#comic books meta

[captainlordauditor]

Captain America and Superman are Jewish responses to the Nazi idea of the ubermensch that ask different, but equally compelling questions in response to it. Captain America asks "what if the ubermensch was real, and he loved Jews?" and Superman asks "what if the ubermensch was real, and he was a Jew?"

[incorrectbatfam]

Back when I worked at a restaurant, we would have this one DoorDash guy who had honest to God the worst timing ever. I never learned his name but he looked like a Mark and he had a special talent for showing up as something was happening. One time he came to pick up an order as the police were escorting someone from the bar for trying to assault the bartender and Mark was just standing in the middle of the entryway like🧍‍♂️asking about a burger that hadn't been started yet. Another time, he showed up as the kitchen was on fire and didn't understand why he couldn't pick up his order anyway even after my boss explained it to him three times. There was also the time he showed up and twenty seconds later, our POS system spontaneously imploded and our boss—the only person who could fix it—was out that day. Mark was an omen. Every time we saw his car pull up, there would be a collective sense of exhaustion mixed with dread.

Anyway, I think every piece of superhero media needs a civilian background character like Mark whose sole purpose is to get in the way and Fuck Shit Up by simply existing.

[eveningdawn222]

people who act like batman isn't "judge jury and executioner" because he doesn't kill people are like. genuinely so funny to me because. they're very obviously thinking of "executioner" as like. the stereotypical guy with axe who chops people heads off, and not, yknow, the literal definition of the idiom itself, which is about someone who has the ability to judge and then subsequently punish someone unilaterally. which is quite literally what batman does.

he has the ability to decide what is a "crime" to him, he is the one who decides whether people are guilty of those crimes, and he is the one who executes their punishment. the severity of the punishment doesn't matter - he is unaccountable to anyone else, and indeed is allowed to commit as many crimes as needed to reach his arbitrary ideal of "justice."

the ideal of batman is this: a man who is so fundamentally changed by an act of senseless violence that he takes it upon himself to fight back against the rot and corruption in the world. he does this not through political activism, not through ridding himself of his wealth in favor of a greater good, not through community outreach, but through an individualistic fantasy of being a hero.

and you'll say: charlie, but he does do that !!! he donates his money all the time, he funds social programs, hospitals, orphanages, gets people jobs -

and i will say this: so why don't things get better?

because here's the base of it. gotham, at its core, can't get better. no matter what bruce wayne does, there will always be more crime, more villains, more death, more people for batman to beat up in back alleys. because that's what sells.

reoffending rates don't matter in gotham, prison reform doesn't matter in gotham, what actually causes crime doesn't matter in gotham because that doesn't sell books.

and so here it is; dc has unintentionally created a world where batman can't win, but can't be wrong, and where thousands of nameless, faceless, only-created-to-die civilians must be pushed into the meat grinder that is gotham, to fuel bruce wayne's angst and vindicate his constant, tireless, noble fight against the forces of evil.

and then: a new robin, who is poor and who's parents are dead or gone because of this cycle; who is happy go-lucky and hated by editors and fans for being robin, for not being dick grayson, for being poor.

and this robin is written, unintentionally or not, to be angry at the ways in which batman's (the narrative's) idea of justice is detached from its victims. bruce seems perfectly fine to allow countless unnamed women to be at risk from garzonas in his home country, yet robin is the one who is portrayed as irrational and violent.

this robin is not detached from gotham in the way bruce wayne is: this robin is a product of gotham.

(and here's the thing. you can't punch aids. you can't fight a disease with colorful fights and nifty gadgets. and how would robin dying from aids add to batman's story; it would call into question the systemic changes that haven't been made in gotham. how does a child get aids, in batman's city?)

so robin dies, and then bruce (the narrative) spends the next couple of decades blaming it on him. it is jason's fault; he was reckless, he just ran in, he thought it was all a game. if only bruce had seen what was coming, if only he could have known that jason wasn't rich enough or smart enough or liked enough to be robin.

batman gets a little more violent, a little more self destructive. he hurts people more and almost (!!) kills a couple guys. this is bad because it's self destructive and "not who he is." it is not bad because batman should not be able to just beat people up when he's angry.

and then he gets a shiny new robin - who is all the things jason "wasn't": rich and smart and rational and he doesn't put who batman is into question. batman and robin are partners, and jason is a grave and a cautionary tale, and (crucially here) never right.

the joker kills thousands and it doesn't matter because they were written to be killed.

batman beats up thousands and it doesn't matter because they were written to be criminals.

and then jason comes back, and nothing has changed. there is a batman and a (shiny! rich!) robin and the joker kills thousands. (because it sells)

and jason is angry - he has been left unavenged - his death has meant nothing, just as willis' had, just as catherine's had, just as gloria's had, just as -

thousands. ten of thousands. hundreds of thousands. written to be killed.

but one of them gets to come back.

and he is angry - not only at the joker, but at bruce (the narrative) - because why is the joker still alive (when thousands-)

here is the thing - jason todd is right. not because the death penalty is good, not because criminals deserve to die, not because of everything he says -

but because of what he calls into question. why is the joker alive?

because he sells books.

and dc has written a masterful character, through no fault of their own, because jason knows what is wrong, and he knows who is at fault - batman. (the narrative)

so the argument that bruce can't kill because he's not judge jury and executioner; the argument that jason is a cop or that jason is insane or that jason is in the wrong here; they hold no weight.

batman can't kill the joker because the joker sells comic books.

and jason can't kill the joker because the joker sells comic books.

so he will beg and plead and grovel - he will betray everything that is himself, he will forsake his family and his city and kill himself - just so that bruce (the narrative) will let the joker die.

he was condemned to death by an audience, and after he came back he has spent his whole life looking us in the eyes and screaming, asking, pleading; why is the joker still alive?

why are thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands (the number doesn't matter, see, because they're just a number. not people. not real.) why are we expendable for his story? why did i have to die just for nothing to change?

and the answer is money. and the answer is the batman can never be wrong. and the answer is shitty writing. and the answer is -

nothing jason can ever change.

which is the worst of it all. he is a victim with no power, and no one else in the world can see it. he is raging and crying and screaming at his father and his writers and you - and it doesn't matter. jason doesn't matter. and he knows it.

[mollysunder]

Sky and Viktor's relationship is such a horror movie to me. You've got a man who was frustrated by the limitations placed on his life that were out of his control, like his class, mobility, and general health. Despite everything, he manages to rise beyond his station and avoid being an assistant for the rest of his life.

Then you've got a woman from the same background who admires him and all that he's accomplished in spite of the similar class based prejudices they faced all the while she's his assistant. She works up the courage to take leap of faith and reach out to him with her own research to show what's possible if they worked together as equals. And then he gets her killed!

Sky's death isn't the end of it because while it affects Viktor it is in no way meaningful to Sky's life or value as a person whatsoever. Even the pendant he wears in her memory is based on the design of her notebook, but that was just her notebook's cover, she probably bought it from a store and the design itself is probably mass produced. Why not use Sky's signature that was in her letter and in the notebook, the thing part if the notebook with real value?

Then Sky's brought back in s2 and she really only exists to be Viktor's assistant again, who he kills, again! But this time it's different because this time Viktor's making a conscious decision to look Sky in the eye and kill her... to prove he's changed.

In the middle of all this, in no way has Sky's death been mourned by her family or anyone else who could have known her. Jayce wasn't affected by the reveal, he didn't think it was important to tell Heimerdinger, or anyone who knew her. Nothing about her life, death, or disappearance has spurred any emotional reaction or even curiosity about what happened to her.

Sky's new life was also extremely isolated because she became further tied to him (in some ways you could say she was defined by him). Viktor never mentioned Sky to anyone in the material plane during his commune arc, so she only exists to him and she has no way to communicate with others, she's just there for Viktor's sake.

Then in the finale we learn this all a part of a big time loop where Viktor actively set the wheels in motion to have him and Jayce create hextech together, but if everything follows as is, that means Sky is violently killed in those timelines too. That means Viktor weighed the costs and decided over and over and over again that Sky was expendable enough to let her die for his plan to work eventually. How is that not murder at this point?

What's worse is that post-finale Sky's humanity is a point of dispute amongst the fandom, the VAs, and the writers themselves. Sky's the hexcore manipulating Viktor. No, Sky's a manifestion of Viktor's guilt. No, she's actually supposed to represent his humanity/conscious made physical. And in none of these arguments do they discuss Sky as a person, she's just an object meant to serve Viktor both in the narrative sense and literal sense as his assistant.

The most absolutely maddening part is that with Viktor's new bio on the League site, not only have most traces of Viktor had been scrubbed by Piltover's archive, but Sky's life has been completely wiped. Her death was implied to have been swept under the rug, and only described as the "loss of life" consequence from his Hexcore experiment.

Viktor was afraid of dying a senseless death (created by the conditions Piltover condemned his birth to) in obscurity and then he turned it into Sky's destiny.

[whinlatter]

What’s something about Ron Weasley as a character that you think is underrated?

That Ron is really, really funny, and that his sense of humour isn't a sign of immaturity or gratuitous comic relief for the reader's sake, but an absolutely essential part of what both Harry and Hermione value in Ron as a character as an antidote to their own tendencies (moodiness and seriousness/anxiousness, respectively). Ron makes bad days bearable to get through for the people around him. I think people mistake Ron making jokes for a lack of emotional awareness, but I actually think it’s the opposite. By the series end Ron is literally the most emotionally well-adjusted of the central canon characters. That line about Peeves’ poem right at the end of DH when the war is won (“Really gives a feeling for the scope and tragedy of the thing, doesn't it?”) is a) brilliant and b) such a great manifesto for how Ron’s outlook on the world — not humour as emotional avoidance, but humour that sits within all the grief and pain and suffering, and makes it that bit more bearable. So yeah Ron Weasley’s love for chuckles is Important and Overlooked and I will keep saying it til I am blue in the face

[kalinara]

I always feel like this is an underrated moment between both of these characters.

Scott's awkward as fuck, and generally tends to avoid a lot of physical contact himself. He was isolated in the past, and now he's in a time period where everyone basically treats him like the baby version of a monster. "Don't touch me!" is a common refrain.

But he sees someone who seems to need physical comfort and impulsively, and awkwardly goes for it.

And I'm not a Laura Kinney expert, so please feel free to correct me, folks who know better. But the gist I've gotten of Laura's story at this time is that she's (also) relatively isolated from most of her age group. And aside from maybe the guy she was in a romantic relationship with for a while, I don't get the sense that she's been offered much by way of physical comfort from someone her own age before. And it probably helps that he immediately backs off when she says "No."

(The faces of the peanut gallery make me laugh so hard.)

And then, of course, there's that equally sweet moment later, when she ends up returning the favor:

I'm actually pretty glad these two never ended up dating during his time in the future. I think they're maybe a little too alike, with a bit too much by way of similar trauma and backstory to really make it work.

But they do make such wonderful friends, and I love how much they seem to understand each other.

They don't really have the same camaraderie that Scott and Kamala got once Scott aged back up again, which is a bit of a shame. But they did have a few good moments when they were both on the X-Men together in Krakoa.

It's just a lovely little friendship and I love it very much.

(Panels from All New X-Men #20 and Guardians of the Galaxy #12)

[skywalkr-nberrie]

Anakin’s love and marriage to Padmé wasn’t the issue of why he fell to the dark side. He was already being groomed by Palpatine in becoming his apprentice, and Padmé not being there wouldn’t have changed that. She just made it easier. Anakin was born a slave, which doesn’t leave him in the right headspace, and ever since Shmi died, Anakin became more unstable. Inevitably, he became more obsessed with control and wanting the power to stop the ones he loves from dying. Had Padmé not been in his life, Anakin still would have fallen due to Palpatine’s manipulations and topped with the Jedi’s mistreatment of Anakin. The Jedi and even OW failed Anakin in a way where Anakin came to a point where he doubts their faith in him, and he in return loses his trust him them. He says so himself in the ROTS novel. None of that had anything to do with Padmé.

But to insinuate that Anakin only cared for gaining “power” and essentially his “greed” is to blame for his actions, is super reductive understanding of his character. Yes, Anakin was greedy for control, and power. But not because he’s power hungry and wants to rule the galaxy. He only ever wanted more power to keep his loved ones safe, to assume control over what happens to him. (and this would’ve happened even if he and Padmé weren’t together.) saying that if Anakin “truly cared about saving his wife”, he would have told OW or any of the masters about his situation but didn’t because he was “greedy” is again, incorrect. Because Anakin DID go to the Jedi for advice. He talked to Yoda. Anakin put his faith into the Jedi but they didn’t exactly lead him down the path he needed.

Doubled with the fact that he knows the Council doesn’t trust him, and him not being sure he can trust them, (yes, including OW.) this led him to seeking answers in other and more dangerous places. Which was Palpatine. Whom Anakin is already vulnerable to and was being groomed by. Anakin’s fall to the darkside was due to his desperation and desire to save his wife, the love of his life. Not because he was greedy for more power and that he didn’t truly care about saving Padmé. That’s just a bad analysis of his character, intentions, and motivations. Anakin only became obsessed with the idea of “gaining power to rule and obtain authority” happened AFTER he fell. And that’s because the darkside plays with your sanity like that, makes you want and do things you normally wouldn’t do or want.

The main point is: Anakin’s fall doesn’t stem from his greed for wanting power because he seeks heroism, status, and authority. It was out of genuine love and desperation for his wife. Then again, his marriage to Padmé also isn’t to blame for his fall, because that was due to Anakin’s own fear of loss and abandonment. He would’ve fallen under any circumstance, with how unstable, vulnerable, and manipulated he was. That was the tragedy. He was always doomed to fall.

[artbyblastweave]

On another note It’s interesting to think about the gray area of Bronze Age Marvel where "comic book time" was only barely starting to be necessary. Spider-Man aged in real time for a while, through high school and then out of college. When the All-New -All-Different X-Men debuted, the members of the original lineup who stuck around were mentioned to be.... about as old as they'd have been if they'd been aging in real time from their first debut, maybe with a little compression? Ten to twelve years or so, which roughly works- 1963 to 1975. In issue 97, set in what I think is supposed to be December of 1975, Jean Grey mentions last having fought the Sentinels in 1969- it would eventually become extremely rare for them to nail their own asses down with a specific date like that. This leads to an interesting thing early in Claremont's run, I'm talking really early, like Banshee is still a full-time member of the team early- there was one arc where the ANAD lineup, from an outside perspective, just drops off the face of the earth for a year. They get brainwashed and abducted and put in a carnival, then Magneto abducts them from there and drags them to a facility in Antarctica, and then they get stuck in the Savage Land for a few months, and then they get waylaid and stuck in Japan when their boat crashes and then they have to deal with a bunch of bullshit in Japan before they can finagle a way back to the States. By the time they get back they're all missing persons cases and the Professor thinks that they were killed.

This arc is fascinating to me because it was told more-or-less in real time, taking the better part of a year with the monthly releases, and apparently taking the same amount of time in-universe. Moreover it's a storyline that's incredibly dependent on the political and technological situation in the late 70s when it was being published. It's a conflict that vanishes the second they get to Japan if the internet exists, if cell-phones exist, if 24 hour news cycles exist. (To say nothing of the datedness of the now-rarely deployed supervillain Moses Magnum.) But it's still technically in continuity, unless someone's said something to the contrary that I missed. It's still the arc where Banshee got permanently benched from the A-list X-Men Roster due to blowing out his vocal cords countering a Japan-wrecking Earthquake machine. They still spent like a year dealing with all that bullshit. One year out of the supposed 15 or 20 that they've all been at this- and it has to be roughly in the middle, to accommodate the veteran hero status of the O5 team members that were involved. That was actually a reasonable time allocation when this came out, when the setting was still pushing forward from the outer edges of realtime. It's so much weirder now.

[leagueofbats]

i think i know the reason why bruce has problems with all of his children when they grow up:

bruce decided who he was and what his moral code would be when he was 8, and that has never changed after that. so i really think he just does not believe that people CAN change because HE never did...

but most people, most children especially, change a whole lot. and children who live through a lot of trauma can change very very much.

so for bruce, who - after seeing his parents die, yes- had a rather normal childhood (no fighting crime, no getting tortured, no dying, etc).. he cant relate to them. at all.

look at the oldest two:

dick started being robin at 9 i think? that man is trauma central. no wonder he and bruce got i to fight after fight when he was a teenager.

jason got tortured, DIED, woke up in his grave, was taken and brainwashed by a cult, got dipped into the lazarus pit... there was NO chance of him being the kid he died as.

Bruce is unchanging, but all the batlings are growing up, changing a lot, changing all the time. and he does not understand that thats normal - to him they are either doing something wrong or they ARE wrong somehow.

[writing-for-life]

About Love As The Catalyst For Change

Okay, so while I was going through all the panels for March Mania, I also stumbled over these ones again:

And although I’ve read it all a million times and had all these feelings before, I just need to blurt them out:

Love Is What Changes Him

It’s such a central message of The Sandman, but I feel it often gets lost in a million other things. And they’re all important, but so is this one.

Because yes, Dream went with Delirium and found Destruction (and Despair found him btw), and his Destiny was Death. And that whole Desire thing… ‘nuff said. BUT… (major spoilers ahead)

Those panels above are basically the turning point in a nutshell. No, well, the turning point is actually the moment he kisses (and then kills) Orpheus, but those panels are the essence:

He set out with Delirium in hopes to find Thessaly (the pendant Nuala wears here used to be hers, and she gave it to her when she left the Dreaming and him. And I can’t even begin to tell you how I feel about him letting Nuala keep a gift of his ex, who betrays him later by protecting the woman he hurt, and then making it the item that holds the power with which Nuala can call in her boon. One could spin that very far in all sorts of different directions).

But when he comes back after killing Orpheus, it doesn’t really matter anymore. Thessaly was the usual romanticised dream that could never be real. But he finally did find love. For his son. The unconditional kind. The one that doesn’t need anything in return because it just is. And he was loved back, if for a brief moment. But it was real, not a dream. And that love stays real (that’s why it initiates the turn, 3rd act and all that).

I’m reminded again of the words of Frank McConnell in his intro to The Kindly Ones:

“And with [killing Orpheus], Dream has entered time, choice, guilt and regret—has entered the sphere of the human.”

(Side note at this point: With all of this in mind, read Dream Hunters [again], and look at all THREE main characters—that includes the onmyōji, not just the monk and the fox.)

And it would be so easy to say, “Well, love killed him then, what’s the fucking point?” Not just the love for his son, but also the love of a maiden who called in her boon (Nuala), the love of a mother for her child (Lyta), the love of a crone for no one but herself (Thessaly).

But we all know that “change or die” was never an “either or”, because it’s an “and both”. And it’s ultimately love, in all its shapes and forms, four times over, that changed him (while it was also part of the death knell, but that’s a complicated one. In any case, it also led to change: To be(come) a new, better, kinder Dream).

Yes, call me romantic or hopeless (although I think that’s the wrong word in this context, because I feel it’s the opposite), I don’t care.

Because that story is about catharsis. And that means Dream is a vessel for our feelings. And the feelings won’t be the same if we change any of this, for better, for worse. Because truthfully: That story is about me. And you. And you.

About allowing love, of whatever kind (this is very clearly not just about romantic love), to change us. And that ultimately means letting go (of control). Just like he did.

Bleurgh, I’m crying. Catharsis 🤣

[diltonsstrangescience]

My new favorite headcanon that I don’t really believe is that Jughead is the one character in the Archie comics universe who’s aware that they’ve all existed in the exact same state since (at least) the 40s while time passes around them. And he’s so chill all the time because at this point he’s basically in the second act of a time loop story—he’s stopped trying to convince people or break the loop, and he’s stopped worrying about any and all consequences.

Jughead’s already so weird that nobody thinks twice when he tells them things about their time loop-ish situation, or acts oddly nonchalant about things that should warrant concern. They assume he’s just making dumb jokes or being lazy.

Jug doesn’t really mind the loop. There are worse ways to spend eternity than being a cool teen doing fun stuff with your friends forever. Getting to experience every new decade and its technological advancements without the drawback of aging. It’s a pretty sweet deal. But occasionally it is a little worrying that nobody else is ever able to understand the nature of their universe.

Overall though, Jug’s pretty fine with how things are. He doesn’t waste time worrying about the loop and it’s existential issues, he just keeps on living like always. Life is good. Why try to change it? He’s just going to do whatever makes him happy moment to moment. He’s going to hang out with his friends, and eat good food, and be as weird as he can possibly be. Forever. :)

[unnamedmedicalprofessional]

The key thing to understand about Batman is that he is a massive workaholic. He has the same "with great power comes great responsibility" thing as Spider-man where being a superhero conflicts with his personal life, but while Spider-man keeps trying to balance them, Batman just gives up and just uses Bruce Wayne for philanthropy and as a distractingly shallow cover story. He should never be a jerk just for the sake of it, but he can sometimes prioritize the larger goals of being Batman over everyday human kindness if they come into conflict. He's very morally absolutist in some respects, like killing, but very pragmatic in other ways, like making contingency plans for his friends.

He lacks humour not because he's so angsty (although he is angsty) but because every second he spends joking around is a second he could spend saving someone's life. He's stoic not because he doesn't care. but because he simply doesn't have time to be emotional. He sees so much horror every single day that he doesn't know how to cope with without repressing it. However, that's not an excuse. He still needs to remember his humanity. He needs people to remind him of his humanity. That's what he needs the batfamily for, but the fact that he struggles so hard with this in the first place does huge damage to his relationship to said bat family. This is not just good for his personal life, but also if he completely sacrifices his mental health to be Batman, eventually he'll be so unstable that it will hurt his ability to be Batman effectively. In the end, repressing emotions will just make them fester.

[catre33]

my friend's over here doodling

And hands me THIS

(Sketch of Aziraphale asleep at his desk in the bookshop)

And then THIS

(Sketch of Crowley asleep on the bench in Saint James' Park)

Can we get her some love???

[bruciemilf]

"Comic books are the authentic form of canon and you should stay faithful to them," okay but like you realize that's limiting!! You realize that official content is put in front of you to be analyzed and criticized and adapted in your individual form of enjoyment, otherwise its just fucking boring, right? You realize it's extremely rare for official content to be enjoyable when it's written by someone who doesn't understand a character because they like them, but because they have to appeal to popular trends and what sells best, right? You realize you don't possess some superior leverage over others just because you stick to that only, right? Right?

[theerurishipper]

I really need Nightwing to be taken away from TT post-haste. I can't take it anymore. This whole dumb ass plot is so nonsensical and relies heavily on everyone in the room losing all sense of logic and reason. If Dick Grayson was any kind of in character this whole plot would have been over before you could say "Heartless fucking sucks." Please god when will the nightmare end

[catastrophicalcat]

I've been really hesitant to watch Harley Quinn since I first read reviews and TV tropes and didn't love its take on Catwoman. But now I'm sitting here binging the show in an attempt to power through work, and it's better than I expected, which is yet another lesson in giving the actual work a chance rather than attempting to judge it based on summaries or other people's perceptions of it.

P.S. Still super annoyed about Selina in Caper Crusader though!

P.P.S. Haven't gotten to S3 of HQ so maybe I will change my mind lol