#and pretty much the entire didio era

[thenotoriousscuttlecliff]

Every time that DC has tried to make Superman/Wonder Woman happen in the mainstream comics they quickly decided against it and then went really hard on Clois. Last time they went so hard they actually killed off the New 52 Superman and brought back the married post-Crisis Clark and Lois and gave them a son.

[necrotic-nephilim]

18, 19, 20, 22!

for the chose violence ask game!

18. it's absolutely criminal that the fandom has been sleeping on...

oh SO SO many things. so many things this fandom sleeps on, by proxy of a lot of people not reading the comics. i think the fandom is sleeping on the fact that Jason was Red Robin before Tim. i think the fandom is sleeping on Batman: Prodigal, the *first* time Dick was Batman and Tim was Robin with him and how they bonded during that era, when it was just them. (the DickTim potential. it's all i'm saying.) i think the fandom is sleeping on Helena Bertinelli in *general* and her connections to the Batfam. i think the fandom sleeps on the family that the Bats have outside of the Batfam. (ie: Cass' siblings, Damian's family on his mother's side, Dick's sister, Steph's mom, etc) i could go on forever. but i think the main thing is family, just bc to me i always find it odd when the Batfam are stripped of their family and important relationships outside of their little sphere bc i find it wildly unrealistic and boring and sometimes i wonder if the fandom knows these characters even exist.

19. you're mad/ashamed/horrified you actually kind of like...

BAD PARENTS JANET AND JACK DRAKE. it's my guilty pleasure. and i KNOW it's not canon and OOC from the information we have. i even actually really enjoy Jack Drake as a character and i especially enjoy Dana Winters, Tim's step-mom. in canon i find these relationships are really nuanced and rich. but for fanon? everytime i will always lean into the Drakes sort of sucking. i'm just unhinged for concepts where they're cartoonishly neglectful, members of the Court of Owls, literal criminals/psychopaths, etc. it's so fun to add that layer of nuance to Tim even though the whole point of Tim was he was a normal kid with a normal life who happened to find out Bruce Wayne was Batman. like i will always defend Jack Drake when discussing canon. but i will write him as an evil, evil bastard in fics. i can't explain it. it just calls to me.

20. part of canon you found tedious or boring

when Bludhaven blew up and the whole One Year Later thing. it felt sloppy and so fucking needlessly petty on behalf of Dan Didio. he wanted to kill *one* character he had a hate boner for, and an entire city gets nuked and then we flash forward a year? it's just such needless writing. it's tedious to work around in fanfiction and i always ignore the entire thing. nothing about it was done to develop Dick or any other character, or done to have real consequences and a thought out plot compared to things like No Man's Land, it was just Dan Didio trying to kill off Nightwing. so i don't like it. i also found the era when Jason was Wingman pretty boring. i think it could've been fun to try to pivot Jason's character but the whole thing is bland to me and i ignore it, even as a pre-Flashpoint Jason stan. also, the entirety of War Games. but i wouldn't say i find that boring, more-so i find it infuriating how much the writers despised Stephanie Brown and bent over backwards to make her the villain and put so much destruction on the back of a teenage girl just trying to be good. also i find most Crisis Events tedious and i ignore them. i simply cannot be made to care.

22. your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores

oh this is so tough to answer without repeating answers from above oh god. i think the fact that Helena made Cass' Batgirl suit is a big one for me, and that she was briefly Batgirl. there are so many interesting things to be done with Cass wearing a suit that Helena made instead of making her own. and that the mouth covering is something we associate with Cass' verbal issues, but it was Helena who put it there first, meaning Cass didn't pick it, but she leaned into it anyway. i think you could do a lot with that character wise. also Bette Kane. i would like her to stop being ignored. oh and the entirety of Knightfall. how is such a massive arc in the comics largely glossed over by the fandom, i will never understand that there isn't at least *mention* of Jean-Paul in fics where Tim is Robin.

oh ALSO my favorite thing, that Dick has hallucinated Jason multiple times while Jason was dead. that will never leave my mind. the common thread of most of the Batfam hallucinating people is just neat in general.

[fantastic-nonsense]

Okay so....there was a post about Barbara Gordon and visible vs. invisible disability floating around on here awhile back. And someone wrote an excellent response already (thanks so much to @dilfdoctordoom for pointing everything out that they did), but I wanted to add my own two cents onto it because I felt there were some unaddressed issues...only when I finally got around to actually responding to it, I found out I was blocked by the OP (because tumblr is a hellsite that doesn't actively tell you you're blocked until you try to hit "post"). That's all a preface to say: this is a response to that post, and it's largely responding to the OP's comments about how the current depiction of Babs' disability is "great, actually!" because it provides representation to people with invisible disabilities.

Which...first it needs to be said that the OP is using "invisible disabilities need rep!" to excuse visible disabilities being erased and minimized. Because this isn't a situation where people are looking at a character who's always had invisible disabilities and going "they don't count." This is a character who for thirty years was disabled in a highly visible way and promoted as DC's most prominent physically disabled character...and a character whose existing physical disability (complete spinal cord injury leading to paralysis) was then erased, changed, and continuously minimized to justify making her a walking Batgirl again. DC also did this while erasing two other female characters (one of whom, Cassandra Cain, was disabled herself and actually is an example of someone with an invisible disability).

Barbara's disability, by its nature, is not one that should be portrayed as invisible. She was shot in a way that completely severed her spinal cord and shattered the surrounding bone structure. That was always her disability and despite the spinal chip magi-cure it technically remains her disability. Even if she can walk, she should still either be an ambulatory wheelchair user or using a cane/forearm braces, on the page, consistently. Her disability should be visible; that was the intention of her creators (one of whom was a disabled woman) and that was the representation she provides. She's also worn glasses since her introduction as a character, a disability that was also erased in the New 52/Burnside era via editorial mandate (and one that we have only recently won back post-Infinite Frontier). I find it interesting that OP chose not to comment on that.

Cassandra's disability, however, is invisible and always has been. Her struggles with speech and language are not ones that can be seen just by looking at her. She's been an incredible avenue of representation for people with learning, speech, and language processing issues for 22 years. And yet she got first character assassinated, then pushed to the sidelines, and then erased from the universe entirely because DC couldn't bear to have a disabled Asian woman wearing the Batgirl mantle instead of Barbara Gordon.

And while Stephanie isn't relevant in a conversation surrounding disability, I would like to point out that she became Batgirl largely by accident due to being resurrected at a time when 'who should be the new Batgirl?' was a topic being hotly debated. Babs was as close to being magi-cured and Batgirl again in 2009 as Dick was to being killed in Infinite Crisis (which is to say, pretty damn close). Steph becoming Batgirl only delayed the inevitable, which was a coordinated multi-year editorial effort to push Cass out of the cowl and Babs back into it.

So if people like OP want to talk about the representation of visible vs. invisible disability, I think we should talk about how making Babs a walking Batgirl again erased representation of both types of disability in the process. Because it was not a decision made to give representation to people with invisible disabilities. It was a decision made because Dan Didio and a small group of similarly powerful old, white, male, able-bodied managers wanted the Batgirl from their childhoods to be on the pages again, and if they had to erase two disabled characters and multiple female characters entirely to make it work, they were willing to do so.

Nearly all subsequent writers have effectively erased her disability by omission via giving occasional lip service to it-occasional comments about the chip, the back brace, the cane-and then disregarding it entirely whenever it suits them to do so (repeatedly showing Babs in inaccessible living and working environments, having her continually suit up as Batgirl despite saying it should be an "emergency only" thing, constantly showing her standing/with her legs crossed/in weird positions when she is sitting like there's an editorial mandate on artists to remind people 'she's not paralyzed! she can walk now!', etc).

And those creative and editorial decisions need to be talked about when discussing the treatment of Babs and frankly all of the Batgirls since 2011, because it's objectively ableist writing and it's frankly incredibly tiring to have to continually point this out despite the well-sourced and thorough discussions Babs fans (both abled and disabled) have written on the subject over the past 11 years.

[davidmann95]

Dan Didio's out of DC Comics. Thoughts?

Anonymous said: So it seems that Dan DiDio is out of DC Comics. The question is: Did he do anything good, or is his entire tenure a series of failures buoyed up by the best efforts of the individual writers?

Anonymous said: I'm sure you've heard about Didio, so as we look at his complicated legacy and his contribution to the DC Comics and comics in general, reminder that outside of whatever we may think of him as a creator and his impact, as a person, he not only did not fire, but went out of his way to keep Berganza around at the expense of female creators and has acted like a fucking asshole in general (have you heard why Final Crisis was late).

Anonymous said: Dan DiDio is leaving DC!

Anonymous said: So, Didio’s out, apparently. Thoughts?

Anonymous said: So Didio left the building. Thoughts?

Anonymous said: So you mentioned on Twitter what you were afraid would happen post-Didio’s departure. What would you LIKE to happen? For my part I hope 5G gets changed and Morrison can do his 12 issue second season like he planned.

dr-doc-phd said: I know the situation is complex and a little scary but CRAB RAVE DAN DIDIO IS DEAD

End of an era. As for the fact of it itself, purely in a vacuum: he did more good stuff than he was credited for but others probably also could have without all the *gestures broadly*, so I’d call this a good thing.

Beyond that? For starters, depends which rumors you believe. Was he fired for mismanaging, if you believe BC? Is it because WB is maybe shifting priorities away from the direct market (which I have to imagine would pretty much mean the end of weekly physical periodic comics in the US before long) and DiDio wasn’t playing ball as IGN alluded to? I myself could easily see him just flexing as hard as he could against 5G, given it goes against so much of his clear vision of what DC as a shared universe is supposed to look like, and the higher-ups eventually getting sick of the internal strife. In any case, will his replacement be an empty suit, someone who can improve things, or someone who’ll make everything exponentially worse? Will there even be a replacement, or is Jim Lee simply steering the ship solo now? It’s too late in the game for this to affect immediate plans (sadly I can’t imagine TGL won’t still end with a shortened run), and those are still so nebulous as to be indecipherable, but how will this impact its long-term rollout and longevity? All I can really tell you at this point is that anyone acting certain about what happens from here is a liar, and that probably includes the people actually making the decisions.

[thattimdrakeguy]

Bendis has gone from one of my secretly favorite writers to one of my least favorite. Like not only has he made the last so many issues of Young Justice contain some of the most bare bones writing, not only has he made some of the most un-logical decisions of Tim’s fictional life (which is jaw dropping), but he also can’t write Damian worth a damn. He showed he couldn’t get more then two things right about him in 6 pages.

Like I’ve already made it clear that I think Damian’s writing for a while now has just been horrid even if no one talks about it, but just ... no, Bendis, no. Bendis can’t even get one of the simplest trademarks of Damian right.

Damian has a very particular way of speaking, it’s something that even fan fic writers can get right, but just, right away Bendis has him say “Yo”, like, it’s so nitpicky, but it’s just such an obvious thing to avoid. Damian’s way of speaking is so straight forward and obvious, so so obvious. How does one get in the position to write a character in an official medium and get something so obvious and simple wrong?

Is it like on the application to be a DC writer “make sure you never read our character’s before”, because I keep reading current comics every now and again and I wonder.

Has Bendis ever read Damian before? It’s like he just had him described to him as he was dozing off, like, how can you be so bad at writing him? He makes him mean and snarky, but like, come oooon, stop being a parody of bad writing. Why is everything with you lately so bare bones and awful?

Damian would not have a card collection, you absolute dolt.

I’m plenty aware that other writers act like he’s a normal kid and crap, but those writers are absolute crap too. You don’t choose the bad writers to be your inspiration.

Do you know a single thing about what you’re writing?

Why are you writing something you clearly don’t understand?

Damian is such a simple and specific character, it should not be this hard to get more than only two things right with him. 

You couldn’t get the simplest things right with him.

These are such small things, but it’s blowing my mind how reoccurring these things constantly happen.

Even the artist, I love David LeFuente so much, like he’s one of my favorite artists, and I love his Tim and all that, but like, why doe he choose to draw some of the characters so weird?

I love the way he draws Jon, but why does Jon look older then how he drew Conner? They’re the same age currently aren’t they? Conner’s like a young adult now by the way they act. Very late high school years at the very least since they don’t actually specify how long he’s been in Gemworld. So why does Conner look about 4 years younger then his Jon when if anything he’d be older? Like Lefuente’s Conner didn’t look like Conner at all. How did he make Conner look younger than Jon?

And why does Damian look 5? I know a lot of artist struggle to draw younger kids, but why do they constantly get artists that seem like they never seen a 13 year old to draw Damian. It cannot be that hard to have an artist that knows what a 13 year old looks like to draw Damian. There has to be at least one person that can do that. DC, just hire a guy that can draw a 13 year old, to draw your 13 year old character, please. If they’re going to draw them, that should be one of the requirements, you know, actually being able to draw them.

Like why is it so hard to find artists that can draw Tim and Damian? Neither one of them has an easy time finding creative teams that get them. It seems like both of those guys have such struggles finding artists and writers that seem like they actually know what they look like and act like.

Even the language used to describe the issue feels off “These two best buds”, like I don’t make it a secret Super Sons is garbage, and the whole progression of their relationship when it became a thing is some of the worst I’ve ever seen in any comic ever, but like, DC clearly loves them, Didio has said so, and it’s no surprise DC can’t even get what they love right, but “two best buds” doesn’t sound like it’s referring to a thing describing Damian.

It’s another nitpick, but it’s another that’s like, so easy to avoid, because it’s like “oh hey maybe this doesn’t sound like it’s referring to a Damian thing, maybe we should change it. Like it’s so simple, so freaking simple. It’s not a big deal at all in the big run, but something that takes a literal nanosecond to realize is off isn’t that hard to fix. It’s so simple, so genuinely simple, and they got it wrong. All these things they’re getting wrong just keep adding up to the point it’s becoming parody-level’s of stupid it keeps happening.

DC is so inadequate at such basic things at this stage in the game. Even describing things to fit what they’re describing is becoming hard for them. Damian is not a character you describe like he’s a bro or something, it’s not that hard.

Damian is not that hard of a character to get right at all. He’s genuinely very simple. If you never seen him in your entire life. It would take like 3 to 4 issues to understand his character. How he acts, what his thought processes are like, and his life style, but somehow they keep messing that up.

I want Damian to be in a comic that actually knows what to do with him so badly. Like I’m so sick of every comic he’s in getting the most simplest yet obvious things wrong with him.

A big flaw of this specifically, is just how much Super Sons doesn’t work as a concept. It’s very superficial why people want them together, and yet somehow the way they put it together doesn’t work even worse. They have to ignore a lot of obvious stuff to make it even be a thing, which is exactly what they did, so anything involving them is right away so forced that it’s gut-wrenchingly distracting.

But it’s like stuff like this, with the smallest details, just sort of represents a lot about DC, and I think this is why it’s bugging me so much. The amount of obvious stuff they get wrong or at least off is becoming more grating to me.

DC has a massive habit of avoiding the most obvious simple stuff, to instead make a crap load of dumb ideas in.

In this case it’s super small, like a few choices of words, but at this stage it’s just slaps in the face. Get one freaking thing right.

You some how think Tim would change his name just like that, which is just stupid.

You forget almost everything about Damian’s character to put him in places he doesn’t belong.

You think Batman would beat up his kids. His parents died when he was a kid, that happened, but he didn’t become Batman because he was a psychopath, he became Batman to avoid crimes like that happening. That’s the very DNA basic level of Batman, and you got it wrong multiple times in the past few years, and he is your most popular character. You can’t get the basics of your most popular character in Batman right.

And you seem to think doing everything people don’t want is going to get you sales, when after a while people are just gonna leave.

You cannot get the simplest of things right, obvious, simple things, that take a nanosecond of thought, and you get them wrong.

A character that never wanted to stop being Robin like Tim, probably isn’t going to randomly change his identity to match a person that just tried to kill him like how you’re acting. It should take no thought at all to realize that’s a very dumb idea, but you seem to be doing it when you probably shouldn’t.

A character who became a crime fighter to stop crimes, probably isn’t going to beat the crap out of his kids for doing nothing wrong. He didn’t even try to find out if Jason did something, he just assumed without doing any detective work, and he’s a detective. He hit Tim in the face so hard he fell to the ground because Tim wanted to help him. That’s so stupid. I don’t care if Batman’s being mentally tortured by Bane during that last bit, the very basic morals of Batman would probably kick in considering it’s like no one’s ever tried to mentally torture him before. I’m pretty sure hitting a kid in the face isn’t gonna be his first thought when all the kid did was try to help him.

These small minuscule things that they can’t get right. The people that do that are in charge of major things in a company that used to give people something to be happy about each month, are just like this. Even simple (most likely barely noticeable to most people things) things escape them.

Damian is more then just being a snarky, mean, dude.

I’m so unreasonably upset that they keep messing up this character in the simplest of ways.

They’ve already ruined the whole point of his character development, they ignore half the bad stuff he does almost like they purposely want to avoid character development, the very simple basics of his character they ignore to pander to a very easily amused audience, and it’s just tiring.

Damian is like that unmentioned horribly written character, and I think it’s because his arrival was that beginning of the end era of DC were all the crap we hate now started. Like his character ever showing up at all was ridiculous and I won’t pretend otherwise, but at least as an Elseworld’s character he had promise. 

Like because his character showed up in the beginning of the end, a lot of the fans that are still around care less and less about stuff, so no one comments on it. Compared to someone like Tim who been around since 1989, so when they got the smallest but most simplest of things wrong with him it got called out more. Plus, the somewhat surprisingly large amount of people that are that easily persuade by easy pandering praise some of the stuff, so other people assume nothing is wrong.

DC, please, just get writers and people in-charge that can actually think for more than a nanosecond.

Within 6 pages they already got the basic trademarks of a very simple character wrong, and couldn’t even realize that two measly words were bizarre choices. He is not a little kid bro-ing around with his school bestie. I know Super Sons probably did that, but because a comic did it, does not make it a good idea. That’s still completely ridiculous and out of character for Damian to do, seeing how he showed no interest until it suddenly happened. He is a stubborn, half-way anti-social character, he is not going to kidnap, terrify, threaten, and stalk a little kid, to then have the kid he did that to, mostly ignore all that and be okay with it, while no one barely does a thing about his behavior. They set those kids on a trip together. That makes no sense. I get Jon is a superhero with powers, but basic parenting says don’t force your kid to be around someone who would realistically traumatize them. Like, basically, it doesn’t work. At a molecular level, it does not work. Fiction that can be as fantastical as superhero comics is typically maintained by following human logic, or at least in the modern day of comics, but they just ignored that completely.

I don’t expect every writer ever to get everything right about every character, but they couldn’t even get the way he talks right. They couldn’t even realize that “hey, maybe he wouldn’t like this stuff”.

I’m so tired of Damian being reduced to tropes and archetypes that don’t fit, and seeing people actually cheer it on.

He’s not a normal kid, he’s never been shown to be interested in the stuff they act like until they suddenly acted like he was. 

He was a unique character that had stories that could’ve been told but instead people chanted for him to be one of those blood curdlingly generic characters ever.

He’s just a school bully type of character now with a secret heart of gold or something.

He was more then that, and he deserves to be more then that.

Why is the generic and simple being cheered on?

He stuck out like a sore thumb, and had unique stories that could’ve been told, but instead it seems like so many people just want him to be the most bland, generic excuse of a character ever because they find it cute or something.

To me, Damian should’ve never been made, at least not have been put into the main DC universe. I believe that his introduction broke a lot of the Bat-Family because of writers constantly making everyone out of character to try and make him work, when just letting characters react like how they would react would be much more interesting and unique. I think in the long run he was a very bad idea, BUT, if you’re going to do it, why are you constantly ruining the character that you soiled a lot of stuff for to begin with just like that? You can’t even care about that? 

You are a comic book company, your basic design should be to create characters and stories that entertain people. Your basic structure shouldn’t be to just bastardize the stuff you made when people were enjoying it.

Even the stuff you went out of your way to do and partially left a mess you later on just butchered.

How is a company that produces fiction run by people that can’t understand what’s in their own product?

I wouldn’t be nearly, even close to as upset as I am unreasonably so right now if this stuff didn’t keep happening. If this obviously avoidable stuff didn’t keep showing up. If this was one time weird thing then what ever, but this obvious stuff keeps happening, like no one knows why they’re writing what they are.

Like this isn’t about so much as Damian saying “yo” and implied to have a card collection, as it is me being upset that DC keeps getting the simplest things about their own characters wrong to such an extent that even the most bare bones obvious thing about a character is even being done wrong. They couldn’t even get how a character that talks very distinctly speaks right, they couldn’t even get their very straight forward and simple life style right.

I wish DC would just go bankrupt or something, because it’s so stupid that every comic I read there’s a bunch of ridiculous stupid garbage in it.

But OH HEY, NIGHTWING’S COMING BACK.

Tynion’s a bad writer, but he at least knows that maybe fans would like their favorite character to be called by their actual name. So I guess one of the dumbest decisions DC’s probably made ever is being undone, but the fact the decision was ever made to begin with is ridiculous.

[lysical]

I was introduced to a lot of the Batfamily via the Morrison run. How screwed up is my perception of them? Comics are an effing minefield of characterization—I know, I’m a Hank Pym fan because I ran into him first in one of his highly rare likeable periods. Any tips/recs? It feels like everywhere I go the characters aren’t the “real” ones, and idk where to find these “real” ones. (This goes for Tim too, although you seem understandably down on him lately & might not want to talk Drake anymore

It does vary by character, actually. There are some fundamental things he does that are a bit out of there, and other things that are just plain offensive, but he’s not the absolute worst to come in on, as damned by faint praise as that is. 

Long post ahead

Bruce: Morrison and I fundamentally see the character very differently. He sort of subscribes to some ideas about Bruce as Batman that I just don’t like re: emotions, life, family. He uses a lot of allegories and devices in his work and the depth is there, I just don’t agree with what he was doing and had to say about Batman on a fundamental level. Post-Crisis Bruce is a bit all over the place. A lot of different writers got their hands on him and the dark and gritty post-Jason transformation of the character was intense and permanent. Because of this, coming into Morrison doesn’t really hurt you that much--especially since for a lot of it he’s functionally dead. Maybe check out some runs like Hush (more emphasis on the family), Dark Victory (some young Dick Grayson), Batman: Year One (say what you want about Miller, but it’s a decent book and the atmosphere and art are great for an introduction to the modern character), and then hop over to some of Bruce’s team books. Sometimes characters get distilled well over in their team books compared to their solos (especially since the Bat Department is...weird at times). Maybe check out Superman/Batman, the old team up from the early 2000s. For Bruce it’s just best to cast a wide net and read a variety. JLA: Tower of Babel is a good one to see Batman and the wider superhero community in conflict, which brings in a lot of Batman’s negative aspects in a way that was decently balanced and didn’t villainize him via narrative even as the characters might have felt that way about him (Young Justice certainly did XD), but I havent’ read it in a long time so ymmv. 

Dick: One of the few characters that didn’t get that bad a hand by Morrison, or too much of a characterization shift (his character shift had happened during the Chuck Dixon and Devin Grayson period, although the latter more than the former). Unlike new 52 onwards, while he was softened a little to pair effectively with Damian, it wasn’t too much as we saw at times later and how fandom kind of tends to portray them (’Shut the hell up, Damian’ comes to mind). The Dickbats run was a nice change and development for Dick, a natural progression. The things that were sort of tweaked to create conflict with that transition (Dick not wanting Batman, some characterization behind that) were pre-Morrision, during Battle for the Cowl and the setup to Morrison, so while they follow on from that they’re mostly absent from the run. For the modern Robin Dick stories, go for Teen Titans: Year One, Dark Victory, Batman: Year Three, a couple of the other year ones are decent, although some incorporate those characterization shifts, but that’s comics. I’d go back to New Teen Titans (starts in Pre-Crisis, goes into Post, but the book doesn’t have a huge change due to the crisis and it’s just a really good run, deserving of being the benemoth during that time period that it was) to get the best of Dick on a team, then maybe check out Prodigal (follows on from Knightfall, Dick’s first run as Batman), skip Nightwing: Year One (it’s got tiny amounts of Dick and Jason bonding but Dixon ripped everything else about Dick’s early Nightwing period to shreds). From there, depends if you want his solo or his team stuff, he’s a pretty easy character to follow. I like to start chronologically with him because then you see the shifts happen as he falls back under control of the bat-books, and his solo and team stuff have some interesting contrasts (I lean towards his team stuff generally because Dick has always been about that for me, rather than running solo). 

Babs: Birds of Prey is her essential stuff, I don’t think Morrison really did that much with her but my memories of it all are a bit vague now. I’d personally take anything when she’s romantically involved with Dick with a grain of salt, that relationship was a bit of a disaster and they both do terrible things to each other (I believe the one responsible for it all is Devin again but it’s been a while since i visited that train wreck) and there’s some victim-blaming that happens that’s not so good. I prefer Oracle having a bit of distance from the Batfam, as she’s just surpassed being someone who is under Batman’s authority and is just crucial to the entire operation of the superhero community in general, so Bird s of Prey. 

Jason: Hnng. Here’s where Morrison really just decided to throw away established DC continuity and try his hand at a bunch of crap that fell completely flat. Just toss it and purge, tbh. Winick got Jason back late in the run but it was too late for that. Maybe there are tiny aspects of characterization that aren’t bad (Pride and Prejudice) but Morrison misunderstood Jason on a much more fundamental level. Also the red hair was probably some attempt to make a witty visual pun and add ‘depth’ but there are so many problems with it. Continuity-wise it makes so sense with how pre-crisis and post- worked, particularly for Jason, and additionally Morrison is realllllly wishy-washy with his ‘EVERYTHING IS CANON’ stuff that it rings false, plus in Pre-Crisis he was like...blonde I don’t understand. The implications of Jason being forced to dye his hair are absolutely disgusting for Bruce and go back into that fundamental problem I have with how Morrison sees Bruce. Jason, Post-resurrection suffers a lot of DC writers not knowing what to do and unloading a lot of DC’s baggage and some unconscious, problematic tropes onto him. Read his Post-Crisis origin (Batman 408 on, there’s the origin and some issues after set up by his original Post-Crisis writer Max Collins) and maybe all his Post-Crisis, pre-Death stuff since there’s honestly not a lot and it’s fairly obvious when Starlin starts pushing for his death. For post-resurrection, Under the Red Hood, Lost Days (it goes off the rails at the end, so I only half rec it honestly), Outsiders 44 and 45, Countdown (but only if you’re skipping the plot and just reading the Jason (&Donna &Kyle) bits, it’s one of the most even-handed treatments he actually gets in Post-Crisis but the book is otherwise terrible). Then just go straight to RHatO Rebirth. 

Tim: Ignore new 52 and Rebirth entirely. Red Robin is a book a lot of Tim fans really like but I personally think it’s bad in general and also don’t like what the writer does with Tim, but ymmv. Tim’s origin is also pretty weak and his initial mini and series aren’t that great at establishing him as a proper character outside ‘this kid is Robin pls like him we want to get away from the controversy of the last one’ so it’s hard to connect with him there without nostalgia glasses. By Knightfall (1994ish) on, that’s where he’s more of a character himself, and his stuff from about then through to the early 2000s is the best (before Geoff Johns got him in Teen Titans and Didio started doing Things, which basically led us to today to be honest). Personally, I think Tim functions best in a team, there are aspects of what his writers do in his solo where they just...missed the implications and it kind of grates on me. His stand out book imo is Young Justice (the og comic not the cartoon which only shares the name and nothing else tbh). 

Steph: Another who actually got treated decently well during the Morrison-era, as opposed to the crap she was dealt earlier during her time as Robin and War Games. Steph’s Batgirl run is something I definitely recommend, and her stuff with Dick and Damian in Morrison’s era is contemporary with that. Her origin is actually really good and compelling, so I’d dig into that (TEC 647, i think, is her first appearance). She kind of just revolves around Tim during his run and their relationship is kind of...there are implications there that are a bit cringe. Her stuff with Cass on the other hand is really enjoyable so I’d recommend those. Her brief Robin run is decent if melancholy considering what we know happens, and I wouldn’t touch War Games with a ten foot pole. 

Cass: Shafted from the mid-2000s on, tbh. She got a bit blessed with a solid creative team to start her off in her Batgirl run, it attempts some pretty deep and interesting explorations of her character that while not perfectly executed are still really good comics. I’d just read her No Man’s Land stuff, follow her book and stuff with Steph and pretty much just ditch out when One Year Later hits. Her Black Bat outfit is cool and there is some retroactive backpedalling by DC to justify shafting her but it’s all Morrison era anyway so you might be familiar already. 

Damian: Morrison created him and he took a lot of liberties with that backstory which unfortunately have had a lasting impact for Talia, which is frustrating. As Damian’s creator, what you see is what you get. Morrison didn’t want him to be likeable and he also didn’t really want him to be permanent (ties in again to how Morrison sees Bruce and family tbh), other writers gave Damian development later, but despite being around for over a decade now, there is still a lot of push and pull between writers about his characterization and development. It’s unfortunate but there’s a noticeable lack of consistency with Damian and his development that is frustrating to read. Probably read Tomasi’s stuff if you want Damian’s softened, developed arc and avoid other stuff. I’m not the best for Damian because most of his stuff is during the new 52 which I wasn’t around for and am picking through only occasionally. 

Hope this helps. 

[swipestream]

Sensor Sweep: Tower of the Elephant, Leigh Brackett, Kenneth Morris, D&D Survey

Writers (Tellers of Weird Tales): Harold S. Farnese didn’t write any stories, poems, or articles for Weird Tales, nor was he a cover artist or illustrator. His eight letters published in “The Eyrie,” the letters column of Weird Tales, failed to land him in the top twenty contributors in that category. You might say that he was a pretty minor figure in the history of the magazine and its contributors. Except for that part where he was so central to a certain understanding of what we call the Cthulhu Mythos. Beyond that, Farnese may have been the first person to adapt a work by H.P. Lovecraft to a form other than verse or prose.

Fiction (John C. Wright): Conan is young here. The internal chronology of the stories is subject to some guesswork. But it is fair to say that this is the second or third tale in Conan’s career, taking place after Frost Giant’s Daughter (1934). We see him for the first time in what will be his signature costume: “naked except for a loin-cloth and his high-strapped sandals.”

I found, as I often do, that not only is Robert E. Howard a better writer than I was able, as a callow youth, to see he was. He also easily surpasses the modern writers attempting to climb his particular dark mountain. From the high peak, brooding, he glares down at inferior writers mocking him, and, coldly, he laughs.

Particularly when Howard is compared with the modern trash that pretends to be fantasy while deconstructing and destroying everything for which the genre stands, he is right to laugh.

Let us list the ways.

Fiction (DMR Books): After covering Barbarian Book Club’s Pre-Tolkien challenge the other day, I figured there’s no reason not to join in. Dunsany and Merritt have been pretty well covered so far, so I wanted to review something lesser known. Nictzin Dyalhis or Clifford Ball would have been perfect, but it would feel too self-serving if I reviewed one of those. So instead I selected “The Regent of the North” by Kenneth Morris, which I first read, appropriately enough, in the anthology Tales Before Tolkien. It’s the best story in the book besides Merritt’s “Woman of the Wood.” Interestingly, editor Douglas A. Anderson doesn’t believe Tolkien ever read either story, but he included them anyway.

  Fiction (Rough Edges): SCARRED FACES is the second novella by Stephen D. Frances featuring Hank Janson (which is also the by-line, of course). In this early tale, Hank is still a traveling cosmetics salesman who just happens to wind up in the middle of violent crimes. This time it’s an acid attack on a beautiful young woman that leaves her dead. Shortly after that, two thugs kidnap Hank and try to take him for a ride because they think he may have seen too much. Of course he escapes, and from there it’s not long until he’s mixed up in a dangerous racket that involves several more beautiful young women, at least one of whom wants Hank dead.

  Fiction (Ringer Files): I read this book while the temperatures outside were pushing the 110 degree mark. The acceptance of global warming, or at least, climate change has most of us wondering what happens to a planet that heats up. This book, written in 1963, takes a look at the flip-side of that theory and sees the world under another ice-age. I picked this up a couple years ago along with several other science fiction novels by Silverberg. I’ve come late to the game in appreciating Robert Silverberg’s science fiction novels. I don’t know how I didn’t read his books when I was in my teens and enjoying Asimov and Clarke and others.

  Fiction (Black Gate): Although Leigh Brackett (1915–1978) wrote planetary adventures during the Golden Age of Science Fiction and was married to Edmond Hamilton, one of the Golden Age’s most praised masters, she seems to, well, bracket the era rather than belong to it. Her stories set on fantastical versions of Mars and Venus are indebted to Edgar Rice Burroughs, while her dark emotional intensity looked forward to New Wave SF of the ‘60s. In his introduction to Martian Quest: The Early Brackett, Michael Moorcock wrote that “It’s readily arguable that without her you would not have gotten anything like the same New Wave … echoes of Leigh can be heard in Delany, Zelazny and that whole school of writers who expanded sf’s limits and left us with some visionary

extravaganzas.”

  Fiction (Lawrence Person): Here’s a book I picked up more for the state and the publisher than the author. Dark Harvest was a very active small press from the early 1980s into the early 1990s. They published primarily horror and science fiction, and did very well with it, but managed to kill themselves off by branching out in mystery.

      Conventions (Western Fictioneers): If there was ever a time when I was especially proud to a member of Western Fictioneers, it was the weekend of our convention in Oklahoma City. Old friends did some catching up, and new friends were made. I lost count of the states represented. (Idaho, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Colorado, California, Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama, South Carolina, New Mexico, etc.) The discussions were intimate and open, and the session topics were deeply informative, thanks to our many knowledgeable presenters.

Fiction (Paperback Warrior): It’s hard to guess why William Crawford adopted the pseudonym of W.C. Rawford for his 1974 stand-alone western, “Ranger Kirk.” The copyright page says it’s by William Crawford and the book is dedicated to “Robert Gene Crawford, my brother.” Moreover, the pen name of W.C. Rawford isn’t really throwing pseudonym sleuths off the scent. Who was he fooling?

Fiction (Walker’s Retreat): The RPG Pundit put out a video about the survey that Wizards of the Coast recently put out about Dungeons & Dragons. He wasn’t the only one suspecting this. I did too, and seeing that the survey’s cooked to push this meme disease is sufficient confirmation for me to decide to cut WOTC off entirely (and with it, all versions of D&D after Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd Edition).

Gaming (Niche Gamer): Square Enix has shared the first gameplay for the recently announced Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles Remastered Edition.

Featured above, the first gameplay of the game was shown off during this year’s Tokyo Game Show.

Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles Remastered Edition is launching for both PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch sometime next year.

Comic Books (Injustice Gamer): I know there’s the GenCon bit everybody has seen and written about. I just didn’t expect the con to deal itself a deathblow this fast, and that’s all I’ll write here for now.

DC co-publishers Dan Didio and Jim Lee recently did an interview on ICV2 regarding DC’s sales year to year and the industry. Bounding into comics provided a little commentary via numbers, but didn’t go into analysis, instead asking for opinions in the comments section. Didio seems to think the biggest problem is over-saturation of the comics market, while Lee is pointing to declining traffic at Barnes and Noble and waning interest in The Walking Dead.

  Gaming (Table Top Gaming News): I know some of my friends are down at AWA downtown. I’m currently safely at home, grooving to some Sims 4 while I wait for this evening’s D&D session. Gotta go take care of that Strahd murder house, y’all! But I know what you are here for are the reviews I know you so desperately desire. So let’s get to it.

Today we have: Super Mario Bros. Party Card Game, Snow Time, D100 Dungeon, Tower of Madness, The Deck of Many Animated Spells, Kariba, Deities Domination, Seal Team Flix, Nanty Narking, Brass, Yellow & Yangtze, Menara, and Quests of Valeria.

  Sensor Sweep: Tower of the Elephant, Leigh Brackett, Kenneth Morris, D&D Survey published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames

[davidmann95]

First bendis interview is out , thoughts?

In the interest of completion I listened to the whole podcast (which yielded basically nothing that I hadn’t seen in summaries, except that he wasn’t a fan of Man of Steel the movie and that Byrne wasn’t as big an influence on his relaunch plan as you might expect, both of which were good to hear). As far as the relevant points go:

* No, he isn’t killing Jon or rebooting the universe. We knew the latter and had no reason to think he would do the former, but people still seemed pretty nervous.

* This interview seemed more about Action Comics with the Daily Planet crew (unsurprising, since talking about what kind of adventures we’d be seeing in Superman would probably give a lot of the game away); renewed focus on Jimmy and Perry and Lois, grappling with the state of the newspaper industry. All fine with me, it’s been entirely too long on all fronts since the books have dealt with those. Him referring to Lois as the most fearless character in comics and mentioning her marriage being “the eighth-most interesting thing about her” are both good signs, and him citing his enjoyment for a lot of Kirby-era stuff for Jimmy gives some hope he’ll deal with a few of those elements, which would definitely be big enough to drive threats in Superman.

* Confirmation that Brian Cunningham is the new Super-editor, which I’ve discussed before.

* The big quote that’s got people concerned: "So many people are worried about the state of their marriage and the state of their family. You should be. What they are attempting to do is so enormous and it is so delicate, and so precious, and there is so much pressure on them coming from so many different directions. You absolutely should be scared for that delicate, beautiful relationship.“ Obviously that raises an eyebrow, but given DC’s doubled-down on the two of them sticking together I don’t think DC would let him get away with anything truly stupid; more importantly, they’re still together a year in the future in Doomsday Clock. The ‘pressure…from so many different directions’ bit makes me think this is going to be more about external threats than them fighting about him spending too much time saving the world or somesuch nonsense.

* The two big points for me that raised my hopes were when he discussed Superman’s multiplicity as a character - his roles as father, husband, guardian, reporter, farmer, etc. - and how much that complicates him, and how to Clark he had to be Superman, but being a reporter was the first major choice he made about his own life on his own terms. “Clark is who I am, Superman is what I can do” is a phrase that’s stuck for years and has always struck me as kiiiiinda right but mostly leads creators down a boring, reductive path; “Superman is who I have to be, Clark is who I chose to be” feels a lot truer to his character as I’ve always understood it.

And the general stuff about how everyone at the office asked how he got the underwear back (DiDio offered them to him right away and he said yes - good to know upper management wised up, though I always figured that was much too big a shift for Bendis alone to facilitate, especially given Batman’s own change suggests it was probably largely about getting perennial looks in place for Doomsday Clock), and how Superman standing for truth, justice, and the American Way in 2018 is more powerful and poignant now that we’re more aware than ever how much we can’t take those for granted. It sounds to me like he has a solid grasp on the material and the strengths of what he has to work with - as long as he gives it his A-game the way I understand he did on Jessica Jones lately, I think this has a very good chance of being the revitalization that Superman’s needed.

[fantastic-nonsense]

Decided to address this as its own post, since my response to the post itself didn’t actually get any traction:

See, I’d buy this except A) I have been a DC reader for far too long and B) I was actually around and bitterblogging when Didio actually said “heroes shouldn’t have happy personal lives.” That was in 2013.

For context, at the time he said this (right after the editorial veto on Kate and Maggie’s wedding), Dan Didio was literally refusing to let the writers write heroes having happy personal lives. Examples:

Clark and Lois broke up over petty stupid shit and then Clark said “I didn’t really love her that much anyway” and swanned off with Diana for awhile (See Superman/Wonder Woman). Like they split Clark and Lois up on their 75th anniversary year. Honestly, I feel like this point alone makes my point, but I’m going to keep going

Grant Morrison was remaking Talia Al Ghul into a literal batshit crazy character that didn’t bat an eye at killing her own son to get back at Bruce

on that note, the killing/fridging of Damian Wayne to advance the angst arcs of like the entire Batfam happened about this time too

Bruce and Selina were hostile towards each other (like lmao them getting married now is justice for readers who had to deal with what DC put us through from 2011-2013 with them)

Barry and Iris were not married and had barely met each other at the time, and the rest of the Flash family was erased from existence

including Wally West (and by extension Linda Park and Wally’s two kids), meaning that they simultaneously broke up two of the happiest and most stable marriages at DC

Arthur and Mera’s relationship was in editorial flux and DC couldn’t decide if they were married or not, despite Mera being Arthur’s queen for over two years at that point

Dinah Lance was married to another man and she and Oliver Queen barely knew each other, and there was all kinds of angst happening on both sides of that

Hal Jordan and Carol Ferris were once more broken up and/or waffling on the status of their relationship

Hawkman and Hawkgirl/Hawkwoman weren’t together (despite their whole schtick being “continually reincarnated souls that find each other in every life”)

The “Core Four” Birds of Prey members (Babs, Helena, Dinah, and Zinda) either didn’t exist (Helena, Zinda) or had their previously good relationships with each other erased (Babs and Dinah)

Dick Grayson and Barbara Gordon were no longer together and had a pretty rocky relationship

Gail Simone had to deal with editorial interference on Barbara’s Batgirl book because they wouldn’t let her write what she wanted because it was “too happy”

they did a weird sort of waffling erasure concerning Dick and Damian’s time as Batman and Robin (so that the two weren’t nearly as close) in favor of emphasizing the relationship between Damian and Bruce

Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown were erased from existence, and Scott Snyder literally created Harper Row because he wasn’t allowed (by editorial edict) to use Cass in his comic

Starfire was a sexualized amnesiac that didn’t remember the Teen Titans

the original Teen Titans had apparently never met

Conner Kent/Superboy and Cassie Sandsmark/Wonder Girl were broken up and were hostile towards each other

Tim Drake was in an absolute disaster of a relationship with Cassie, and the Teen Titans were a mess in general because the Teen Titans comic was being written by fucking Scott Lobdell of all people

heroes that previously had great interpersonal relationships with each other now either hated each other, were lowkey and sometimes outright hostile to each other, or simply didn’t know each other

Grim and gritty Booster Gold happened. Yeah. I know.

Grimdark Jaime Reyes/Blue Beetle happened.

Grimdark bratty Billy Batson happened. Like what even was the thought process there

Lots of other bullshittery where characters didn’t know each other, were erased from the universe/didn’t exist, or had their relationships erased/sabotaged/ended happened

People literally wrote posts upon posts and pulled together photosets on photosets (and even more photosets) of all the ships and various relationships that had been utterly wrecked by the New 52. Hell, I wrote posts about how bitter I was about DC wrecking my characters’ personal lives because of Dan Didio’s stupid mentality. Kate and Maggie were in no way the only casualties of this debacle. So...was it tone deaf beyond belief to not let Kate and Maggie marry and sent a very different message to people than they probably wanted? Hell yeah. Was it the result of homophobia? Probably not. So yeah: I’d buy the whole “homophobia” thing if I hadn’t been there for the whole hellscape trainwreck that was 2011-2016-era New 52 comics and knew better.

Also:

9/5/2013 - Citing last-minute editorial meddling on approved storylines (and not because of an anti-gay marriage stance from DC Comics, as some spreading the news would have you believe), J.H. Williams III and W. Haden Blackman stepped down from their duties on Batwoman. Williams stated on his site,

“Unfortunately, in recent months, DC has asked us to alter or completely discard many long-standing storylines in ways that we feel compromise the character and the series,” wrote Blackman and Williams. “We were told to ditch plans for Killer Croc’s origins; forced to drastically alter the original ending of our current arc, which would have defined Batwoman’s heroic future in bold new ways; and, most crushingly, prohibited from ever showing Kate and Maggie actually getting married. All of these editorial decisions came at the last minute, and always after a year or more of planning and plotting on our end. We’ve always understood that, as much as we love the character, Batwoman ultimately belongs to DC. However, the eleventh-hour nature of these changes left us frustrated and angry - because they prevent us from telling the best stories we can. So, after a lot of soul-searching, we’ve decided to leave the book after Issue 26.”

It wasn’t just the marriage that got nixed in the Batwoman book.

tl;dr: it wasn’t homophobia and this isn’t a double standard. It really was Didio just being an absolute dick for 5 years and refusing to let heroes have happy personal lives and romantic relationships, and in general, it was the absolutely ridiculous editorial interference on various levels that led to several of the debacles of the New 52 days (not just this one). The game has changed due to the Rebirth initiative. Writers and editors alike have thrown tons of shade on Didio’s perspective. Geoff Johns, after five years of putting up with it, basically told Didio to fuck off and took over the reins in steering the direction the company took with the characters/plotlines. Hence Rebirth and DC’s apparent determination to get all of the classic couples together again and have them be in (more or less) happy and healthy relationships.