realises it doesn’t matter. She believes in love, humanity, and altruism, and witnesses that humans are also capable of good, and will fight for them anyway.

The male character is the damsel in distress. The male character appears shirtless for no plot reason. The male character uses charm where Diana barges in ready to fight. The Amazons are strong as hell. The Amazons are of many ages and body types (though admittedly still not enough). The fight choreography is amazing.

While I wouldn’t have objected to more muscles and a longer skirt, Gal Gadot is never shot gratuitously, no upskirt or down cleavage views, but instead the camera celebrates her fighting ability and she is shown as strong, capable, passionate, and determined.

While in a way naive and idealistic, Diana is not talked down or condescended to by the men who befriend her. Much of the film can be summed up as Steve: “Diana no!”, Diana: “Diana yes!”, but in more of a “Trust me, I’ve got this” kind of way. Her decisions are validated and it isn’t a failing when she doesn’t get it 100% right, it’s a chance to learn and grow.

The scenes of her going over the top, across no mans land, and into the village put happy tears in my eyes.

The movie gave me a very Captain America vibe, in terms of quality and character-wise, potentially focusing on characters at the cost of plot, but this is not a negative. Though The First Avenger is one of the weaker Marvel films in my opinion, it’s still enjoyable, re-watchable, and sets up a great and beloved character really well. As long as Justice League doesn’t do to Diana what Age of Ultron did to Black Widow, I’m hoping DC can now build from WW just as Marvel built from Cap.

However, despite in a superhero movie context ticking all the boxes while turning a bunch of tropes on their heads, I did have issues with the movie. While I absolutely loved it, I can’t give it a free pass on everything.

Firstly, I got excited that the villain was also a woman, but unfortunately Dr Poison kind of fell flat in the shadow of Ludendorff and Ares.

But, on that note, why do two out of three of the villains have a disability? Why is one described as a psychopath? Why is there a joke about Diana being blind? We did get a man with PTSD, so why do none of the Amazons (while showing scars), have visible disabilities?

Why are there so few non-white Amazons, and why are there even less with speaking lines? We got a Native American man talking about colonialism. We got an Arabic man talking about the colour of his skin. So why didn’t we get more women of colour?

I loved this movie. I cried during Diana’s fight scenes because they were so powerful and I thought, is this what men feel like in every other superhero movie? But that’s because this movie was made for me.

Just like Rogue One, just like The Force Awakens, just like Fury Road. I am an able bodied white woman. These movies are amazing and have been described as groundbreaking, but they’re not groundbreaking for everyone. A white woman in a leading role is not groundbreaking. We need to do better.

One more issue might just be because I recently listened to all 23 hours of Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast on WWI (Blueprint for Armageddon) which focuses on the human factors and costs of WWI, but it did leave me feeling a little bit uncomfortable.

In a way, it is still considered “too soon” to joke about the world wars, with good reason. But, over at Marvel, Captain America is an actual Nazi right now without much of a peep in the mainstream so apparently nothing is off limits. But if EA’s Battlefield 1 #justWWIthings hashtag debacle is anything to go by, WWI is still a touchy subject.

Probably because pretty much an entire generation was killed, injured, or traumatised from horrible warfare on a cosmic scale compared to anything that had come before, many of the mass casualties the result of inept leaders making bad decisions from their board rooms.

So actually it makes perfect sense that Diana’s first foray into the world of men would be during this time. Because obviously the Amazons are not averse to fighting honourably with arrows and swords, but with the scale of destruction and devastation never seen before that point, it would be easier to believe that a god of war was behind the great war instead of average people.

It was refreshing to see a movie about WWI for a change because it did explore some of the horrors (trench warfare, new technology including gas attacks, civilian casualties), and it was amazing to see a woman kicking ass and taking names in a war movie in general, BUT… when the opportunity arose to explore the theme of humans being capable of evil without an external otherworldly force, the movie contradicted itself by having Ares be alive and having his death at the hands of Wonder Woman stop the war.

I was hoping, and I think it would have been much more poignant and meaningful, for Ares to have already been dead the whole time. (Then we could have also avoided the tired fist fight at the end.)

While the movie did not let us think in black and white, of the german soldiers as the inherently evil bad guys, and did not let the allies get off scot free, the fact that WWI was portrayed as being ended by one superhero killing one supervillain to me felt like a cheapening of the horrible things that real humans enacted on each other and the suffering and struggles that real men and women went through to bring an end to the war.

#wonder woman #ww #movie review #spoilers

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19 things Ivanka Trump wants you to know, per her new book

Washington (CNN)Ivanka Trump’s 212-page book aimed at helping millennial working women define success in their careers and lives, titled “Women Who Work,” came out Tuesday.

Written with the extensive use of a 19-page works cited, and inspirational quotes and stories from more than 130 people, including Oprah Winfrey, Colin Powell, Mindy Kaling, Maya Angelou, Sheryl Sandberg and Walt Disney, the tone is very on-brand for Trump.

The book also includes motivational quotes written in funky calligraphy on pale pink paper (paging Elle Woods — no, they aren’t scented) at the beginning of each chapter.

The first daughter wrote her guide before the November 2016 election, updating with a brief preface during the presidential transition time.

“Women Who Work” presents Trump, who now serves her father’s administration as a top adviser, as a model working woman.

Here are some anecdotes and tidbits the image-conscious Trump offers up:

Her children call their grandmother “Glamma.”

The glamorous Ivana Trump, President Donald Trump’s first wife and mother to Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric, is described by her daughter as “a fashion icon, the consummate hostess and a lifelong entrepreneur.”

She’s a runner.

“(I’m) striving to improve as a runner,” writes Trump, who has been spotted jogging in Washington’s Rock Creek Park.

She’s a hard worker.

“Anyone who knows me knows that I will outwork anyone,” she says.

Husband Jared Kushner is a moderating force.

“He’s incredibly pragmatic, always cool in the face of adversity; he finds it unproductive to focus on the problem (versus the solution) or to react emotionally,” she writes of Kushner. “He’s my greatest teacher in this regard, the calm, soothing voice of reason that guides me to focus on what matters most, even in moments of crisis or chaos, where I naturally tend to be a bit more emotional.”

She likes peonies.

Trump encourages working women to get perspective on their lives and careers by looking from a point far in the future. Her imagined scenario is a milestone birthday. “I’m standing at the end of a long table, adorned with beautiful bouquets of blush-colored peonies, and seated on both sides are the people who’ve mattered most to me in my life.”

She majored in real estate.

Trump attended Georgetown University and transferred to the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where she majored in real estate and also studied finance and art history.

Arabella, 5, to join the family business? Trump insists it’s up to her, but she worked on the Trump International DC Hotel with her daughter’s future in mind. “I can envision Arabella overseeing this hotel someday (if she so chooses!), and I shared that with the selection committee,” she says.

She’s a reader.

“I consume a tremendous amount of information: books, newspapers, trade publications, magazines,” she lists. “TED Talks and podcasts are another way I diversify my own information bias and expose myself to bite-sized, snackable bits of information on topics.”

2016 — a “real eye-opener!”

Trump — who attended private school and enjoyed a NYC-centric adult life, discussed the importance of talking to people outside her bubble, citing her father’s presidential campaign. “Having talked to people on both sides of the political aisle during my father’s campaign for the presidency, I learned firsthand the importance of gathering and considering disparate viewpoints.”

She and Jared are matchmakers.

Trump discusses the importance of collecting contacts — “My favorite personal example of this is how Jared and I have introduced seven couples who’ve gotten married. Seven! (We joke that our hidden talent is matchmaking, but that we don’t give guarantees. So far, so good, no divorces!)”

She makes a lot of lists.

Trump makes the time to write resolutions on New Year’s Day. “I sit down alone with a notebook and headphones to brainstorm a long list of high-level objectives for each of the different businesses that I oversee,” she writes. She also makes lists of personal and family resolutions. And she keeps daily and long-term to-do lists in a Moleskine notebook year-round. (Also, she says that her digital calendar is “color-coded by business and topic.”)

Jared likes to walk.

“Jared logs miles every Sunday by taking calls on his cell while pacing in circles in the living room or walking outdoors,” she writes, citing research that walking boosts creativity.

She gardens. Trump bonds with her children while gardening at their New Jersey country home on weekends. “Berries are a big hit: strawberries and blueberries; we even have a peach tree and a fig bush.”

She practices Transcendental Meditation.

Trump has meditated for “several years,” she says, “And I couldn’t do half of what I do in a day without it.” She says 20 minutes is ideal for clearing the head, but five minutes is “better than nothing!”

She used to guard her children on social media.

Trump frequently posts images of her three children, 1, 3, and 5, on Instagram, but it wasn’t always that way. “I didn’t share a single picture of Arabella publicly until after her first birthday,” adding that positive feedback on the behind-the-scenes images of her life encouraged her to post more frequently.

She gives her kids ‘spa baths.’

Trump talks about the importance of spending individual time with each of her children. “I’ve never really loved bath time,” she writes, but, “I try to make it special for the kids. I like to give them ‘spa baths,’ where I run the shower for steam, play rainforest music on Spotify, lower the lights, and let them add bubble bath to the water. They get a kick out of it and it makes it more fun for us all.”

She likes Bravo’s ‘Real Housewives.’

Trump acknowledges that “Sometimes I like turning on ‘Real Housewives’ and sitting in front of the TV eating a giant bowl of pasta with a glass of wine, but if I’m honest with myself, it’s kind of counterproductive,” she writes, adding that those times are good for meditation or exercise.

She gets real about breastfeeding.

“One of the hardest things about returning to work is trying to continue breastfeeding and watching your milk supply plummet,” she says, which “made me feel like an awful parent.” She said she’s cut herself some slack since her first child.

Her mother-in-law brings the snacks. Trump’s mother-in-law, Jared Kushner’s mom, Seryl, kept employees at her eponymous apparel and accessories brand well-fed. “I stock the fridge with healthy snacks (thanks to my awesome mother-in-law, who does grocery runs for us!),” Trump writes. She has since taken a formal leave of absence from Ivanka Trump.