#comix round up

[slaapkat]

IT IS TIME... FOR THE FOURTH ANNUAL COMIX OF THE YEAR!

admittedly, this year i've been SLACKIN', but finally getting the job of my dreams will do that to a person. I've still managed to read a fair bit! this year was huge regardless, from a fantastic trip to MEMPHIS where amidst the glitz and glamor of all things Elvis and roll&roll I finally managed to find the much-coveted Green Arrow (1988) #90 (well, much coveted to me), to an INCREDIBLE trip to LONDON to meet with my best pal @ufonaut for the SECOND time this year and bought so many comic books I genuinely struggled to pack it back with me and was this close to having to check a bag. seriously, so many comic books.

that being said, still an amazing year for comics! so let's hit it!

Justice Society of America (2022)

-Part of the reason I think this year went by so fast is because most of it was spent eagerly awaiting the next issue of the long anticipated JSA revival, headed once again by Geoff Johns. One of the few series that so far has been hit after hit, culminating this year with issue #8 with the official introduction of Ruby Sokov and a peak at the slow unraveling of Alan Scott's past. Perhaps the best part of the series so far are the nods to actual Golden Age history, one of which inspired another placement on this list after its discovery. While retcons are continuous point for many fans, including myself, I feel Geoff manages to weave together old and new canon together with such passion it can't help but feel natural.

2. Stargirl: The Lost Children (2022)

-I'll admit, this one was a surprise hit. Ordinarily, I hate it when a writer breaks into the scene with a ton of random OC's in the effort to make his mark, and I even mentioned last year that the characters introduced at the end of The New Golden Age (2022) #1 had me apprehensive at first. However, seeing them all in action instantly changed my mind. Stargirl and Red Arrow made for a surprisingly organic team, and all of the newly introduced sidekicks alongside the actual forgotten Golden Age ones once again help the whole thing feel natural, breathing new life into the once stagnant mini-universe of the Justice Society. My only disappointment, maybe, was that robo-Hourman wasn't actually evil. Oh well!

3. Universal Monsters: Dracula (2023)

-Sleeper hit of the century. I had no idea James Tynion IV was coming out with a Dracula adaption until I came across the cover of #1 by accident while ambling through my comic book store and was instantly so struck that I bought it without even reading it first. It might have helped that I was in the middle of listening to the podcast adaption of Dracula Daily (Re: Dracula) and so I had the good ol count on the brain. The comic itself is a relatively loose adaptation, but Tynion's writing combined with the phenomenal art ends up depicting the story with a fantastic dramatical and dreamlike (and as a consequence, inevitably nightmarish) quality. As I reach the end of listening to Re: Dracula myself, I'm excited to see what Tynion does with it.

4. Jay Garrick: The Flash (2023)

-Jeremy Adams wasn't winning any favors with me at first, what with the way it felt the quality of his Green Lantern run had taken a steep nosedive in recent issues, but I'm a firm believer in reading anything at least once so that if I'm gonna be a hater, I'm at least going to have a reason why. Color me surprised when his Flash story ended up so far ahead the other two Golden Age minis that it simply no longer compares. Judy was a fast (no pun intended) favorite from the moment I saw her Who's Who entry in The New Golden Age, and further still in The Lost Children. The story weaves itself naturally between the past and present and truly make Judy Garrick feel as though she's been here all along. It's also wonderful to be able to see Jay's wife, Joan, back in the spotlight!

5. Green Lantern: Earth One (2018)

-After seeing the hc trade staring me right in the face on the shelves of my comic book store for AGES I was finally goaded into reading it and boy I'm kicking myself for not having read it earlier. Beautiful art, beautiful writing, fantastic characterization. As much as I like alt universes they can be hit or miss, but this one was absolutely a hit. Dared to try something new with the medium while still keeping true to the source material. Also, Hal should have kept that beard.

6. Flashpoint (2011)

-Another story I can't believe I put off for as long as I did, for as much publicity and praise it's had. At the time I was still wary of anything Geoff John's wrote outside of his JSA or GL and also didn't care much for the Flash as a character generally. However, inspired by how much I liked Flashpoint Beyond and curiosity piqued by The Flash movie, I gave it a shot and found myself MUCH more entertained than I thought I'd be. Finally reading this story brought a lot of context to Thomas' character development throughout his arcs in Batman (2016), Infinite Frontier (2021), and Justice League Incarnate (2021), as well as how this arc finally completed in Flashpoint Beyond (2022).

7. Silverblade (1987)

-Somehow, 1987-88 was truly the magic year for comics. I've lost count of how many weirdly incredible and advanced titles came out of that specific year alone. A weird story in and of itself, it's hard to describe what exactly the appeal of it was unless you just Get It yourself. An old, washed-up Hollywood actor with nothing but a starry- eyed manservant for company who suddenly gains the ability to physically transform into any role he's ever played, including a swashbuckling visage of his younger self? Viewed through the right lens, it's captivating.

8. Green Lantern: War of the Green Lanterns (2011)

-Now, I've read all of Geoff's Green Lantern already years ago and I couldn't tell you what compelled me to read any part of it again, but I did and now I'm deeply tempted to give it a go all over again. This entry specifically entails the War of the Green Lanterns arc, itself told intermittently between Green Lantern (2005) and Green Lantern Corps (2006). I don't know, something about it was so much more refreshing to read compared to many recent story arcs of today. Maybe it was the way it was essentially self-contained between these two books, maybe it was the way it felt like it had actual substance, a beginning and middle and end, with real identifiable character arcs for all involved. I might be biased in that case, because it's subsequently one of my favorite pieces of Sinestro characterization, but Hal and even Guy, John, and Kyle have some shining moments in it, too.

9. Diamond Jack in Slam-Bang Comics (1940)

-Who is Diamond Jack, exactly? Well, to the unassuming reader he might have just been a random one-off mention of a name that Geoff dropped in Justice Society of America #2 with no real consequence to the overall plot of the story. Most people might have missed it entirely. Not us! Not only is Diamond Jack real, he's absolutely batshit insane. Hailing from an obscure Fawcett publication and lasting a mere meager six issues, he can best be described as peak Golden Age antics. Absurd but in a truly delightful way, it makes you wonder just how someone like Geoff Johns stumbled upon it. He turns into a vampire! He fights a sky demon! He has a magic ring he got from a guy named Warlock the Wizard! What's not to love! My only hope is that Geoff brings him back in more than name only and we get to see what exactly has him spatting with the Golden Age Zatara.

[beesmygod]

HI EVERYONE: TODAY'S PAGE IS LATE.

im calling my shot too early, but i've spent the last 2 days getting my ass beat by lupus symptoms. im feeling so much better. the page is coming.

BUT in the meanwhile: i wrote this long post about why i left Hiveworks

ill put it under a readmore here on tumblr in its entirety:

intro: dont get your hopes up

look, i’m going to be straight up with you: there’s no messy drama or fallout that caused this. no juicy deets or salacious rumors to slurp down. you know if this were the case, i would have erupted across my various social medias in a frenzied rage with all the delicacy of a bull in a china shop partly for entertainment purposes. instead, this will probably be a boring at best navel gaze where i try to walk the line between pragmatically trying to explain why i left and moral grandstanding. because leaving abruptly looks weird externally, i do actually have to explain why instead of just mysteriously leaving during a period of time where i am being an obnoxious asshole. a combination of disdain for the current cultural zeitgeist and a growing culture of disrespect toward audiences has culminated in my online behavior devolving into the online version of grabbing people saying stupid shit on the street and shaking them very hard. this is something an insane person would do. i know.

the commodification and increasingly blatant commercialization of an art format that could once arguably be compared to other amateur transgressive arts (ex: underground comix, tijuana bibles) is borderline heartbreaking. not to be too dramatic, but i want to start smashing things like im a monster from the rampage arcade game to scare the NIMBYs away before they start building escape rooms where the fetish web comics used to be. there is no place unspoiled by the poison of advertising and sponsorships. except…

 

 

trying to make money in comics is a fool’s errand. go make furry porn commissions if you want to make money doing art! you’re completely out of your mind if you go into the arts to make money. full on detachment from reality if you choose comics. they should commit you if you choose web comics.

 

at hive:

i think people have a wildly different perception regarding the popularity of A Ghost Story so i have approximate data to give people an idea. having culled the SHIT out of my analytics results to remove bot traffic, i think i have relatively accurate results, i get about 1000 unique visitors a month (generously rounding up lol), about half of them are regulars, and 10% of them donate to patreon (this is, imo, an unfathomably large amount lol. shocking and humbling. thank you for your continued support of me in spite of [gestures]).  i feel like a small comic 99% of the time, but man. 1,000 is a big number. i can at least reasonably assume, i’m PRETTY sure, that i was a comparatively small comic in hiveworks.

my monthly payout was roughly $100 a month (and merch sales, if applicable) and their services included web site help, dealing with any merch sales, and site hosting in exchange for running banner ads (which have been a fixture on web comics since the conception of google’s ad program; remember the homestuck bidding wars??). banner ads felt like a small and reasonable compromise to be included in something that felt like a weird pipe dream. in certain circles, a hiveworks invitation was a stamp of quality with prestige; i was very aware of the company i was invited into keep and was initially pretty concerned with how my presence reflected onto them and their work. i was going through some serious brain problems due to a deeply stupid relationship and, as a result, i did my best to keep my head down, stay out of people’s way, and focus on not bringing undue shame to something i was well aware i was completely unsuited for. i had (and frankly, still have) no idea why i was chosen as i had not applied. i cannot stress enough that i was under no delusions as to the quality of my comic lol. my perception was that someone had stuck their neck out to make a special exception for me and i was constantly on the verge of fucking it up and humiliating them.

it was a very off-balance exchange extremely in my favor, and i was aware of this. especially since, being frank and honest here, i was bringing absolutely nothing to the table for them. i don’t want to put words in anyone’s mouth, but its a reasonable conclusion that i was more trouble than i was worth, given the infinitesimal worth.

the vast majority of hiveworks readers completely bounced off my comic, which makes perfect sense given the hiveworks audience is i think more interested in the genre they primarily host: fantasy and magical realism. in comparison, “a ghost story” is a slow, slooow burn about federal bureaucracy and being insane with extremely amateur art; i know what i am! and that’s fine! but i became a little resentful (and i tried not to! honest!) after 7 years of perpetually being put on a back burner. it felt like i was being strung along for reasons beyond my comprehension or as the baseline of acceptable awfulness for the website’s quality. someone has to be the “worst”, objectively. it’s not a great feeling to know it, coming to terms with it i think was much healthier than trying to fight it. it was a really good driving force to keep my mind off the nightmare of my life at that point and improve my art a lot.

AGS’ irrelevance was underscored by it being mentioned once over the course of 7 years on official social media networks, upon which a great deal of importance was placed. but frankly, there is nothing worse than dealing with the guy who sucks whining for the spotlight as though they are clueless as to why they are getting the shaft. so i simply achieved enlightenment by getting over it and realizing where i was in the hierarchy and how lucky i was to have so much shit done for me. i was (am, unbelievably. it never gets less wild when i sit down and really think about it) making enough through patreon that the $100 became my monthly fun money while i lived in oregon. it was welcome, but not essential.

a lot of real life, awful things happened that suck and couldn’t be avoided: one of the main points of communication and organization became terribly ill, COVID happened and obliterated shipping and manufacturing rates for apparently all eternity, uhhh the fabric of reality began to unravel lol. it’s been a terrible couple of years. i want to underscore this stuff so that people understand i was not wronged greatly in the grand scheme of things.

there are things that started to chip away at me over time, which made me question if i was a good fit at all. genuinely: the only thing i want to do is to try to live happily within my morals doing what i love to do. even and especially if it means living very broke. that’s the exchange i’m consciously choosing to make when i pick up the pen every day. due to the generosity of the people who support me or have supported me at any time (special shout out to adam, who puts up with this shit for some reason), i am able to do that. i contribute a proportional amount to the household now but tried to be (was??) 50/50 or 25/25/25/25 when i had roommates. i don’t want my one unyielding selfish choice to be anyone else’s burden.

i was told by another artist in hiveworks that my confrontational behavior could be a poor reflection on the brand, which became the tipping point in my choice to leave. to be clear, no one in charge told me this, but even conceptually i was not comfortable representing a company that i felt i was a member of out of obligation or inertia. i didn’t belong there and my presence was an active detriment instead of a tolerated nuisance.

anyway:

when the offer to leave was presented, i didn’t feel regret, or anxiety, or upset at all. i felt a placid sense of relief. i COULD leave. that’s TRUE. i had been kicking it around on my private twitter for a few months going back and forth with myself over what was more important to me: being able to take care of myself financially or doing something about my own hypocrisy that kept me up at night. if my incessant argument is that advertising based commercialization is a societal poison, then i need to put my money where my mouth is. and if i’m consistently annoying, i need to leave as a courtesy to everyone else.

i don’t regret my time with hive at all, but the overarching transformation from a collection of cartoonists to a brand is not where i want to take my art. i can’t bring myself to work even within the proximity of seven seas, a deeply abhorrent company. i am completely disinterested in wasting time or energy worrying about “the algorithm” because i don’t make comics for the computer’s sake and recognize that there’s a finite number of people interested in web comics in the world and an even more finite amount of money to spend on luxuries (because none of us have any money lol). i don’t want to repeat the familiar cycle of lamenting the death of art as we know it every 6 months.

people who are choosing to spend their limited funds supporting me are making a deliberate choice to elevate my presence in their life. i want and need to keep this in mind at all times, because it drives my attitudes toward what i want to choose to focus on. i want to keep my art (“art”) free with additional goodies being as reasonably priced as possible in the hopes that in this way we scratch each other’s back. making money drawing comics is a ridiculous privilege granted to me by people willing to sacrifice their time and money to me; i need to be thinking more about all that i have instead of worrying about what i don’t.

[gone-series-orchid]

what sort of hobbies do you think the characters would have had before the fayz?

i love this question!

sam - obviously surfing, but i also think he liked playing the occasional casual game of soccer or basketball. general athletic stuff. and of course i think he likes playing video games. idk. he probably really likes the wii. he kills at wii sports!

quinn - i think he’s a collector of obscure 1960s and ’70s memorabilia, particularly underground comix like the work of robert crumb. real quirky stuff! he also probably makes youtube poops and memes. weirdly i think he’d be fairly good at tennis

astrid - i know canonically she’s a runner (according to hunger) but tbh i always pictured her as a fairly dedicated swimmer. she likes solving puzzles and reading (mostly nonfiction but some literary classics, too)

caine - i think he might’ve picked up some bougie hobbies from his parents, like maybe constructing a ship in a bottle? or maybe that’s too geeky for him, idk

lana - an avid collector of cosmetics, specifically cheap dime store stuff (some of which might not have been paid for). i also thinks she loves reading horror books, specifically anything from stephen king. also running, of course

howard - i feel like he collects movies and anime on vhs. i like to think of him as kind of a movie buff lol. i also think he likes to swim, mostly bc it’s cosmically funny to think of astrid and him sharing a hobby

orc - you know i had to include him of course 🤪 i think he likes to go a few rounds on a punching bag in his garage on occasion. and pulling up grass by the handful

thank you for the ask!!! i really appreciate them! feel free to send more!!

[disappointingyet]

These are my favourite films released in the UK in 2022 – as far as I can tell (it’s getting increasingly hard to work out what snuck out when. Taken as a whole, the list looks a bit Nordic, a bit gloomy, short on action. I’ve put together a round-up of some of the other movies I saw this year, including the critics’ favourite and at least one notorious turkey. And, as ever, there was a lot I didn’t see, because I didn’t get around to it or because I didn’t want to. Specifically, I should mention Top Gun: Maverick, which by most accounts is an excellent piece of film-making – but going to watch a sequel to a film I found excruciatingly dull and full of unappealing characters seemed kind of perverse. And The Banshees of Inisherin:  Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is unforgivable racist trash, I didn’t like In Bruges (or his brother’s film Calvary for that matter), so I’m not willing to give Camberwell’s Martin McDonagh another chance.

Anyway, on to the list (and do let me know what you think I might have enjoyed but missed).

1. Licorice Pizza 

Paul Thomas Anderson in fun mode, telling the story of an entrepreneurial teen in early 1970s LA. It’s beautifully specific, and rather than making cheap and obvious jokes  based on stereotypes of the era, it builds punchlines from history. Contains (words I never anticipated writing) a cameo from Bradley Cooper that’s just gobsmacking.

Full review here

2. Hytti nro 6 (Compartment No6)

This is a Finnish train movie set in super-bleak post-Soviet Russia. So yes, you will feel cold and uncomfortable just watching it. Our mismatched travellers are a Finnish mature student exiting a relationship with a Moscow-based academic and a young Russian miner. The question, of course, is how these two will find common ground, but this film – with moments of sharp humour and excellent observation – avoids the obvious and earns your time and patience.

Full review here

3. Verdens Verste Menneske (The Worst Person In The World)

I remain baffled by the title, which does come from a line in the film, but sets off all sorts of false expectations. The central character is no monster (nor, despite what one of the other leads tells her, a particular good person), just a typical contemporary female lead, struggling to find something fulfilling to do as her twenties and early thirties drift past her while dealing with the inadequacy of men, whether as relatives or partners. This is told in 14 sharply written chapters. In particular, the one in which two strangers at a party play at testing what they can do without technically cheating on their partners is great film-making. One quibble and a question: the film sympathises a bit too much with the I’m-just-saying-it-as-I-see-it comix writer dude, and can a bookshop assistant and a barista really afford a flat like that in central Oslo?

(MUBI)

4. White Noise

Middle-aged angst, teen angst, fear-of-the-apocalypse angst, married angst, it’s-the’80s angst, American consumer angst, academic rivalry angst… all these angsts and more are explored in Noah Baumbach’s dark comedy, adapted from a novel by Don DeLillo. Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig play the couple who know that in many ways they should be happy, but of course that just amplifies their misery. Baumbach does a fine job of recreating the 1980s and manages several switches in scale that could have easily tipped the film off balance. Make sure you stay for the closing credit sequence, which is great although it does make hard to actually read who the key grip or the catering company were. 

(Netflix)

5. Bergman Island 

A filmmaking couple go to Ingmar Bergman’s old stomping ground to get some writing done. All does not go smoothly. Much less heavy-going than that makes it sound, and at least as reminiscent of Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy as it is of Bergman. I found it captivating.

Full review here

(MUBI)

6. Emily The Criminal 

Pleasingly spare, low-budget gig economy and scam economy LA thriller that makes superior use of Audrey Plaza's particular screen presence and vibe. Firmly recommended.

Full review here

7. Les Olympiades, Paris 13e (Paris 13th District)

Shot in very lovely black & white, this is essentially a sweet comedy-drama about the romantic misadventures of a trio of young(ish) Parisians, although it was marketed as something a bit edgier than it really is. Director Jacques Audiard is best known for male-centric crime movies, but maybe the co-writing credit for Céline Sciamma (Portrait Of A Lady On Fire, Petite Maman) gives a better steer on what this is like. 

(MUBI)

8. Madres Paralelas 

I’ve been mostly underwhelmed by Almodóvar’s recent run of what could be called anti-melodramas: stories of wild coincidences and personal tragedies told in numb, mostly humour-free fashion. Madres Paralelas worked better for me: he makes an odd choice of framing the central narrative with a very different one involving the same characters. It’s jarring, but I think it ultimately makes its own kind of sense.

Full review here 

9/10. Bodies Bodies Bodies/Triangle Of Sadness

I wasn’t expecting to be repeatedly reminded in 2022 of Very Bad Things, a (not very good) 1998 comedy starring Christian Slater and Cameron Diaz that’s like The Hangover only with a high body count. These films are both vastly superior to VBT, but echo its rapidly escalating nastiness. Both involve the privileged classes placed in situations of extreme discomfort, although the politics of Triangle Of Sadness are more explicit and (it feels) more central to the film than those of Bodies Bodies Bodies.

In BBB, a bunch of twentysomethings gather in big, isolated house just as a storm is approaching. They start playing bodies bodies bodies (known in my time as murder in the dark), only… well, you can guess. There’s a strong 1990s vibe to this, especially the way the movie seems to feel about its characters, while being very 2020s in its casting, the sex lives of the characters and the woman worried her podcast (‘a podcast takes a lot of work!’) isn’t getting any respect from her friends. I really enjoyed this.

If you have seen Ruben Østlund’s Force Majeure or The Square, you’ll know to expect fairly broad satire and the lives of the pampered going very wrong in Triangle Of Sadness. (If you haven’t seen any of them, start with Force Majeure, which is the best of the trio.) TOS ups the stakes on Force Majeure’s ski resort by putting its characters on a luxury yacht. There’s a deceptively low-key beginning in which we’re introduced to Yaya (the late Charlbi Dean) and Carl (Harris Dickinson), models in a relationship driven - at least for her - by the potential for Instagram influencer synergy. The intensity builds when they bag a free holiday on the yacht, where Østlund attempts to outdo The Square’s much-discussed party scene. At which point, it’s fair to say that as much as Jean Luc Godard’s Week End and assorted Buñuel films, this is indebted to American gross-out movies. Subtle this film is not, but if you have a strong stomach and a taste for comedy that’s grotesque and openly political, this is a blast.

11. Competencia Oficial (Official Competition)

Take the title of the movie itself plus that of the film-within-the-film – Rivalry – and you’ve got the theme of this Spanish comedy. An aging billionaire decides to fund a potentially prize-winning film in an attempt to cement his legacy. He’s advised to hire the talented-but-eccentric Lola (Penelope Cruz) to direct and she casts a very serious theatrical type (Oscar Martinez) and a mainstream movie star who has houses in LA and St Tropez (Antonio Banderas).  The two actors, inevitably, clash over their contrasting lifestyles and approaches to their craft, with Lola’s interventions pushing up the tension. The film is essentially a three-hander, as the trio rehearse the film in the vast, empty, marble spaces of the rich dude’s foundation. 

It stays more on the leash than I was expecting – there are multiple opportunities for things to get unhinged that the film doesn’t take (or mostly). I did properly laugh a fair number of times, and with Almodóvar seemingly sworn off comedies for good, this does a decent job of filling that void.

[destroyscythe-heck]

Slime Witch’s zine that they’re hyping up like it’s some super bold avant-garde transgressive media ™️ and they’re like the second coming of John Waters, the Marquis De Sade, Robert Mapplethorpe, Keneth Anger, and Lucifer Valentine all at the same time, even though John is not even dead. It will also (sic) “blow your tits clean off”. But it turned out to be just a collection of deliberately poorly drawn (because Underground Comix) pictures of the characters from Paw Patrol reenacting Salo and the 120 Days of Sodom for no other reason than “wouldn’t it be fucked up if… yeah I’m totally subverting innocence and making a statement and not just being a common edgelord”, and selected snippets from their MCU Thorki BNF days with the names are changed because they want people to forget that era. As if was even possible for them to ever be into something like the MCU because they’ve rebranded and are a serious transgressive ™️ artistic genius who would never stoop so low in their entire life.

Also one of Slime’s former partners is about to drop another round of Allegations about why they broke up, how they were a complete nightmare to be in a relationship with, and how Slime got both of them kicked out of the Punk house they were living in three months ago and Slime lied about getting kicked out by their parents and they just wanted to slum it a bit to make their art more “authentic”. Their dad is Anna’s boss at Lockheed and probably a huge thorn in Anna’s side in the tech support department because he still does not know that a PDF and a Word Doc are different.

Heaven forbid they ever find out that there is more to being a transgressive subversive artist than just writing edgy fanfic about the same fandoms that are the most mainstream fandoms ever at the time.

Even though we haven’t talked since at least three years before your first call out post, I’ll never forget you *******.

You truly were an uhhh unique acquaintance.

Sorry to all of the people who had to flee book Twitter because of Elon. I can simulate it for you right here though!

[ufonaut]

WELCOME TO THE SECOND ANNUAL COMIX OF THE YEAR ROUND-UP EXTRAVAGANZA!

It’s been a tough year but as casual readers subjected to endless liveblogs know, in between the wonders of graduation and getting my dream vacation with @slaapkat and who-knows-what-else, I’ve dedicated my time to reading and reading and reading as many comics as I can get my hands on & falling even deeper in love with the medium! Hell, I like to think I’ve become a sorta bonafide collector by now -- with 300-something issues to my name -- and I’ve attended all the comic cons and comic marts available and spent many a day searching through shops for that one very special back issue. So, without further ado, let’s see what’s stuck with me and changed me to my core as the very best of comics do!

Rorschach (2020) In the simplest of terms, Tom King’s Rorschach is a classic noir murder mystery wrapped up in the trappings of the Watchmen universe but that doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the fact that it’s quite genuinely a comic like no other. It’s a story about stories, a deconstruction of the very medium, a transformation, a blending of fiction & reality (Frank Miller might be Rorschach! The fictional Wil Myerson is invited to comic book legend Otto Binder’s real life seance!) and so much more. It might very well be my favourite comic of all time, not just of the year.

Strange Adventures (2020) Tom King always has this amazing talent of taking characters I’d never cared about before, putting them in the single most compelling story conceivable and getting me invested like nothing else. Strange Adventures is steeped in themes of war and colonialism, perceived duty and grief and how the optics of it all can shift a story fundamentally. It’s all woven brilliantly in allegories written across alien worlds paired up with gorgeous art and I’m in awe of it even now.

The Longbow Hunters (1987) // Green Arrow (1988) Before this year, I’d hated Ollie and all that’s Green Arrow-related. While that still holds true & steady for everything written after 2001, it has to be said the characterisation in the Grell - Dixon run remains an astounding feat of writing. I read GA #95, realised that the relationship between Hal & Ollie drove me all kinds of criminally insane and immediately proceeded to read the whole thing only to grow to love Eddie Fyers and Connor Hawke to the point that I’d now consider them some of my all time favourite characters.

The Phantom Stranger (1969) It’s Paul Kupperberg’s The Phantom Stranger (1987) miniseries that’s owed the honour of getting me to love Stranger as much as I do but as that’s left in the annals of last year, the ‘69 run shines as the very best of DC’s horror titles from back in the silver age and showcases a range of then-new writers that have come to be some of the biggest names in the industry. Ranging from Poe-style terror, mystery and intrigue to occasional deep dives into Stranger’s inner world, it’s an unmissable series.

The Books of Magic (1990) // Mister E (1991) // The Trenchcoat Brigade (1999) What I like to call “the Brigade trilogy” remains my absolute favourite glimpse into the magic side of the DC universe with the absolute best cast of characters imaginable. While Books’ popularity has never dwindled thanks to its author’s popularity, I consider the Mister E solo to be what elevates this series to unimaginable heights. As an exploration of trauma and sexuality, I’d say Mister E rivals just about any Black Label book and has persisted as one of those stories I just can’t seem to ever get out of my head.

Starman (1994) Ranking so low only on a technicality (started last year, finished this one), Starman is quite honestly THE comic as far as I’m concerned. What James Robinson offers here is a masterclass on coming of age stories, bittersweet nostalgia, the golden age of heroics and grief. There’s something very special to this one, most of all because I’ve never cried so much while reading anything else in my life, but partly because there’s some unplaceable familiarity to Robinson’s writing, one of those rare instances of finding a writer that sees the world exactly like you do.

The Creeper (1997) Okay, this one’s a surprise even to me but Len Kaminski’s miniseries has lived rent free in my mind since the minute I finished it. An unexpected commentary on the genre, The Creeper is a clever little horror book that seems like it should take its cues from the usual POV on mental health that comes with the territory yet evades it at every turn. It’s a delightful portrait of a man learning to love the monster that dwells within his very self and, somehow, the single most realistic portrayal of mental illness I’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing in comic books.

Supergirl (2021) Another Tom King title (what’d you expect?) and one that’s not even finished at that, but Supergirl won me over in a heartbeat around #3. At first, it seemed wordy and overly-complicated and too much sci-fi for someone whose tastes don’t point in that direction and then, suddenly, it was everything I’ve ever wanted. It’s not just the beautiful art or the found family feeling growing between Kara & Ruthye or even the ever-favourite theme of grief that keeps me coming back but the fact that Tom King managed to give us a Supergirl that feels human. 

Green Lantern (2021) The return of Sinestro as a multilayered, complex character who’s outgrown the days of straightforward villainy and redeemed himself to his people to the point that Korugar -- a nation of refugees -- is a respected member of United Planets means more to me than I can possibly say, even on top of just how plain engaging Geoffrey Thorne’s writing is. Beyond that, Thorne has accomplished the impossible and made me outright love characters who’d seemed boring in the hands of previous writers and has even brought a fresh & innovative perspective to the GL mythos. This is, frankly, everything I’ve ever wanted from a Lantern book.

Gotham by Midnight (2015) Maybe the best thing to have come out of New 52, Gotham by Midnight is the perfect middle ground between the Ostrander & Moench takes on Jim Corrigan/Spectre but also astounds as a tremendously well-written supernatural horror title by itself. I’m a huge fan of Corrigan but stories that focus on him rather than the Spectre entity are a rare delight so, at the risk of being a touch biased, I’m willing to say that this reconciliation of the traumatized, angry, jaded cop from 1992 & the fun-loving PI with a healthy dose of curiosity from 1987 is the single best take on ol’ Jimbo.

Honourable Mentions:

The Book of Fate (1997) - a permanent addition to this list, regardless of when I’ve read it!

The Human Target (2021)

Infinite Frontier (2021)

Justice League Incarnate (2021)

Vertigo Visions: Dr. 13 (1998)

Superman vs. Lobo (2021)

Hellblazer (1988) #51

Challengers of the Unknown (1997)

DC vs. Vampires (2021)

The Authority/Lobo: Jingle Hell (2003) - a representative of the fact that I’ve read every single Lobo appearance this year!

Catwoman: Lonely City (2021)

DC Pride (2021) - solely for the Alan Scott story!

Blue & Gold (2021)

Justice League Dark Annual (2021)

Night Force (1996)

Scare Tactics (1996)

Green Lantern (1990) - the Kyle Rayner half!

Ambush Bug (1985) // Son of Ambush Bug (1986)

[meccacon]

MECCAcon’s MARVELvsDC “verzuz”: SUNDAY, 1/24, 8pm EST/ 5pm PST via MECCAcon’s #Clubhouse Bringing the “verzuz” series from our fam’s club, THE ANIMATION CLUB (follow them!) to our own, this time in the form of all things COMIX & GRAPHIC NOVELS! Hosted by the HELLA dope @l.a._iz_gfc L.A. Salter (cuz y’all know I’m not about this mainstream life🤣)! Pull up UPON THEE! FYI: you will only be allowed to participate in the rounds if you change your profile pic to either the Marvel or DC Comix logo, or a character. It is MANDATORY, and helps us in counting! If you don’t, you will be put back into the audience! We can see your beards or inches another tiiime, ok? 🤣❤️💪🏾 **10rounds** https://www.instagram.com/p/CKabFiRs1Ba/?igshid=1gyn6yl6v1yau

[marypsue]

I tried to articulate my feelings about how Lady Loki always seems to be drawn and ended up with a ficlet. The thought did briefly cross my mind that I might not have enough knowledge of relevant comix canon/lore/whatever to have an informed opinion on this, but then I remembered that I’ve never let that stop me before. 

...

“But what is the point in being a woman, if not a beautiful one?”

The meaning of Fandral’s curious comment does not immediately become clear when Thor rounds the corner into the feast-hall. His friends sit at opposite ends of the table, Sif upright and taut with anger, Fandral splayed lounging across two chairs. Thor does not see Hogun or Volstagg – both, it seems, wisely keeping their distance from what is quickly shaping up to be a fight.

Sif smiles like a bright blade in the sunlight, her eyes fierce, as she says sharply, “I don’t know. What is the point in being a man, if not a wise one?”

“But a man cannot choose his wits. Whereas he -” Fandral breaks off mid-sentence at the sight of Thor, beaming in his direction as he beckons him forward. “Thor! Can you explain to us what your brother is up to?”

Thor looks from Fandral to Sif, failing to see the connection between Loki and their conversation. Perhaps Fandral wishes only to change the subject, to prevent the fight that any fool could see brewing. If so, he has chosen wisely. The Lady Sif has roundly defeated him on every occasion they have sparred, and that was when she was not spurred on by righteous fury. “Loki’s working some mischief?”

Sif and Fandral exchange a look.

“He’s certainly working at something,” Sif says, at last. “Flawed as your friend Fandral’s logic is, his conclusion is at least sound.”

“My logic is impeccable,” Fandral protests. “If I had the choice, I would not be a maiden unless I could be assured to be the fairest in the court.”

“That’s because you’re vain,” Sif snaps back.

“I’m confused,” Thor admits. “What has my brother to do with the fairness of -” There’s a step at the door, and he turns to see, mid-sentence, how the two connect. “- maidens.”

Loki – it is, unmistakably, Loki – meets his eyes with a quirk of one eyebrow, as though challenging Thor to ask. He should, by now, know that Thor has never in his life shied from a challenge. Still, Thor finds his tongue tied, trying to find a way to ask the obvious question.

“Loki,” he manages, at last, with a gesture that encompasses his brother’s green gown and the figure beneath. “What is…this?”

Loki’s voice is also unmistakably Loki’s, though with a lighter pitch that somehow makes his mocking reply sound the crueller. “What does it look like?”

“It looks,” Thor says, because he has found that, when he states the obvious, there is less opportunity for Loki to twist his meaning, “as though you’ve taken the shape of a maiden.”

Loki’s eyebrows rise in apparent disbelief, but he says only, “Yes, Thor, congratulations on having eyes.” His smile is both sweet and unsettling. “I’m working on my shapeshifting.”

Fandral, Thor must admit, does have some semblance of a point. His brother, guised as a woman, is – not ugly, but certainly no vision either. His hair is clean and carefully dressed but unornamented, his face bare, though there is gold at his throat and rich embroidery in his gown. Thor might have passed him in the hall and failed to notice who it was he passed, were his high cheekbones and fine chin and straight, strong nose not still so unmistakably Loki.

They are features a little too delicate for a man. Now, Thor sees, they are also a little too strong for a woman.

It makes no sense. Surely, if this is shapeshifting, then this appearance is one his brother chose. But Loki has never been one to shy from attention – except when dodging the consequences of some prank. Never been one not to loudly proclaim his own glory in both word and dress. For him to look so…so unremarkable is – uncharacteristic, even disregarding the part where he’s unexpectedly a maiden.

“You look so…” Thor starts, trying to put the thought into words, and Loki arches one eyebrow.

“Ladylike?”

“Plain,” Thor says, admitting defeat.

Loki’s expression barely changes, but there is a certain tightness around his mouth and narrowing of his eyes that tells Thor to watch out for knives in his immediate future. “This is how I usually look.”

“It’s just not like you,” Thor says, hastily. “You’re usually so…dramatic.”

“I see,” Loki says flatly. “You expected something more like - this.”

A faint green-gold shimmer washes over him head to toe. When it clears, there is no inch of Loki left unaltered. Thor has to look hastily away from the pale expanse of cleavage revealed by his low-cut, tightly-fitted breastplate, framed by the enormous, luxurious fur tossed over his shoulders and the cascade of his unbound hair. Looking away, though, means that Thor must find somewhere else to rest his gaze, which means his eye sweeps over the entirety of Loki’s tight costume (surely he was not hiding those curves under the other dress?) before finally landing on his brother’s big, darkly-lined eyes. Loki’s nose seems smaller, his jaw narrower, cheeks softer, lips fuller and painted a dark, glossy purple, rendering his face lovely but severe and a little strange. Even the way he stands is different, weight on one hip, exaggerating the already exaggerated slenderness of his waist.

He looks, Thor thinks, once he recovers from the momentary shock, distinctly womanly. And distinctly unimpressed.

“Well?” Loki demands, when no one makes any comment.

“That is more what we expected, yes,” Fandral says brightly.

The stare Loki fixes him with is venomous.

“And that’s precisely why I chose this,” he says, the shimmer racing back over him, changing him back to the simpler appearance of a few moments before. “At the moment, I have no need and even less desire to impress the Fandrals of the world.”

The Lady Sif hastily turns a snort of laughter into a cough, hiding it behind one hand.

“Mother will be most pleased with your spellwork,” Thor tries, and Loki rolls his eyes.

“Oh, go hit something with your hammer.” He turns to leave, but pauses a moment in the doorway, looking back over his shoulder. “The point is not in beauty any more so than womanhood itself is.”

And then, with a rustle of skirts, he’s gone.

“Did either of you understand that?” Fandral asks, looking from Sif to Thor.

Sif gives a huff, rising to her feet. She addresses herself to Thor when she speaks. “It’s not often that your brother and I agree on something, Thor, but he makes a compelling point.” Her grin is very bright. “I’m going down to the training ring. You both are welcome to join me. If you feel equal to being beaten by a maiden.”

“Well, you both heard Loki,” Thor says. “I find myself under strict instructions to go hit something with my hammer.”

…

Thor spends a pleasant afternoon sparring with his friends, and does not see Loki again until dinner. Loki, it seems, has chosen to remain in the shape of a maiden, despite the darting, disapproving look his appearance draws from their father. Loki seems not to notice it, turning instead to their mother and engaging her in a fervent conversation on the finer points of physical transformation.

It takes Thor until partway through the meal to realise what is different about Loki – that is, what is different from that morning. He has kept the green gown, the simple braids, the smaller (and better-covered) bust, even the strong, sharp features.

But, Thor realises, watching his brother laugh at some quiet comment of their mother’s, Loki has also kept the purple-painted lips.

Loki looks up, as though feeling Thor’s eyes on him, and smiles. It is a conspiratorial smile, and, as Thor watches, Loki meets his eye and winks.

Thor smiles to himself, as he turns back to his meal.

And he alone at the long table, save for Loki, is not startled when Fandral suddenly yelps and leaps to his feet with a horrified look at his plate.

[aion-rsa]

House of X and Powers of X: Key X-Men Comics to Read

https://ift.tt/306iu50

We picked out some key books from Marvel's history to help you understand the big X-Men reboot.

facebook

twitter

tumblr

House of X and Powers of X have done the unthinkable: they’ve made having an encyclopedic knowledge of Marvel X-Men continuity minutiae an asset. Now I have a reason to talk about Xorn’s brother Xorn who was posing as Magneto pretending to be Xorn OTHER than to make someone go away.

This is, of course, a joke. HoX/PoX is remarkably accessible for anyone with any level of background knowledge of the X-Men, from “I like Hugh Jackman” to “remember the time the Sentinels tried to kill the sun because it was causing mutations?” But there is certainly a lot in here that rewards deeper knowledge. And to help you understand it all, we put together a reading list that might help you see the throughlines from Marvel Comics history that help create the comics sensation revitalizing the X-Men books. 

For this reading guide, we’re not only going to tell you what’s good and why we like it. We’re also going to try and piece together how it fits into what Jonathan Hickman and crew are doing in today’s series. Because of that, we’re slapping a big ol’ SPOILER WARNING here: proceeding beyond this point risks spoiling big twists from the first half of the HoX/PoX epic.

  FOR GENERAL BACKGROUND: X-Men: Grand Design

Ed Piskor is the indie comix guy who, prior to this book, was best known for a webcomic-turned-prestige-series, Hip-Hop Family Tree, which told the story of the origins of the biggest genre in music (it’s fantastic, by the way). His acclaim for that book, where he would quite frequently homage superhero covers, eventually garnered enough attention from Marvel for them to take a risk on him. In a fit of uncharacteristic ambition, they allowed Piskor to rework thirty years and 300 issues of X-Men or X-adjacent comics into one miniseries. The result is absolutely stunning.

There are retcons involved, but Piskor manages to turn several eras of comics history into one coherent narrative. Retcons become plot points, characters move rationally instead of for post-hoc rationales and slow-burn payoffs are seeded even earlier. It’s all done with a distinctly underground style, which is refreshing and appropriate, since this is the era when the X-Men became counterculture iconography. 

In other words, if you need the best X-Men comics history lesson imaginable, this is the book for you.

Pay close attention to: Anything with Moira Mactaggert. The revelation in House of X #2 that current Marvel continuity was the tenth time Moira had been resurrected and that she had been planning for six lives to protect the mutant race casts literally the entirety of X-Men history in a new light. So now any interaction with the Professor or his students, like, say, when she was watching Jean Grey become the Phoenix on Muir Island, has potentially new meaning. Grand Design is particularly valuable here because Piskor started before the planning for Hickman’s relaunch did, so you are reading source material that the rebooter himself was probably working off of.

read more - The Best Episodes of X-Men: The Animated Series

You may also like: For tone and craft, X-Men: Grand Design is unique. Despite countless reboots and cleanups attempted in the almost 50 years the X-Men have been published, nothing to my knowledge has been this comprehensive or accessible. However, if you like the characters and the idea of a modernized, streamlined origin-esque story, Jeff Parker and Roger Cruz’s mid-aughts series, X-Men First Class, which tells new stories with the original team of X-Men, is worth checking out. It’s a lot of fun, certainly a lot more fun than reading the original Silver Age issues themselves.

start with the first volume of X-Men: Grand Design here.

TO UNDERSTAND THE BIG THEMES: Ultimate Comics: Hawkeye 

No, I’m not kidding. I am absolutely recommending an alternate universe Hawkeye miniseries in an article about X-Men comics. 

On his way to destroying it, Jonathan Hickman was given space to play around with the Ultimate Universe, and he used it, writing a Thor miniseries and relaunching the Ultimates. Ultimate Comics: Hawkeye was the third prong of his overall story and it focused on a fictional country - the Southeast Asian Republic - as Hawkeye and a team of SHIELD agents arrive on site to deal with a civil war. We quickly find out that SEAR scientists have created a virus to eliminate the X-gene, and a serum that gives their own people a virus-resistant mutation. A “paradigm shift,” as one of the SEAR officials calls it.

That government unleashes both prongs of the plan and promptly loses control of the situation, setting up SEAR as a mutant haven for people taking their serum and thus one of the three prongs of a global conflict that plays out in Ultimate Comics: Ultimates.

Pay close attention to: The Xorns. Not because they’re anything like the ones who have shown up in HoX/PoX - the ones in House of X have only thus far been glimpsed, and the millennial nihilist icon from Powers of X is a corpse in an alternate timeline (probably).

read more - Pryde of the X-Men: The Animated Series We Almost Got

No, we’re watching the Xorns in Ultimate Comics: Hawkeye because the idea of mutants as resources in a geopolitical struggle seems central to the conflict playing out between the Krakoan mutants and the humans in the X^1 timeline of today’s series. With all the talk of omega mutants and alignments, you should be able to get a very good sense of what is to come in the mutant conflict by reading this.

You may also like: Ultimate Comics: Ultimates, Hickman and eventual Secret Wars collaborator Esad Ribic’s story of what else is going on in the world while SEAR blows up. That story is mainly concerned with SHIELD being woefully outgunned by the mutants on one side, and evil Reed Richards’ Asgard- and Europe- destroying hyper evolved Children. It’s really good.

read Ultimate Comics Hawkeye here.

FOR A SENSE OF THE TONE: “Days of Future Past”

“Days of Future Past” is right smack in the middle of what Piskor covers in Grand Design. So why read it separately? Because I strongly suspect this is the foundational text of what Hickman is trying to do with his story.

This is one of the all-time classic X-Men stories by maybe the most well liked team in the franchise’s history. In the far future of 2013, Sentinels have taken control of the US and are on their way to taking over the world, because they see human existence as the flaw causing mutation that they are programmed to wipe out. So they kill most of the heroes and round up the remaining ones into camps. Wolverine, Rachel Summers (in her first appearance), Katherine Pryde (not long after her debut), Colossus, Storm and Magneto all team up so Rachel can send Kitty’s consciousness back in time, take over her younger body and prevent the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (led by Mystique and Destiny) from killing Senator Robert Kelly, sending the future spiralling towards extinction.

These two issues function as an effective preview of the conflict that HoX/PoX explores. Humans are irrationally afraid of Mutants, who alternate between trying to be left alone and trying to dominate their progenitors. Meanwhile, the robots say “you both suck” and (presumably before falling into the sun in the case of Mothermold) just start killing.

read more: X-Men Movies Watch Order

Furthermore, “Days of Future Past” is precisely the kind of dystopia that PoX is pushing. The X^2 future has lot of Age of Apocalypse trappings, but its central conflict is between mutants trying desperately to survive and robots who hate everything biological trying to destroy everyone. Surprisingly, though Nimrod is closely associated with this dark future, he doesn’t actually appear in these issues. He comes back in time about 50 issues later, from that future but not seen in it. 

Pay close attention to: The mood and milieu of this story are the important factors, but it’s also probably worth keeping an eye on Destiny and Moira Mactaggart here. The mutant precog had one very...pointed...run in with Groundhog Lady in her third life, and they come very close to each other here. This may be fertile territory for a retcon.

You may also like: Uncanny X-Men #208-209. This is Nimrod’s big battle with the X-Men and the Hellfire Club’s Inner Circle, as Rachel Summers lays dying in Central Park. It’s nowhere near the bleak, oppressive tone that “Days of Future Past” has, but you get some sense here of the sheer power that Nimrod has at his disposal. Also, he’s clearly insane, and as far as things you want from your robots, insanity is not high on the list.

read Days of Future Past here.

TO UNDERSTAND THE MAIN VILLAIN: “The Phalanx Covenant”

The X-Men crossover that introduced Generation X, the second wave of mutant students after the New Mutants/X-Force, also seems surprisingly important. Originally presented as an offshoot of the techno-organic space mutant Warlock’s race, the Phalanx are half Borg, half grey goo nightmare. In this story, they invade Earth to assimilate and destroy it, but find that they can’t assimilate mutants, so they start trying to figure out why by kidnapping the X-Men and a group of teens identified as potential students. They fail, of course, but not before planting phalanx eggs around the planet and killing off a character who became inexplicably popular a year and a half later (Blink, who existed in the 616 for a grand total of 20 minutes before dying. She’s great, but I don’t get why she endured and not someone like Synch). 

read more: The Many Different Versions of the X-Men Dark Phoenix Saga

The Phalanx are the hive galaxy in the X^3 future being called down by the Librarian to assimilate humanity, and it looks like (at least in whatever life of Moira’s this is), they’re finally successful. 

Pay close attention to: Husk and M. I went back and forth on whether to prioritize this or the other comics you might like, trying to figure out which is more important to the narrative, and what sold me on The Phalanx Covenant is the fact that Husk and M are part of the X-Men strike force attacking Mothermold in space in House of X. They’re also two of the more plot-relevant members of Generation X during this crossover - Monet is the one who finally breaks them out of captivity, and Husk’s powers are revealed because one shell is infected with TO virus. That doesn’t feel like a coincidence.

You may also like: Annihilation: Conquest. This is the second mid-aughts Marvel Space crossover, the first helmed by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning exclusively, and the one that launched this line of books into what would eventually give us the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. The galaxy is reeling from the events of Annihilation, and as it recovers, the Phalanx take over Hala and the remains of the Kree empire. This series is good, pure Marvel Space fun. It’s the exact moment where I fell in love with this line of books. It’s also very thorough in laying out the mythology and rules of the Phalanx. 

read The Phalanx Covenant here.

TO TAKE A WILD GUESS ON WHAT IS YET TO COME: “The Dark Angel Saga”

This run on Uncanny X-Force, ostensibly a side book full of stabby mutants (and Deathlok) brought together first as Cyclops’ wetworks squad, then held together by Angel’s money, is without a doubt the best X-Men comic of the last 15 years. It’s also brimming with Apocalypse lore, which feels like one of a couple things left deliberately unstated by the events of HoX/PoX. 

The gang finds an Akkaba enclave in the desert, discovering that they’ve resurrected Apocalypse and are training the now six year old kid to be the evolutionary destroyer they believe he’s destined to become. So Fantomex shoots the kid in the head.

read more: The X-Men Movies You Never Saw

What follows is an extended superhero musing on nature vs. nurture, while at the same time the Death Seed Apocalypse planted in Angel’s back to turn him into Archangel takes over Warren’s mind, turning him into the new Apocalypse. The story goes through all the reasons for it and has Warren reassemble his horsemen. It functions essentially as a deep dive into the reasons for Apocalypse’s ascension and the role that he plays in the galactic ecosystem of the Marvel Universe.

That’s noticeably missing from Apocalypse’s scenes in the new series.

Pay close attention to: The Celestial stuff. Apocalypse in Powers of X was a heroic figure, leading a suicide mission against Nimrod and the robots to get Moira information on Nimrod’s emergence so she could stop it in life 10. There’s no mention of the role he was originally created for, one that exists separate from the Moira cycle because it started thousands of years before she was born: to guide evolution on Earth so the Celestials don’t return and destroy it. How that plays into the man-mutant-machine war seems like a clear fit, but also completely unmentioned.

You may also like: Uncanny X-Men vol. 2 #14-17. Even though it takes place during the utterly dreadful A vs. X, Kieron Gillen’s Mr. Sinister story is the definitive recent take on the master genetic manipulator, and he’s DEFINITELY coming.

read The Dark Angel Saga here.

facebook

twitter

tumblr

Feature Jim Dandy

Sep 10, 2019

Marvel

X-Men

Jonathan Hickman

from Books https://ift.tt/2ZPW4sO

[comixconnection]

That’s right folks, in addition to our beautiful (and delicious!) tins of tea, Comix Connection is now selling TEA POTS! Specifically, SPIDER-MAN TEA POTS...and in celebration, we have four brand-new SPIDER TEAS to brew-up and drink straight from the spider’s...err...spout!

PETER PARKER, SPIDER-MAN: The homey flavors of chestnut and cream evoke the comfort of Aunt May's kitchen while the vibrant tang of ceylon and cherries pay homage to a life of adventure and derring-do. A dash of cornflowers and rose petals comes swinging in like a summer breeze caught while web-slinging over the city (okay so we all know NYC doesn't ever smell that sweet, but nobody would actually want to drink what those streets smell like!). This tea weighs the grounding influence of black tea and responsibility against the sprightly spring of light fruit and florals in classic cherry red and cornflower blue -- because as no one knows better than your friendly neighborhood Peter Parker, with great tea must come great responsibility!      --THIS TEA CONTAINS A HIGH LEVEL OF CAFFEINE

MILES MORALES, SPIDER-MAN: The ultimate in flavor, this tea combines the strength and power of caramel and chocolate black tea with the light, vibrant flavors of honeybush and rooibos for the perfect balance of old and new. With almond, vanilla, marigold flowers and cornflowers to round-out the brew, this is a tea that is (if you’ll pardon the pun) steeped in tradition while still being ready to swing forward into the future -- just like everyone’s favorite Champion of ultimate arachnid responsibility.     --THIS TEA CONTAINS A LOW LEVEL OF CAFFEINE

SPIDER-GWEN: Straight from Earth-65 comes this radioactively delicious blend of white and green teas accented with fruit, flowers, and the rich grounding sweetness of vanilla. Cornflower and rose petal accents add color while a combination of nutty roast hojicha and the vibrant fruitiness of white eternal spring makes for a balanced tea that delicately straddles the line between responsibility and recklessness -- just like your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Woman (a.k.a. Ghost Spider).     --THIS TEA CONTAINS A MODERATE LEVEL OF CAFFEINE

VENOM: A viciously powerful tea made from malty assam, nutty mate, and spicy rooibos vanilla chai, this tea has bite to spare thanks to the addition of cloves, cardamon, ginger, and red peppercorn. The sultry undercurrent of chocolate and hazelnut seeps over your senses like a viscous, venomous symbiote whispering sweet nothings in your ear just before its jaws snap down -- but don't fret. Everything is better when you have someone (or something) to share it with and one of the upsides to being possessed by a carnivorous alien organism is that with a tongue that long, you'll be able to taste every sweet and spicy note of this rich and invigorating tea.     --THIS TEA CONTAINS A HIGH LEVEL OF CAFFEINE

So pour yourself a cup of Great ResponsibiliTEA today!

[slaapkat]

PRESENTING, THE THIRD ANNUAL COMIX OF THE YEAR!

This year, in my opinion, was a HUGE year for comics! As evidenced by most of my list being composed of modern-day stuff, BUT I did manage to read some new things here and there in spite of that! If nothing else, I’ve expanded my physical library IMMENSELY over the past year as nothing brings me more joy than collecting anything I may have read in the past. 

This year was a GREAT year for some incredible writing by some amazing authors. Dark Crisis has been one of the best events I’ve ever gotten to witness unfold, and makes me so much more excited for everything we have in store next year. Namely: the return of the JSA! Many of my choices in this years list will reflect that, as a result. Organized more or less in order, here is my top ten list of comics that have stuck with me the most throughout this year!

1. The New Golden Age (2022) #1

-NOW THIS IS CINEMA! I’ve been waiting for this since the moment I first declared myself a fan of the JSA. They’re coming back! Finally! and every part of it just feels so genuine and real! This on top of the new upcoming Justice Society of America title, as well as every interview Geoff Johns has given in the past few months has really started to let me believe he’s GOOD again. Not to mention him stating right out that Alan Scott is the main character of his world. What could be better than that! As apprehensive as I was at first with this sudden plethora of OCs, I’ve swung right back around to loving the entire concept immensely, from mystery surrounding this new Red Lantern to the excitement of Stargirl: The Lost Children. Plus! Jared being included and acknowledged among the fates! the ENTIRE future JSA being built on second chances! KYLE KNIGHT! RUBY SOKOV! absolutely chomping at the bit to see where this goes and I trust Geoff every bit of the way.

2. Flashpoint Beyond (2022)

-what originally started as a “haha look how crazy tommy is” quickly developed into a realization of “holy shit this is fantastic actually”. A beautifully tragic story about a man fighting for his life against the narrative with almost suicidal determination until he ultimately comes to reaccept his place in the world after losing his son twice over. A surprisingly well-written continuation of Tom King’s arc on Geoff Johns’ part, that packages everything from Flashpoint, Batman (2016) and Justice League Incarnate (2021) into a neat little bow that ultimately makes for an extremely satisfying character arc. With Thomas and the Flashpoint universe confirmed alive, I’m hoping we get to see more of him soon, especially reunited with his pals in the JLI.

3. Justice League Incarnate (2021)

-Also a VERY surprising fav. A team of characters that you wouldn’t ever expect to work together and yet, THEY DO! Now, I usually hate the Justice League and any JL offshoots as a rule, but these guys were FUN and the concept of a multiverse-hopping rag-tag team of heroes was immensely entertaining. There was a chemistry between everyone involved that made it all feel more real than any other JL team. With the infinite earths now once again made canon by Dark Crisis, I have my fingers crossed for their return (along with flashpoint batman!), whether it be an ongoing or even just a mini. 

4. Watchmen (1986)

-Okay, I will admit, Watchmen was one of those books that always sounded WAY overhyped, and up until this year I gave it a wide berth as a result and kept dragging my feet about reading it generally. I loved the movie, I loved Tom King’s Rorschach, but I just couldn’t make myself take that first step and actually READ it until I found the tpb for sale at a con and figured. might as well. and now I can say: yes, it is worth the hype. a fantastic gritty deconstruction of the superhero genre with solid writing throughout. thankful to have read it in the end as well, given its connection to Rorschach, as well as Doomsday Clock, Flashpoint Beyond, and arguably Geoff John’s vision for his little corner of DC moving forward. Reading the source material also lead me to appreciate the movie SO much more. Literally what is with all the hate surrounding Zack Snyder when he’s the only one in the world to ever produce a perfect comic book adaptation. be real. 

5. Doomsday Clock (2017)

-Another series I frequently passed over due to it being largely panned in most fandom spaces and being willing to believe it due to not being a fan of Geoff John’s writing until recently. Boy was I wrong! And boy am I glad I did read it, as from here alone its obvious Geoff Johns has been working at SOMETHING for years now, playing the long con between this and his Stargirl TV show to get his dream JSA book off the ground. Doomsday Clock plays with many of the same themes in Watchmen, albeit a bit more loosely, and more importantly provided what I found to be a fascinating examination on the cultural importance and staying power of comic book superheroes itself, particularly with the sequence showcase the example of superman’s floating timelime. Of course, you can’t forget Geoff Johns explicitly stating canonically in-text that Alan Scott is the most important one of them all, to the point if he didn’t exist then neither would the JSA or the whole world of superheroes at all <3

6. Enemy Ace: War Idyll (1990)

-This entry, admittedly, is borderline, HOWEVER: my defense is that I didn’t read it until after I made last year’s list, and I didn’t get into Enemy Ace as a whole until this year as it was, so it counts! War Idyll is a beautifully illustrated, beautifully written story that encapsulates everything that was tragic yet morbidly beautiful about WWI. George Pratt is one of those rare men who can write as well as he paints. While the Vietnam flashbacks still fail to interest quite as much, I can still see the obvious parallels drawn between the two wars. I always end up sobbing towards the end no matter how many times I read it. 

7. Rogues (2022)

-This one surprised me more than anything else. I tend not to enjoy anything Flash related, and as much as his rogues gallery is admittedly far more entertaining on their own, the association with the Flash (any of them) is usually enough to make me ignore them. However, the concept of this story was simply too good to ignore. Joshua Williamson perfectly captures that look and aesthetic of a washed-up former great, and you can’t help but feel sorry for the Rogues and even actively start to root for them..... until it all begins steadily unraveling, bit by bit. I didn’t realize how emotionally invested I’d actually become until I got to a splash page at the end of the last book and suddenly I couldn’t stop crying! An absolute gut punch of a series, 10/10.

8. Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985)

-Right after the news broke that George Perez’s health had taken a turn for the worse and that he didn’t have too much longer to live, I found a paperback copy at a local used books store and figured it was as good a sign as any to finally read one of the most famous and widely known events in DC history. While in my opinion George and Marv do struggle with juggling such a large ensemble cast and the story subsequently suffer in parts for it, as a whole the book holds up exceedingly well decades later, including Supergirl’s emotional sacrifice. As much as it held up well enough on its own, I also appreciated the additional context reading the original gave me as Dark Crisis unfolded over the course of the year. Not to mention, the addition and appreciate of a new fav (Pariah).

9. DC vs. Vampires (2021) #1-6

-Specfically the first half of the series because I genuinely, genuinely believe these first 6 issues are best of any apocalyptic au story ever written. The sheer DRAMA of everything that happens, Hal lying out his ass at every single opportunity, being to most mustache-twirling evil maniac he can be. Parallax......2! Whatever happens after largely doesn’t exist to me and as of writing this the scans to #12 have yet to drop so I’m reserving my full judgement of the series until then. Ollie’s whole one-on-one with Hal in #6 still guts me as much as Dick suddenly revealing he’s actually the vampire king and then immediately killing the entire batfam makes me laugh (as well as the ensuing freakout on the batfam side of tumblr to the point several others had to make posts assuring them none of this was canon or real lmaooooo). 

10. Deathstroke (1991)

-Also a surprise, motivated by some covers I saw at a convention that showed Slade with such feminine allure I simply had to investigate. While it does start falling off towards the end, overall I found this series to be a fun exploration of Slade’s character. By and large, it was a fun book generally. Slade is the main character of the world, just living his life as he sees fit. He can’t stop sleeping with women. He’s divorced. He ignores his kids. He will win or kill himself trying. He might be in love with Wintergreen. Who knows. I enjoyed reading this and as a result keep finding it hilarious that people keep complaining about Slade losing his enhanced abilities in Dark Crisis when that’s not even the first time it’s happened lmao. Wish all his other solos were even as remotely readable and enjoyable as this one.  

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

The Justice Society of America (2022)

Enemy Ace/Hans von Hammer as he appears in Star-Spangled War Stories (1952), Men of War (1977), Unknown Soldier (1977), and Our Army at War (1952).

Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths (2022)

Dark Crisis: The Deadly Green (2022)

Catwoman: Lonely City (2021)

The Human Target (2021)

Sword of Azrael (2022)

[recentanimenews]

Voice Actor Kenshō Ono Tries His Hand at Herding Cats

  If you need a little cat-related cuteness to round out your Tuesday, Avex Pictures has got you covered with a series of Youtube videos featuring voice actor Kenshō Ono (who plays Subaru Mikazuki in My Roommate is a Cat) learning the finer points of feline appreciation at a cat cafe in Akihabara.

      The "Cat Tour Movie" series starring Kenshō Ono is ongoing, so be sure to check out the Avex Pictures official Youtube channel to catch additional episodes in the future.

    Known as Dokyonin wa Hiza, Tokidoki Atama no Ue. in the original Japanese, the My Roommate is a Cat manga is written by Minatsuki, illustrated by As Futasuya, and serialized in Flex Comix's Comic Polaris digital manga magazine. The My Roommate is a Cat TV anime is directed by Kaoru Suzuki and features animation production by Zero-G. The series is currently broadcasting on Japanese TV and streaming on Crunchyroll. Crunchyroll describes My Roommate is a Cat as follows:

  The story of Mikazuki Subaru, a novelist who is shy and struggles in relationships with other people, and a cat who was dumped by humans and lived a tough life on the streets. Through a twist of fate, the two of them end up living together. This heartwarming tale illustrates day-to-day life through the eyes of both man and cat. These moments seem trivial, but as they build upon themselves, the two become family and find happiness in their life together.

  Source: Ota-suke

  ---

Paul Chapman is the host of The Greatest Movie EVER! Podcast and GME! Anime Fun Time.

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[tilbageidanmark]

Movies I watched this week - 24

In The Cakemaker ( האופה מברלין‎) a lonely baker moves from Berlin to Jerusalem in order to bond with the widow and young son of his boyfriend, who had died in a car accident. 

A restrained, moving and subversive Israeli film about Identities - what a surprise!. 8+ / 10.

The only trope that annoyed me was the power of “Food” as magic.

✴️             

2 with Saoirse Ronan:

✳️✳️✳️ In The Lovely Bones, 14 year old Saoirse Ronan is being murdered (brutally, but off screen) by creepy neighbor Stanley Tucci. The first 30 minutes before the murder are bone-chillingly scary, but then it turns into a stupid, unnecessary metaphysical theoretical bullshit. Sad!

✳️✳️✳️ Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig’s directorial debut.

Sensitive, quiet and empathetic, well-paced and beautifully acted. Re-watch.

Best film of the week!

✳️✳️✳️ Bonus: Saoirse Ronan's many accents

✴️               

In Daniel Clowes’s sad Ghost World, misfit teenage friends, Scarlett Johansson and Thora Birch, prank dorky Steve Buscemi after they find a lonely heart ad he had placed.

Sweet and sensitive about adolescent angst and punk restlessness.

9/10.

✴️                

Unfortunately, Terry Zwigoff’s next film after Ghost World was Bad Santa, a terrible, unfunny crime story of a Charles Bukowski-type mall Santa with no redeeming characteristics who robs the stores where he works at the end of the season. 2/10

✴️                  

“Mmm... Whale carcass...”

Luca, the newest Pixar feature, (which is like “Coco but on the Italian Riviera”...), and which is like “Call me by your name”, but without the gay stuff. First feature from the director of La Luna, and pretty much a Vespa product placement.

I like the posters from the old film classics (Roman Holiday, Bicycle Thief) that can be briefly glimpsed on the town’s walls!

✴️                       

2 with Kristen Stewart:

✳️✳️✳️ American Ultra: A goofy underground comix disguised as an action movie where the hero is a loser stoner who loves his stoner girlfriend. Sweet and over the top. With Huell Babineaux in a colorful sweater in a small role.

Terrific end titles done in Mike’s "Apollo Ape" drawing style.

I wrote about it here, giving it “3 Funyons”.

(Re-watch)

✳️✳️✳️ Personal Shopper starts suggestively with two interesting stories, one of lovely Stewart as a shopper for a super model celebrity who eventually gets murdered, and another of her being a medium who communicates with ghosts. But in the last 30 minutes, she is trying to connect with her dead twin brother, and the whole plot falls apart and ends ‘nowhere’ (literally in a random room in Oman).

It is shot in romantic Paris with a small side connection to Hilda of Klimt (who was also a spiritualist), so it was very appealing to the eye.

Even though it was uneven, I’ll look for other films by prolific French director Olivier Assayas.

✴️                    

The Bothersome Man is a weird Norwegian film about a man who suddenly finds himself in a cold, “perfect” city - but without children or any emotions - and his attempts to escape from there. He is first dropped off - dressed like ‘Paris, Texas’s Harry Dean Stanton - in front of a deserted gas station in the middle of nowhere. It’s a dystopian story without explanations or much direction. 4/10.

✴️                

Icarus - Amateur cyclist Bryan Fogel’s 2017 investigation into illegal doping in international sport, and his discovery of a massive Russian conspiracy of cheating and cover up. I wonder how he first got the director of Russia's national anti-doping laboratory to help him cheat.

✴️                       

✳️✳️✳️ “Man just wants to forget the bad stuff, and believe in the made-up good stuff. It's easier that way.”

Kurosawa classic 1950′s Rashōmon - I didn’t remember how low budget and simple it was: There are only three settings in the film: Rashōmon gate, the woods, and the courtyard. The black and White filming is symbolic of light and darkness, good and evil. Part of the score is Ravel’s Boléro.

(The Internet Archive copy is haltingly bad, but the only one I could find).

✳️✳️✳️ Sheila Marie Orfano explains The Rashomon effect, where individuals give significantly different but equally believable accounts of the same event.

✴️                        

Kurzgesagt’s short film A Minute by Minute Account of the Day the Dinosaurs Died.

The YouTube channel of Kurzgesagt in general is one of the best.

✴️                   

In the new Fatherhood, Kevin Hart’s wife dies a day after she gives birth, and he stays to raise his daughter by himself. I wanted to like it more but there wasn’t much there.

Also, the newborn baby was a bit too old. 3/10

✴️                  

Errol Morris’s horrifying Standard Operating Procedure shows that we only know about Bush’s war crimes at Abu Ghraib because they were photographed. “American values” never change.

(This copy is pretty grainy)

✴️                       

On the waterfront - Young Brando’s first Oscar performance was truly riveting.

“... It wasn't him, Charley, it was you. Remember that night in the Garden you came down to my dressing room... I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let's face it. It was you, Charley..” 

✴️                   

In 2018, before he did ‘‘Another Round", Thomas Vinterberg must have bought a big house in the country, so he had to direct Kursk, about the Russian nuclear submarine that sunk and couldn’t be saved.

Conventional and boring. But I can’t imagine how this story could be told in any interesting way. 

With Lars Brygmann (in a ”normal” person role) and a cameo by Max Von Sydow.

✴️                        

Another unforgettable Max Von Sydow role, as “Joubert”, in my all-time favorite film, Sydney Pollack’s best, Three Days of the Condor.

“...It will happen this way. You may be walking. Maybe the first sunny day of the spring. And a car will slow beside you, and a door will open, and someone you know, maybe even trust, will get out of the car. And he will smile, a becoming smile. But he will leave open the door of the car and offer to give you a lift...”

The perfect thriller which I’ve seen at least 12-15 times, and will probably see again and again. Dave Grusin’s score is superb. It’s also one of the most Christmasy movies I know. 

10/10

✴️                             

2 scars:

✳️✳️✳️ The original Pre-Production Code, Howard Hawks Scarface, inspired by Al Capone, and the archetype of the gangster film. “This picture is an indictment of gang rule in America and of the callous indifference of the government to this constantly increasing menace to our safety and our liberty”. I never realized that there was some comedy and (lovely!) cabaret singing in it.

✳️✳️✳️ Oliver Stone’s 1983 Scarface, with Hector Salamanca as “Alberto” and Harris Yulin as Mel Bernstein!

40 years later, it’s just a bit too long - could use a little trim.

You need people like me so you can point your fuckin' fingers and say, "That's the bad guy."

✴️                  

A short YT clip of clips from Kubrick’s films, from FilmoteCanet Cinema which has hundreds more.

✴️                

Woody Allen’s Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, with Gene Wilder as the doctor who falls in love with an Armenian sheep, Burt Reynolds and Lynn Redgrave. In hindsight, not as lecherous as remembered, but very 1972.

- - - - -

Throw-back to the art project:

Lady Bird Adora.

Daniel Clowes Adora.

La Luna Adora.

Three Days of the Condor Adora.

- - - - -

(My complete movie list is here)

[aisicle]

Is animation still just for kids? Part one: animation as an effective promotional tool in tourism.

Lately, I’ve noticed that there are certain places in the West that are picking up on a promotional technique that’s been around in Japan for quite some time now: using stunningly beautiful animation as a way to attract people to their product. For the first part of this post, I wanted to talk specifically about the use of animation in tourism as a means to attract more visitors.

In the winter of 2017, Destination Canada hired director Makoto Shinkai and studio CoMix Wave of Your Name fame, the highest-grossing anime and Japanese film of all time, to create a promotional campaign to attract Japanese tourists to the True North. It features Canadian attractions such as Niagara Falls, the Canadian Rockies, Banff Lake, Abraham Lake, as well was major cities Vancouver and Toronto. For 31 gorgeous seconds, you can picture yourself traveling in the midst of Canadian winter looking at the wonderful sights of pure white snow, gleaming icicles and clear skies – instead of trudging through the melting slush and mud and the reality of getting frostbite on your toes.

(I kid, of course. As a Canadian I love my country and while it does go below freezing a lot of the time, the snowy season is a sight that not many other countries get to experience!)

Approximately a month later, the state of Oregon released their own animated promotional video produced by local agency Widen + Kennedy, with animation by Psyop and Sun Creatures Studio and music by Oregon Symphony. While it isn’t in what would be known as Japanese animation or “anime” style exactly, many have compared it to famous Japanese animation studio, Studio Ghlibi for its whimsical take that is “Only Slightly Exaggerated.”

Even in film, the inclusion of famous landmarks that attract tourists, such as London in Harry Potter, Hobbiton in New Zealand, Times Square in New York City, or Cloud Gate “the Bean” in Chicago, is not uncommon. Yet, many see it as more authentic than when the same technique is used in animation.

It’s the opposite in Japan. In 2016, it was announced that 88 places in Japan were going to be designated as “animation spots” to attract tourists to a “Cool Japan.” Since 2015, fans of the anime Free! have been flocking to Australia’s Russell Hotel that was featured in one of their episodes, with the specific room shown as having bookings up to a year in advance. Most recently, a tourism campaign centred around the international hit Yuri!!! On Ice will begin its third round in the town of Karatsu, which was the inspiration for the main character’s fictional home town of Hasetsu. There will be a museum dedicated to the series opening up for a limited time in the small town, as well as a “Hasetsu Passport” that will be given out with tickets so that you are able to see all the sights that were featured in the anime.

Image taken from the Daily Mail.

Hasetsu vs. Karatsu. Image taken from Crunchyroll.

I dug up the numbers for Canada’s tourism for 2017. Unfortunately, it looks like tourism rose up in every region except Japan, which is unfortunate because the promotional video was incredibly breath-taking. Destination Canada’s report stated that this may have been because of the strength of the Japanese Yen compared to the Canadian dollar at the time, so we’ll see if the new year will show us the power of animation yet.

[ufonaut]

WELCOME TO THE MAYBE-ANNUAL COMIX ROUND-UP EXTRAVAGANZA!

As much as a whole lot of this year has sucked, I’m forever grateful to have found a refuge in comics and to have discovered some really devastatingly good stories out there, most of which have now become what I’d consider all-time favourites. Here’s to getting into Alan Scott and the JSA & co! Without further ado, my top ten COMIX of the year (very few of which are actually recent):

Strange Adventures (2020)

Green Lantern 80th Anniversary 100-Page Super Spectacular (2020) -- “Dark Things Cannot Stand The Light” (Tynion, Frank)

The Golden Age (1993)

The Book of Fate (1997)

JSA (1999)

JSA: Classified (2005)

Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen (2019)

Comic Cavalcade (1942)

Green Lantern (1941)

Justice Society of America (1992)

Honorary mentions: Fate (1994), Rorschach (2020), The Spectre (1992), Solomon Grundy (2009), All-Star Squadron (1981) #20, Infinity Inc (1984) #9, DC First: Green Lantern/Green Lantern (2002) #1, All-Star Comics (1976) #60-#69 and Starman (1994) #28.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!

[meccacon]

*** starts in TEN MINUTES *** #MECCAcon’s MARVELvsDC “verzuz”: SUNDAY, 1/24, 8pm EST/ 5pm PST via MECCAcon’s #Clubhouse https://lnkd.in/eBQWydT Bringing the “verzuz” series from our fam’s club, THE ANIMATION CLUB (follow them!) to our own, this time in the form of all things COMIX & GRAPHIC NOVELS! Hosted by the HELLA dope @l.a._iz_gfc L.A. Salter (cuz y’all know I’m not about this mainstream life🤣)! Pull up UPON THEE! FYI: you will only be allowed to participate in the rounds if you change your profile pic to either the #Marvel or #DCcomics logo, or a character. It is MANDATORY, and helps us in counting! If you don’t, you will be put back into the audience! We can see your beards or inches another tiiime, ok? 🤣❤️💪🏾 **10rounds** #blacklinkedin https://www.instagram.com/p/CKctiXwsdm_/?igshid=1rvjx449zvoxp