#and yet dc keeps giving booster to him

[pluckyredhead]

hello! was curious if you have any knowledge of the blue and gold run (by dan jurgens et al)? i came across it discounted on google play and have no idea of its quality so thought it might be worth asking

It's not great, alas! Absolutely nothing of importance happens to the characters, there's zero growth or change of any kind and nothing exciting in the way of action scenes etc. Which is fine for a comedy book if the comedy is funny, but...it's not funny. There's a running...god, "gag" is too strong a word, but thing, I guess, where Skeets is livestreaming their antics and people are commenting on social media, but Dan Jurgens doesn't seem to know how social media works or what people sound like on it. There's another running "gag" where there are fangirls following them around and one of them keeps calling Booster "Boostie" and that I guess is supposed to count as a joke? Because she does it nine hundred times. It's never funny. It's just cringe. I hate to use the word cringe but it really applies here.

So yeah, it's not offensive or anger inducing but it's also not really worth spending money on unless it's REALLY discounted. It's not horribly bad, it's not good, it's just completely empty as a comic.

[l0vem41l]

mean when i'm nervous.

「 tws + notes: no tws, unedited as BAWLS, dc writer newbie but im very enthusiastic abt the comics and shows and movies, dog metaphor but insane and unsubtle, explicitly vigilante!reader in dick grayson’s part, dramatic asf but not really angst 」

「 gn!reader, can be platonic or romantic <3 」

↳ ft. bruce wayne, clark kent, richard "dick" grayson, and john constantine

author's note: so. we all know what my favourite thing right now is (⌒_⌒;) i still adore everything i used to write for,,, but i’ve been on my comic motives recently (*ﾟｰﾟ*) ! reading dc mostly but spider-noir and deadpool have been picked up along the way!!! um. anyways. if i get comfy enough, i might do more dc stuff but i get that this isn't my exact audience on this blog— sorry my loves (´＿｀。) </3 might write a part two cuz i love jason. and booster gold. and like every single one of them (´▽`ʃ♡ƪ) halfway through writing this i realized everything feels very literal, so i feel the need to mention that this is not dog hybrid reader stuff but if u fw that u can imagine it that way

perhaps the habit of burning bridges you’re actively crossing isn’t a good idea. and you’re not an idiot, not in the slightest— but even if you were, everyone knows that needless self destruction when developing relationships is counterproductive.

you strike the match anyways, like it’s just a force of habit. another instinct.

if you spent life knowing that the hand only beats. why would you expect it to do anything else when it’s lowered towards you?

you learn to keep your hopes down, ears alert, and teeth sharp. you learn to get used to the taste of blood. to make things messy and complicated, and to end things when they need to be ended, because god knows it’s only self preservation when you do it.

you learn that the only way to survive is to bite— to hurt before something hurts you.

and one day, an unfamiliar hand that extends towards you decides to feed instead.

why do you still bare your teeth?

▸ BRUCE is unsure why he sticks around. he’s understanding, but also reasonably frustrated with your antics. it doesn’t evade him that they stem from something deeply rooted in your past— but he doesn’t know what to do about it. if there is anything to do.

at his core, he's a detective. he's got an eye for digging into strange pasts and a knack for knowing things he isn't supposed to. but in spite of his paranoia and hunger to know, bruce doesn't pry too much. he can do research on his own, without you ever having to realize.

you’re self-sufficient, he’ll give you that. you’re unsure sometimes of whether he’s proud that you can take care of yourself or irritated that you consistently insist on doing so. he’s unsure too. not like he lets you know.

it’s a mutual understanding the two of you share— he stays, you bite. yet bruce, unsurprisingly, doesn’t mind being bitten. he’d hope that the reason he’s sticking around is for the selfless reason of making sure you’re alright. though, the reality is, you’ve grown on him, whether you realize or not.

bruce has always been fond of strays.

▸ CLARK is nothing but patient. and that scares you beyond reason.

he sees the way you bare your teeth whenever someone gets too close for comfort to you. he knows when to back away, when to speak, when not to— he’s always attempting to never make you feel backed into a corner.

somehow, it makes you more anxious seeing just how much he understands about you. he knows just how to coax you out of the corner of your cage, how to bring you in closer, and it almost, almost convinces you to let your guard down.

the thought of that is terrifying.

you try barking, you try biting— and none of it works. clark doesn’t coddle you when you’re wrong— but he’s absolutely nothing but gentle. patient and understanding, sometimes you wonder how a man of steel can be so soft for someone like you.

▸ DICK isn’t dumb. it’s fairly easy for him to put two and two together. quickly, he figures out what he’s dealing with when he encounters you.

his conversations with you are never without a note of levity— a deliberate action on his end, you’re certain. he knows, you know, and because of it, everything feels oddly tense around him, even with the attempts to banter.

it’s too late to run. his observant gaze has caught a glimpse of you through your one way glass, and he’s chosen to meet your eyes with a smile. there's a sense of foreboding that gnaws at your gut, anxiously anticipating what might be lurking under that grin of his.

on his end, there are no malicious intentions. he doesn’t really have ulterior motives when it comes to you.

most times, he chooses to defend you and be the one standing at your side when no one else does. you don't understand why he insists on offering you friendship when all you do is pull away.

after a long night of patrolling the streets of gotham, you find the two of you leaning on the railing of a rooftop side by side. your eyes are on this cityscape of gotham. his are on you.

“you keep on insisting i’m not as bad as i seem,” you mutter under your breath.

late nights make for loose lips. he’s pleasantly surprised to hear you continue the thought instead of attempting to take it back.

“do you just hate being right?” you snort, allowing your gaze to flit over to him just for a second.

"no." dick smiles, shrugging his shoulders nonchalantly. “i think you just hate the fact that i could be.”

▸ you tried not to bother with CONSTANTINE. the day the two of you met, you didn’t even introduce yourself.

john constantine’s presence alone reeks of trouble, as acrid and suffocating as the cigarette smoke that clings to his tan trenchcoat. you are attuned to things like that. he notices.

one thing you actually enjoy about him? he doesn’t chase. he’s a nosy one, for certain, sticking his nose into places no one in their right mind would— but for the most part, he steers clear of yours. initially, you think it’s because your urge to be left alone by him is so prevalent that he’s just chosen to heed the warning and not approach when unwanted.

but he’s not a man known for abiding by rules. he’s much more curious with you than you notice or prefer. in a way, your distance has made you more myth than man, more tale than tangible— you are a rumor passed through whispers between lips, a silent shadow lurking in the corner of the room… and he loves a good mystery.

“c’mon. you're actin’ like ‘m gonna bite your head off, luv,” he chuckles, lighting up the cigarette between his fingers.

i'd probably be the one doing that if i got any closer. you keep that thought in your head, standing with a gap between the two of you as always.

he doesn't miss how you avoid looking into his eyes like his gaze could murder, instead, focusing your gaze on the cherry of the cig, burning bright red.

“not much for a wee natter, hm?”

the quick shake of your head only makes his smirk grow. you could just walk away… so why exactly were you sticking around?

“fine by me. quiet company’s welcome.” that’s a sentence he’d probably never say to anyone else. in a strange way, he feels like he knows you well enough to be comfortable with the words that hang in the air.

it’s weird. you’re completely unknown, and yet, an irrational part of his mind keeps nagging at him to look just a little closer at you. sometimes, when he listens to it, he catches a glimpse of something silent in your eyes— an all too familiar pain of a person who can’t help but hurt the things that they cling onto.

so that’s why you’re keen on keeping everyone at arms length. it almost makes him laugh to think how similar the two of you are, plain as day, and yet unnoticed by you— a person who won’t even meet his eyes.

— reblogs always appreciated!

[fluentmoviequoter]

Butterflies Aren't Just for Kids

Part 2 of Crushes Aren't Just for Kids

Pairing: JLU!Bruce Wayne x fem!JL!reader

Summary: Bruce hasn't asked you out yet, despite the League's interest in your new relationship. When he finally has enough and takes you away from their prying eyes and endless questions, you tell him why you hid your feelings for so long.

Warnings: fluff!!! John, Diana, and Wally get warnings for being nosy

Word Count: 1.6k+ words

A/N: Have I mentioned that I love this show? I considered basing this on The Once and Future Thing (s1 finale) but think that would be better as an independent rewrite. Also, I love Wally so much!!

Picture from Pinterest

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Plenty has changed since Morgaine Le Fay turned you, Bruce, Clark, Diana, and John into kids and back into adults to defeat her son. Bruce learned about your crush on him, as did John and Diana, and Bruce hinted that he’d ask you out soon. Being a superhero vigilante is a full-time job, though, and he has yet to find the time to do that.

Every time you set foot in the Watchtower, John and Diana give you questioning looks. You can tell they want to pry and hear about what’s happening with you and Bruce, but you also know they won’t believe you when you say nothing. Luckily, you still have easy access to all the hiding places Bruce installed in the multi-million-dollar space base.

While you sit in the cafeteria and eat, your thoughts drift to Bruce. He’s off somewhere fighting an alien with Clark, yet all you want is another quiet moment at his side.

“Hey,” Wally greets as he sits.

“Hi, Walls,” you reply with a smile.

“What’s up with all the weird looks?”

“What do you mean?”

Wally looks down and quickly counts the food items on his four trays. He speeds back into the cafeteria for another pudding, and you brace yourself for the wind that follows his return.

“Everyone keeps looking at you like there’s something big happening. They used to look at me like that, but you’re hogging my attention,” Wally answers.

“Sorry about that.”

“Seriously, it’s impossible to miss all of the looks. John and Diana look ready to snap every time you walk into the room.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” you lie. “I’m sure whatever they think is happening will pass soon and all eyes will be back on you.”

“As they should be, right?”

“Right, Walls.”

You excuse yourself, but not before you offer your cake to Wally. You ignore the looks Wally mentioned as you walk toward J’onn’s station in the heart of the Watchtower.

“J’onn, can you send me home? I don’t think I’ve got anything else to do up here,” you request.

“Certainly. I’ll let you know if we need you to return.”

“Thanks.”

A light blinds you temporarily, and when you open your eyes, you realize someone must have told J’onn you have a new home.

“I have got to talk to John about boundaries,” you mumble as you begin the short walk to Wayne Manor.

A few days later, you haven’t even seen Bruce. You’ve been pining after him for years, though, so what’s a few more days before that date he said he’d take you on? As long as it isn’t a theme park, you think as you walk through the Watchtower.

“We need to talk,” Diana says as she pulls you into a corner.

“About what?” you ask.

“You and Bruce,” John answers, stepping out of the shadows.

“What is this, an intervention? There’s nothing to talk about!” you whisper harshly.

“What happened after we left?” Diana inquires.

“He took me home. If you must know, he implied that he’d ask me out, but that is it! He may not even like me anymore.”

John shakes his head with a knowing look on his face. He can read you too well to lie to him.

“Look, I’m trying to be patient and wait for him to decide, ask, whatever, but it is getting very hard to do with you two drawing attention to us! Booster Gold asked me where the boyfriend was, and he didn’t even know who he was talking about!”

“Booster never knows what he’s talking about,” John argues.

“That is not the point.”

John smirks before he asks, “So, when you and Bruce have kids, do you think they’ll look like you two did in Mordred’s kingdom?”

The door behind Diana opens, and you realize you’ve been having this conversation outside Bruce’s workshop. While he was in it.

“Stop,” Bruce demands.

Diana nudges you, and you push her away. You’ll do something, but not because she encouraged you to, because you want to.

“What?” you ask with an exaggerated pout. “You don’t want to have kids with me, Brucie?”

Bruce rolls his eyes at your reply, but John and Diana stay beside you despite his bat glare.

“Are you going to ask her out?” Diana asks. “Because we’re all waiting for you to do something.”

“Clearly,” Bruce replies. “We’re leaving. Lantern. Diana.”

Before John or Diana can speak again, J’onn transports you and Bruce away. They’re left facing each other with a few answers and more questions.

“Where do you think they went?” Diana inquires.

“I’m- I’m not sure I want to think about that,” John answers slowly. “She is my friend, you know.”

“So is he.”

“Yeah,” John says, his voice laced with sarcasm and disbelief. “Sure, he is. Best friend, really.”

When you arrive in the manor, pressed to Bruce’s side just as you were in the amusement park, you don’t hesitate to turn and hug him. Bruce’s arms wrap around you loosely, and you step back when Alfred enters the living room.

“I’ll assume you’re the reason I’ve been getting so many dirty looks and questions from the League?” Bruce asks.

His lips are up at the edges, and you think he will smile at any moment. You can’t tell by looking at him, but Bruce feels like a kid again when he’s with you. He didn't experience childhood like he should have, so he lets himself be genuine with you. He’s done wasting time, he decides.

“You know, I’ve been fighting by your side for a long time,” you say. “But your hugs are way better than your grappling hooks.”

Bruce shakes his head and leads you toward the couch before Alfred returns with popcorn, a tray of snacks, and your favorite drink that you did not ask for nor mention. You thank him, and he winks at you quickly. He’s glad to see Bruce happy and to have visitors in the manor again.

“I should’ve hugged you sooner,” you muse as you reach for the food. “Could have been spending time here for years by now.”

“Why didn’t you say anything before?” Bruce asks softly.

“Why didn’t you?” you counter. You lick your lips before answering, “You’re important to me, Bruce. I didn’t want to jeopardize our relationship or the team, or, worse, put you in danger by saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. There were too many unknowns.”

“So, you planned to, what? Wait until I said something?”

“Caged butterflies,” you whisper. “Cages don’t hold them very well. I would’ve said something eventually, but Morgaine put me in a position where I didn’t have to.”

“Then, technically, John told me.”

“You’re a jerk, you know that?”

Bruce smiles, and the butterflies you felt as a kid revive to create a hurricane in your heart. He leans in and brushes his lips over your cheek before saying, “I’ve been told… I’ve also been told crushes aren’t just for kids.”

“Jerk,” you mumble again as you turn your face toward Bruce.

“Oh! Oh!” John yells when you step out of J’onn’s transporter and onto the Watchtower. “Someone’s glowing. How them butterflies feeling?”

“Like kids again,” you answer honestly. “I guess I should thank you for forcing me to do something.”

“Lanterns have been making dreams come true for millennia.”

“There’s no way that’s true.”

“You don’t know that. You’re not a Lantern, or a mind reader.”

“It’s not true,” J’onn calls without looking away from his console.

“Man, we need better friends,” John tells you.

“You are my better friend.”

“Save that lovey stuff for the boyfriend.”

“I thought he was Diana’s boyfriend,” you argue, tilting your head as you hide your smile.

“The ploy of a mastermind to learn the truth,” John answers with a shrug.

“You really are spending too much time with Wally.”

John stands and beckons you to follow him. You do so wordlessly, but you run into someone as you round a corner beside him. Bruce grasps your arms gently to keep you upright before dropping his head to look at you.

“Here comes the bride,” Wally sings under his breath.

You and Bruce look up quickly, surprised to see Wally has joined John, and they are watching your interaction with far too much interest.

“And that’s why we’re glad Wally wasn’t included in Mordred’s spell,” you grumble against Bruce’s chest.

“What spell?” Wally asks. He doesn’t give anyone time to answer before he rambles, “Hey, have you told her about your childhood, Bats? I mean, you’re definitely a loner now, but good luck learning anything about him; he’s one tough walnut to crack.”

“I know,” you and John say together.

Bruce tightens his grip on you before requesting J’onn send him home. The Watchtower is no longer a haven from Gotham, not with the League’s new favorite topic of conversation: you and Batman.

“We should buy a vacation house,” Bruce says as you open your eyes in Gotham.

“Yeah. In Coast City, where Ollie can find us and bring the rest of the fan club,” you joke.

Bruce stays quiet for a moment, and you begin to ask him what’s wrong, but he cuts you off.

“Get ready. We’re going on that date I promised,” he says.

“You never actually asked,” you point out.

“Will you go on a date with me?” Bruce asks.

“I’d love to.”

“Then go get ready. I’m taking you somewhere we can be ourselves.”

“Where could you possibly take me that Bruce Wayne won’t be recognized? And if you say an amusement park I will walk out right now.”

“I was thinking Metropolis. The roof of the Daily Planet. I called in a few favors.”

“I take it back. You weren’t a cute kid… you’re still cute.”

“And you still have trouble with maintaining eye contact.” Bruce leads you to the stairs and spreads his hand over your lower back before he whispers, “We’ll work on it.”

[maerobotron]

Listen, this might be insecurity, or boredom, or people pleasing or whatever, or I'm just feeling a spiral of doom related to some life things, and I'm not at all good at keeping up on these kinds of things, except, oddly, xanga? which dates me?

I'm starting to get to the point where I don't give a damn, but I'm not there yet.

Anyway, there's some small town drama that I just have to speak about so I am reviving a dream of mine called Harriet the Suburban Spy.

The short introduction to this is that between COVID and a mental health crisis, I moved back to my small hometown from a big city and I hate it and spend a lot of time ignoring my grandma when she says that "Smallville is a great town to live in" and the local paper gives addresses about police calls and more than once I have seen people comment about how "Smallville's crime rate is horrifying, and I would never move to the big city!"

(DC is a possibility here. I'm not likely to stick to one topic regardless. My thoughts about Superman and Smallville are complicated though and my partner is required to listen to me on this, so I might just leave it in his capable hands)

SHORT INTRO???

More under the cut, I know I'm wordy, and this is probably not interesting.

I'm the worst. I was not a popular kid in high school, which I'm cool with, but I was on the periphery of a lot of things, and one of those things was the school's music program. And in my hometown, the music program is big. Probably not as big as sports, cause, this is the United States, but big.

And also toxic. Glee, toxic even.

Oh yes friends. We had 2 show choirs. My sister (twin, estranged, complicated) was part of the freshman one but then there was a weird religious thing where even dancing was iffy, so she quit, but still, I did get to see some shit.

In any case, late last year the beloved (BELOVED) show choir director was placed on suspension pending investigation. The kids are out of control, but what that means is anyone's guess, and frankly, to be incredibly millennial, the boomers in this town are wild and out of control has meant anything from wants to take on more leadership at church to terrorism. This guy has been with the district for 30 some years, and that's a long time, so the little town freaks out, and I have friends who have kids in these programs start defending the heck out of this guy, and I'm just thinking, not only have I been in the district's music program (band, orchestra, choir) but I've also attended more music functions in this town because of Smallville's biggest cheerleader, my grandmother, and I have never interacted with this guy, and normally I trust these friends, but for some reason I have a bad feeling about this guy. But whatever. I can't judge without any evidence, and I am unlikely to meet this guy in my everyday life, so I'll let my tiny sister (best friend, fellow gossip) know about this, and we reminisced about other sister's time in this and other music endeavors and we both largely forgot about this. The guy was reinstated a few weeks later and the investigation resolved, and I thought it was probably resolved more because of a booster threatening rather than an actual conclusion, but whatever.

Until this week, when "Local alum sues school district" and I'm like what... The alum in question: we overlapped a couple of years, but I don't know him, but I was intrigued by this whole thing. What is his part on this? Now, the local paper already has some issues, but I was especially intrigued by the fact that they didn't say anything substantial about who this is. The reason for the lawsuit is because the district has not provided information that he has requested regarding the investigation.

Here's the thing. I don't necessarily find it weird that a random guy with no apparent ties to the investigation is interested. If kids are being harmed, or lack proper adult supervision, this is a community issue. I am also concerned. But I'm still like, who is this guy and what is he doing? It is one thing to be concerned and another to file a lawsuit.

I will admit. I do not care about this town. It used to be a swamp, and in my opinion, it can go back. And part of my reasoning is because I have come across too many people in this town that are interested in protecting the powerful at the expense of those who are not. And of course this is every town, and the world, yeah, yeah, but this is my hometown and I can hate it without anyone's permission. It does not surprise me that the district is not handing over information. They are barely willing to hand out transcripts (ask me how I know). And maybe this is a lawsuit to help correct that. But I still don't know why he cares so much.

So like, if you're interested, stay tuned for more details. If you're not, I am sufficiently amused.

[mattdcblog]

Booster gold for the character ask!

Favorite thing:

Outside of himself in terms of inter-connectivity, you really can't go wrong with this character. Hes EVERYWHERE, and he's designed to be that way. Everything about his backstory ties him to places and people within the DC universe. In terms of the character himself though, one of my favorite aspects of him is how utterly, disastrously human he is. I've talked about Booster at length in MANY other posts so I'll try to wane poetic here, and just keep it at: he's an underdog who never seems to win, and that makes the small victories that much greater.

Least favorite:

We don't know anything about the time period he comes from, beyond "its a bit like modern day Gotham, but worse somehow." What was growing up there like? What makes it different from our present? How did growing up in that environment affect him? What happened to make superheroes not as well known? ARE WE EVER GONNA TOUCH ON THE WHOLE "NUCLEAR WAR THAT CAUSED WHOLE CENTURIES OF HISTORY TO BE LOST," DAN?!

Favorite line:

[ID: Booster says, "Tonight's your night, you handsome cheetah." He looks at a picture in his yearbook of him in an orange crop top football uniform. His number is 5, and he's wearing a hat with a long feather in it. The text is cut off, but reads, "North Gotham Swashbucklers Class of 2462." /End ID.]

Seriously go read this its wild

There are more iconic lines of course but this one i actively quote jxnfndmf

brOTP:

Ted, Trixie, Fire, Chel (although is it really a brotp if you're related?) I guess you could say Scott as well but imo he's more Ted's friend than boosters.

OTP:

Its Ted, for the same reasons I listed on my blue beetle answer. Them being friends was a complete coincidence and in any other situation wouldn't make a lick of sense, and yet, somehow, it endures.

nOTP:

Harley, Godiva. Seriously what WERE those???

random HC:

"He thinks in Esperanto" was a throw away line but I really like it regardless. Also I think him having no knowledge of ordinary things is hilarious. He can tell you the (mostly) complete history of a landmark, but have absolutely no clue where it's located. Also I think he needs a doppelganger thats just incredibly Canadian because I still don't know if that was a real admission from the n52 days but my WORD is it funny.

unpopular opinion:

I miss mindancer, I think she could be a really good rogue if she was developed right. Also Chel! WHERE IS CHEL!!!!

Song:

Too Much Time On My Hands by Styx. I've got a whole playlist if you're interested, too.

Fav pic:

[ID: the cover of Justice League America #37. Booster is holding a hand out towards the viewer, a surprised look on his face. Fire stands behind him, fearfully clutching his chest. Behind them, Beetle is cowering in Ice's arms. A wall of grey paneling is behind them, with an electronic sign reading "intruder alert." /End ID.]

A friend once said that BG had bimbo lips in this picture and it stuck with me so vividly that not only do I ALSO now think that every time I see this pic, I always make sure when I'm drawing BG to "remember to give him the bimbo lips." Also I'm just really partial to Hughes' art of BG in general.

[taiblogcomics]

Absolutely Thera-Pissed

Hey there, visas and green cards. It's our ninth blogaversary! Wow, we've been going for quite a long time. Long enough to completely change platforms at least once. Considering we just finished our whole backlog, I think we should try something new in honour of the amazing coincidence of these two events synching up. Before we start on another backlog of terrible comics (trust me, I have something in mind), let's do something we've never done before on this blog. We've only ever really covered comics issue by issue. How would you feel, dear readers, if we instead did an entire storyline all at once?

And oh boy, do I have just the storyline in mind. Here's the cover:

Oh yeah. We're doing this. This story has kind of hung over this blog, mostly due to its connections to Red Hood and the Outlaws. It also prominitely features Harley Quinn, who also appeared in Suicide Squad (which ended before this story took place). And personally, I am a fan of Harley, Booster, and the Titans. And oh boy, does this comic shit all over them, in some of the most truly appalling ways possible. This is Heroes in Crisis. All nine issues. Let's jump right in~

I won’t be going over the covers of the individual issues, or even this one so much, but I do like that quote at the top. It is actually some good superhero artwork! It is an extremely awful story, but the artwork is fine~

So the first issue starts like this: Booster Gold's in one of those tiny middle-American diners. The host's loving it, since she says superheroes never show up and eat here. And oh look, here comes another one! Booster replies that that's no hero, as Harley Quinn walks in. Clearly he hasn't been reading her solo series. Harley orders some pie, and she and Booster eat in terse silence. Until suddenly Harley grabs a knife, and the two begin a real knock-down, drag-out fight. And lemme tell ya something, Harley keeps up with a guy who can fly and project forcefields pretty well. Eventually the pair are exhausted, and Booster says he's gotta bring Harley in, after what he saw her do. Harley protests, because she didn't kill all those people. She saw Booster do it.

All this is intercut with two different scenes. One is sort of a confession-cam style thing, a bunch of heroes (including Harley, Blue Jay, Booster, and Hotspot) all admitting they're here for therapy. And the second is Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman talking with each other as they land in a particular site. This place is called Sanctuary. It is currently full of dead heroes. Among the deceased here are Hotspot, Lagoon Boy, Wally West, and Roy Harper. And this is my first major complaint. Do you know what all these characters have in common? Hey, DC: Stop using the Titans as your cannon fodder. Stop treating them as a joke. Every iteration of the team deserves more respect than this.

So Harley and Booster are going to be our POV characters for this story. I like both of these characters a lot, so this is probably going to be pretty painful seeing them written horribly. Harley goes off to the Penguin for protection, and we actually get to see her in her old costume. It is a breath of fresh air, honestly. Booster, meanwhile, mostly just tries to rationalise his actions with Skeets, his robot buddy. Booster suffered kind of a psychotic break back in the Batman storyline "The Gift", which is why he was in Sanctuary to begin with. This story is basically a follow-up to that one, and has the same sort of tone.

Harley confronts the trinity in Gotham, revealing she set the whole thing up with Penguin just so she could get close to them on her terms. She uses the Lasso of Truth to confess she saw Booster Gold do it, then uses the Kryptonite in Batman's belt to skip town. The next time we see her, she's at the docks, giving a eulogy to Poison Ivy, another victim of Sanctuary. Booster Gold, meanwhile, has rationalised that Batman would solve the crime himself rather than turn himself in, and goes to Barry Allen to check in. Of course, the trinity are the only ones who know about the accident yet, so when Booster tells Barry that Wally's dead, he gets super pissed. Just like the readers are!

Issue 3 is a flashback issue, showing Booster's first day at Sanctuary. Sanctuary works like this: everyone gets their own private quarters, and if they want to visit the common areas, they wear a mask and cloak to preserve anonymity. Here's the first really big problem with Sanctuary: while therapy for superheroes is a good (possibly necessary) concept, Sanctuary is only one kind of therapy. It essentially assumes everyone responds the same to the same sort of therapy. The kind here is that Sanctuary gives you a private room that simulates your traumas (with a holodeck) and has you physically confront them. Lagoon Boy, for example, is shown to be facing the laser that killed him over and over again. Wally sets up superhero battles that still have his kids with him. And while this sort of therapy might help some people, it's definitely not universal.

Booster starts his first session, which ends up just being a hologram of himself, talking to him. Before he can get much further, though, alarms go off and everyone is urged to emergency evacuate. Lagoon Boy is killed--in a deliberate callback to his previous death, no less--and we see a few other victims, including Red Devil, Commander Steel, and Gunfire. Wally clutches Roy's body as he dies in his arms, and Harley smacks Wally in the face with her hammer. She greets Booster cheerfully, and he admits he's having a hell of a first day.

After a brief scene of Aqualad (Garth, in this case) drinking in a bar--and who can blame him for wanting to drink after experiencing this story?--Batman and Barry meet, thus showing they're still unsure who did it. Booster is being interrogated under the Lasso of Truth, and he relays the previous issue to us. In his mind, Harley did it. Harley, meanwhile, has tracked down Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) and surprisingly... they hug. Babs promises to help stick by Harley and prove her innocence. After all, Babs has been through trauma, too. The comic reminds us of this with another confession-cam video, showing Babs display the scars she received from “The Killing Joke".

So, about these confession cams... They've been interspersed between scenes, showing everyone from Batman down to guys like Gunfire or the Protector relaying their problems by confession. Again, this sort of therapy isn't for everyone, but it's the only one Sanctuary's got. Superman tells Batman that Lois has been receiving these videos anonymously. Batman responds that there are no videos. Sanctuary does not keep records, to preserve patient confidentiality. Supes replies that there are videos, he's seen them, and now the media has them. The issue ends with a breaking story about "What is the secret superhero Sanctuary?" exposé airing on television...

Speaking of breaking, Blue Beetle (Ted Kord, who I'm as surprised as anybody to find out is alive again post-Rebirth) breaks Booster out of the Hall of Justice where he's being held. The pair watch the breaking news report on television while they try to come up with a plan. Booster's idea is to confess to Barry again, figuring they won't expect the stupidest possible move, making it actually the smartest possible move. Booster has not really recovered from his insanity, I see. He and Beetle do exactly that, surprising Barry at work, which is apparently all the advantage they need. This is because Barry, as a forensic scientist, has access to the data on the autopsies.

While Superman makes a public statement to the press regarding Sanctuary, Batman passes Skeets into Batgirl's care, and she immediately violates that trust by in turn passing Skeets to Harley. It's implied Harley tortures the information regarding Booster's whereabouts out of Skeets, but it's okay because he's just a robot. Babs and Harley turn up at Booster's place as he's analysing the data he obtained from Barry. Here's where it all starts to fall into place: the data on Wally West says his body is five days older than the rest of them.

Issue 6 is kind of a triple piece, but one that can be summed up fairly quickly. It focuses on three specific characters who were all at Sanctuary. The parts regarding Gnaark the caveman (another Titans alumnus) are ultimately pointless, since the issue ends with his death. The parts with Harley focus on Joker's abuse of her and Posion Ivy's care towards her. This also ends badly. Wally's parts focus on the DC Rebirth story where he essentially willed himself back into the universe. And while that story is really good and it was a joy to see Wally again, it ultimately ended with the knowledge that Wally's family did not reappear with him. His kids are gone, his wife is with someone else and does not remember him, and until he forced his way back into everyone's memories, no one else recalled him either. This would traumatise anybody. But it may have really traumatised Wally.

The next issue starts really well, honestly. Booster and Harley are fighting it out--again--while Babs and Beetle just watch. Like, they aren't even stressed, they're both familiar with their respective charges, and this is really no surprise. In any other comic, this would be a great scene. Shame that it's in this one, and it's not nearly enough to save even a lick of it. Eventually Babs works out that Booster's forcefields are only currently working because of some jury-rigged tech that's powered by Blue Beetle's consciousness. So she knocks him out with one hit. Harley prepares a killing blow, but ultimately cannot go through with it, proving she's a good person. She and Booster just collapse on the floor, and bond over the fact that they both kind of suck as superheroes (from their own perspectives, at least).

With Booster, Beetle, Babs, and Harley (Barley?) all on the same side now, the group decide to get to the bottom of everything together. Meanwhile, the rose Harley dropped off the docks is picked up by Wally. See, while the body they found of Wally is five days older than the rest, this means he time-traveled and is still at present alive. Wally channels his Speed Force into the rose, causing it to grow rapidly--and Poison Ivy blooms from it, restored to life. I don't get it either, but if it means Ivy didn't die in this stupid story, I'll take it. Wally then apologises, since Ivy just returned to life and now she has to see death so soon. Those five days are up, and a second Wally appears, ready to literally kill himself.

So here's what really fucking happened.

Wally had been at Sanctuary three weeks already. He's frustrated because the therapy's not helping as fast as he thought it would. He does a jump into the Speed Force and basically exists everywhere at once. Spread across the time stream, he witnesses everybody's confession cams all at once. He sees "the trauma of a thousand heroes in crisis" (hey, we have a title, ladies and gentlemen). And... it's too much. Realising everybody's personal pain breaks him. He unleashes the burst of pent-up energy he'd stored to do the time jaunt thing and kills everyone at Sanctuary.

Lagoon Boy. Protector. Hotspot. Red Devil. Arsenal. Gnaark. Solstice. Tattooed Man. Gunfire. Blue Jay. Commander Steel. Nemesis. I want you to remember these names. These were all pre-existing characters. Half of them were members of the Titans at one point or another. Wally West, the Flash, killed them in a stupid, stupid storyline that not only assassinates his character, but also literally assassinates all these other characters.

Wally uses his super speed to set up the bodies, rig the crime scenes so it looks like Harley or Booster could be responsible for their deaths. He then travels forward in time to the present moment, where he has just confessed all this to Poison Ivy. He kills that version of himself and travels back in time with it to fake his own death. He then uses the VR tech of Sanctuary to trick Booster and Harley into believing they saw the other commit the deeds. Neither of them even knew they'd never left their respective therapy simulations. This leaves Wally with a five day window to figure out something good he can do to make up for killing everyone.

So the final issue wraps it up like this: Booster time-travels the group back to where Barry is about to kill his own paradox clone. Harley and Ivy reunite, which is nice. So here's the plan: this doesn't have to end with any more death. In the end, what Barry did was all an accident. So Booster travels into the future to make a clone of the paradox-Wally. This gives them a five-day-old body they can leave at the massacre, in order to close the timeloop. The present Wally turns himself in and is arrested, while the five-days-ago paradox Wally merges back into the Speed Force, still running to try and find his family.

And the "good" thing Wally did to make up for killing everyone? He was the one that leaked Sanctuary's existence to the media. In his mind, the idea that heroes are seen as constant paragons was too much pressure. By letting the public know that even superheroes need therapy, even superheroes suffer trauma just like everyone else, he he could let people know that heroes are just that: people. People like everyone else. And that it is okay for anyone to seek help if you need it. This seems like a nice sentiment, until you remember the reason Wally killed everyone is because he was impatient about how his therapy was going.  What an awful story.

-----

Like, legitimately, this story is just awful. The basic premise--that heroes could probably do with therapy--is not a bad one. The execution is just really completely mismanaged, though. Start with the beginning. Why are Harley Quinn and Booster Gold chosen as the focus characters? Because they're the ones you could believe would orchestrate a mass murder, right? Except no. You would never believe that. Booster is not that much of a screw-up, and Harley is not that much of a villain. Neither of them have been those things for many years. The readers know that, but it feels like the writer didn't.

And that's the worst part of it all. The superficiality of the story. In the end, why was this story written? To explore the concept of therapy for superheroes? Well, then, it went about it in the worst way possible. Not everyone experiences trauma in the same way. And therefore, not everyone responds to therapy in the same way. The way therapy is depicted in this story is just wrong. Frankly, Sanctuary looks like one of the worst places to get treatment, right alongside Arkham Asylum. Do you think anybody's really going to take away from this story "It's okay to talk about your traumas if you need to"? In or out of universe?

I didn't really talk about the confession cams, but they seemed highly unnecessary. They were always the same, a 3x3 of panels featuring a superhero talking about their traumas. Most of them didn't factor into the story, and at most they felt like a common scene transition. They tried to give them some weight by revealing that the contents of all these possibly got leaked? But then they just kinda dropped that subplot. Which was really kind of serious, because the traumas range from the Protector (a character created for drug PSAs) confessing that he has done drugs to Superman talking about the burden of keeping his identity secret. How much of these did the public actually get? And if it was none, what was even the point of it being a subplot~? Like, leak that Sanctuary existed, sure, but why did Lois Lane get sent all the videos that shouldn't have existed~?

What this story has done to Wally is awful. They have completely tarnished this likeable, amazing hero by having him kill twelve people (thirteen, if you include Poison Ivy), several of them colleagues and friends. All because he's trying to fake his way through therapy when it isn't helping him as fast as he wants. Know what would have been a good story? How about he learns to cope with his trauma? How about he actually gets his family back? It's unrealistic as hell, but it's a fictional story. It's escapism. It's okay to have a happy ending. I ''want'' my stories to end in happy endings, because it's so hard to get them in real life. I want something better than this.

DC Rebirth was a breath of fresh air. Wally's return to the DC universe felt like the clouds were lifitng. The stories following Rebirth felt like a return to form after the darkening of the New 52. It felt like the stories were getting good again, like the comics were getting fun and hopeful again. It couldn't last, though, could it? This story is only three years after the Rebirth initiative. Three years? That's all the hope we get in the universe? I sincerely hope this story ends up an abberation, and not a return to form of the darker, more dour universe we put up with in the New 52. Especially given current events, you can understand why a brighter, optimistic fictional world is appealing. I sincerely hope that when comics resume publication after the pandemic, a more positive outlook continues, and stories like this are left in the garbage where they belong.

This book is fucking awful, and I am done with it. Next week, we'll start reviewing an all-new series for the Taiblog. Let's just say I'm not done ranting about injustices against the Teen Titans~

[renaroo]

Some Times (Time and Time Again) (8/8)

Disclaimer: Booster Gold, Blue Beetle, and associated characters are the creative property of DC Comics. Warnings: Canon shaken not stirred, Heavy canon references to Booster Gold (2009-2011) and Blue Beetle (2016-2018) Pairings: Boostle Rating: T Synopsis: Booster Gold and the rest of the Time Masters are still straightening up things in the wake of the most recent universal Rebirth. But Rip Hunter is still missing in the aftermath, leaving Booster in charge with Skeets, Michelle, and Rani. But there’s a distraction for Booster, one he can’t keep himself from ignoring.

Ted Kord, miraculously, is still alive. And that makes everything more complicated than Michael could have ever imagined.

A/N: We’re finally here! After such a long wait, we’ve finally come to the end of this fic. It’s been a wild ride, fueled at the end here by quarantine and anxiety, but I really have loved writing this story. I adore these characters, miss the Time Family in the comics, and hope I did them justice in this story. I hope it is something enjoyable for all of you, too.

As we wrap up this long journey, I absolutely must thank all of you for coming along with me. And, of course, a wonderful and appreciative thank you to @babybatbrat, @spiralcass, @shibascarf, @mcbangle, gaymage, Schw0099, GeorginaNadia, @secretlystephaniebrown, and arouraleona for your lovely comments and supportive words <3 I appreciate them so very much!

Michael Jon Carter

Booster Gold is not new to being a superhero.

He’s been there and seen that. His current “job” interview was him watching the rebirth of the multiverse after a giant mind-controlling worm tore everything to hell. He fought with the bravest and greatest men and women he ever met against the monster that killed Superman. He actually got to confess his feelings and act with them for the friend that he couldn’t stop from dying years beforehand. 

And he is still unprepared for the twists and turns before him now. 

From underneath a metal I-beam, Michael Jon Carter stares in silence at the shimmering black metal of Black Beetle. He heard Rani’s accusation, but what is more deafening is what comes after.

Black Beetle stands in silence rather than correct her. 

Ted, on his back still behind Rani, looks around multiple times before squinting at Black Beetle. “What’s a Boppy?” he asks cluelessly.

“Nothing,” Black Beetle insists, scooping forward and grabbing Rani’s wrist before retching her away from his line of fire. “Not anymore.”

A wild spark of protectiveness takes possession of Booster as he realizes what’s about to happen. Even with the pounding in his chest and ears ever-growing -- god, Rani can’t be right, she can’t -- he knows he has to save Ted first and foremost. He pushes and shoves at the heavy metal laying across him when it rather unexpectedly gives way.

Blinking in surprise, Booster glances over and sees Michelle across the other side of the lab near the transporter platform. She’s weary, but her hand is reaching forward outstretched toward the I-beam, using her suit’s magnetism.

“Mike, go!” she coughs out. 

His family, his loved ones, are all in pain around him, and Booster can’t figure out a way to heal all of it outside of the most direct way first.

Clenching his fist, Booster flings himself forward with the force of his flight ring. He tackles into Black Beetle’s waist and takes him into the nearest wall before he can fire at Ted. 

Then, before either himself or the time-traveling menace can catch their breath again, they are enclosed in a thick bubble produced by the forcefield belt.

“Boost!” “Mikey!” “Michael!” muffled yells cry from outside.

For the moment, Booster ignores them, pushing up to his feet one foot at a time. He can feel a trickle of blood down from his nose yet again, but he ignores it, focusing instead as Black Beetle stands back up. 

“You think you can keep me trapped in here, Gold?” he snarls.

“I don’t know, it worked for Guy Gardner before,” Booster only half jests. He stands tall, meeting Black Beetle eye to eye. “And like it or not, he has a lantern ring. Is that blaster stronger than the most powerful tool in the universe?”

Black Beetle snarls and begins to readjust his suit’s weaponry. “Then I’ll take that belt off of you and free us both.”

“Maybe,” Booster admits, “but you should at least answer some questions for me first.”

“I don’t owe you anything,” Black Beetle growls. 

“Yeah? So sure about that?” Booster taunts, stabbing a finger at Black Beetle’s armored chest. “Is Rani right? Is whoever is inside that black tin can Rip Hunter?” He squinted at the little exposed face he could see and felt a sickening lurch in his stomach. “Are you my missing friend?”

“You and Rip Hunter were never friends,” Black Beetle says coldly.

“We were friends to me,” Booster says gently. He searches Beetle’s face and feels his chest clench. “Rip. C’mon, Rip. It’s you. Please, just. Take the helmet down. I haven’t seen you in months. Years, it feels like.”

For a moment, there is no response from Black Beetle at all. He stands, stoically, nose to nose with Booster before tipping his head down. All at once, his armor responds, cryptically unfolding and reforming away from his head regressing back into the torso of the suit. 

Booster sets his jaw, his heart still aching at the reveal no matter how much Booster attempted to prepare himself. 

Rip Hunter’s face is unmistakable, from his firm brow to the stern lines of his jaw. His hair is returned to the dirty blonde, no longer dyed or shaded as Rip has taken to. But, what is not the same, is the haunting glow that now envelops his eyes. It permeates out around him, rotating in a colorful display of the rainbow lights Booster has become so familiar with from the timestream. 

“What’s happening?” Booster demands immediately. “You wouldn’t do all of this without a reason, you wouldn’t… None of this would be happening unless Rip Hunter had a good reason. No matter how crazy he is. You are. Whatever. What I’m trying to say is...” Booster looks down to his hands which seem to be shrugging back at him in confusion before he throws them up in defeat. “What the actual fuck!?”

Scowling at him in a way that only Rip Hunter can, Black Beetle glares back into Booster’s face. “I am doing what Rip Hunter always must do -- correct the timestream, preserve events, make the tough choices.”

“Were you always Black Beetle?” Booster asks. “Either you need an Oscar or Rip -- my Rip -- didn’t know anything about this when you first showed up.”

“A Rip Hunter is always Black Beetle,” he answers cryptically.

“You really are Rip, because only Rip can make me that infuriated in a sentence,” Booster groans, rubbing a hand across his face only to flinch at the pain from his nose. “Why are you trying to kill Ted? Time has changed -- you yourself used to talk about it being fluid! Everything’s stable! Ted doesn’t have to die to save the universe!”

“He has to die for Rip Hunter to exist, that is obvious!” Black Beetle snarls, the chronal energy beginning to shine through even his mouth. “Each moment takes me closer to being rewritten, closer to impermanence! And without me there will be no protection for time itself! The universe will never survive!” 

“Wow, you egotistical jackass, I’m right here!” Booster shouts back, gesturing to himself wildly. “You trained me! And I wasn’t going to sit back and let you disappear before I knew you were going to have this chronal temper tantrum, and I’m definitely not going to do it now! Give me some credit.”

“You will be too content to see me come to existence,” Rip declares, beginning to fold in on himself, his body convulsing in a seizure that was all too familiar to Booster after his own bout of chronal leprosy. “I will never come to be.”

“What a terrible thing to think of your family,” Booster jokes gently, moving to catch Rip’s now bulking shoulders. He falls to his knees on the floor with him.

“You don’t even know how much family we are,” Rip chokes out. “You may never know.”

Booster’s chest clenches at that and he presses his forehead to Rip’s. “I think, buddy, I’ve got a clue,” he remarks gently. “You’re sick and you’re not thinking straight, Rip. And if you think you’re not coming into existence in this universe, you’re so wrong it’s laughable. Really! When you’re old enough, I’m going to give you such shit for it. The great Rip Hunter, bested by Booster Gold.”

“Bested by Michael Carter,” Rip says weakly back, his skin beginning to crack and shed chronal light more and more. The crevices of his suit shine brightly with it. “Will you promise? To make sure?”

“Of course, Rip,” Booster says, leaning back and away far enough to look fully into Rip’s face. “I’m good on my word to my family. Always.”

He waits, watching as Rip and Black Beetle in one disappear before his very eyes, pieces of chronal energy breaking up bit by bit and folding in on itself, disappearing from visible existence as if it were never there. Michael clutches his fists and tightly squeezes his eyes together as his chin drops to his chest. A surge of emotions he hasn’t let himself feel for Rip rush through him at once. 

After a long breath, he lowers his field and releases a long sigh. 

“Chalk that one down,” he says miserably, barely glancing over his shoulder at the three standing in shocked silence behind him. 

“Chalk what down, Boost?” Ted bothers to utter as Michelle and Rani hug and let tears run down their faces. 

“Well,” Booster sighs, pushing up to his feet, “I promised whenever he’s reborn and old enough, I’m going to give him shit for being wrong for once. That is a father-son promise that absolutely I am going to keep.”

He’s wobbly in his knees as he steps over to Ted and the others, but he tries his best not to show it. He’s already feeling weak in a lot of other ways and he doesn’t feel like letting any of them show. 

Ted is banged up and holding onto his right shoulder rather tenderly. But his face is more concerned than pained. 

“Are you okay?” Ted asks.

“Of course not,” Michael answers back. “You?”

“I’m, honestly, really confused,” Ted says, scratching at the back of his head. “But I’m also, just, really glad. Glad’s a weird way to be right now, isn’t it? I mean I’m relieved. Nope, not any better. I’m, uh. I’m…”

For just a moment, Booster raises a finger to hush Ted and tilts his body enough to look Michelle and Rani’s ways. 

“Girls? Are you guys going to be okay?” he asks tiredly.

“Yeah,” Shel answers, wiping at her eyes with the hand not gripped by Rani. “I-I’ll be okay.”

Rani nods, sniffling. “Boppy’ll be back. So I’m okay.”

Nodding, Booster takes a breath and then immediately slings his arms around Ted’s shoulders and pulls him into a full-body hug. “This is the weirdest, wildest, dumbest reunion of all time, but I don’t want you to ever doubt that…” he looks ahead, searching for his words. He blinks in distraction. “Don’t… want you to…” 

Holding Ted and arm's length, Booster stares ahead at Skeets and, more specifically, at the chalkboard just behind Skeet’s floating form.

Where before Ted Kord is KEY was written by itself, there is now a giant checkmark

“That… That dramatic son of a bitch!” Michael cries out, forgetting his weariness to stomp over to the board and examine. “He’s-- He does exist in this universe and has been writing on the board! The whole time! He could have-- why did he want--”

“Michael,” Michelle clears her throat before stiffly nodding her head toward Ted. “Maybe he… needed to make sure… things happened.”

Ted, for his part, looks utterly lost. 

“Come here,” Booster groans, reaching over to grab Ted’s wrist and yanking him close before planting a kiss to his cheek. 

“God, you could just ask me to take a few steps forward,” Ted chuckles into Booster’s skin.

He then grabs Michelle and Rani and pulls them all close.  “My family is all here,” he says confidently. “Even if one’s hiding out in the timestream like a jackass right now.”

“Language, Michael, really,” Michelle says with no heat to her words at all.

“And I’m always going to do what’s right for all of you,” he promises. 

They hug him back, every bit of his body held close by the people he loves most in the world at that moment in time. 

Then another I-beam falls ten feet ahead of them causing them all to jump and yell in surprise. 

“Okay,” Booster says, slow and drawn out. “What’s best for our family next step is probably fixing this place up before doing any other time shenanigans because I think I’ve put that off for about as long as the old Lab’s going to take it.”

“Well, not to brag,” Ted says before reaching up and pulling his goggles down over his eyes, “but I’m actually kind of a genius with labs.”

Booster feels his face melt into an affectionate smile, looking over Ted so fondly. “I know.”

“Ew, is this what love looks like,” Rani says, sticking out her tongue.

“Come here you,” Booster laughs, grabbing her sides and pulling her into a bear hug so that he can nuzzle her neck while she struggles and shrilly giggles. He flinches and lets go to check on his nose.

“You deserve that, brother-o’-mine,” Shel baps him on the head.

Ted, though, is on his knees and holding out his hands to study the bandage over Booster’s nose instead. He smirks and shakes his head. “You do know that promise goes both ways, right?” he asks, gently putting his hands over Booster’s. “I’ll do anything that’s best for you, too.”

“I know,” Booster says.

He knows there’s a lot of work still left to do, and that this new universe has a lot of things left to fix, but he feels in his soul more than he ever has before that on the track they’re on, there’s no place he’d rather be in that moment. For once, he can’t wait to see what the future might bring.

[tessatechaitea]

Justice League Spectacular #1 (1992)

Just off-panel: Bibbo's ice cream truck.

I probably shouldn't be reading this or Justice League Quarterly before I read the Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League but what can I do? That's the order they were placed in the short box! It would be a different story if free will were not an illusion but since it is, my hands are tied. It's either read this or, um, I don't know. Die from a temporal paradox? I won't risk it! I was looking through a bunch of my old writing and art last week and discovered a bunch of the kind of sentimental and sort of intellectual crap young people write. It's the kind of stuff you hide away and never show anybody ever and hope that when you die, it'll just get tossed in a dumpster with your old porn and Magic the Gathering cards. But it got me thinking about how brave I am! So brave! The kind of brave you wouldn't hesitate to call some jerk who signed up for the military because he couldn't live as a civilian. No, no. More braver than that! And being this super brave kind of person, I thought that maybe I should share some of this old poetry with everybody! But not yet! You have to work up to being truly brave! So instead, I'll share this piece of artwork I did that was supposed to be the first in a lengthy and disgusting series. It's of Lord Fondlerot, a character I created for the Dwarflover online comic I used to do. He was really into fucking things and I thought, "Hey! I should do a series of drawings where he fucks every creature in the monster manual!" But instead of doing an entire series, I drew one picture and grew either bored or disgusted with the concept. So here's that one picture:

Lord Fondlerot fucking an Axebeak.

Now you're probably wondering just how terrible my poetry must be if I'm opening with that! Well, you'll see soon enough! This issue begins with Sue Dibny still alive and visiting a Florida theme park with her husband, The Elasticated Man. Wow, remember when Sue Dibny was killed and all the heroes freaked out about their secret identities and considered doing intense brain damage to every single person who ever knew any of their identities until they found out that The Atom's ex-wife Jean Loring had gone cuckoo for Atom's cocoa puffs? She wanted them back so bad that she began threatening and murdering the loved ones of all the super heroes. It was the kind of story DC sometimes does where you read it and think, "Well, the twist at the end of that mystery was definitely worth the destruction of the most stable marriage in the DC Universe and also the death of Firestorm and Captain Boomerang! So good!" I mean it doesn't make you think that. It makes you think the exact opposite. Tom King would eventually do pretty much the same thing in Heroes in Crisis but instead of Jean Loring fucking up by accidentally killing Sue Dibny and murdering more people to cover her tracks, Wally West fucks up and kills Poison Ivy and some others and then tries to cover his tracks. But at least Tom King's had all of those entertaining scenes where the heroes are doing therapy and we get to see how much they're all suffering from PTSD. That's always a fun aspect of super heroes we never get to read enough about. Dammit! I keep doing it. I meant it was the opposite of fun! Although I still liked it because sometimes I just like seeing other people in pain. Not in a sick perverse way where I pop a boner or something! Just in that way where you sit around all day thinking, "My life is terrible and everything is wrong and I hate my parents for bringing me into this wretched existence and the only thing that might make me feel better is to learn that Superman sometimes feels the same way." Oh, remember when Tom King was writing Batman and he had that two issue Booster Gold arc where we got to see how fucking insane Booster Gold was from living through all of those horrible, wretched, dark alternate timelines? And the only way he can deal with the trauma and the PTSD is by making a joke out of everything? I'll have to think of that as the canon Booster Gold when I'm reading Giffen and DeMatteis's Justice League. Maybe it'll make all of Booster and Beetle's inappropriate joking more appropriate. Back to the story, Sue Dibny, alive and well, and her husband Ralph "The Elasticated Man" Dibny are busy showing a bunch of European diplomats around the non-Disney World theme park.

See? You can tell they're European because they're all smart and shit.

The first stop in the park is to Alice's Wonderland where the diplomats are attacked by the Royal Flush Gang. They are a gang whose theme is playing cards and not expensive toilets. Their powers are the ability to ride on gigantic cards and to make poker puns.

If looking good in tight fitting costumes is also a power, it's my new answer to the question of which super power would I choose..

Ten's outfit reminds me of the days when nipples were allowed to show through tops without being erased away through some kind of editing software. The 70s were a wild decade! Sure, there were also nips on television in the 80s but the 80s, generally speaking, sucked and were a huge contribution to the downfall of America.

The King of Spades mansplaining their entire concept to the Queen of Spades.

It's true that the royal flush beats any other poker hand but I doubt Superman is going to surrender after this concept is explained to him because, in the end, they're not fucking playing poker. It turns out Maxwell Lord paid the Royal Flush Gang to make a little trouble so the Justice League could beat them up and get some media attention. But the Justice League has apparently broken up and The Elasticated Man just isn't hero enough to save the European delegates all by himself. He might have been if the Royal Flush Gang had done what they were told and not really fight back. But why would they do that?! Wouldn't they still be in trouble with federal agents?! Booster Gold finds Blue Beetle busy pouting in the old Justice League cave headquarters. Booster has decided to try to cheer his old buddy up although why wouldn't Booster just travel to a timeline where Ted Kord is already cheered up? Is that how time travel works in the DCU? Or did Booster already try that, it went horribly sideways, and now he's a little more fucked up in the head when he returns to the "real" timeline?

For some reason, Ice and Fire have also come down to the cave. Probably to accidentally go on a double date with Booster and Beetle. Booster and Fire and Beetle and Ice hear a news report about the Royal Flush Gang and decide to go save Ralph. Superman also hears about the situation and heads to Florida where he's almost immediately defeated by The Royal Flush Gang. Not because they're dangerous and competent super villains but because some mysterious benefactor has give them weapons capable of knocking out Superman's powers. Maxwell Lord is not that benefactor so who could have done it? Certainly not Guy Gardner, right?! What would he want with getting the Justice League back together. Isn't he busy being Warrior or something by this point? Power Girl, Metamorpho, and Guy Gardner all join in on the fight. The guy behind it all is that Weapons Master dude who is desperate to get a new weapon for his arsenal: a Green Lantern ring. The attack on the Royal Flush Gang fails to get him the ring so he decides to attack directly. But not in this issue! He has to wait for a regular series issue. Ice uses Guy's ring to contact Hal Jordan because somebody finally decided this Justice League wasn't really a big league Justice League. Everybody reading it knew it for years. But I guess Dan Jurgens was assigned the task to get a new, more believably powerful League together. So Hal Jordan flies around to pick up some new members to save the day. He chooses The Flash and Aquaman which seems about right. But he also chooses Crimson Fox which seems like sliding backwards into goofy Justice League territory. Not that I totally approve of Aquaman but I have to admit he's a "serious" choice for the League.

Doctor Light also joins the party. Although why she'd keep the name of a pedo, I couldn't guess. Just become Lightwoman or something. But no! Once some jerk earns their doctorate, they just have to demand to be called Doctor.

I'm sorry. I was too distracted pointing out that Doctor Light joined the fight and how her namesake was a pervert to comment on Metamorpho acting like a huge fucking pig. Crimson Fox beats up some guys dressed as cards and admits that she's a boring idiot whose favorite part of the game is shuffling the cards. I understand the need to think up some kind of goofy one-liner when you go into battle but shouldn't you at least try to think up one that doesn't make yourself sound like a pathetic asshole? Weapons Master's plan failed but he figures he has enough information to get Green Lantern's ring next time. He'll then sell it to a Dominator for a few bucks and maybe some slaves. The big hitters talk it over and decide they should start a new Justice League without the approval of the United Nations. Yeah! Who needs some stupid Earthly authority when you've got an invulnerable Kryptonian, an all powerful space cop, and the king of the seven seas! All they need is a Greek Goddess and a mentally ill furry with a long history of violent behavior and they'll have the big team back together! Booyah! I mean, without that stupid Booyah shit because Cyborg is basically a toaster at this point. Maybe. I don't know! What am I, Johnni DC, Continuity Cop?! The heroes make one more decision: split the group into two Leagues. So once again, they're forming Justice League America and Justice League Europe. How come I don't remember this shit?! Did the comics get canceled in '92 and then immediately fired back up? I don't seem to remember two different incarnations of these teams. Maybe I should have stored my comic books in chronological order so it would all make sense. Justice League Spectacular #1 Rating: C. I just read the letters pages and it looks like this comic book takes place between JLA #60 and JLA #61! So editorial decided the teams needed to be shaken up and the best way to do it was to disband the League in the regular series, have a special one-shot comic that gets them back together but with a different roster, and then send them back to work in the next issue of the regular series. I guess I should just shove this comic book into the middle of the regular series so when I reread it all again in my 80s, it'll make more sense! Let's close with the worst drawing of Aquaman I've ever seen:

Actually, he looks a little bit like Grunion Guy.

[firesoulstuff]

Blogger asks. I'm sorry there's so many but I liked too many of the questions. 2 3 7 8 11 13 18 20 21 25 28 29 31 32 33 34 38 39 40 42 46 50

2. What are your favourite cuisines?

I guess Italian cuisine? I don’t know. I’ll eat pretty much anything that isn’t spicy. I also really like most Asain cuisines but I’m also more cautious about it because I don’t know what half of it it.

3. What are your favourite TV shows?

I’ll limit myself to three: DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, The Flash, Bob’s Burgers

7. What are your favourite books?

WHY do people keep asking me about books?!?! I haven’t read an actual book since I was MAYBE fourteen! I’ll say the Avatar: The Last Airbender graphic novels

8. What are your favourite movies?

Again, I’ll limit myself to three: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Jumanji Welcome to the Jungle, Frozen 2

11. If you had to get a new pet right now (ignoring price), what would you get? What would you name them?

I would LOVE a dog. Any dog. Dream pet is a Dachshund who I would name Booster.

13. If you had to make everyone you know watch one movie, read one book, and listen to one song, what would they be?

Movie: Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle

Book: The Search (Avatar the Last Airbender comic)

Song: 1985, Bowling for Soup

18. If you had to pick one item to be gifted to you (up to $50,000 USD in value) that you couldn’t exchange/give away, what would you pick?

Does student loan repayment count??? Because that would cover a good portion of it.

20. If you had to become a high school teacher, what subject would you teach? And what club/sports team would you advise?

I would teach History or English, solely because those are the two classes I understand. I would advise the drama club.

21. What’s one time that someone made you laugh uncontrollably?

This middle-aged man who came into the restaurant I work in and it’s a “walk up to the counter and place your order, come get it when we call the number” type place. This dude and his wife had the stupidest, most complicated order, and talked SO LOUD/FAST. They were ordering from my coworker a register over from me and the guy who’s order I was taking had to stop several times because he couldn’t hear himself over this guy loudly asking what kind of cheese came on a cheddar melt and if his wife could get her tossed salad as a wrap. THEN, 20 minutes later, this guy comes back after getting his food and ends up making me come with him back to his table, where there are six senior citizens and his wife, all unable to figure out what food belongs to who. I sorted it out and then went back to the kitchen and LOST it. The whole situation was so utterly ridiculous. The guy ended up backing his huge van into the corner of our roof later; which should not be possible but he managed.

25. What’s the book/movie/TV show that influenced you the most out of everything?

I’m not really sure. I looked a lot to TV growing up for my role models. I think I’ve gotten this question before and said Kim Possible because I admired Shego’s sarcasm and aspired to it, so I’m going to stick with that answer.

28. What’s the best meal you’ve ever had?

This AMAZING Vietnamese soup a kid in my eighth grade class made for a cultural fair. I was too shy to ask him about the recipe or even the name and I have regretted it every day since. Ten years later and I still wish I knew what that soup was!

29. What’s the funniest movie you’ve ever seen?

Frozen 2. Between Olaf and Kristof I freaking lost it.

31. What’s one food/dish that you really want to try?

Dumplings.

32. Where are three places you want to travel to? Any specific reasons for them?

1. San Diego. Just because it is on the clear opposite end of the country from where I live.

2. The Japanese countryside. I have always wanted to see cherry blossoms are my favorite flowers and I would LOVE to see them in person.

3. Hampton Beach, New Hampshire. I’ve been a few times, it’s one of my favorite vacation places!

33. What’s one skill that you’d like to try and learn for fun?

Rifle shooting. I have no desire to own a gun, as I guarantee you that even if I had one for self defense I would get attacked and have it nowhere near me. That being said, if the apocalypse ever goes down, it would save me some time if I knew how to work my dad’s old hunting rifle.

34. What are some movies/TV shows that you most want to watch, but haven’t yet?

1. House

2. Umbrella Academy

3. Manifest (anyone know if this one is worth it?)

38. What are some foods that you hated as a kid, which you’ve now come to like?

Shrimp and broccoli

39. What are some of your most unusual pet peeves?

I really hate when people tip their heads back with the bag of chips to their mouth get all the crumbs at the bottom. No idea why that bothers me, it just does. I can’t watch and have to look away.

40. What are some of the most random/arbitrary reasons you’d swipe left on someone for (reject them) in a dating app?

(Ironically I made a dating app account today)

I swiped left on one guy because his profile picture was him wearing a suit. I just... I don’t trust a guy in a suit.

Also bad haircuts.

42. What are some songs that make you most want to sing along when you hear them?

Limiting myself to 5

1. Iris, The Goo-Goo Dolls

2. Welcome to my Life, Simple Plan

3. Accidentally in Love, Counting Crows

4. Breakaway, Kelly Clarkson

5. Stand, Rascal Flatts

46. What are some movies/TV shows/books that you think are overrated?

Movies: Harry Potter, Fast and Furious

TV Shows: Black Mirror, Prison Break (I like Prison Break a lot, but it really should’ve been done after two, MAYBE three seasons)

Books: Twilight, Harry Potter

50. In terms of weather, what does a “perfect day” look like to you?

74 degrees and sunny. No humidity.

[the-desolated-quill]

Shazam! - Quill’s Quickies (No Spoilers)

If you had asked me which DC movie I was most looking forward to last year, I would never have said Shazam. It just seemed like one of those D list superheroes Warner Bros pulled out of their arses in the hopes of keeping up with Marvel (other movies that were announced at the time were a Black Adam solo movie, Booster Gold, Lobo, Deadshot, Justice League Dark and The Sandman. Surprise, surprise, after the disaster that was Justice League, these films aren’t being made anymore). Also I was wary of DC trying to change tact in order to win back audience approval. In the case of Justice League, ‘changing tact’ resulted in a shallow, dull and pointless movie. Not that I’m saying DC needs to be dark. I’m open to lighter movies. I just didn’t want it to come at the cost of DC’s other strengths, which is its willingness to ask pointed and intelligent questions about superhero mythology (or at least attempt to, in the case of Batman V Superman).

Then the first Comic Con trailer came out and I was very pleasantly surprised. It had a great hook (a child becoming an adult superhero) and it was genuinely funny. In fact it quickly became my most anticipated movie this year.

So what did I think of Shazam?

Short answer: I LOVED it!

I’d even go as far to say that this is probably my favourite DC movie so far.

First off the cast is fantastic. Asher Angel and Zachary Levi are both amazing as Billy Batson. At no point do you ever doubt the authenticity of their performances. I one hundred percent believed they were the same character. Also I really appreciated that Levi didn’t hog the spotlight. Both he and Angel have roughly the same amount of screentime and director David F. Sandberg actually gets very creative with how he utilises the transformations in the film.

Oh yes. Lets quickly talk about the direction. Sandberg is better known for directing horror movies and, without giving too much away, there were some moments that really played up that horror vibe. But for the most part, the film is pretty much a straightforward comedy and Sandberg’s direction is flawless, embracing the strange and goofy material and really having fun with the concept.

Another character I really liked was the villain Dr. Sivana, played by Mark Strong. Not a very complex villain, but it works incredibly well. I especially love how the film completely throws itself into the melodrama of it all. I mean just look at him.

He looks like a Bond villain. They’re not trying to be remotely subtle about his villainy at all., And to be fair, with a name like Thaddeus Sivana, how could he?

The character is well written with a great motivation, I enjoyed the parallels the film makes between him and Billy, and Mark Strong milks it for all its worth with a delightfully hammy performance.

Other cast members I liked were Djimon Hounsou as the wizard Shazam who gives Billy his powers and Jack Dylan Grazer as Freddy Freeman, who gets some of the best lines in the film. In fact the entire foster family is brilliant and the kids do a great job in their roles. It could have been so easy for them to have been little more than caricatures, but they’re all really well developed and they all have a role to play in the story, particularly toward the end of the film, which I won’t spoil, but it’s got to be said that this film has one of the most satisfying third acts I’ve seen in a long time. The amount of payoffs was staggering. I had the biggest smile on my face throughout.

Something I quickly want to talk about is how the film writes and portrays kids. One of the things I absolutely hated about Spider-Man: Homecoming was how childish everyone was. It felt painfully like adults trying to write kid dialogue and in the process Peter Parker, who was supposed to be 15 years old in that movie, came across like a 7 year old. Shazam doesn’t have that problem and that’s largely because the film treats the kids like actual people rather than just walking punchlines or cuteness magnets. Even Zachary Levi, mercifully, doesn’t overdo it. When adults are asked to act like kids, what we normally end up with is a stupid adult acting childishly. Levi manages to pitch it at just the right level so it never becomes annoying or grating. The same can be said of the humour. Unlike recent MCU films, the comedy in Shazam never felt forced or awkward. It fitted perfectly with the tone of the movie and jokes hit bullseyes every time. I was laughing and laughing hard throughout. Yet despite the comedy, it still felt like a DC movie. It wasn’t like Justice League where they were trying desperately to be like Marvel. Like Wonder Woman, Shazam clearly takes place in the same world as Snyder’s movies, but brings its own ideas and style to the table, complimenting and building off of what came before.

As well as being a very funny movie, it’s also arguably the most wholesome movie to come out of DC since... well... ever. There’s a strong focus on heartwarming themes such as family and outcasts finding their place in the world and finding love and support with each other. There’s no cynicism or dark pretence to it. It feels genuine and authentic and has an extremely positive message behind it. Billy’s arc is genuinely touching and I was emotionally engaged throughout. I really liked Billy and I really liked this family.

Shazam is funny, emotional and intelligent, and you should definitely check it out if you haven’t already. DC have put their best foot forward with this movie and I really hope we get to see more from Shazam really soon.

[thecomicsnexus]

Cold Redemption

BOOSTER GOLD #2 MARCH 1986 BY DAN JURGENS, MIKE DECARLO AND TOM ZIUKO

SYNOPSIS (FROM DC DATABASE)

The mysterious woman has made off with the guidance system while Booster is paralyzed. While the press badger him for info, he manages to overcome the mental and physical paralysis and get up. with the help of his friend Dr. Klyburn he manages to answer a few questions and leave to rest and assess what to do.

The woman's name is Mindancer, and she is currently in the employ of a group called "The 1000", who have an underground facility beneath Centennial Park. The "director" of this organization accepts the guidance system and gives Mindancer a new job. Free Blackguard from maximum security and bring him back for discipline in regards to his failure.

Booster and Skeets speak with their secretary, Trixie, and then get a talking down to by Booster's PR guy, Dirk Davis. Dirk pisses off Booster and nearly gets canned. Booster's morale is down as he goes back to his penthouse.

Another mysterious lady (Thorn) is shown who is attempting to learn of The 1000's whereabouts.

Booster films a commercial, gets another talking down to by his creative director, Ms. Rose Forrest (of Rose and Thorn fame), and is in talks about the comic book deal outside when the alarm at the nearby prison goes off. Double trouble, it's Mindancer and the just "liberated" Blackguard!

Booster is revealed to have a force shield of some sort.

While Trixie deals with a mob of people wanting to speak with Booster on a variety of issues back at the office, Booster and Skeets take on the very dangerous duo with the cameras rolling. This will be make or break for Booster! Skeets keeps Mindancer busy while Booster takes down Blackguard in an agreed upon strength vs strength fist fight.

Then he goes after Mindancer as Skeets realizes that they have to isolate from large groups of people. She draws from their minds for her mental powers. She knows she's in trouble, and since she can't penetrate Booster's force shield, she makes a nearby prison guard think he's seeing dragons and just as he's about to fire at the film crew, Booster grabs the gun and stops him.

But while he was distracted by the guard, a somewhat recovered Blackguard hurls his energy mace at Skeets and gets a direct hit!.

The person attempting to find out who Booster really is finds no records of any kind about him and determines to back him into a corner to reveal who he is.

REVIEW

While the story moves at a very odd pace, I like the “uniqueness” of this character. We have seen the press destroying a hero’s morale all the time, especially with Spider-man. But in this case, Booster is doing this for fame, and this is the price of fame.

Also noticeable, is that his Legion’s ring is being filmed in the commercial, it won’t take long until someone discovers this (I know there is a Legion cross-over coming up).

I am not surprised to see Thorn in this book considering the main bad is the 1000 (previously known as the 100). I don’t think I remember Rose in the first issue though.

The art is looking a bit better than previous Jurgens work, but I don’t think DeCarlo is the best option as his inker. I know his style varies too much depending on the inker, but it could also be that he just hasn’t polished his style yet.

I give the issue a score of 7.

[jewishlensnart]

So it’s the holiday season, which in a lot of households means presents. You know who has more merch than almost any other Flash villain (1. being Reverse Flash as of my last count)? Captain Cold!

Have a Len lover in your life? Need to give your family gift ideas? Peep this list, y’all!

I used to own...basically everything with Len on it. I had the largest Flash collection in the southern US until about 3 years ago, when I sold the vast majority of it, and gave away even more. These reviews come from in-hand experience. Let’s start with the Original Lad:

DC Direct Captain Cold

Holy macaroni, was this figure terrible. Yes it was comic-accurate at the time, but you could not pose it, you could not keep it standing, and the face when you removed the glasses? Nightmare fuel. Still, it was a figure from 2001, and they really were doing their best, so I’d have to rate this guy a 2 out of 5.

These next two came out around roughly the same time, but could not be more different in quality. First up, DC Direct Justice Captain Cold

Strictly speaking, this figure was beautiful. Yeah it was in the hyper-realistic style of Alex Ross, who I’ve never been a fan of, but it was toned down in a way that made it less uncanny valley. The figure had stubble painted on, and if you removed the hood (which you technically could but shouldn’t), he had hair under there! But still, this was a DC Direct figure from 2008, so it had all the same flaws that a figure from that time period tended to have: absolutely a bitch to pose, hard to keep upright without the base (I let mine lean against the wall whenever I needed the base for even more precarious figures), joints prone to snapping if you worked him too hard. Still, by far my favorite of the DC Direct/Collectibles Len figures, if not my favorite full-size figure. 4.5 of 5.

Meanwhile in big box stores across the nation, DC Universe Classics was releasing their best wave yet, wave 7. Man, I had that whole thing aside from Aquaman; Big Barda, Flash, Kid Flash, Blue Beetle, Booster Gold, and of course, Captain Cold

This is the ugliest Len figure. Hands down, the least visually appealing. Which is a shame, because it’s also one of the best! Completely comic accurate until you hit the upper torso/head area, a ridiculous amount of articulation, with the single best cold gun of any of these figures...but jfc that expression. The weird poncho/hood always bothered me too, because while it was almost comic accurate, something just threw it off the track and made it look more ridiculous than cool. 3.5 out of 5.

After the New 52 hit, DC Collectibles released 2 Captain Cold figures in rapid succession, one that was packaged alone, and one that came as part of a 7-figure set

Can you spot the differences? There’s just one: the Len from the 7-figure set is in a dark blue suit, and doesn’t come with the ice mace and ice dagger. Like all DC Direct figures before them, these DC Collectibles figures are pretty to look at, but offer very little in the way of articulation. They could be hard to keep upright, which was annoying, as neither came with a stand, and do not try to take off the hood. Nothing under there. Still, they were very pretty depictions of a popular redesign, so I feel alright giving these guys a 3 of 5.

DC Collectibles spat out a final Len figure for the CWverse line back in 2015

As a big fan of Wentworth Miller and his face, I feel this figure could have been better. I mean, I’ve seen Arrowverse figures that are spot on, and this one just is not. Maybe it’s because the goggles obscure a good portion of the face, I don’t know. That being said, I love this figure, and it’s actually one I re-bought at a convention recently, along with the Heatwave figure from the same line, that hadn’t been released when I’d started selling off all of my toys. The costume is show-accurate, the figure comes with an extra set of hands, and the gun is just really cool. This is a solid 4 of 5 figure.

These next toys aren’t action figures per say, as they don’t do much in the way of action, but they’re cute and I like them, for the most part.

Funko took over the market and the world back in 2010 when it first introduced the Pop Vinyl figures, but it took a hit TV show to get Flash villains other than the Reverse Flash into production. There are 3 Captain Cold Funko products currently out, the two Pop Vinyls and a Re-Action figure

Now, I love the first Pop Vinyl. The round, lifeless black eyes of the Pops have freaked me out for a long time, but with Len in his sweet goggles, this Pop is perfect for me. I actually have him on a shelf in my closet. The variant...look, I like how they included the actual real-life hairline Wentworth Miller has, but those creepy eyes just kill it for me. The Re-Action figure, by the way, is garbage. They’re supposed to be based on the lines of toys that came out back in the 80s, but all that means to me is little to no articulation, weird molds that look nothing like the character they’re supposed to be, and few if any accessories. Why is he wearing a tie??? Just. The worst. 5 of 5 for Pop 1, 3 of 5 for Pop 2, and 1 of 5 for the Re-Action figure.

There are a bunch of figures that came out before Funko’s reign that have little to no articulation, and here they are:

Action League Citizen Cold, from the Batman: The Brave and the Bold line

I love a good boy??? 5 of 5, absolutely perfect. No you can’t pose him, but he already comes in a dynamic, interesting pose. This is my absolute favorite of all the non-poseable figures, and I miss mine all the time.

Imaginext, a line of toys for very young superhero fans, made a New 52 Captain Cold a few years back

Honestly, Imaginext toys are ridiculous, and I love every single one of them. They’re great toys for little kids, and yeah, Len is completely bald underneath that hoodie and ice gun backpack, but he has a snowball cannon to compensate with, so who’s the real loser?! 5 of 5, beautiful.

Did you kno w that back in 2011, McDonalds put out a line of Happy Meal Young Justice toys featuring Captain Cold??? Did you want to know? Too bad, you know now.

My dad’s dog chewed up his ice projectile, rendering the actual immobile figure completely useless...but I still really like it??? Like, it’s a toy that came with food that I sweet-talked the counter guy into giving me. It’s a worthless little nothing of a toy...but I still like it. 3 of 5.

Pocket Heroes were a weird little line of 3-inch figures that came in two-packs. One of those packs contained Flash and Captain Cold

You can basically only move their arms and legs, and while this figure comes with a cold gun and a remarkably ripped set of abs and pecs, the design never really appealed to me. 2.5 out of 5.

I collected MiniMates once upon a time. 2.5 inch figures that were basically fancy LEGOs? Deal me in! ViniMates are uh. Not that.

ViniMates are 6-inch figures and I Do Not Like Them. Being made of vinyl makes them almost completely free of articulation, so the post you get them in is the one they stay in. Also, this one is based on the show-interpretation of Len and it seems to be smoldering at me. Don’t like that. 1 out of 5.

On the other end of the vinyl spectrum, the Mini-Mezitz line from Mezco is simply delightful.

Mini-Mezitz were 2-inch figures with articulation in their arms, legs, and neck joints. I love mine, and they have been hanging out on the top of my bookcase for like 7 years now. 4 out of 5, absolutely weird-dorable.

Eaglemoss once put my blog on the front page of their website without telling me, back when I was actively snapping pictures of my Flash collection. The Eaglemoss lead figures, once you get past the fact that yes, these dudes are made of painted lead so maybe handle with care, are a good staple in any collection. Captain Cold got two

Both Eaglemoss figures came with information booklets about Captain Cold, though the chess piece New 52 version focused almost solely on his New 52 history. They’re both very detailed, and I really like them. 3.5 out of 5.

I never watched Thomas the Tank Engine as a kid...but I saw this weirdass thing in a HomeGoods one day and just kinda. Stopped and stared.

He’s a train. Len is a train now. Don’t like it. 1 out of 5.

So there’s this company called Kotobukiya. They’re most famous for their bishoujo statues, but they make guys too. I had the Flash Kotobukiya statue, back in the day. I was not collecting Flash stuff when they made a Captain Cold one.

I’m actually apparently getting this as a gift from my boyfriend for Hanukkah. He finally got access to my wishlist. This statue is based on the Francis Manapul New 52 redesign, and it is what we call Big Sexy. Frankly, I give it a 5 out of 5.

No offense to Wentworth Miller, but my favorite Captain Cold TV appearance is always going to be his role in the JLU episode, Flash and Substance.

The JLU figures were all godawful, but hell if we as a fandom didn’t gobble them up back in the day. I had all the available Rogues, Len, Heatwave, Captain Boomerang, Weather Wizard, “Justice Lords Flash” (who was really just Reverse Flash, let’s be real), Mirror Master...it’s the most complete set of Rogues you can get, actually. But they were terrible figures; the Dorito-like shape of the shoulder to waist ratio combined with the narrow feet of the figure guaranteed that these toys would not stay upright without a stand. They had no articulation, and most came without weapons. But you could get three-packs of them in Target for like $12, and they were designed with children in mind, so. 3.5 out of 5, because frankly, the Timmverse designs will always tug at my nostalgia strings.

Captain Cold is available in two official LEGO forms

The first is from the Mighty Macros line, and features Len vs the Flash in a racecar vs snowmobile race. It’s very cute and easy to build. The second is the more challenging Gorilla Grodd Goes Bananas set, which also includes Flash, Grodd, and strangely enough, Batman and Wonder Woman. I never owned that set, and it’s pretty hard to find these days, regularly running $80 and up. Both sets are a 5 out of 5, though, because LEGO does not mess around when it comes to quality fun.

I saved my favorites for last. In the 70s, there was a line of toys called MEGOs, which were plastic-bodied toys with cloth suits. Mattel, and later the Figures Toy Company, would both do their own versions of Captain Cold

The first version, by Mattel, is amazing. Mine is literally sitting next to me as I type this. I took him to Universal with me when I won a trip to Halloween Horror Nights back in 2015, I take him to the movies with me when I don’t have anyone else to go with, he’s my little buddy. My dad’s dog, again, chewed his left arm completely off at one point, but I don’t care. I love him. As for the Figures Toys version, I actually won a fairly cheap auction for him earlier this week, so we shall see! I don’t know if I like how he has the whole “Super Friends hypothermia Len” look going on, but I do like how his costume isn’t just cheap, tearable vinyl. We shall see what’s under that hood soon. I give the Mattel one a 5 out of 5 for the years of joy he’s given me. The Figures Toys one is pending, but I’m gonna give a tentative 4 out of 5, because it really does look nice.

You could get Len in other forms, like as a game piece in the Heroclix and Dice Masters games, as a paintable figure for a Batman tabletop roleplaying game, as trading cards, as a set of guitar picks, as a card holder, as a very hard to find but still lovely statue from DC Direct, in official pin form from Funko and Fansets, on an old 7-Eleven cup, and of course, in the pages of the comics...but I’ve always liked toys, so that’s what I decided to go over. Hope y’all enjoyed this, and maybe got some ideas for your own collections.

[gokinjeespot]

off the rack #1235

Monday, November 5, 2018

 I schlepped my giant laptop to Comet Comics new location last week to write these reviews. Otherwise there would have only been two titles that had any rack copies for me to borrow. My thanks to Becky and Ryan for giving me permission to read their subscription service comics.

 Penny and I had a daylight savings time oopsie moment Sunday morning when we went to the Carleton Tavern for breakfast. Sam is always there early and we usually are among his first customers at 9 AM when he officially opens. We hadn't changed the time in the car and thought that it was really deserted when we got there. It's usually hopping at 10 AM but our server pointed out our boo-boo and boy did I feel like a goof. I would like to see the twice a year time adjustments go the way of the Dodo bird.

 West Coast Avengers #3/LGY #105 - Kelly Thompson (writer) Stefano Caselli (art) Triona Farrell (colours) VC's Joe Caramagna (letters). Spider-Gwen is my favourite team member right now. The fight with B.R.O.D.O.K. escalates with more giant mutated women stomping around L.A. The good news is Tigra is now on the side of the good guys. The bad news is Kate got zapped by B.R.O.D.O.K. I love all the dialogue and team members interacting.

 Iron Man #5/LGY #605 - Dan Slott (writer) Max Dunbar & Gang Hyuk Lim (art) Dono Sanchez Almara (colours) VC's Joe Caramagna (letters). Self Made Man part 5. Remember Arno Stark? I didn't. He's Tony's brother. This issue features his return and he's a piece of work. This genius makes Spock look like he's emotionally unstable. Arno teams up with someone who has already caused Tony problems so the future should be quite interesting.

 Extermination #4 - Ed Brisson (writer) Pepe Larraz (pencils) Dexter Vines (inks) Erick Arciniega (colours) VC's Joe Sabino (letters). This is where we find out why Ahab is trying to kill the young X-Men from the past and how young Cable is trying to save everybody. I knew newbie Nathan was a good guy. It's too bad the good guys run out of time when Ahab's harpoon finds its target. You may notice a subtle change in the art as Pepe's pencils are inked by someone else.

 Hex Wives #1 - Ben Blacker (writer) Mirka Andolfo (art) Marissa Louise (colours) Josh Reed (letters). This new Vertigo series is about  a coven of immortal witches and the men who are trying to exterminate them. We begin in 1692 with the introduction of the main witches and end the issue in the present (?) where they have been reincarnated, but are unaware of who they really are and their powers haven't manifested yet. The reason I've put a question mark on the present is because it looks more like the 1960s with the way the women are dressed. That bit of confusion was enough to turn me off so I won't be reading any more.

 Marvel Two-In-One #11/LGY #111 - Chip Zdarsky (writer) Ramon K. Perez (art) Frederico Blee (colours) VC's Joe Caramagna (letters). The reunion of Ben and Reed starts to fill in the blanks for us fans as to what the rest of Fantastic Four Family was up to after they left Ben and Johnny to go exploring. I don't think any other writer has impressed me as much as Chip has with how Reed is being portrayed. Just reading Reed's dialogue makes me smarter. We also meet a new version of Doctor Doom and I like him.

 Old Man Hawkeye #10 - Ethan Sacks (writer) Marco Checchetto (art) Andres Mossa (colours) VC's Joe Caramagna (letters). An Eye for an Eye part 10.  The Hawkeyes cross the border into Canada in Clint's search for more Thunderbolts targets. This time it's the treacherous Moonstone. Meanwhile good old Bullseye is still hot on Clint's trail. The super big bad guy has finally gotten what he wants and that could mean trouble for our hero. I love this alternate future.

 Old Man Logan #50 - Ed Brisson (writer) Ibraim Roberson & Neil Edwards (art) Carlos Lopez (colours) VC's Cory Petit (letters). King of Nothing conclusion. So what did I miss since I stopped reading this book? A lot. I think the run ends here with Logan fighting Maestro, the evil Hulk from an alternate universe. Maestro has taken over the small town on Fort Wells in Canada and Logan aims to free the townsfolk from tyranny. I thought the bad guy was defeated way too easily and the last panel hinting that Old Man Logan dies was wimpy. Fans need not despair though. Dead Man Logan hits the racks in November.

 Deathstroke/Yogi Bear #1 - Frank Tieri (writer) Mark Texeira (art) Jeromy Cox (colours) Wes Abbott (letters). This $4.99 US one shot featuring DC and Hanna-Barbera characters is chock full of crazy cartoon silliness. Yogi hires Deathstroke to find a missing Boo Boo. As an incentive to buy the others in this series of crossovers there's part one of a Secret Squirrel story that continues in "Green Lantern/Huckleberry Hound #1".

 Heroes in Crisis #2 - Tom King (writer) Clay Mann (art pages 1-15, 19-22) Travis Moore (art pages 16-18) Tomeu Morey & Arif Prianto (colours) Clayton Cowles (letters). Harley is great in this story. I love how Tom King is writing her. I was happy to see Booster Gold bite the dust last issue but alas, Skeets shows up to revive him. Wondering who is killing the B-list heroes is keeping me interested.

 Jessica Jones: Blindspot Graphic Novel - Kelly Thompson (writer) Mattia De Iulis (art & colours chapters #1-5) Marcio Takara (art chapter 6) Rachelle Rosenberg (colours chapter 6) VC's Cory Petit (letters). No Netflix? No need for FOMO. I binged this 5-part mystery plus bonus birthday party story in one sitting and that's rare for me. As much as I like Michael Gaydos's work on Alias, I much prefer Mattia De Iulis's art in this twisty cold case. I really liked seeing Matt Murdock, Elsa Bloodstone and Spider-Man showing up in this story. Brian Michael Bendis made me a big Jessica Jones fan and I wasn't sure if Kelly Thompson could match Brian's take on Jess but I was very impressed with this story. Even if you've never read Alias or know nothing about Jessica Jones you should buy this book. It's that good.

[pluckyredhead]

I'm sorry your ship is tragic right now! If I were canon-familiar I would try to cheer you up with fluff. At least since it's comics there's a chance he'll come back?

This is the sweetest ask in the world and - please forgive me - I laughed until I cried when I read it, because I have been crying about Ted Kord’s death for twelve years. In fact, the ship is kind of the least tragic it’s been since 2005.

Very short version:

1987: Ted and Booster meet and become instant BFFs.

2005: DC kills Ted off. Booster spends the next six years crying and trying to remake the universe (he’s a time traveller) in order to bring Ted back.

2011: DC reboots their universe and erases (among many other things) the entire history of this friendship. Booster is still a superhero but Ted’s successor Jaime is the only Blue Beetle and Ted is just glimpsed in a passing cameo.

2016: DC launches their Rebirth initiative and retcons Ted’s history again as an older, retired hero training new hero Jaime (it’s VERY cute). Ted and Booster still don’t know each other (and Booster hasn’t been seen in the main universe since 2015 anyway).

Anyway, this is all very exciting! No one is dead and Ted and Jaime actually get to interact! (In the original continuity, Ted died before Jaime debuted.) There’s still a possibility for Ted and Booster to become ~totally platonic~ best friends!

It me. (It Jaime’s little sister, actually. But also me.)

Anyway, the tragic scans I’ve been posting are all from Injustice 2, which is a tie-in comic to a video game that I’ve been completely ignoring except MY BOYS. So it’s not the “real” Ted and Booster but it’s still gut-wrenching, and also the furthest they’ve pushed that platonic boundary so far? And this is a ship that includes naked hugging, comparisons to jilted lovers, and Booster explicitly saying he’s after Ted’s heart.

But yeah, DC loves to give us tragic alternate versions of these two. See also:

They revealed that the original universe Booster Gold, dying from some kind of degenerative time cancer, went back in time to find Ted and speak with him one last time before...dying and ascending to become basically a time elemental? It doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Batman: The Brave and the Bold gave us not just an episode where Jaime learns of Ted’s tragic death, but another one where Booster goes back in time to hang out with Ted before said tragic death because he misses him so much.

Young Justice also has Jaime which means it needs a tragically dead Ted, though there’s no Booster to weep over him there.

We don’t know about the DCW yet but they keep namedropping Ted and Booster has to exist because he’s Rip Hunter’s father, so. FINGERS CROSSED!!!

Anyway these are (some of) my Boostle feels, sorry, you didn’t ask for any of that, I’M VERY EMOTIONAL RIGHT NOW.

[emuchipmunk]

Booster Gold would love E.M. Forster’s Maurice and here’s why

This might get a little crazy but bear with me, if not for the actual content then for some of the best quotes you’ll ever read. Since DC doesn’t do shit with Booster Gold or Blue Beetle until it’s time for one of them to be evil or die (or both), that clearly means that I get to steal the characters and make them my own and that’s exactly what I plan on doing. I’ll put this all under a cut because golly gee I went off on this one. Also, like, this went from analysis to a little fic of sorts??? Have no clue what happened honestly.

Ok so even though Booster is from the future I’d imagine that he’d still have to read some old ass books in school, even if “old ass” to them means like,,,now for us. BUT for the sake of this, I’m just gonna mirror Booster’s education and discovery of Forster off of how I discovered Forster with little detail changes. 

So in this English class, everyone in the class has to choose an author that they’ve never heard of before and read a few books from them and make a project of any kind that they think represents the author and whatnot right. The teacher maybe hands out a list of authors put in different categories of what they write and since it’s the future I’d think that the list probably has a few more LGBT authors than mine did, but Booster sees it and says he’ll give mister E. M. Forster a try because it’s a goofy name so he reads this book called Maurice. Now Maurice isn’t one of his more popular books, it’s actually kind of hard to find in book stores and I’m pretty sure it got most of its fame because of the story surrounding the book rather than the actual book, but the point still stands. 

Booster starts reading Maurice and literally from the first page absolutely falls in love with it. The dedication page says nothing about Forster’s family, nothing about his friends, it only says: 

Begun 1913

Finished 1914

Dedicated to a Happier Year

Now Booster isn’t a pro at history (at least this point in history) but he’s pretty sure that the dedication in the book and the LGBT category Forster was in on the teacher’s list probably had something to do with each other and not in the good way. But still, he reads on, already convinced that he’s going to like the book just from seeing that. And he’s right. 

Like I said, the future is probably hopefully a lot more open to different genders and sexualities so it’s not like Booster is particularly closed off about the fact that he likes girls and boys, but it still kind of is a complicated thing to come to realizing, and instantly he’s drawn to Maurice as he tries to navigate his feelings once Clive is in his life, showing him all these ancient Greek texts that are about same sex love and Maurice and Clive end up spending a lot of their time together. Booster just keeps waiting for this thing to fall apart because he knows this isn’t how same sex love happened back then, he knows that something has to go wrong. Yet Clive and Maurice continue being happy together and being off in their own little world. 

That is, until Clive realizes the dangers of being a practicing homosexual at this point and what it could mean for his future. This is it, this is where the story changes and it’s only going to go downhill from here. Except...it doesn’t. Sure, there is a chunk of the novel where Maurice has to deal with the fact that Clive, his first love, left him after opening his eyes to his own sexuality, but it doesn’t end like that. And once Booster finishes the book, a little teary eyed and unable to let go of the story, he reads the author’s note and falls even more in love with it once he reads Forster saying, 

“A happy ending was imperative. I shouldn’t have bothered to write otherwise. I was determined that in fiction anyway two men should fall in love and remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows, and in this sense, Maurice and Alec still roam the greenwood.”

So after the project is finished, Booster has other things to focus on and kind of forgets about the book for a little while. He goes through all of the time travel, ends up with the JLI and all that stuff. And then as they’re hanging out, they start talking about school and all the dumb books they had to read for classes and someone asks Booster what kind of cool books they have in the future. He responds with “I wouldn’t know, I was reading old books too” and he remembers his favorite project he did in high school and starts getting really excited to tell them all about it. He keeps the story itself for himself, just tells them all about the cool poster he made that represented the Forster books he read. Eventually the conversation drifts off to something else but Booster’s still stuck on this book that he connected to a few years ago. 

He gets a new copy of the book and falls in love with it all over again and starts underlining the passages that he likes and making little comments on the edge of the pages. He comes back to read it every few months when he’s having a particularly hard time or even when he’s having a good time, whenever he just wants to look at it with a fresh perspective. He leaves different notes and likes different quotes every time. 

“There has been, is, and always will be every conceivable type of person.” He likes that one when he starts thinking he stands out too much and people won’t like him because of it. Finds comfort in the fact that it was like that back then too.

“He could die for such a friend, he would allow such a friend to die for him; they would make any sacrifice for each other, and count the world nothing, neither death nor distance nor crossness could part them, because ‘this is my friend.’” He liked that one before him and Ted had such a close bond and he didn’t have any true friends in this time yet, not knowing how close him and Ted would get and knowing that the quote would become a little too real in the coming years. 

“He lived on, miserable and misunderstood, as before, and increasingly lonely. One cannot write those words too often: Maurice’s loneliness: it increased.” That one jumped out to him after Ted died and he was left on his own for the first time in years without realizing how much his best friend meant to him until it was too late. 

There was even one line that he remembered word for word from back before any of this hero business even started, when he was in his own time and didn’t know what he was going to do with his life. Maybe it’s what brought him here without him realizing. “The past is devoid of meaning like the present, and a refuge for cowards.” He was a coward, he couldn’t manage to get anything right and he was terrified of what would happen when he grew up and lost his good looks that everyone kept him around for. So he ran away to the past and now he’s here. 

It was when Ted came back that Booster decided that he needed to share the book that meant so much to him with somebody and so who else to share it with than his best friend? So he brought out the book one night while it was kinda slow for the JLI and Ted was hanging out with Booster in his room. The book at this point was pretty beat up, had sticky notes and pencil and pen all over it. Ted was immediately curious, as Ted is all the time, and saw how nervous Booster was and immediately knew that this was something important to him. And they spent the rest of the night talking about Maurice, the quotes that Booster comes back to time after time and what it meant to him as a kid when he read it for the first time. They’d both be lying if they said there weren’t plenty of tears that night. 

After that night, Booster read it one more time and this time a new quote jumped out at him. “He had brought out the man in Alec, and now it was Alec’s turn to bring out the hero in him.” He realized that Ted was Alec all along and maybe it was possible to have a happy ending, maybe Forster wasn’t lying when he gave Maurice and Alec that happy ending so long ago. 

Years and years later, that quote from the authors note his first readthrough of the book stuck with him, and when Ted and Booster finally got married, the inside of the wedding bands reminded them that no matter what happens, “A happy ending was imperative.”

[studentsofshield]

Pick of the Week and Comics Reviews for the Week of 4/26/17

By Vincent Faust

This was originally published on the date in the title derp

It’s new comics day, everyone! For those totally unaware, the majority of comics come out in a serial format. A single comic is usually called an issue, though there are other weird nicknames like singles, floppies, etc. Major publishers put out their several series once a month. Though the different series are spread out so that product is coming out every week. Special issues called annuals even come out to cover that “13th month” of uneven weeks.

Today I will be reviewing some of the major releases of this week. After reading and reviewing all of them, I will also select a “pick of the week” as the standout issue. At the end I will also make some recommendations about new collected editions that have come out this week.

Pick of the Week: Flash 21 Writer: Josh Williamson, Artist: Howard Porter

5/5

This is how you do a fantastic comic book. Rebirth, baby, let’s go! The DC Universe that everyone knows and loves is on its way back to us. There are so many things to discuss here and I also don’t want to spoil much.

Howard Porter’s art is gorgeous. His representation of Barry’s super speed is gorgeous, though we already know that from his run on the title with Geoff Johns over 10 years ago. We also get a shot of the gruesome corpse of Eobard Thawne, the Reverse Flash. A bruised and bandaged Bruce Wayne also highlights Porter’s versatility. He also admirably handles some flashback peeks in a time travel sequence.

A Watchtower “lost and found” scene shows off so many Easter eggs. What to think of some of these? Meaningless background art or a hint at what is to come? These are clearly the costumes of Hourman, Star-Spangled Kid, and Doctor Midnite. A Rocket Red #7 suit is also seen, which specifically refers back to the 1980s JLI iteration of the character. As opposed to the Generation Lost/New 52 version. The issue also opens with another Johnny Thunder scene.

The final page reveal is insane. Reading this issue makes me realize how much I love these darn characters and how giddy I am that DC is finally taking steps after seven years to make things right again. Perfect.

Action Comics 978 Writer: Dan Jurgens, Artist: Carlo Barberi

5/5

This is continuing Dan Jurgens’ aftermath story following the Reborn crossover saga. Clark is checking through Fortress of Solitude memories to determine what all has changed in his past thanks to the merging with the Superman of Earth-Prime. He basically has phantom memories. This allows Jurgens to do some refreshing on the origin and clarify what is in continuity and what isn’t.

Readers get a jaw dropping splash on page 6 showcasing many of his villains and eras. Electric Blue Superman is notably shown. Darkseid is drawn in his Jack Kirby style. Manchester Black is even here (obviously specifically nodding to What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice, and the American Way from Action Comics #775). We even get to see the trunks on for a second.

Jurgens basically runs us through the major emotional moments of his original 1990s tenure on the Superman books. From his proposal to Lois, revealing his secret identity, to his death at the hands of Doomsday, to the marriage.

The book ends with Mr. Oz teasing something for Clark and Hank Henshaw forming his Superman Revenge Squad with Eradicator, Metallo, Blanque, and soon to be Mongul.

The Superman books are going through a really exciting period right now. Just like many of DC’s characters. But Supes is at his best he’s been for probably a decade. Truly magical work.

Blue Beetle 8 Writer: Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis, Artist: Scott Kollins

3/5

This has been the lowest selling Rebirth title from its debut to its most recent issue. It’s really a shame that it isn’t clicking with readers considering the all-star classic creative team. Though maybe it’s precisely that traditional feel that is holding the book back.

One thing the old school style has going for it is a meaty feeling. I don’t get the same feeling reading this issue that I did from the X-Men books. Not much decompression here. Lots of dialogue and action is packed into this little package.

The title page describes “the reunion of one of the greatest teams in comic book history.” I got really excited and thought it was going to be the return of Booster Gold. But it was referring to DeMatteis joining the creative team as scripter. I haven’t read enough of the previous issues to determine if this marks an improvement.

The final page of Jaime Reyes putting on Ted’s classic Blue Beetle suit is giving me more of those great Rebirth feelings. Check out my post on Rebirth dream books to hear what I think could save this book (it’s Booster Gold).

Justice League of America 5 Writer: Steve Orlando, Artist: Andy MacDonald

2/5

Nothing offensive about this issue. Nothing to write home about either. I still don’t totally understand why this specific lineup has been assembled as the splinter Justice League team. Seems like they’d be better off called the Outsiders. Ryan Choi gets so little attention. As do pretty much everyone on this team. Characterization is completely lacking. As a Philadelphian, I was annoyed that Ray’s home city was teased but the change was not actually acknowledged. Not much else to say about this book. Doesn’t pique my interest much.

Suicide Squad 16 Writer: Rob Williams, Artist: Tony S. Daniel

2/5

First of all, I have not read most of this series. I admit complete bias before cracking this issue open. I don’t think the Suicide Squad has been interesting since John Ostrander left it in 1992. There have been worthy successors like Gail Simone’s Secret Six and Greg Rucka’s Checkmate as far as DC Universe political intrigue and bad guys turned sorta good stories go.

I also think that DC completely ruined the franchise with the New 52. Presenting the book as a core flagship and making Harley Quinn a featured character deflates all of the tension and entire premise of the book. DC considers Harley their “fourth pillar” after Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman. So the entire point of the Suicide Squad – that a member could die at any minute – is made moot.

DC tapped Jim Lee to initially draw the Rebirth iteration of Suicide Squad. Which obviously indicates they see it as a blockbuster title. Which makes sense from a business perspective given the recent (crappy) film adaptation. But Lee is not a good fit for this title. I also think he tries to return to something close to his 1990s X-Men/Wildcats aesthetic when on major books nowadays. Something has happened and that style of his has been rough on everything since All-Star Batman and Robin.

Enough rambling and onto the actual book at hand. Right off the bat on the cover I spy atrocious costumes for Harley and Deadshot. Katana has some obnoxious TnA perspective going on. On the interiors, Tony Daniel is at least a step up from the misplaced Lee.

The most interesting character here is Lex Luthor in his new status quo. The Squad infiltrate his complex while Amanda Waller talks him up. All to receive some Kryptonite so that General Zod can join the Squad. Because that is sure to work out.

X-Men Blue 2 Writer: Cullen Bunn, Artist: Jorge Molina

3/5

I still don’t care about these versions of the Original Five. Across Bendis and Hopeless, I was never given a reason to care about this time-displaced Wonder Bread. They’re just boring versions of their older selves. Which of course makes me upset seeing as how Cyclops is my favorite Marvel superhero.

Bunn was clearly born to write Magneto. He’s done fantastic work with the character previously in the Marvel Now era solo series and then in the All-New All-Different Uncanny X-Men. I just wish that he was more of a central character in this book. Jean goes into his mind and Bunn effectively pulls the heartstrings with a Holocaust flashback that was not done in an exploitative way.

Some of the dialogue between the teenagers is iffy. I am not a fan of Jorge Molina’s Jean Grey design. Otherwise, this book felt pretty decompressed. Nothing actually happens, there is no complete story within these pages.

A beginning flashback scene has Jean Grey arguing with Magneto over cooperating. She states that he had battled them over and over again, with his response being “that was a long time ago.” It was for most readers as well. Which is why we don’t care about these characters. But maybe there is a silver lining, with a tasty final page tease.

Though this will likely just turn Magneto into a stock villain again. Here’s hoping Bunn has interesting plans.

X-Men Gold 2 Writer: Marc Guggenheim, Artist: Ardian Syaf

3/5

I’m not going to get too into the Ardian Syaf controversy here. His art is meh in this issue, with some bright spots and some sequences that look really lazy.

We an incredibly abridged fight with the new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Who we learn are joined by Mesmero. Kitty has an awkward exposition scene with Steve Rogers. Are other books not addressing his H.Y.D.R.A. stuff at all yet?

Nightcrawler gets injured, Old Man Logan gets captured. A generic faceless mutant gets shot. Guggenheim is already going overboard with the race metaphor. The new Avalanche and Pyro aren’t explained yet either.

This Brotherhood arc doesn’t have me jazzed to keep reading. It offers nothing new but is also not effectively pulling at my nostalgia for X-eras past.

Reprints

Marvel has a publishing initiative that they call True Believers. It reprints certain classic single issues for a dollar cover price. There are two really cool ones out this week.

One is True Believers: Generation X which collects the debut issue of that titular 1990s X-title. Everyone likes to dig on the 90s era in comics, and especially the X-Men. However, Scott Lobdell and Chris Bachalo did some wonderful work on this underrated title. Bachalo’s art is on a whole other level of innovative and unique. The characterization of these young mutants under the pen (or rather keyboard) of Lobdell was unparalleled for years. This is obviously being released to coincide with the upcoming Generation X series with limited connections to the originals. I am hoping that this new book does well and motivates someone at Marvel to give fans a comprehensive reprint of this classic.

Another is being labeled as True Believers: X-Men Gold. There actually was previously an X-Men Gold book prior to the ongoing one. It was a one-shot released in late 2013. However, this is not that. This reprints Uncanny X-Men #281. Which is the first issue of the next major status quo after Chris Claremont left the X-Men. This is the origins of the Blue and Gold era which the current X-books are trying to recapture. Beautiful (though very 90s) art by Whilce Portacio. A little less impressive script by some concoction of Jim Lee, John Byrne, and Whilce Portacio. This is before Scott Lobdell came on to give an actual direction to Uncanny X-Men.

Avengers: Masters of Evil Epic Collection

This is the third epic collection of Silver Age Avengers from Marvel. It collects issues 41-56, Annual 1-2. The beginning of this is the tail end of the Kooky Quartet era of Avengers history (though at this point joined by Hank Pym as Goliath). This period then proceeds with classic Avengers like Hercules and Black Panther jumping on. Roy Thomas picked up writing the book in the last epic at #35. He will do lots of character development for Black Panther across his run. This ends right before the debut of Vision. One can actually buy four Avengers epic collections from the very beginning. That’s almost 2,000 pages of classic Marvel action.

Flash by Waid Vol 2

The greatest Flash run of all time. In fact, this specific collection collects The Return of Barry Allen. Which is almost universally considered the best Flash story of all time. A Flash fan would have to be insane to not instantly be on the lookout for this.

Saga Deluxe Vol 2

Everyone loves Saga. I think? Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples’ smash hit Image title wows most who read it. With its emotional drama and wacky characters. What is there not to love? If you don’t already rabidly pick it up in issues or paperbacks, here’s a sexy hardcover. Or just upgrade. This collects issues 19-36. Which is equivalent to the fourth through sixth trades.

Young Justice Vol 1

Do you like the animated TV show of the same name? With characters like Connor Kent, Tim Drake, Bart Allen, and Cassie Sandsmark. This is the origin of that title and much of its roster of teenage superpowered heroes. This is also a comic written by Peter David. Which means, as long as DC continues printing them, you will have a solid chunk to read and digest. It also means that the characterization and relationships are on point. I’ve been looking forward to checking this out.

Let me know in the comments below what comics you enjoyed this week or intend to pick up.