#comic book spoilers

[catastrophicalcat]

Oh gosh I love this! Thomas Wayne's journal about Bruce:

Batman & Robin #20

[why-i-love-comics]

Red Hood: Outlaws #46 - "Like Son" (2023)

written by Patrick R. Young art by Nico Bascunan, Javier Rodriguez Vejares, & Nicole Bukowska

[byfulcrums]

I'm going insane what the shit

[yourgaydads]

dream: "lucienne, please call IT, the corinthian appears to have stopped working."

lucienne: "...you're IT."

[loopyarts]

God, he’s just so baby here. 😭 Chris Samnee never misses in giving me some of the most adorable baby Dick Grayson drawings ever.

Ha ha I love it when little Dick sasses his guardian/Bruce so much.

Bi disaster guardian/surrogate father and his little surrogate Ace/Demisexual son.

[stormandforge]

Raw reactions to X-Force #5

Yup, someone dies.

MASSIVE spoilers (and controversial opinions) below.

It's Nori. There'd been so much foreshadowing in the comic - and so much fan discussion about the upcoming character death - that I had started believing it wouldn't be her. But no, it was always going to be her. When you consider the way she joined the team, her post-Krakoa trauma, her selflessness and her relationship with Forge, it makes complete sense.

That death scene goes hard. We actually see her burned-up corpse, we hear her farewell words - oof, my heart. Rest in power, little blue-haired hero.

This said, everyone attacking Geoff Thorne over Nori's death needs to calm down. I would understand this amount of upset if he'd done her dirty, but he really hasn't. He's consistently written her with respect, gave her as much spotlight as he could in a team book, and gave her a heroic death. Stories kill characters, people. That's just the way it is.

Also: Nori's coming back, maybe even in this run. We just don't know yet. And don't give me nonsense about the resurrection protocols being gone - mutants came back from the dead before Krakoa, they will continue to do so.

"Forge always has a plan." YES. Nothing to do with his power; he's just always up to something. That's Forge 101. Fuck me, it's so good to have a writer who understands him. And because Thorne has done his homework, I believe what we're witnessing is a typical Forge plan: something that he believes will benefit the greater good, but that is also misguided and full of hubris and will repeatedly backfire in his face.

Forge can be cold, but this is subzero. He loves Nori, he wouldn't act that way if he was fully himself. Something's going on. Someone needs to shake him real hard - beat him to a pulp, really - and realign his neurons. The two most qualified people to do that are showing up in the next issue, so I'm thinking this is what will happen.

Why does he take her gauntlets? It can't just be for the sake of getting his tech back. As i said he's not that cold, and also he can probably make those again in his sleep.

FORGE ALMOST KILLED AN ALT VERSION OF STORM IN COLD BLOOD. The man is not well, I'm telling you.

There's a theme of Forge hurting the women he cares about in this issue. Trust Sage to see the pattern and get the hell out before anything can happen- the hurting or the caring.

OK, now he's levitating with a big shiny triangle around his body. That's magic, isn't it? For a second I started thinking the Analog must be magic after all, but then I remembered Sage loves staring into it too, so it can't be. Mmm...still processing.

Thorne understands Forge's power better than any writer I've seen (yup that includes Claremont), and I appreciate that he mentions his need for materials to build anything. It should be obvious, but most writers have him make things out of thin air. There's only so much he can fit in that utility belt.

So many people, so many things! Poor Marcus To.

Marcus To is still doing excellent though. Do I need to tell you that Forge is hot? I think I've been clear on that already, but let me reiterate: FORGE IS HOT.

"Slippery as ice": oh, that made me hap-py. Such an evocative, accurate way of describing Sage.

No, Forge's power doesn't let him see what will happen. But you know whose power can see every eventuality? Sage's. This was highlighted in the very first issue, and Forge repeats the exact same words from this moment in this issue. THERE'S SOMETHING TO THAT.

I continue to dig the dynamic between Forge and Sage, curses and all. The little cerebral push and pull they have going on is very interesting.

Also continue to adore Tessa herself. The way she challenges Forge at every opportunity, the way she always asks the right questions *chef's kiss*. Everyone obviously wants to murder Forge on that last page, but I love that she's the one who tells him to go fuck himself, even though she's been the person closest to him on the team. She's my girl. I'm this close to opening a side blog entirely devoted to her awesomeness. (I see what Geoff Thorne means when he says she tries to steal the show. She does!)

OK, so, there's no way Forge has a team anymore at this point, so I assume the next issue will be a downtime one. I imagine he'll go home, have an existential crisis featuring his two exes (as you do) and then get back on the road. Or something? Also, the next issue has a Sage variant cover, which could imply she plays an important part in it. One can only hope. If it's the issue of Forge getting his ass kicked by awesome women, she should take part.

[monsieuroverlord]

Because I can't get this out of my head:

I mean, look, he picked flowers for her! And it was cathartic for him!!

And the visual of placing them around her head only like a crown is darkly beautiful to me.

Now, I used to be really into flower symbolism once upon a time, so each flower here can have a different meaning down to the color.

In this case, do I think the flowers were intentional here? No, not at all. They're kind of random actually. I think it's more to do with the fact he actually took the time to pick whatever was nearby in general in addition to digging the graves (Lord knows how long that took)

And also, from an art perspective, different shapes are visually interesting. I don't think it goes any deeper than that, but it's fun to speculate anyway.

Taking from the second panel here, the following flowers based on my educated guesses:

Red poppies: remembrance and hope for a peaceful future (for example, used as a symbol of remembrance for soldiers in Canada)

Pink poppies: compassion, kindness, sympathy, and platonic love

Yellow daisies: well wishes and joy -- can often be used in a "get well soon bouquet"

Pink amaryllis (Not 100% about this one, but close enough): determination and strength.

There's some others in near the crown that could maybe be a red rose and a pink daisy, but I can't really tell.

Like I said, kind of random. Aside from the red poppy, they're too happy -- feels out of place with the rest of the book. So I'm going with it's just a pretty visual and I'm overanalyzing, lol.

Now, if I really wanted to pick flowers with deeper meaning, what would I pick? Great question!

First things first, none of these flowers are native to North Carolina (Unless you want to argue that the "daisy" is really a false sunflower or something similar, but I digress.) But invasive species are a thing, so eh ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Here are my picks of flowers that have deeper meaning:

Magnolia: often associated with feminine energy, grace, and beauty; symbol of perseverance and determination. would be easy to find in North Carolina

Purple Hyacinth: deep sorrow and regret. a classic. Easily grown in North Carolina, but not native (Though the thought of Aki raiding someone's garden bed for this is mildly funny to me)

Lilies: now we got a couple choices here, as there's a few species native to swampland in the Carolinas. Lilies in general are a popular funeral flower, symbolizing peace and innocence restored to the soul of the departed. My personal favorite is the Carolina Lily, as it is very similar-looking to a classic tiger lily, which is my favorite flower

And finally, just so we are 4-for-4, the humble milkweed!

Symbolizes remembrance, dignity, and freedom:

[shironezuninja]

I’ll compare Marvel character names to 2013’s The Wolverine film, once I’ve completed watching the 2011 Wolverine anime series. The name, Hideki Kurohagi, has now been identified…as the villainous character voiced by The Banished One. Hurry up n’ kill him already, Wolvie. I just finished watching Episode 7 today.

[doomreed]

Slight spoilers from Ultimates #1 today, but we know that they know about the 616 and the Fantastic Four that exists there, we still haven't seen the character we were introduced to as Reed without armor or mask at all yet, but I still think that's either Victor taking up Reed’s name bc the Maker somehow replaced them, or a combination of them both somehow, maybe similar to what we saw in Zdarsky's Doom 2099 one-shot?

Or... what if Reed is in the armor system itself, somehow? What if Victor refuses to be parted from him, or something happened to his physical self and the suit (Reed) is carrying on in his name while also acting as life support?

I know Hickman likes to "blend" these two sometimes, I feel like he heavily subscribes to Chris Claremont's "two sides of the same coin" notion with them, so really there's no telling but it's driving me up the wall to not know 😅

[emmadiamondqueen]

[leox-un]

valley of ashes

[catastrophicalcat]

I take back everything I ever said, I love WFA, please give us more!

Wayne Family Adventures #151

[why-i-love-comics]

Red Hood: Outlaws #42 - "Penny Given Sunday" (2023)

written by Patrick R. Young art by Nico Bascunan, Paula Fidelis,  Patrick Guanlao

[ekko-idk]

Epilogue :)

Yknow the line "he'd speed up my mind when it was sluggish" in the journal 3 lost pages? Yea this is how I think that went

[yourgaydads]

Just a monster walking hand in hand with a toddler in an apocalyptic landscape

[oraclereadsandreviews]

“barbara gordon getting paralyzed for the sake of bruce wayne’s development was misogynist, but oracle is a better mantle for her and she should still be a wheelchair user.” i say into the mic.

the crowd boos. i begin to walk off in shame, when a voice speaks.

“she’s right,” they say. everyone turns to the 5th row, but no one is there. then on the screen behind me: barbara gordon herself.