#avengers and justified crossover

[dispatchvampire]

Close Encounters of the Preferred Kind - (MCU/Justified Crossover)

Part 2 in my wholly unintentional Two Snipers series.

Rating: PG-13

Fandom: Justified/The Avengers (MCU) Crossover (kinda)

Pairing: Clint Barton/Tim Gutterson

Word Count: 2066

Warnings: Fluff (kinda sorta, if you squint), canon level violence, aliens, cussing, a lot of cussing.

Summary: Set after the events of 'Bad Mistakes (I've Made A Few)', this is the second meeting of our fateful couple, with aliens invading, families meeting, and, of course, Tim's long-suffering boss, Chief Deputy Marshal Art Mullen. Life gets messy when worlds collide.

Author’s Notes: 100% did not intend to write a follow-up to BM, but these two don't really do things on my timeline or my schedule. Anyway, the idea of this made me laugh, this is what happens when you introduce your Boo to your people, and everybody had issues. Oh, and the mood board was all me, with picture credit going to their varying photographers.

Eastern Kentucky is not where one expects Armageddon to start, but there it is and there they are. 

“What the fuck am I looking at, Art?” the sniper asked his superior officer as he stared unflinchingly down his rifle scope. When he’d gotten the call that all hell had broken loose in Noble’s Holler, Tim figured it was more methed up psychopaths who were unclear on the local mayor’s penchant for pig sticking. Purple creatures falling out of a hole in the sky with more tentacles than a jellyfish was not on his bingo card. 

“I got no idea,” the older man answered, never once looking up from his binoculars, “but my suggestion is nothing but headshots.” He paused as he loaded his own rifle and stretched out on a bluff overlooking the mayhem next to Tim. To look at the Chief Deputy in his tie and button down shirt, he didn’t seem the type to get down on the ground and dirty, but most folks underestimated him to their peril. The man taught at Glynco and was a badass well before Tim got proficient with a slingshot, much less a rifle.  “Assuming that those are actually their heads.”

“Copy that.” There was nothing quite as satisfying as brass ejecting from the port and watching his target become iridescent green mist. 

Alien invasions were not generally the purview of the United States Marshals Service,  but occasionally, needs must. 

The giant millipedes had massive tentacles and leathery purple skin which was impervious to conventional small arms fire; the only thing that seemed to fell the murderous, marauding bastards was a shot through he presumed was the eye, a target approximate the size of a navel orange, or through the mouth, an open maw about the size of a peach. Luckily, the produce section had never been an issue for Tim. 

He’d been shooting and reloading for the better part of an hour after the damn portal opened up, doing his best to defend Ellstin Limehouse’s normally quiet enclave as best he could. It was the least he could do, even if he didn’t exactly trust the guy. Their interpersonal issues had nothing to do with the welfare of the innocents being set upon by these nightmare fuel monstrosities. 

Correction: “By comparison, my nightmares are a breeze.”

When the first creature fell without his intervention, Tim was startled enough to jerk back from the ledge and take his eyes off the scope, just in time to see the honest-to-God Captain America shield go flying past the end of his rifle, taking out a creature coming up on his flank that he’d missed before bouncing back to its owner with disturbing accuracy. 

“I am entirely too old for this shit,” Art grumbled as he rolled away from the edge to reload his rifle with all the annoyance and irritation of a deluge of Friday afternoon paperwork. 

“I will be goddamned,” Tim murmured reverently as his brain processed what was happening. Creatures began falling left, right, and center as a roaring overhead signaled the arrival of Iron Man while the roaring on the ground was the giant green menace known as the Hulk ripping through these things like they were made of tissue paper. But that wasn’t what held his interest. 

There, big as life and dressed in form-fitting purple and black kevlar, was the luscious not-so-little secret he’d been keeping since his detail in DC. What should have been a routine job a couple months ago turned into a three-night-stand for the duration of the operation, and then some flirty texts back and forth and more than the occasional round of phone sex in the time intervening. None of that could have prepared him for seeing Clint in action up close and personal. 

The armless black suit emphasized every unreasonably pretty inch of the man, from his ridiculous arms that wielded a bow as ably as he hefted his own rifle, shot after unerring shot bounding and leaping nimbly from cover to cover, down to the perfect cupcake ass that fit in his hands just so. Goddamn the man was so pretty he could be considered a potentially lethal distraction. 

“You gonna watch or are you gonna shoot?” Raylan demanded from his right as he stretched out on the ground with a rifle to join the party. The cowboy had been late to the party since he and Rachel had been left to man the office in Lexington, but once gunplay became the order of the day, Tim knew it was only a matter of time before the man in the infamous tan hat showed up. That he was able to convince Rachel, their normally by-the-book and most level-headed colleague, to come out on an alien invasion spoke to the man’s ability to charm the devil himself out of his seat in Hell. 

“Fuck you,” Tim snarled, but without any heat behind it as he took up his position again and began firing once more at the few remaining creatures on the ground below them. 

From start to finish was just under three hours of sustained fire, and when Tim finally rose to his feet to survey the area, the story was told in the sea of expended brass cartridges and rivers of green blood running through the streets of the valley below. Black trucks were rolling in from both sides of the holler with SHIELD logos on them, signaling the cleanup crew. 

“You know what time it is now, right?” Raylan asked with a devilish grin as he doffed his hat to shrug out of his ballistic vest. He’d stripped down to a form-fitting white t-shirt and looked more like he’d been called in from a day off than from a day at the office. 

“What’s that?” Art demanded as the guys helped him to his feet, brushing an annoyed hand over the wrinkles and streaks of dirt that his wife Leslie would likely fuss over later. After she yelled at him about going out on an alien invasion not two months out of a stint at the heart hospital. 

With a shiteating grin and the pop of a peppermint Altoid in his mouth, Raylan nodded toward the collection of superheroes at the edge of the fray, watching the cleanup proceedings begin and talking amongst themselves. “The interagency debrief, of course!” He was off before anyone had a chance to contradict him, leaving Tim, Rachel, and Art to chase after the cocksure cowboy. 

“Can’t get him to even look at paperwork any other time,” Rachel grumbled as they slowly approached the other group. 

“This ain’t paperwork,” Tim replied, though his eyes were on one thing and one thing only. 

Like they had a mind of their own, his feet carried him right up until he was close enough to tap Clint on the shoulder. “How do, stranger.”

The pure joy on the man’s face when he turned around did funny, fizzy things to his insides that he was loath to examine, and were dangerously close to giddy. The man smelled like sweat and looked like heaven, and fuck if all he wanted to do was run his hands over those arms that had held him up against a wall more than once. As it was, he was standing closer than was strictly necessary and well beyond the bounds of ‘just friends reuniting’. The desire to wrap his arms around the man was damn difficult to quell. 

“I wondered if I’d get to see you,” the archer replied with a shy smile and flushed cheeks. “I mean, I’d hoped,” he rambled on, “but then—” he gestured at the carnage behind him. 

For a moment, it was like the world had winnowed down to just the two of them. “I get it. I’m glad you’re here now, though.” 

“Me too.”

And then the moment was broken by the diminutive redhead standing next to them elbowing Clint in the ribs. “Who’s your friend, Barton?” She was equally clad in black, the kevlar skating over and highlighting every single curve and hollow, highlighting both the beauty and the danger that she embodied. 

Rolling his eyes, Clint took half a step back to face her more fully. “Nat, this is Tim Gutterson of the Marshals.” 

Her green eyes lit up as her lips curved into a mischievous smirk. “The hottie you told me about from a couple months ago in DC?” 

The blond’s eyes widened comically as his face shifted from flushed to pale to tomato red with alarming speed. “Real subtle, Nat.” 

If his face felt hot before, now it felt like the skin was melting off of him. The idea of Clint talking about him, to Black Widow of all people, combined with the adrenaline dump of the situation only added to the feeling of surreal dissociation. Feeling a bit cheeky, he grinned slyly as he looked Clint up and down. “Talking about me, Clint? My heart’s a-flutter with curiosity.” 

“Deputy Gutterson, you gonna introduce your friends?” Art’s voice was a bucket of cold water down his back as he suddenly remembered both his location and his audience. 

From Raylan’s grin, he knew he would never EVER live this down, no matter how many terrible situations the cowboy’s penchant for prohibited pussy landed them in, and Rachel? Well, she was the office master interrogator for a reason and he knew damn sure that he would be spilling everything he knew to her before they made it to the Lexington city limits. 

“Chief Deputy Art Mullen, this is Clint Barton of the Avengers and …” he trailed off, uncertain how to introduce the Black Frickin’ Widow. 

She stepped up and shook Art’s hand like a practiced politician. “Natasha Romanov. Lovely to meet you.” 

The older man smiled and, while Tim couldn’t swear to it, appeared to blush like a schoolboy. “Likewise.” 

Not to be outdone, Raylan smoothly inserted himself between them with his hand out and his 1000 megawatt gunslinger charm turned to ‘thermonuclear’. “Raylan Givens, Miss Romanov. Longtime admirer of your work.” 

She giggled. The assassin actually fucking giggled and her nose wrinkled. “You can call me Natasha.” 

Art watched this scene, the four of them talking amongst themselves, with apocalyptic levels of horror dawning on his face. The sheer amount of paperwork Raylan and Tim, hell Raylan by himself most days, generate was enough to fell a small forest. These folks together were an environmental crime waiting to happen. The potential bodycount of a Raylan and Romanoff team-up was nothing short of an imminent violation of the Geneva Convention. “Oh absolutely fucking not.” 

All four heads turned in his direction, Raylan’s mouth already open and ready to rock, but he was having none of the bullshit. 

“You,” Art pointed to the cowboy, “get in the car.” 

“Bu—”

“Nope,” he held up the finger of doom, the finger of ‘unpaid time off if he kept on,’ it 3was one they were all exceptionally familiar with. “Car. Now.” Turning to Tim, he softened a bit. “Say your goodbyes, we have paperwork.” 

Rather than argue, Tim merely nodded, cringing when he turned to face Clint. “Dad says I gotta go.” 

Clint’s smirk was nothing short of wicked and it was suddenly a billion degrees around Tim. “I’ll be around tonight if you wanna meet up.” 

“I’d like that just fine.” Anything else he wanted to say was cut off at a sound he rarely heard outside of the comforts of her mother’s house. A sound that stripped away the years and the edge to reveal a girl much more carefree. Deputy Marshal Rachel ‘I make suspects cry for funsies’ Brooks was standing off to the side and making googoo eyes at none other than the Brooklyn Boys. Captain Frickin America and the Winter Goddamn Soldier were flirting with his best friend and putting their numbers in her phone. 

“See what you did?” Art demanded from behind him as he leaned against the closed passenger door of the sedan that sealed Raylan inside.

“Me?” Tim demanded in affront. “How is this my fault?”

Art’s face was a mask of vaguely amused sarcasm. “You’re a bad influence.”

“Well, now that’s just hurtful. Besides,” he threw his rifle bag in the trunk before slinking into the back seat on the driver’s side and meeting his friend’s eyes in the rearview mirror, “I thought that was Raylan.” 

[thisiswhereikeepdcthings]

how crazy do you think the AO3 authours notes are in gotham?

"Joker killed my grandma with a reindeer whilst playing 'grandma got run over by a reindeer' and i don't think i can continue to write this JokerBat fic anymore guys sorry :/ it just feels disrespectful."

“Look, I get if Batman/Clark Kent isn’t your cup of tea, but the guy writes more about Batman than anyone else outside of Gotham. There’s got to be a reason, is all I’m saying.”

“And here I am, jumping on the Batman/Bruce Wayne train like the rest of our beloved hellhole. Anyway, if you’re not from Gotham you can keep your criticisms to yourself or I will not be held responsible for the bloodshed that will occur should you insult our beloved sunshine child and his goth sugar baby. You don’t know them like we do.”

“Hey, sorry I haven’t updated in awhile. I died and then got caught up in this whole my-father-didn’t-avenge-me angst thing. Which was completely justified in my opinion. Anyway…”

“Let’s be honest, this entire series is dedicated to the fact that Red Hood could crush any of us with his thighs and we’d say thank you.”

“I just read a fic shipping Nightwing/Superman and I mean, come on. The author is clearly not from Gotham but I can never unsee that and I think I should be entitled to financial compensation.”

“Sorry it’s been awhile, I just got a new job! With the Best Boss™️ (if you know, you know). Also, my boss said he’d give a hundred bucks if I wrote a Batman bashing fic? Thoughts? Ngl I don’t think it’d even be that hard.”

“‘WHy aRE yoU WriTIng ABouT FakE SupERheROes WHen THe rEAl oNEs aRE riGHt tHEre?’ Uh, because it’s Gotham and they’re all a disaster? And also because I don’t want to be haunted by the venegeful spirits of robins past idk. Thinking of doing a crossover though. Batman in the Avengers? Thoughts?”

“I just want my husband Nightwing to be happy, is that too much to ask?”

“I came across Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy on my way home from school today and will now be hyperfixating on that ship, thanks.”

“Leave me and my 235k word fic of Prince!Bruce/Knight!Batman alone you Metropolis and Superman-loving traitors. This is not for you.”

[catofadifferentcolor]

Terrible Fic Idea #87: Percy Jackson, but make it MCU

Look, I didn't want to come up with yet another crazy PJO crossover, but here I am. Because instead of just coming up with the lightest, fluffiest, gayest PJO romance possible - which is what I wanted - I had to turn it into an MCU identity reveal fic too.

Or: What if post-ToA Percy Jackson was Peter Parker's caseworker following Aunt May's untimely death?

Just imagine it:

Tony Stark first meets Percy Jackson in the ICU of Metropolitan General the day after Peter and his aunt are caught in a terrible subway accident. May dies on scene. Even with his advanced healing, Peter is badly injured and taken to the nearest hospital - where it quickly becomes apparent he's Enhanced. It takes about 24 hours for the news to make its way to Tony, who immediately storms the hospital with the intention of taking Peter back to his Tower to heal-

-only to be told Peter's not going anywhere by the social worker assigned to the case.

This is remarkable for many reasons, not the least because the social worker is an unassuming, overworked 27-year-old wearing Finding Nemo socks and a faded Save the Oceans t-shirt. That the case worker - Percy Jackson - stands his ground in the face of Iron Man's wrath is even more remarkable, but Tony is forced to admit the kid has a point: he can't just let someone without any obvious connection to a minor walk off with said minor, particularly when that minor is Enhanced.

It takes Tony a couple days to get his ducks in a row, proving that he is not only able and willing to take in Peter, but is the one his aunt wanted to take care of him in the event something happened to her. During that time he has JARVIS research everything he can on Percy (lives in a Central Park penthouse owned by his long-time boyfriend, a successful music producer; volunteers for a NPO started by his best friend dedicated to restoring the wild; brief stint as the youngest ever on the FBI's most wanted, etc), but finds nothing to suggest he's anything other than a social worker trying to do what's best for his charges.

Percy becomes a semi-regular fixture at the Tower. At first it's just business, checking in on how Peter is doing and facilitating the foster care/adoption paperwork. Later it becomes something akin to friendship, with Percy being utterly unimpressed by Tony's fame but remarkably charmed by his inventions and philanthropic efforts. (He also comes to have strong feelings about the Rogues and their actions during the Civil War once he learns of them, helping Tony to see their betrayal for what it is. This alone makes him one of Rhodey and Pepper's favorite people.)

This goes on for quite some time - though I see this as happening post-CACW, we don't jump straight into the Infinity War, with there being several years wherein the Accords are ratified, the Rogues found and tried for their actions in the Civil War, and for the most part allowed to return to the Avengers on a probationary basis - until Thor finally arrives with news of Thanos' impending arrival.

Only Percy happens to be visiting when Thor arrives and the Avengers naturally have questions after Thor addresses him as Prince Perseus.

The truth of Percy's identity comes out in fits and starts (demigod son of Poseidon, saved the world a couple times, ascended to become God of Heroes, Natural Disasters, and Poison as well as Patron God of New York City; has been dating Apollo since he was fourteen; yes, is actually a social worker, albeit one who takes cases across the country to protect demigods and Enhanced), which is not helped by Thor (who can't help but comment on what he knows of Percy's heroics) or Apollo (who shows up after Percy texts an SOS but can't help but talk up his boyfriend either.)

The Infinity War still happens, albeit rather differently than in canon - perhaps Thanos turns out to be a disgruntled child or sibling of Gaia out for revenge, justifying Greek/Roman interference? But the details don't really matter as much as the identity reveal.

And... that's really all I have with regards to plot. But there should be a lot of character moments leading up to the reveal that hint at who Percy really is but which don't form a coherent narrative until the truth is revealed.

Bonuses include:

The softest, fluffiest romance possible for Apollo and Percy, with the pair more or less falling head over heels at first sight at the start of TTC, having their first kiss at the party at the end of the book, and dating throughout the rest of the Titan War. Apollo goes absolutely batshit insane when Percy goes missing at the start of HOO and breaks out of Olympus to crash the Senate meeting at the end of SoN and check on his boyfriend, and eventually gets made mortal for helping too much during the Giant War. The broad strokes of ToA occur with Percy fighting at his now-mortal boyfriend's side, and Percy ascends to godhood when Apollo regains his. There's some tension (Zeus is not happy about his firstborn son's choice of lover, fearing overthrow; Poseidon fears Apollo will end up breaking Percy's heart, but softens after Percy ascends and his chance of becoming a flower diminishes; many CHB campers think Percy's mad for dating a god, etc) but for the most part it should be as fluffy as circumstances allow.

Percy having been really obvious about his background, but in ways that seem reasonable ("How did you meet your boyfriend?" "I was at a really bad party when a friend ended up calling her brother to pick us up early. I fell in love with his car and then with him.") or like jokes ("Those sea turtles really seem to like you." "I like them too." "I guess they're kind of cute." "Excellent conversationalists too.") until the full truth comes out; and

Thor attempting to make up for blowing Percy's cover in dramatic (and hilarious) ways. This should include the gift of at least one native Asgardian water plant ("Dude, have you never heard of invasive species?") and end in a bakery's worth of Asgardian baked goods.

And that's all I have, though given the way this has been living rent-free in my head all week there may be more. As always feel free to adopt this bun, just link back if you do anything with it.

More PJO Ideas | More Terrible Fic Ideas

[just-a-simpel-narrator]

Hey! I hope you're having a nice day

I saw your masked feather AU art, and I got curious. Is it a ducktales/PKNA crossover?

I see UNO got a body, right?

The art is really cute too

Heyyy! I'm doing great, thanks!

I hope your day is wonderful too!!

This if officially the first ask I ever got so I'm currently very excited!

This Au has been cooking in my head for so long, that I, to be honest, don't really know where to start or end, but I'll give my best to stay on topic

Yes, Masked Feathers is basically a Ducktales 17 and Pkna Crossover, though some other aspects from the Comics are also present (like events from other comics having happened, or a certain one-of-character that I really really love being there. I'll talk about him sooner or later)

To give a (hopefully) short summery, it all started with me being pretty pissed about how they handled Donald in the Ducktales Series, especially him trading places with Della on the Moon. Which ended up evolving into, the Duck Avenger is the one to save Della from the Moon, due to Uno detecting a weird Signal.

Don't get me wrong, I do love how Della manages to get back all by herself (and she would have made it back by herself here too, Pk was simply faster) but they did Donald dirty, so I'd say it's pretty justified.

Other things of Course changed too, for example I could talk pages about the Situation with Gyro, but this is getting pretty long already, I just wanted to get into the original thought.

The Au currently consists of a Main and Secondary Storyline, the Main one following Donald and well all that's happening, and the second one tbh is basically all about Stefan and Lylas Friendship. (Aka Lyla slowly finding out more about Stefans Backstory, which yes. I do have completely planned out)

And yes, Uno also gets a body

He secretly starts building it after the whole ordeal with Due, but gets "interrupted" when Ducklair gets back. Lyla (and possibly Gyro, I haven't decided yet) ends up helping him finish it. After a few upgrades he's also able to control most of the DucklairTower without having to transfer his consciousness. I just thought it would be neat

Also Pk straight up deck's Everett in the face after he offers him the money

Anyway, I hope that answered your questions in some way, I know it got pretty long, sorry about that

I'll gladly go more in depth into the timeline or whatever if you want to know more, but that's it for now!

I hope you have a wonderful day/night and thank you so much for reading/asking!

[racefortheironthrone]

How did Civil War differ in the books? I gave up around where Spider-Man went public with his identity (trying to keep track of all the crossover stuff put me off). The stuff you mentioned Tony doing suggests how that side was unreasonable, how was Cap being unreasonable (esp in a setting that thinks Magneto has a point for going homicidal at ANY of the stuff Tony & co proposed, when it's applied to mutants)?

To be clear on my Civil War ask, I am not trying to argue or troll, I find your points about the mutant metaphor in the context of a world with heroes interesting and I'm curious how you see the Sokovia Accords, or their book equivalents. The MCU had it that signing the Accords were required to superhero, so an Avenger who objected, could quit , but IIRC, in the books, that wasn't an option? Like superpowers meant you were conscripted or something? TBC, I was totally pro Cap in both versions

There are some pretty big differences between the comics and the MCU version of Civil War:

in the comics, Registration is meant to be a parallel to the Patriot Act in that it's a wild and tangentially-connected overreaction to a tragedy - the Stamford disaster was directly caused by the actions of a supervillain and had very little to do with the training and experience of the New Warriors. In the movie, the Sokovia Accords happen because of something that the Avengers were directly involved in, although they are similarly grounded in a desire by governments to bring a threat to their monopoly on force under control.

In the movie, while Steve doesn't like the Accords, he's initially intending to resign until he sees the Accords being used to justify a "kill on sight" order on Bucky - and even after he intervenes to save Bucky's life and ensure a modicum of due process, Steve is almost ready to sign on the dotted line when he finds out about Wanda being indefinitely detained. That's when he finds out Zemo and the Winter Soldier program and decides to violate the Accords in order to stop the conspiracy. In the books, Steve rejects the Registration Act on first principles, refuses any possibility of compromise, and becomes increasingly radicalized as time goes on.

Likewise, for his part, Tony is more willing to compromise on the Accords than he was on the Registration Act in the comics, and while he does have Vision put Wanda under house arrest out of panic, he's not involved in Ross' blacksite prisons and changes his position the moment he sees the Raft. There's also none of the really baroque evil shit, like the murderous Thor clone or putting together the Thunderbolts.

To answer some of your other questions: the people writing Civil War didn't agree on what the Registration Act was supposed to do, with some of them describing it as gun control and others as enslavement of anyone with superpowers. although pretty much everyone agreed on the interdimensional blacksite prisons business.

In terms of Cap being unreasonable, I would recommend listening to the podcast I recorded several years ago linked above, but I would point to two main things. The first is that Cap brings the Punisher into his Secret Avengers resistance, even though it's entirely predictable that Castle will start killing Tony's supervillains at the first opportunity. The second is that Cap decides to stage the final battle between himself and Tony in downtown NYC, with no concern for collateral damage or civilian casualties.

[himynameis4]

I feel like y’all are sleeping on the canonically-overlapping timeframes between It Chapter 1 & Stranger Things.

Will goes missing in early November (aka fall) of 1983. It Chapter 1 takes place 1988-1989, with Georgie going missing October 1988, and all the action taking place the subsequent summer.

The summer of 1989 would be when the Party graduates high school, you guys.

Wouldn’t it be interesting if Ted Wheeler had a sister, Maggie Tozier, perhaps? Finn Wolfhard has said that Richie and Mike wouldn’t get along, and Mike being frustrated with his dipshit little cousin is hilarious to me.

There are already crossover fics existing—ones that make Mike & Richie twins, ones that have Richie as the elder cousin, lots of ones that have Richie sent to live with/visit the Wheelers in Hawkins—but none I’ve seen that take the timeline into account, none with Mike as the elder cousin, and few that primarily take place in Derry.

What about, instead, starting post-season 4, with Karen Wheeler? The Wheelers are incredibly flawed, as parental figures go, but the end of season 4 leaves off with them seeming to pay more attention to the dangers in their children’s lives. Perhaps Karen Wheeler, newly wise to the supernatural dangers of Hawkins, sends Mike and Holly to live with their cousins in Derry for their own good? Hawkins is practically a ghost town, after all… Nancy’s over 18, Karen can’t control her—but she can protect her younger two, at least.

Perhaps it’s discovered that Mike was a target of Vecna, and the party, on edge and traumatized after Max, advocates for him to move away, where he’ll be safe, unintentionally heightening Mike’s feelings of uselessness (but he knows he could be useful, if they’d just listen this time, if they’d just let him stay… he feels sick thinking it, but also sickeningly justified in it, too: if he’d been in hawkins when they went for vecna that first time, max would be awake, and eddie would be alive. Mike could’ve done better, he just knows it, if only he’d been there to plan, he would’ve done better than the harebrained scheme nancy threw together, nearly getting max killed, and he only just made up with will, and eddie is dead, and he cant leave now—).

(It’s interesting to explore how mike sometimes simultaneously overconfident & incredibly insecure, as well as his (mis?)perception of himself, nancy, etc. Another interesting theme to explore here is the concept of usefulness, and how that does or does not factor into being loved and having value. Mike is useful, Mike is a leader… but by taking away Mike’s opportunities to express these things, it forces Mike to contend with his own self-worth and how he values himself, and his feelings on having to be “useful” in relationships relationships/to be loved (see: she doesn’t need me, mike’s van ramblings on lois lane, etc).

On top of that…what if Ted died fighting the upsidedown, protecting his children, and Karen shuffles the kids off to Derry shortly thereafter? Maybe she stays with Mike and Holly in Derry, but maybe she doesn’t stay forever—perhaps she returns to Hawkins to try and defend her wayward, rebellious eldest, Nancy, fighting at her daughters’ side and avenging her late husband. So Mike is left to grapple with the loss of his father mostly on his own, though Aunt Maggie and Uncle Went do their best. Perhaps it’s made worse by the fact that, just as his parents seemed to be doing better, to be caring, one got himself killed and the other abandoned them. In their attempts to “do better” they both—well, they don’t. Frankly, mike preferred when they didnt pay attention at all. At least they were all alive, and mike was with the people he loved. Will he have to forgive them, now? His father and his last-minute heroics, as though that makes up for a lifetime of distance; his mother and her grief, deciding that acknowledging her failures as a parent means giving up all hopes of being a better one?

(Themes? Forgiveness, parents, the impacts parents have on their children, etc.)

And on top of all of that, now he’s stuck in this shitty, homophobic town, one that isn’t all that different from his shitty, homophobic hometown, except that missing children are mundane here and most of the people he loves are miles away. Oh, and also it’s cold as fuck, because he’s in Maine, and he has to share a room with his shitty little cousin, Richie.

Mike is abruptly shoved into the same position El was—he’s dealing with a lot of shit at school, but why the hell would he tell el about it, with everything she’s dealing with in hawkins?? El had it worse in Lenora, apparently—given the way she reacted when he tried to compare their experiences with bullying.

(This isn’t entirely accurate, isn’t reflective of the intention behind El’s statement or the reason she reacted to Mike the way she did, merely a way Mike might internalize and interpret and be affected by El’s response to him talking about his experiences with bullying in season four.)

Reconstructing cerebro on the roof without dustin sucks. Being unable to communicate with the people he loves would suck more, though, and telephone lines are never private, no matter who’s listening in (nosey aunts and cousins or government agents on their side or government agents decidedly NOT on their side—it doesn’t matter. They don’t get to spy, because it’s not of their goddamn business).

(At least he and will are talking. Every other night, practically. Mike climbs out of the window of his shared bedroom, sits on the roof next to his Cerebro, and talks and talks and talks with will until the sky gets light. They discuss the latest new of the upsidedown, their friends, will’s connection to all of it, their families. Will is the only person mike tells, honestly, about what it’s like in Derry. They talk about light things too—plan campaigns they know they’ll never get to play, talk about comics and gossip about annoying siblings & cousins. When the Little Shop of Horrors movie comes out, they watch it separately & then talk about it together. Overall, they’re making a better go of it than the last time they tried long distance.)

(The cognitive disconnect for mike between what he’s experienced, what his friends have experienced, and the relatively mundane (for now) evils of derry high school might be interesting to explore, too.)

Life continues in this vein for about 2 years. The upsidedown & vecna aren’t fully resolved, but things are at a kind of stalemate, at least.

And then, in 1988, Georgie Denbrough goes missing.

(If you made it to the end of this long-ass post, congrats, man. I figure i’ll tag @wibble-wobbegong since i know he was/is v into stephen king? If you’re reading this, hi wibble! Idk this plot bunny has been dancing in my head. If anybody has thoughts, or different directions they wanna springboard off from this, i’d love to hear ab it lol. I think imma tag this on “wheeler in derry” for my own organization. If i elaborate ill probably tag it there)

[yellowocaballero]

definitely no pressure or anything and u can ignore this entirely but i would love to hear more abt any of ur ideas for atsv fic (ur multiversal mistake peter parker fic appealed to me greatly) ...... i loved how atsv tied so explicitly into metanarratives by just calling them 'canon events' instead of smth else and the whole movie felt like it was justifying miles as spiderman and that his story is just as much a spiderman story as the others. and i love how you engage with canon in similar ways ? like u engage with the text of canon on a level that i find really interesting frex like i loved ur stephanie fic extra just bc stephanie is a character done so dirty by canon in all these awful misogynist ways that ur fic felt like like such an amazing contradiction.... this ask has kind of gotten away from me, but i hope ur doing well on the whole !

Thank you! All of the Spidey crossover fic ideas I have are tepid, so none are good enough to share. Bad crossovers are easy, good crossovers are so hard. And there's nothing more obnoxious than a bad crossover. MK/Avengers fics, you were awful.

I typed out this whole dissection on how modern Spider-Man writers have completely lost the thread of Peter as an 'everyman', and how he wasn't an 'everyman' because he was relatable in terms of personality, identity, or actions, but because he was relatable in terms of problems, and how once Spider-Man stories started being about how difficult it is to be Spider-Man Masked Hero instead of being about how difficult it is to survive in this world and be a good person when you never know if you're doing the right thing or not, then they stopped being actually engaging as everyman stories. and when you simplify Spider-Man down to 'he's just like you except with a cooler life!' then you miss WHY it's important that Peter's life is marked by tragedy and defined by his sadness, which is the fact that if his life was easy then it would indicate that it was easy to be a good person, and what the story tries to say is that being a good person is the hardest thing in the fucking world But Baby We Do It Anyway, and THAT'S what Spider-Man is about, and -

Then I realized that was fucking dumb and also not what you asked and deleted it. ATSV is peak fanfiction because it engages in conversation with the text, and while it has a lot to say about Spidey stories itself it is not a Spidey story. I think end of the day 'what classic spidey is about' just can't be what Miles is about, because Miles is about his relationship to Peter & Spider-Man. They're mutually exclusive. Miles CAN'T have Peter's story at all, because ATSV is telling a story about telling a story. Superhero stories really can't exist unobserved anymore huh. This is so common - Spidey stories since the 2010 have honestly been about being Spidey stories - that at this rate it is also a Spidey story and so it is valid on the grounds of how ubiqutous this story is. I sound like a dipshit.

So I'm still trying to formulate a good story. Miguel vexes me, I've been trying to lock down a good story idea for him for ages and it just hasn't happened. What I liked about the SM2099 comic was the fact that it was about Miguel, who was dealing with a problem that a lot of adults deal with: having your sense of self and identity disrupted, having your understanding of the world disrupted, and trying to sort out how to build yourself into somebody you can live with. I don't think he ever truly figures that out. So it's hard to write a story asking that question, because man I'll let you know when I figure it out too.

And I'm glad you liked New Wave - that was also heavily in conversation with the text, because the text hated women. Steph is an everyman to me - not because she's remotely similar to any human being in real life, but because she wants what any human being would want. And does the weirdest possible thing to get it.

[traumatizedbymay2016]

Ok this might be a little bit tinfoil hat, but I feel like a large part of the reason that Tony Stark ended up being the de facto soul of the MCU was that he was in a different genre to everyone else. It feels so obvious to me.

Every other Avenger stars in some variation on character versus character conflict the majority of the time, and the exceptions I can think of are still (generally) external (character versus society and character versus fate seem to be common secondary conflicts). Tony is the only character who stars predominantly in character versus self conflicts.

For starters, the Iron Man trilogy is way better when you recognize this distinction. Whiplash and Killian are lame villains, yes, but it's because they aren't the antagonist at all. At best they're secondary conflicts, but at worst they're straight up just the inciting incident. The real antagonist of the story is the flaw that Tony is grappling with --- in Iron Man, it's his willful ignorance and isolation from the world; in Iron Man 2, it's his fear of needing help or being a burden (and secondarily his fear of his impending death); and in Iron Man 3 it's his crippling anxiety that nothing he ever does will be enough to protect the ones he loves. It's relatively rare that we see any other character perform this kind of introspection at all, let alone see an entire story built around it (Thor: Ragnarok is the only one that readily comes to mind).

Even weirder to me is that this somehow persists into crossover films. Age of Ultron features Tony grappling with the way the remnants of his Iron Man 3 anxieties are interfacing with his mask of hyper competence; Civil War centers around Tony deconstructing that same mask and attempting to hand the reins over to someone else; the examples are abundant (even if they're handled worse here than in the standalone films).

And I think that's why so much of the Marvel discourse that the interwebs seem hell bent on showing me ends up presenting every Marvel character as "uwu soft precious pure bean" heroes who are nuance-free portrayals of goodness and light in spite of their own laundry lists of mistakes that they move past but never really grow from, only to reach Tony Stark and present even the most understandable of mistakes as though they were pre-meditated and cold blooded decisions for which he is responsible and can never be absolved. If the narrative never forces anyone else to properly reconcile their actions, then those actions were clearly justified; when it does so to Tony, that sends the message that his actions are clearly worse or of greater significance than the others' are.

But that difference is about presentation. It's about the story being told and the conflict being centered, not the culpability or severity of the actions at play. I'm not sure any Avenger has ever screwed up as royally as the time that Thor's coronation got crashed and he decided to get his friends together to attempt frost giant genocide, but the narrative chooses not to focus on that in favor of other elements of Thor's progression. Weighing it as lesser is purely based on bias.

And here's the thing! I understand that 1) protagonists are not necessarily good people and 2) good people can and do make mistakes. I actually prefer characters who can do something terrible --- whether as a result of ignorance, trauma, or panic --- and then, in time, learn from those mistakes and become better people. I would argue that makes a character more compelling, not less so. In fact, the very way that the narrative never even acknowledges the potential for Steve Rogers' actions to have a negative consequence when even bare minimum common sense would dictate that there must be at least a little downside is part of why I don't enjoy the character.

But so much fan meta fails to engage with this in any meaningful way, and so you end up with situations where people are ranting about Tony blasting Sam after Rhodey got knocked out of the sky while entirely ignoring the obvious and understandable distress that would cloud anyone's judgement in that situation in favor of treating it like an intentional act of malice on Tony's part; in spite of the fact that there are dozens of instances in the MCU of heroes attacking each other with greater force in lower stakes situations --- Thor choking Tony in Age of Ultron comes to mind.

Age of Ultron is actually the perfect case study in this phenomenon, as it stands. Tony's arc in the movie is an explicit continuation of his arc in Iron Man 3: He's terrified by the vision of his teammates dead and the world at risk, and is desperately trying to solve that problem on his own in a panic. This leads to the objective mistake of Ultron's birth and near rise to power, which the fandom all-too-happily places the blame for squarely on Tony's shoulders.

Except Tony is just one piece of the puzzle. At a minimum, Bruce Banner was equally involved in the creation of Ultron; a task perfectly in line with his established character trait of pursuing scientific advancement at any cost. Cinematic parallels between the birth of Ultron and the birth of the Hulk are unsubtle, to say the least.

Thor could (and should) have provided some instruction to the two pertaining to the literal magic gemstone they were studying, but went off to go celebrate another victory. Wanda used her mind control powers to influence the situation in the direction of Ultron. Hell, I find it hard to take Steve's "sometimes my team mates don't tell me things" line seriously when the lab is a room made entirely of windows inside his house.

The cherry on top, obviously, being that even if we ignore all available subtext and let Iron Man be the sole creator of Ultron, the Avengers were still effectively functioning as a team and were properly equipped to prevent Ultron from enacting any real damage to the world when they intervened in the vibranium deal with Klaue --- but a certain pair of Avengers were literally fighting on Ultron's team at that point, enabling him to retrieve the needed vibranium and capture Helen Cho.

They're not culpable for that, though, right? How was it said... "She's just a kid"?

With the final irony being that the selfsame Avenger in question would go on to marry the Vision. A character who is literally just "What Tony Stark intended Ultron to be." But when it comes to Vision coming out worthy to wield Mjolnir, that's not Tony's fault, is it? It was a team effort, or a happy accident, or the Mind stone intervening. Never mind that it's personifying J.A.R.V.I.S., Tony's creation. Tony's not the one who does good things, he's the one who makes mistakes.

Meanwhile from the perspective of someone who loves the man versus self narrative, Age of Ultron is about Tony admitting his mistakes and quite literally learning from them and doing better next time. He spends the film taking responsibility for the places he messed up and working to understand how he can do better, and the next time he tries, he does do better. The narrative functions as intended.

But because there isn't a single other character in the room willing to admit wrongdoing --- or, perhaps more accurately, there isn't a single other character in the room that the narrative is willing to force to admit such a thing --- the implication to someone who isn't acclimated to the cycle of Fail, Learn, Succeed that characterizes Tony is just that Tony is The One Who Made Ultron. I mean, Bruce Banner gets more remorseful about being mind controlled to unleash the Hulk than he does about having been an active participant in the creation of a malevolent AI.

I just think it's interesting because so much of the fandom buys into the idea that the characters who never admit that they were wrong actually never were wrong, and that therefore Tony Stark is the worst; but at the same time, the whole heart is gone from the MCU as a franchise. There are still individual fun properties, especially when your particular favorite character is on screen, but you can feel in the places where the fandom is even still a fandom and not a toxic pile of self-consuming sludge that there's something missing.

As frustrated as I am that the fandom is like this, though, I'm more sad that other characters never got to have this kind of introspection. There's just so much missed potential for growth in so many of these characters.

[hollow-dweller]

@abcd-em gave me one (1) iota of encouragement, so:

Why Tony Stark's Death Was A Good Narrative Choice, Actually

my thoughts about this fall into two camps, basically: the utilitarian reasons why his death was a good choice, and the character-based reasons why his death was a good choice.

on the side of utilitarianism, if there is any single character who is the Protagonist of the first three phases of the MCU (not just his own stories, but the MCU as a whole), it is Tony Stark. his growth defines the overarching narrative, and our primary antagonist (Thanos) is positioned as his foil. you could take away virtually any other character in the MCU (except maybe Steve) without having to make many if any changes to the overarching storyline, but you couldn't do that with Tony Stark. i'm not making any arguments about whether that is a good or a bad thing (because it depends), but functionally what this does is give the audience a hand-hold for the shared universe. if you don't want to keep up with everything going on in the MCU, you can elect to only pay attention to the Tony Bits and still get a relatively complete and coherent picture of what's going on.

that's a double-edged sword in a shared universe, because the problem becomes what to do with Tony when he's not on-screen. especially as the MCU progressed, it became increasingly more difficult to justify Tony's non-involvement. moreover, his character became so essential to the universe that when he was present in other characters' stories, he sort of inevitably took them over (which yes, is also to do with behind-the-scenes/actor fuckery, but keeping things strictly in-text here). the most egregious example of this is of course Civil War, which is a Captain America movie in name only, but also Homecoming and Far From Home. at that point, your options for dealing with the elephant in the room ("Where Is Tony Stark?") become pretty limited: even if you were to write in that he retired, every large-scale or crossover event moving forward would have had to have written around his absence, in ways that would have been inevitably unflattering to his character. if they wanted to continue with the MCU in a way that was decoupled from Tony's narrative, their only real option was to kill him. (whether they succeeded in doing that is another story, but. the point is they had a lot more options in moving the narrative forward without Tony as a possible fallback, than if they had simply written him off as being Somewhere, Vaguely Off-Screen.)

obviously utilitarianism alone is not a good enough reason to kill off a character; something can make complete narrative and structural sense and be a dog-shit writing choice (Natasha Romanov when will you be avenged). there are a lot of things that go into what makes a character death a Good Choice, from a character-based perspective, and it's one of those things that tends to have an exception for every rule. the death of Gwen Stacy would be a prime example here: her death becomes a retroactively better narrative choice in the way it has informed and molded the other characters, and in the way her character has been re-examined and re-imagined in subsequent years, than it was on its own (because while i love me a girl who haunts a narrative, she was still fridged at the end of the day).

so for Tony, i think his death is a strong character choice because it is both a culmination and reflection of his established character traits. it takes a specific kind of arrogance and hubris to do what Tony (or any of these characters, frankly) does: to take your innate, cultivated, or acquired talents or abilities and use them to enact what is essentially vigilante justice. i'm not condemning by saying this, to be clear; i think this exact hubris is something Peter and Tony have in common, and both of them are characters that i love. but practically speaking, a genius and billionaire is always going to do more good putting his money and brains to work than physically getting involved in the fight on a personal level, and yet it is that exact thing that Tony does, again and again. this is because Tony is in many ways myopic: going back all the way to IM1 and repeatedly throughout the MCU, he has needed to see the consequences of his actions (or inaction) in order to fully grasp them. the myopia and hubris are complementary and fascinating aspects of his character, and add so much depth to the decisions he makes throughout his tenure in the mcu.

taking these aspects of his character into account, his sacrifice feels motivated, not just by the external circumstances, but by his established traits as a character. often a sacrifice play in a narrative can feel cheap or contrived because it becomes clear that the story was written in order to back the character into a corner where they have no other option but to sacrifice themselves (again, Natasha Romanov when will you be avenged). Tony's sacrifice manages to strike the balance of not being contrived (there WERE other options), while still being justified by the stakes (something had to be done otherwise Thanos was going to destroy the universe, again), and all the while, still making sense from the character's perspective--of course Tony would not have wanted to leave it to anyone else to make that final sacrifice. partly because he has always valued his loved ones more than himself (another fascinating and complicated part of his character), but also because at the end of the day, Tony doesn't really trust anyone other than himself to get the job done.

to me, it is a good character death because it is justified by the stakes, motivated from the character perspective, and has narrative utility.

[keptin-indy]

When the Angels Left the Old Country review

Full disclosure: I won this book in a giveaway, so I feel like I'm morally obligated to write a public review instead of just talking to people in real life about it.  You are free to view me as an unpaid shill, or a shill who has been paid with one (1) book.

A little background on my perspective: I am Jewish, but not very good at it and I have extremely strong feelings on Good Omens going back more than 20 years.  I have cosplayed Aziraphale more than once like 10 years ago.  I looked up a whole lot of Yiddish words before I realized there's a glossary in the back, so learn from my mistakes.

Overall, I enjoyed this book and was sad when it started wrapping up! If the idea of a Good Omens / Fievel: An American Tail crossover sounds like a good time to you, you will probably enjoy this book.

It's a very quick and engaging read, but I happened to start reading it right before the latest round of internet discourse on antisemitism, which made for a fairly distressing combination and a solid day of Jewish navel-gazing in the middle.

It starts a little slow, both plot-wise and genre-wise, but picks up in the second half.  By genre-wise, I mean that there were long sections of the book where I could practically forget that two-thirds of the main cast were supernatural creatures.  Yes, they talked about it, but after a short burst in the beginning, they basically don't do anything with it until the second half of the book.  Even with more going on in the latter half, this is a very low magic book, so don't expect a Good Omens level of miracles and major supernatural characters outside of the main pair.  Yes, they do exist, but this is a much smaller scale story.  This isn't a bad thing, it's just different and I want to set the correct expectations.

Also speaking of expectations, this is much more a Jewish story than it is a queer one.  Yes, there are baby lesbians and what is technically a non-binary character (though I feel that a being that doesn't have a sex to begin with is a very different, less queer thing than someone who is born into the presumption of having a sex and gender).  Now I am wholeheartedly in favor of stories where the focus is not being queer, the characters just happen to be queer people and the plot does not revolve around their identities, so this was fine.  But if you're expecting a romance focus, this doesn't really have one beyond the bog standard "at the end of the narrative, the people who seem compatible get together".  Yes, the angel and demon are devoted to each other and the story treats that as very important, but I've seen a thousand stories where the same level of devotion could be played completely platonically as well.

To quibble, there are some inconsistences, where the author forgot something they'd said earlier or else made changes during writing and didn't go back and bring some other things in line, as well as some things that aren't adequately explained in my opinion, but they didn't detract much beyond occasionally breaking me out of immersion to scratch my head and go right back to reading.  It could perhaps have used another editing pass, but it's far from a major problem.

Very mild spoilers with my opinions on the main characters below:

Little Ash: I'm going to be frank here and say I didn't hugely like Little Ash because he's the kind of character that seems designed to appeal to a certain demographic of YA reader, e.g. the nonthreatening Bad Boy, who is a Rebel with a reputation for Doing Bad Things but who never actually does any of those bad things except when they're morally justified.  If you like Loki in the Thor movies and complain about him being too mean in the Avengers, or TV show!Crowley, or any of the various YA novel love interests of the leather-pants-Draco variety, you'll probably like him much more than I did.  Of the two divine beings, he's the more fleshed out and the one who feels more like a POV character the reader is supposed to identify with, which I of course was a little irritated by.

The angel: The angel's relationship with identity is the most compelling thing in the book to me, but it is unlikely to be a popular character with people who don't view strong senses of Duty, Purpose and general lawfulness as positive, which is frankly most of tumblr.  I would have liked more emotional responses to the changes in its identity, but I guess it was also learning emotions so maybe I shouldn't expect that of it yet.  While becoming more yourself is a good thing, not all parts of the experience are positive at the time, and when it encounters some of these parts, the angel mostly shrugs about it and moves on instead of mourning the loss of what it used to be.  It's a very sanitized transition.

Rose: I like her, as the sort of too-sensible girl you find in middle grade fiction, which I have utmost respect for.  She felt realistically like a young person who did not know what she was about but was convinced she definitely knew what she was about, which is just how being a teenager is.

I wanted there to be more Grandmother Rivke.  This is my biggest complaint.  She was great.

[dispatchvampire]

In honor of Pride, I bring you fic!

This is my Avengers/Justified crossover involving Tim Gutterson & Clint Barton.

Two Snipers, both alike in dignity, or something like that.

[tyrannuspitch]

recapping general, initial feelings on comics i've read recently (JiM2011 + YA2013):

journey into mystery does do some very interesting stuff, but it also does a lot of stuff that i personally find quite tiresome. i'm just not entertained by Elaborate Schemes where we have to follow loki striking bargains with five different people and it will definitely be clever in the end we promise. sometimes the payoff IS good, but while it's happening, it feels like narrative white noise :(

i also tend to find crossovers pretty tiresome. i am weak; i do not have the comic fan's constitution.

i don't really care about leah :( i'm sorry, i did try, but i just find her kind of flat and uninteresting. i might feel differently on a reread, especially if i knew more about her relationship to hela/how she came to be? i'm genuinely not sure if she has a backstory, or if she was invented for JiM specifically. (like, clearly there's something being referenced with her being hela's hand, but that doesn't mean she was a *character* in any previous story. it could literally just be that she was created.)

i did like thori. but thori is funny...? idk, i feel like thori was a supporting character pitched correctly. you aren't asked to be more invested than his writing justifies. he's funny and he represents a single clear idea, and that's enough.

sometimes i like kid loki. i feel like i could/should like him more... he's fine, i see the potential, but something just hasn't clicked for me (yet?). not sure what.

i REALLY like loki's characterisation in young avengers. truly delightful jester energy. he has the wit of a three thousand year old and the audacity of a twelve year old and he is here to cause problems on purpose!!!

the line "i'm not the murderer, i'm the murder weapon" really compels me, and i wish we got more explicit exploration of that. (<- likely thing for an mcu loki fan to say.) alas. more subtextual significance may be revealed on further investigation.

in general, the identity soup is... interesting. JiM concerns two to three lokis (kid loki likes to conflate ikol and the dead loki, but they're not really the same), but YA raises the possibility of ikol-in-kid-loki's-body as a new entity, and, iirc, AoA also treats ikol as separate. hall of mirrors. infinite lokis fighting each other forever. (except not because they resolve it. but still. hmmm)

i have said before that jim/ya/aoa frustrates me, because, for my tastes, it's too focused on self-destruction and not enough on the initial external violence which ends up being internalised. but i've deleted my most recent post on this subject, because i want to re-assess how true this is. i think there is some truth in it, but i'm still just beginning to process what i've read and it's probably a lot less true than i initially thought.

now i guess i should reread agent of asgard, with full(ish) context at last.

[emmym1]

My thoughts on... Avengers Academy 2010 (#21-28) "Second Semester"

The second semester of the Avengers Academy has arrived! This arc was a very fun read with a lot of really good character moments to it. Really loving the direction this series is taking! It was really fun to see the original students of the academy acclimate to having to deal with other students being there all of a sudden and how it made them feel. I really like the new additions to the team. Lightspeed, White Tiger and X-23 are all very fun and intriguing characters who are able to stand on are all interesting in their own ways. I really loved how Lightspeed helped Striker come to terms with his sexuality. It was a super sweet moment and I really wished they explored it more. The storyline of this arc was a super interesting one. It was really cool to see more of the future versions of the original academy members and how their lives turned out. Finesse being unable to remember her own child was really heartbreaking. Same with Reptil taking over the body of his younger self and having to let events play out a certain way to ensure their future. It was really gutwrenching seeing him make sure things play out in a certain way while he knows what has happened and how he secretly wants to prevent that. Their future versions and timeline do seem a bit questionable, I really hope they explore that further in future arcs. It was really intriguing to learn more about the new member's backstories. X-23 and White Tiger in particular had some really intriguing and dark backstories. I love how the students immediatly accepted them because they knew the struggles they went through. A really sweet moment. The ending of the arc was also super interesting. With Hank defining what the avengers means, why they're so important and how they helped him become better personally. While also exploring the downsides of Avengers Academy and whether it has a justifiable reason for existing. The discussions between the academy team and Brigg's team were super intriguing. And I love how it resulted in some very good character development for the academy faculty. Seeing Jocasta become her own person in this was also really interesting to see develop. Really wonder where that'll lead to, especially with how she seems to end up in the future timeline. I will say. I really wished that the students would confront their teachers about the true origins behind the academy and their reasoning for being there. Feels like a big elephant in the room right now and I'm really dying for that confrontation to finally happen. Although it doesn't really seem to get mention much anymore The Runaways crossover event was also really cool. Was nice to see the parallels between the two teams and how they both have suffered in their own ways. The way they litterally saw what everyone went through personally was so good and helped everyone understand and respect each other. I also loved the adorable romance that began brewing between Julie and Karolina, they're so sweet together!

This was a really good arc with a lot of interesting and fun moments. A lot of characters get more substance when it comes to their teenage drama which is a very welcome improvement compared to the early issues of this run. It was also great to see them explore Striker's and Julie's sexuality and their struggle with figuring it out. The overarching story of this arc had a lot of very intriguing stuff to it and hope it gets explored further in upcomming issues. So yeah all by all a really good arc!

[thestargayzingheroine]

Soooooo I was watching OSP's new giant video about the problems with a lot of modern Superhero movies and a big issue with them is that they feel a bit empty and don't give the various heroes in them enough to do between movies or hangout or that there's even THAT many superheroes in these big franchises to begin with to justify trying to adapt most of the big crossover stuff aka why cap civil war was a bit iffy in places. I've.... thought of a bit of a solution to that problem, with the MCU at least. See, the original idea for Avengers Age of Ultron was that the Avengers picked up a LOT of new members between movies and they'd just be there through the whole movie like Captain Marvel and Black Panther. They changed it because they thought it might have been kinda iffy to juggle all those new characters (or because Joss Whedon's a fucking hack take your pick)

I think THAT could have worked, and I think they could have set it up a lot better too. Basically, have a bunch of other heroes be mentioned off-screen during the first Avengers movie and have a few of them show up during the movies set between Avengers 1 and Age of Ultron. Like say, have Hank Pym and Wasp teaming up with Iron Man in Iron Man 3 or putting Carol Danvers in there or having Black Panther helping Captain America out during Winter Soldier.

Then the whole Hydra stuff from the end of that movie forces Cap to put out a call to unite all these heroes under the banner of the Avengers and thats the big team that gets shown off at the start of that movie.

[kurt-wagner-official]

Post #46: Secret Wars issues 1-12

Secret Wars is a weird but very famous and important piece of Marvel history. It's really just a cash grab series written to tie in with a toy line, but it's also a huge influence on all future crossovers. There have been many and will be a lot more crossovers and spin-offs that I’ve been skipping because they don’t really tie directly to the stories that Claremont and later Simonson are telling, and those are the authors I’m focusing on in these posts. But there are some other series that play a large part in the Claremont/Simonson stories, and this is one of them, so I want to read it to get a more complete perspective on the books I’m focusing on. The huge cast involves a lot of characters that are not the focus of this blog, and I'm not really a fan of this series to begin with, so I'm just gonna skim each issue and comment on the X-Men scenes. Issue 1 opens with the Beyonder, a powerful extra-dimensional, plucking a bunch of heroes and villains off of Earth and into a pocket dimension, where he says they have to fight and if they win they get rewarded. That's the whole plot, they're just all on a planet fighting for 12 issues. The X-Men, minus Kitty but plus Scott and Lockheed, are there. Magneto is also on Team Heroes, and the Avengers are very upset, but the X-Men say he's not a true villain and may be a valuable ally. At the end of the issue all the villains show up and attack.

Issue 2 has a big long battle. Afterwards, Scott and Reed Richards bond over how they miss their wives. Scott's always one of my favorite X-Men to see interacting with other heroes. He's the quintessential X-Man and nice to see other team leaders treat him like a peer. Magneto messes with some big machines he found until the Avengers attack him, so he kidnaps Janet van Dyne/Wasp and flies off.

Between their giving Magneto the benefit of the doubt, the presence of Anna, and just them being mutants, the Avengers don't trust the X-Men, so they decide to go find Magneto. Spider-Man overhears and attacks them. What follows is a very stupid sequence where Spidey is somehow able to  beat up the whole team at once while they all gush about how talented he is. It's really just cause Jim Shooter likes Spidey more than the X-Men, by actual feats any of them could give him a good fight one on one and half of them could beat him. Anyway, he runs off to snitch on their plans but Xavier wipes his memory. Meanwhile, Magneto releases Janet and proposes a truce since they can't leave due to a storm outside. They start flirting, with a brief interruption when Doctor Doom requests an alliance and Magneto refuses. The X-Men leave and then there's some more fighting between the villains and the other heroes.

The X-Men make it to Magneto's, hoping he'll team up with them but ready for a fight. Magneto welcomes them and says together they can stop Doctor Doom and use the Beyonder's reward to create a world of peace and harmony. Janet reveals she's been playing him and runs off. Magneto wants to attack her but Xavier stops him, saying they can only work to together if they agree that good ends do not justify evil means.

The X-Men spend most of issue five butting heads with Magneto over their methods, but in the end they save Captain America's team from the villains. Xavier decides the best way they can help us by acting independently but in support of the other heroes. In the battle, Peter is injured, and they have to leave him behind in a village of the alien planter's residents since they have the only healer on the planet.

Ororo is getting fed up with Xavier, who due to his newly functional legs is challenging her role as leader. Meanwhile, Peter misses Kitty, but he's started to have feelings for Zsaji, the alien healer. Then there's some fighting and a lot of scenes with the Avengers looking at Galactus hoping he doesn't eat them all.

There's a lot more battle scenes, some more arguments about who should be in charge, and mostly just stuff with the Avengers. At the end of issue 7, the X-Men have defeated several of Doom's minions, and they take over guarding Galactus while Cap leads his team to go attack Doom.

No X-characters appear in issue 8 until towards the end, when Peter drinks a potion that lets him read Zsaji's mind and realizes she's been healing everyone by giving them her own life force, leaving her dying in his arms. The X-Men call Team Cap to return quickly when Galactus finally activates his machine and starts eating the planet.

Peter leaves Zsaji, who's he's in love with despite never having had an actual conversation, to go fight Galactus. He and the X-Men are soon joined by the others, who finally accept them and Magneto as heroes. They finally drive Galactus off the planet, but he just decides to eat his worldship instead. As they gaze on in horror, knowing their next, Peter is disappointed that Zsaji wakes up and goes to the Human Torch. I don't know what he was expecting, cause she's been dating the Torch and hasn't ever talked to him.

Doom does some fancy science to steal Galactus's power, and Magneto picks up the heroes' ship to fly everyone to face him. On the way, Logan chews out Cap for how he's never championed mutant rights. It's a reasonable point. The Avengers as a general rule are there to defend the planet from supervillains. The X-Men do that too, but they're also fighting for mutant rights. The fact that Cap personally isn't racist against mutants doesn't change that he fights to defend their persecutors. By the end, though, they find common common ground when Cap defends Magneto from the accusations of the other Avengers. Doom steals the Beyonder's power and becomes unstoppable.

Peter goes back to Zsaji with flowers, which is all it takes to win her over. Logan says Peter’s feelings are coming from Zsaji giving him her lifeforce to heal him, but there’s at least a little more to it than that, because none of her other patients fell in love. Peter and Zsaji’s makeout session is interrupted by a war council gathered by Cap, where they decide they need to take out Doom or die trying, but Doom is omniscient now, so as soon as they decide that he blows them all up.

Zsaji finds Peter’s corpse and gives her full life essence to resurrect him. He reawakens to find her dead in his arms. Grief stricken, he still manages to use the fancy alien healing devices to bring back everyone else, although Zsaji is beyond saving. There’s some more big battles, and finally Cap defeats Doom because Doom is scared he will, and his thoughts are all becoming reality, and then the Beyonder comes back and sucks Doom through a portal. Peter is reluctant to return now that Zsaji is dead, but Xavier convinces him not to waste her sacrifice. Lockheed, who disappeared early in the series, comes back with another dragon. Reed does some more science that reverses the Beyonder’s teleportation, and at the last second the other dragon jumps into the teleportation field.

I have mixed feelings about Jim Shooter. He does do some things as an editor that I really like, like pushing legacy heroes, but he also has some terrible censorship policies. And I haven’t read most of the books that were being published at this time, so I don’t know how much Secret Wars fits in with them, but Shooter seems to just not care about any of the X-Men on more than a surface level. Throughout this book, they were constantly at each others throats and never working as a team, Ororo was just mad all the time, and Logan and Scott’s relationship was reset to its early stages. He also presents Logan as an idiot who misjudges the saintly Captain America. Some of the plot points, like Xavier wanting to take a field leadership role and clashing with Ororo, Peter leaving Kitty for Zsaji, and Magneto’s path of redemption, are all things that Claremont carries over into his book, but the way they go about it in this book just doesn’t mesh with how Claremont writes the characters. I know not every writer is gonna agree on everything, but I think Shooter should have given the writers of all these characters more control over how they were written in this book. I don’t know if fans of the other characters feel the same way about how their favorites were treated here, but I imagine a lot of them do. One thing that I absolutely adore about Shooter, though, is that he thought Peter and Kitty were creepy as a couple and used this book to break them up. I don’t like the way he went about writing Peter’s scenes, but admire the goal and the mandate. The last thing I’ll talk about is Magneto. This series is very important for him, because it’s the first time we see him respecting humans and working with them. He also has a great moment where he insists on saving a bunch of Doom’s evil minions from Doom’s battle with the Beyonder, because he doesn’t want anyone, even evil humans, to die in a cage. It’s another case of a solid plot point that’s not executed well, because Shooter’s voice for Magneto is basically the same as his for Doom. If Shooter had let the writers of the current ongoings edit his scripts, I think this miniseries would have been a lot more solid, but as it is, it’s a very jarring read in the middle of Claremont’s run.

[doomerpatrol]

Journey into Mystery by Kieron Gillen [3/5]: a really strong first half and a second half compromised by crossovers; good character arc for Loki but I don't feel like reading mid Thor and New Mutants stories to get it

Moon Knight by Warren Ellis [4/5], Brian Wood [1/5], and Cullen Bunn [2/5]: Ellis's run is really cool and beautifully illustrated urban psychedelia, and then the two subsequent runs completely fail to capitalize on its strongest concepts or aspects. whatever, I'll always have "Sleep."

Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow by Tom King [4/5]: gorgeous neon artwork and a very enjoyable, occasionally moving science-fantasy take on "True Grit", though the ending and some of King's scripting tics definitely bugged me.

Black Cat (and others) by Jed MacKay [3/5]: kind of superficial fun brought down by some awkward crossovers, but I enjoyed the characterization (even if there's no real arc) and some of the heists

She-Hulk (Vol. 2) by Dan Slott [3/5]: DEFINITELY superficial fun, and I think this second volume (I read the first a while ago) is not as strong as its predecessor - its legal-drama/sex-romp sitcom tenor (mostly amusing, occasionally grating) kind of hides how hastily the various subplots are developed and resolved. I think the first volume ends in a thematically stronger and more satisfying way despite having fewer installments. still, it has most of the same elements as that first volume, so it still mostly works!

Magneto by Cullen Bunn [4/5]: the ending is awkwardly abrupt thanks to the Secret Wars crossover, which is unfortunate, because the first seventeen issues (and a brief, slightly messy digression into "Uncanny Avengers") are a great, dark character portrait of a man burdened by survivor's guilt, masochistic self-loathing turned towards teleological martyrdom, justified rage, and messianism

52 by Geoff Johns, Mark Waid, Grant Morrison, and Greg Rucka [4/5]: very fun and engaging year-long series with an assortment of interconnected stories

Immortal Hulk by Al Ewing [5/5]: a fascinating, fucked-up, cosmological body-horror exploration of different manifestations of anger - towards ourselves, towards those that have hurt us, towards the systems that we live in that try to crush us - and what it might mean to channel that

Wonder Woman by Greg Rucka [4/5]: a very enjoyable political drama that really makes Diana as a character sing; gets a little wobbly thanks to Infinite Crisis, but recovers notably better than other books disrupted by events

Uncanny X-Men by Ed Brubaker [2/5]: Claremont karaoke; shows potential but ultimately doesn't have much to say with its stories or characters

X-Men: Messiah Complex by Ed Brubaker, Chris Yost/Craig Kyle, Mike Carey, and Peter David [3/5]: better than the above, though with a number of largely extraneous parts; while the central concept is good the plotting is a little wonky, which makes sense since it's used as the finale for two separate series and is disrupting the narrative of another. if nothing else it makes me want to read its sequels, spin-offs, and precedents

Currently Reading

Jason Aaron's Thor Epic (includes Thor: God of Thunder, Thor (2014), Thors (Secret Wars tie-in series), The Mighty Thor, Thor (2018) / War of the Realms, King Thor): heavy metal excellence, features various artists like Esad Ribic and Russell Dauterman at the top of their game, really sold me on Thor (defender of Midgard) as a character and also making me fall completely in love with Jane Foster as Thor

Starman by James Robinson

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller

Dandadan by Yukinobu Tatsu (ongoing)

Fantastic Four by Ryan North (ongoing)

(bold = have read those parts of an "epic" run)

2024 Comic Log with Overall Ratings

Dungeon Meshi by Ryoko Kui [5/5]: incredibly funny, charming, full of interesting worldbuilding and compelling characters, some strong themes of entropy and consumption/desire and connection/ecology

Doom Patrol by Grant Morrison [5/5]: a darkly creative challenge to the Ubermensch masculinism that dominates comics

The Flash by Mark Waid [4/5]: breezily readable exploration of a character that I think has ebbs and flows, but generally features atypically fun time-travel plots and a great cast

The Flash by Grant Morrison & Mark Millar [4/5]: a solid continuation of Waid's themes and priorities that pushes Flash to his absolute limits

Astonishing X-Men by Joss Whedon [2/5]: tries to be mutant assimilationist, but can't even do that fucking correctly

X-23 by Craig Kyle & Chris Yost [3/5]: perfectly fine, a little hacky in its treatment of motherhood, but a nice and heartfelt contemporary take on the Wolverine: Weapon X story

JLA by Grant Morrison [5/5]: incredible, maybe Morrison's best ongoing achievement

Seven Soldiers by Grant Morrison [3/5]: very cool idea that doesn't really stick the landing but has a lot of bright spots and fabulous art

Batman: No Man's Land by Greg Rucka (and others) [3/5]: a crossover that features some of the best Batman stories and characterization, and also some of the worst; very much carried by the strength of its premise, best realized by Greg Rucka's stories

Animal Man by Grant Morrison [4/5]: features some of the best single issues I've ever read

All-Star Superman by Grant Morrison [5/5]: needs to be read. beautiful.

Grant Morrison's Batman Epic (includes: Batman, Final Crisis, Batman and Robin, Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne, Batman Incorporated) [5/5]: despite having some questionable character decisions and being dense in a way that can be tiring, I love how it redeems Bruce from one of his worst periods and pulls together his values and history cohesively while injecting some great new ideas and consistent motifs - the idea of a hole at the center of everything, the constant imagery of spirals and recurrence, really stuck with me over time.

Action Comics by Grant Morrison [2/5]: frenetic, but very obviously shows Morrison straining against The New 52 reboot, and doesn't live up to its initial promise of a young Superman of the people, and ends on a sour note that seems to reflect Morrison's justified disillusionment with the industry

Detective Comics by Greg Rucka [3/5]: carried by the lovely monochromatic artwork, sets up some interesting ideas like Bruce's bodyguard but ultimately gets cannibalized by crossovers (coincidentally when the best art disappears)

Wolverine by Greg Rucka [4/5]: features Logan in lone wanderer mode, with some awkward threads that don't really go anywhere but also don't trip up the rest of the story too badly

Catwoman by Ed Brubaker [4/5]: peters out in the last third, but the first two are holistically great noir fiction, and have amazing illustrations

Hawkeye by Matt Fraction [5/5]: beautiful artwork by David Aja and Matt Hollingsworth paired with a compelling, clinically criss-cross structure both in paneling and serialization. astonishing that this book works as well as it does considering its protagonist is 1) typically boring and 2) a huge fuck-up

Punisher / Franken-Castle by Rick Remender [2/5]: fails to live up to its premise because Brian Michael Bendis had dibs on all the important characters, so it just throws everything out the window and does some random shit for a bit

Batman: Hush by Jeph Loeb [3/5]: perfectly fine blockbuster action-mystery with an eyeroll main antagonist

Detective Comics by Scott Snyder [3/5]: starts out strong, finishes super weak. I am pretty uninterested in hackneyed evil-since-childhood villains (see also: Hush), and I find the cynicism which runs through all its plots really poorly executed

Venom by Rick Remender [2/5]: fails to live up to its premise by trying to be a Peter Parker book (and also, briefly and inexplicably, a Ghost Rider book)

Black Widow by Marjorie Liu [4/5]: really gorgeous artwork from Daniel Acuna. I think the plot is a little convoluted and underbaked, but its spy-thriller antics were still quite enjoyable to read, and it has some surprisingly strong emotional beats for a character I'm not super-invested in

Birds of Prey by Gail Simone [4/5]: good cheesy fun with great character writing, though a rushed (and largely unnecessary) final act

Batman: Face the Face by James Robinson [3/5]: a "One Year Later" storyline that has some nice Bruce/Tim moments, but its main Two-Face plot is empty calories

Jonathan Hickman's Fantastic Four Epic (includes Dark Reign: Fantastic Four, Fantastic Four, FF [Future Foundation]) [5/5]: another series where, even though I can find it overwhelmingly dense or breakneck in pacing, its thematic payoff is so triumphant that I admire it a lot anyway; probably my second favorite FF run, full of fun sci-fi concepts, moving character beats, and creative changes to the team's structure like the Future Foundation

Superman: Up, Up, and Away by Kurt Busiek and Geoff Johns [5/5]: compared to Face to Face - the other big "One Year Later" return - it's literally no contest; incredibly charming, great art, thematic cohesion