#dcu center

[kingdomcomicscenter-blog]

[gothaminsurance]

The only required reading in the batman fandom should be one solo book with a superhero that has nothing to do with the bat family.

[puppetmaster13u]

@f4nd0m-fun here (I hope they allow us to ask with secondary blogs soon)

Just how wild do you like your Batfam cryptids? I've got ideas for days.

One is a wing fic where all the bats essentially end up half demon. Thomas and Martha make a deal with Alfred to help fix the city and clean up the curses and everything, and. Alfred asks for 'the souls of your descendants' at the point, not caring much for humanity but hoping to get ahead of those pesky demons in his soul collection (so and so said he has Constantine's soul but that's only a piece! What about a bunch of souls that have been tainted by the spirit of a city that has never had reason to hope? Now those are some rare and dark souls).

The Waynes were hoping he'd take their souls instead but he refuses (maybe they're too full of hope or something) but, over time, he grows attached and ends up giving Bruce a shard of his power, allowing him to transform into a demonic winged form based on an animal for his protection after his parents die. When he's young the form is a snowy owl, but once he come back and became Batman his wings have changed. Each of the babies is the same way. As Robin, they gain their baby wings, but, once they move to a new name, their wings evolve.

'The Demon's Head' isn't just a fancy title, the Al'ghul's are demon descended, so Damien is at least a quarter demon even at the beginning, but Alfred's power can't be passed genetically like they thought, so he was born grounded. In this, he shows up sooner, Talkia asking Jason to take Damien with him to his father since she knows her father will kill him for being wingless.

Tim, poor baby. He couldn't fly as Robin because his wings were a shattered mimicry of Jason's Robin wings. He felt like he was in the shadow of the previous Robin, making the 'replacement' nickname sting even more, but, eventually, he grows into the wings of a cardinal and learns to fly.

I'm not sure if Alfred marks Barbara as his person, but if not, maybe he regrets not doing so, thinking that she might not have ended up paralyzed if he'd given her power. But also she's not really considered a 'Wayne descendant' life the kids Bruce adopted, so he'd have to directly make the deal with her. Maybe he does this with Stephanie when she comes along, still thinking about how Barbara might've been better off with a deal. Also, he keeps trying to hold off on gathering their souls because he's grown attached. I figure he'd probably end up wanting to turn them into proper demons too tho when they eventually die but, for now, until the city has been restored (if it ever will be), the Batfam is essentially immortal, and Alfred might be pulling some strings so no one realizes the Waynes are as well. As a side note, I debated Alfred x Lady Gotham for this story.

-

Then I had a dpxdc version of this where the wings were still demonic in origin but basically Scarecrow and Bruce are many many family lines removed cousins from an ancestor who was siblings with Jack Nightingale. On top of that, Danny had wings but they got charred when he was electrocuted. This one also has Clock x Pariah and they have wings due to something to do with ghosts, Danny gets a cloak made out of their feathers while his ghost side slowly grows its own wings (but he'll never have wings as a living again).

-----

Sorry for the long send, I got a bit carried away, but if you want I can dig up my AU again and share what I have for the wings at least, not sure what else I've got written down.

#colony of bats AU

Honestly I love both of these ideas, but what if they were say, combined.

Alfred gifts Bruce a shard of his power- everyone knows the Waynes have wings, even if in most cases too small to fly. But the wings are feathered, usually bright and flashy for the men who inherit the trait.

Which means they're very identifiable. But like you said, Alfred gets (ugh) attached to this little mortal. He's practically raised him and honestly thinks it's adorable watching him manipulate the other richfolk at galas into thinking he's such a "polite young man." Bruce is practically his baby!

So he gifts him a bit of his blood (which we know via Constantine can extend ones lifespan including giving them a bit of healing) and an itty bitty piece of his own power. Just enough for Bruce to be able to willingly call upon it. Just enough for him to disappear into shadows. Just enough for his eyes to gain a hint of an unholy glow. Just enough for a hint of claws. Just enough for feathered wings to shift into jagged mimicries of his own.

You know what could be an interesting thing? The wings are Realms in origin. We know the FentonNightingales separated into the Fentons and Nightingales some time after Jack, so whose to say that the Nightingales didn't get into magic. Perhaps they were given a gift to thank them after a bit of protection or assistance. And the infinite realms are well, infinite. It attaches to all worlds, including say the more demonic ones. But whose to say none of the Fentons made a deal or three in the generations following. They were witch hunters after all, perhaps they need something to keep up with the "traitors" of their bloodline.

Perhaps a deal which resulted in those matching wings.

Now, how could they find out their relation with the Fentons? While there could be the adoption route, what if instead it was right after Danny's accident.

He died screaming, visibly got electrocuted, his wings are torched, there's no way they're not taking him to the hospital. Which means things like blood tests, maybe even a donated organ or two because someone doesn't get blasted with that much electricity without consequences.

Which, it's the batfamily, they definitely have alarms set up for any sort of family pings for both themselves and their rogues. Just in case.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Also had no idea where to put it but if this includes demons and ghosts feeding on fear, or emotions in general, then Scarecrow could be instinctively attempting to feed and grow his wings. Also he deserves raven or rook wings. Maybe a jay's if you wanna go for color.

Oh my gosh, even if Alfred and Gotham don't get together, they definitely have tea together and spar. They're definitely co-parenting either platonically or romantically, it doesn't matter this is their specialist lil boy. Who then brings even more of the specialist lil ones ever!

God I love the implications of Clockwork and Pariah creating a cloak of wings for a ghostling for them to use as their feathers slowly grow back. Love what that implies for the culture of the ghost zone. Love the idea of it maybe having an influence on Danny's wings in ghost form since a ghost's appearance is influenced by their image about themself.

[zithcavooris]

If it wasn't cheating of me to post that rough draft as a drawing-a-day yesterday, I'm pretty sure it's cheating for me to post the line art the very next day. Sue me.

[escelia]

New Sibling Just Dropped

Or Danny gets willingly isekai'd into the DCU and gets a twin out of it.

I know I disappeared from the face of the earth for a bit there, and there's stuff I should probably be updating, but I come baring different stuff this time :D

Just started this for fun, and I have at least one other chapter of it done, but idk how long this bout of inspiration will last, so I'm just rolling with it for now.

@flamingpudding look! i pulled a jason todd and rose from the grave!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Danny was tired. The kind of tired you felt behind your eyes and in your bones, and weighed heavy with achievement. He was perched on the edge of a building in his ghost form looking over Amity Park with a soft smile as he watched Youngblood run through the park with human children, Cujo playfully on their heels. His galaxy cloak (which had been a coronation gift) billowed around his lap like a gas with stars twinkling inside. 

It had been a few years now since he took up the Crown of Fire and became High King of the Infinite Realms, and while he had accomplished many things since then, graduating from high school wasn't something on that list. It sucked that he wouldn't get to walk across the stage with Sam and Tucker, but in the face of all he'd been able to do for both Amity and the Infinite Realms, it was worth it. They coexisted now. There was still trouble every now and then, but Danny had helped the ghosts who insisted on staying in Amity Park find a place in their city where they could thrive.

Youngblood watched over the children of the city, Box Ghost started a box recycling center, Lunch Lady started a program to get food to families that couldn't afford it, and Pointdexter started reporting bullying at the school since he was already there. 

On the Realms' side, Danny shut down Walker's prison. Since it was his lair, he couldn't take it away from him completely, but it no longer housed the many ghosts the warden had considered "rule breakers." He'd given Walker a new set of rules to enforce and essentially took him under his wing as a royal soldier, kept under the close watch of Fight Knight, who'd defected from Pariah Dark so fast after his defeat that it was laughable. 

He'd done something similar with Skulker, though he was a harder case to crack. Unlike Walker, who was happy as long as he had a set of rules to enforce, Skulker wanted to keep hunting. He'd been recruited forcefully by Walker and Fright Knight after they caught him on his way to fight Danny again.

All in all, everything had begun to run smoothly now. The fatigue weighing on him reminded him that it had been hard to accomplish, and continuing to lead his double life hadn't made it any less exhausting. A cold breath rushed through his chest as he felt a familiar presence slide up next to him. 

"You didn't time out," Danny pointed out without looking to face the ghost beside him. Clockwork hummed in acknowledgment.

"Sometimes it's pleasant to watch time flow in person." It was Danny's turn to hum at him. 

"How are you feeling?" The Ancient asked thoughtfully. The younger ghost tilted his head pensively. 

"It's hard to say. I'm tired, but I'm happy. And also sad..." he paused to gather his thoughts. "I feel like I've done everything I needed to."

But not everything he wanted to do. 

"Go on," Clockwork pressed. The teenager did turn his head now to make a face at his mentor. If the guy knew how he felt and what he was going to say, why would he say it out loud? But the other just arched a brow at him and waited.

"Fine," he pouted. "I've spent so much time and energy finding places for everyone here. The GIW are gone, my parents stopped hunting ghosts, Jazz got into the psychology program at Stanford, Sam and Tucker are graduating today... I helped make that happen, I know I did! But they're moving on without me. They're growing up and I don't feel like I am."  

'I don't feel like I'm ready.'

Danny stopped to take a breath and wipe away the icy tears gathering in his eyes. He felt stupid for crying over it. He was 17 for Ancients' sake! Jazz would have told him he grew up too fast, but he still felt like a child. He had no idea what he was doing! And yet! And yet... he felt...

"But you also feel ancient, right? Like you've been around too long and seen too much?" Clockwork said as though he were reading from a script. Danny sulked. Stupid time ghost with his dumb Time Stream TV or whatever. 

"Yeah..."

"All Ancients feel that way. Though you may be feeling unbalanced in more ways than one because of how young you died and the fact you are half human."

"What do you mean?" Danny turned his whole body to face him now, tucking his knees under his chin and circling his arms around them. His cloak moved with him in inky black wisps and settled around him again like clouds of galaxies. 

Clockworks form shifted to that of a child.

"You feel young because you died young. However, it is the nature of humans to grow and change. While you may have died at 14, your childhood died before that. You yearn to grow and learn, while also being an incredibly powerful Ancient."

He supposed that made sense. He recalled all the years cleaning the lab before the portal had even been built, and the fighting and neglect (Jazz's words, not his) that spawned his disdain of Christmas even longer before. He wanted to go back to school. He wanted a reason to love Christmas. He wanted pets and family dinners that didn't come alive. He wanted to grow up properly.

"But you still want to help people," the ghost said as though Danny had been talking out loud or having his mind read. 

"I hate it when you do that," Danny complained. Clockwork just smiled smugly.

"I know." He laughed at the glare Danny threw him. 

"I have a proposition for you," the older ghost began. Danny perked up in intrigue. "I know of another earth dimension with some problems that need to be addressed. Your role as High King puts you in a position to be helpful."

"Their problem has to do with the Realms?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes. Ectoplasm from the Realms is pooling into what are referred to on their planet as Lazarus Pits. They are both helpful and harmful as they do not dissipate into the air so they continually collect and concentrate emotion, but they do sometimes revive the dead."

Danny grimaced in disgust at the thought of dunking a person into a stagnant pool of contaminated ectoplasm. "That sounds disgusting."

"Quite," Clockwork agreed. 

"So what's your proposition?"

"Well, if it is agreeable to you, I would like to de-age your physical form and place you with a family that's had dealings with the Pits firsthand. I've found them to be quite charming." 

"Ah, so you want me to go in undercover?" Danny couldn't help but roll his eyes a little. It wasn't a half bad idea. He could try his hand at childhood again and still get to handle his duties as King Phantom. Leading a double life again would be easy enough, it was just stepping from one role into another. 

"Not at all." Clockwork smiled knowingly. Danny was officially suspicious of his ghost guardian. "This planet has had all kinds of dealings with the occult, and even humans with superpowers isn't that unusual. While I would advise against telling anyone you are a king right away, you are in fact just that: a king. You may do what you wish." 

For an ancient and wise time ghost, Danny thought Clockwork was really shit at hiding his expressions. Though he tried to keep the grin off his face, Danny could clearly see the twitching of his lips and gleam in his eyes that promised the old man was scheming. 

But to get his childhood back. Or, at least a semblance of one... it deserved consideration. Danny looked back out at the cityscape again. Sam and Tucker... they were down there graduating from high school without him. He'd been the one to encourage them to pull away from Team Phantom activities to zero in on their studies, but he didn't regret it. Sam wanted to major in environmental science and Tucker wanted to go to MIT and he just didn't fit into those plans. After Jazz left for Stanford, his parents often forgot he was still there. He'd managed to convince them to study ghosts properly instead of hunting them, and with a little help from the "friendly ghost King Phantom" they were given a place to start. They dove into their research with the same excitement and fervor they'd had all their lives. Which of course meant he went days, sometimes weeks, without seeing them emerge from the lab. It was easy enough to slip past them to the portal while they were distracted. 

The point was that he'd started to feel his anchor to this city, to this realm, start to dissipate as the people who kept him there started to break away from him. He still loved them, wanted to protect them, but they were safe and happy now. He felt fulfilled in his task of protecting them, but there was a buzzing beneath his skin to do more. 

Danny took a deep and controlled breath. He didn't need it in his ghost form, but it felt good to feel his lungs stretch to fullness. 

"When would I start?" He asked finally. The straight face Clockwork had been trying to keep, and he really was so bad at it, finally broke into a wide grin. 

"Right now. Everything is already in place and your duties in the Realms will be taken care of in your absence." 

Danny smiled softly at his guardian. Clockwork sure had a funny way of showing it, but he cared so deeply for the boy next to him that when Danny responded with a bad pun, he couldn't even be annoyed. 

"Well, no time like the present!" He winked.

Clockwork chuckled, and with a flash of light, he sent Danny on his way. 

The more time the older ghost spent with his young ward, the more he appreciated him. The Danny he’d come to know was nothing like the Danny’s from other worlds he’d encountered while trying to prevent Dan from existing. His Danny was now truly one of a kind. None of the others, not even the ones that eventually turned into Dan, had been Ancients. There would never be another Danny like him, and every universe was adjusting to include him should he ever decide to visit them. He had a place in any world, should he choose, but Clockwork knew he was needed most in the one he’d sent him to. It would be truly entertaining to watch the young Ancient settle into his role there, and Clockwork was actually finding himself looking forward to it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was dark and quiet a long while before Danny opened his eyes. And when he did open them it got really loud and really bright really fast. It belatedly occurred to him that he should have asked like a billion more questions before agreeing to be iseaki’d into a different dimension to join a family he knew literally nothing about. 

There was shouting before someone in what looked like a ninja cult uniform shoved a knife into his hand and pushed him in the path of a person in a different uniform. The man in front of him was dressed in blue and black and wearing a mask that covered his eyes, but Danny could see the surprised shape of his mouth before it morphed into something like anger. And then he was being lunged at.

He shrieked as he dodged out of the way. Not his most graceful save, but whatever. His voice was a bit shrill and his center of gravity felt way off. He must have actually been de-aged! He wondered how old he was now. He still felt light on his feet thanks to his ghost half which felt blessedly intact. But the other guy was fast and he ducked into a roll just in time to dodge whatever weapon he was holding. This guy meant business, but he had no idea why he was trying to kill him. 

‘Great, thanks Grandfather Clock for throwing me right back into the good ol’ days,’ he thought sarcastically. Nobody had attacked him for no good reason like that since Walker and Fright caught Skulker mid hunt for the very last time. 

What he now saw was a baton swung down from overhead and Danny knew he wouldn't dodge it in time, so he caught it with the flat of the blade that had been shoved into his hands.

“Wait! Why are we fighting?” Danny yelled, panicked as the guy pushed more force into it. The man's face twisted into something like confusion for a moment and he backed off just the tiniest bit before the scuffing of shoes to his right had him looking over just in time to see another guy in a mask, this time in red, rushing at him. He threw his hands up in surrender. 

“Wait!” He shrieked before he was absolutely bodied sideways into the ground. 

Why was he doing this? He was half ghost, he could have just gone intangible and disappeared. He didn't have to be body slammed into the ground. Wasn't he a child now? Did that guy in red actually just slam a whole child into the ground? 

“Red, hold on! This one's different!” 

“What do you mean?” The guy Red asked. He was still pinning Danny to the ground.

“Yeah, what do you mean?” Danny asked breathlessly, then whimpered, “Someone please tell me what's going on!” 

The one hovering over him must have seen something on his face that convinced him to not try and kill him anymore, because he grabbed him by the collar and started dragging him along. 

“We'll take him in for questioning. Don't let Robin see him.”

“Who's Robin?!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It had been a long, arduous, and confusing journey from wherever they were to… well, wherever they were now. They'd blindfolded him for the transport so he still had no idea what was going on. He had learned that the guy with batons was Nightwing, and Red was actually Red Robin. The one they called Robin was a feral looking thing with swords, he was very small and stabby. Then there was Batman, and he totally threw off the whole bird theme but was easily the most intimidating. And that was all he knew so far. He'd been restrained at an interrogation table. 

Danny groaned and knocked his forehead onto the table. He really, really wished he'd asked Clockwork more questions. He'd at least been able to catch a glimpse of himself in the glass behind Batman. He looked like he was eleven or twelve again, which was not as young as he'd been expecting, but much more preferable than being a literal toddler. The group of people he’d been brought in by seemed to be heroes. They were all incredibly weary of him, but hadn’t gone out of their way to harm him since his capture. Though it was hard to call it a capture when there wasn’t a chase involved. 

“How old are you?” Batman asked suddenly. His voice was low and rough and somehow Danny could tell it didn't sound like that naturally. 

“Um, maybe eleven or twelve?” Danny replied carefully, picking up his head from the table and having the decency to look a little embarrassed. 

“And what's your name?” He looked like he was expecting something.

“My name is Danny, sir.” 

“Hmm…” 

It was quiet and awkward for a long moment.

“Why are you different from the other clones?” 

“Yeeeaaah, I'm not a clone.” Danny absolutely did not jump when the brute slammed the file folder shut in front of him. 

“We'll see what your DNA results have to say about that,” he said confidently before turning to leave, his cape dramatically flaring out behind him.

Sheesh, and he thought he’d had a flair for the dramatics.

‘Okay, time for some assessment,’ Danny thought to himself as he looked around the small closed room. It was soundproofed incredibly well. While he didn’t have super crazy hearing, it was enhanced by his ghost half, and combined with his other sharp senses, it tended to help him gather more information than others could. The most he could hear outside the room was a quiet hum of activity and nothing discernible. Still, he needed to decide how much he would say to these people. How much truth did he want to weave into his tale? These people clearly already had their own assumptions about him in mind, and while there was absolutely nothing wrong with being a clone, he knew he didn’t have what it took to keep up an act like that for long, which would just end up being awkward for everyone. 

He also would not be telling them about his status as Ghost King, per Clockwork’s suggestion. His captors seemed like the uptight sort, and revealing that he was a big, scary ghost monarch didn’t seem like it’d go over well. Telling them he was a halfa would probably get them off his back over the clone thing, at least. He went over the list in his head.

He was a halfa from another dimension, so he couldn’t be a clone.

He had no plans of fighting with anyone unless absolutely necessary. 

He did not have a way back to his other dimension. 

His name was Danny, and he didn’t have a family anymore.

He did not know why he was in the middle of whatever fight he woke up in. 

No, he didn’t know those people.

Danny must’ve been lost in thought for quite a while because his thoughts were interrupted by Batman bursting back through the door. The man’s demeanor had changed completely and he whipped off his cowl to reveal disheveled dark hair, blue eyes, and an expression of absolute heartbreak that accompanied his shuddering breaths. With the mask off, he reminded Danny a lot of his father. 

Batman searched his face and, much like Red Robin had before, seemed to notice something there. 

“She did it twice,” he muttered to himself. “Two of them this whole time and she didn’t tell me about either of them,” he said through gritted teeth. His frown deepened. Danny copied his frown. 

“Hey, are you okay?”

He still had no idea what was going on.

[maxwell-grant]

There's a trend people have pointed out in superhero stories over the past 20 or so years that is the death of "regular" supporting casts, an increasing absence of un-powered sidekicks or people involved who aren't in the thick of the action or in the hero's secret. Everyone who interacts with superheroes is a couple issues away from becoming one, every story involves a supervillain encounter or several dozen, every hero's gotta have a lunchbox-ready "superhero family" made from these characters, and every side character that doesn't join them is either going to die or become a supervillain.

The defining example people use for this is Spider-Man's supporting cast, with every Spider-Man cast member short of Aunt May and J Jonah Jameson getting some kind of powered upgrade or symbiote, and I'm gonna say Amanda Waller is an excellent case study of how this kind of thing happens, and I think it helps to explain why Amanda Waller has been, Like That, for the past 30 years.

She’s wearing a grey shirt underneath a blue blazer and it’s tucked into a similarly blue skirt that stops at mid calf. She reminds me of the neighbourhood aunties I used to see leaving for church every Sunday morning.

My mom used to say that you are the company you keep. So what kind of person does it take to keep a variety of bruised, battered, and dangerous personalities in check? - Amanda Waller: DC's Most Terrifying Woman

To those of you who haven't read John Ostrander and Kim Yale's Suicide Squad, there once was a time where Amanda Waller was something more than a powerful antagonistic force able to butt heads with the biggest superheroes, and something other than a heartless establishment face out to make superheroes miserable for ill-defined reasons. Structurally speaking, Suicide Squad is a comic about marginal DCU characters forced to deal with actual real life problems, and it's central character is a marginalized person forced to deal with DCU problems and characters. The members of the Squad are a rolling parade of costumed misfits and maniacs assigned to go around the globe to fight and kill and die on dirty missions to deal with dirty laundry and stop war zones from erupting, while Amanda Waller is forced to shuffle around her cadre of D-list supervillains and disgraced superheroes and get into stand-offs with secret spy societies, living nukes, voodoo cartels, and Batman.

Amanda Waller neither looks nor acts like the kind of character that stars in a superhero comic, and she is the central character throughout the 66 issues of the run and we follow her character arc from beginning to end as she's forced to spin plates to accomplish her goals and prevent bad situations from getting worse. She is the most fully realized character in the run and everything rests on her shoulders. We spend a lot of time inside her head, her team, her associates, she is the center holding together an extremely chaotic book with no two characters on the same page. She is, and has to be, an extremely powerful person, someone who stands her ground no matter what, an unbeatable force of will because that is the only way she's going to survive the situations she's in, the only way she can be "The Wall", the kind of person who can repel Batman, command a platoon of monsters, talk her way out of Deadshot's contract, someone who can stare at Darkseid and credibly threaten the President into letting her live.

That's the part that everyone is more or less familiar. But there is, or at least used to be, much more to Amanda Waller than just being The Wall, not in the least because being The Wall is also hampering her effectiveness as well as straight up killing her.

"Amanda's toughness has taken her a long way" "It's taken her as far as it can. But it can't take her no further. It's actually starting to drag her down. I'm scared for my baby sister, rev - scared that the anger in her is congealing into hate." - Suicide Squad #31

We get to know her backstory, her plans, her points of contention with the system, her relationships with people around her, and how deeply she cares about things and people even as she sends them to the meatgrinder. From the start we learn that Waller staffs her team with people she's prone to getting into disagreements with, like Simon LaGrieve and Rick Flag, specifically so they can cover her moral blind spots and pick up the slack in emotional intelligence she's lacking, be the heroes that she can't afford to be. It is unspeakably crucial that the Squad is led by Rick Flag as well as Bronze Tiger, a fallen hero who owes Waller for his recovery who eventually takes Flag's baton. Waller stands up for her team, gets into fights with her superiors when they decide to terminate them, and takes the fall for them when necessary. Waller is a person who does Bad Things - but she is not a Bad Person.

The book in no uncertain terms frames the Suicide Squad's existence as monstrous in a scale Waller doesn't understand until the very end, and it digs deep into the unethical things Waller has to allow for and perpetrate in order to keep it running no matter how many lives it saves, and she spends the first half of the book on a downward spiral. But then there's the 2nd half of the book:

In the first 39 issues, Amanda’s flaws are her undoing. As she pushes away the people she hired to act as a balance, she grasped tighter and tighter to her uncompromised vision of the Suicide Squad despite the constant changes and derailment. Her choices had consequences: the death of Rick Flag, her demotion, employees quitting, and finally, the disbandment of the team.

The last 27 issues have Amanda rising up from the ashes after a year in jail. She’s less in her own way – she communicates, her anger isn’t driving her, she’s more receptive of alternative perspective and recognizes when she’s wrong in real time – but she’s still just as scary.

Waller rebuilds her relationships with the people she drove away, takes a different tack to how the team works, and starts going out into the frontlines with the Squad. She brings Oracle (who actually made her debut in this comic) into the fold, saves her life and plays a big role in Barbara making progress in overcoming her Joker trauma. She genuinely puts in the work to improve as a person and do things a better way than before, even if there is an inescapable immorality to the very existence of the Squad and what they do. That immorality never goes away, and it only further horrifies her when learning how badly her project has gone. In fact, it's that very inescapable immorality that ends her arc.

She learns that the CIA has started using a new Suicide Squad to support a brutal regime in South America, and when faced with the full extent of her complicity in Western imperialism? She decides right then and there to end the Suicide Squad for good after they liberate the population of said regime from said Squad. She is the only person who gives a shit about the country enough to start the assignment for free once she knows about it, force the Squad along, lead the mission in field, and personally (and even gently) usher the villain to his death at the end, to end what began with her.

She does bad things, and she does good things. She cares about people, and she uses people. Her decisions ruin as well as save the world. She spins a million plates to match wills and wits with the strongest, wickedest, most cunning humans and superhumans alike, and she still has superiors to answer to and people close to her she hires to judge her for what she does. She endured racism and misogyny and poverty for decades and rode whatever she could to attain as much power over her own life as someone like her could possibly attain, and to have it, she must be a willing tool of the state and bend the knee to Ronald Reagan, the man she derides for what he did to her community, hating every minute of it.

She lost her family to sexual and racial violence, and now she wrangles a penal battalion comprised of some of the worst people on the planet to inflict violence on her orders. She has saved and redeemed people, and she's haunted by the corpses she's left in her wake. She is oppressed and oppressor, someone who could only escape the ravages of American imperialism by becoming one of it's chief enforcers, and still she rebuilds herself into a better person from it upon confronting and challenging her role in it. She is not a bad person, she is not a good person either, she is just afforded a degree of agency and complexity unpowered characters in superhero books simply don't get.

Okay cool, now what is she up to these days?

That, I guess. That is what a strong but unpowered person who does not allow themselves to be bossed around by superheroes or supervillains looks like now. Everytime there's a call for a military bad guy, Waller gets tagged in to be DC's Henry Gyrich. There was a point where Waller was made to contrast the likes of Sarge Steel and Wade Eiling, someone who butted heads with them because she was a well-meaning person working for and committing evil as often as she attempted to stop it. These days, the most consistent beat with her is that she is the most dangerous person alive and worse than the villains she wrangles into working for her. She is a thing to be overcome, a hypocrite to be exposed, a challenge to the natural order of the universe, and she is too terrific at it to be shuffled off quietly. She is a Bad Person and so everything she says and does is Bad (and thus can be ignored).

Integral to Suicide Squad's structure was the fact that Waller was the center holding everything together, the ultimate third party: spinning plates working with, for and against all of the others so she can bend rules and be bent by them. Bent, but never broken, because The Wall doesn't break, others break first. Waller was a one-of-a-kind character, and that broke her, because beating Sarge Steel and Wade Eiling at their own game means replacing Sarge Steel and Wade Eiling. Waller doesn't look like them, she doesn't look like the superheroes either, and so she can't be one of them. She can't even look like herself a lot of the time, they try to slim her up everytime they think they can get away with it.

Suicide Squad was preoccupied with exploring a perspective from a world outside the superhero worldview, but we no longer have her perspective or that of people around her, we only know her through the superheroes she inherently defies and has had an adversarial relationship against from day one. She is someone with a viewpoint that is charitable to neither superheroes nor institutions, and thus, the universe is increasingly less sympathetic to her, the less utility she has to the grander narrative where everyone has to pick between one of two options. If she wasn't powerful and assertive, she'd be another Leslie Thompkins, another Jiminy Cricket the heroes passively ignore. But because she is powerful and doing morally compromised things without asking Batman's permission, she must have a personal grudge. She must be a government monster. She must attack the superheroes for no reason, no ideology, no motive.

So now she's just The Wall 24/7, the mean icy establishment boot who is strong and clever and cruel and hates superheroes and wants to destroy superheroes and rule the world from the shadows. Everything she does is a fuck-up she refuses to take responsability for, everyone is right to hate and distrust mean old Waller, and now everyone gets to look good by dunking on her. They couldn't make her a superhero, so they made her a generic supervillain instead. And now that she's a bad guy, she no longer has to believe anything, she doesn't really have to mean anything, they don't have to write stories about something other than superheroes and supervillains, and they don't have to let a fat woman of color take up space and screentime they could be giving to Harley Quinn and Slade Wilson instead.

Even by the time of Waller's debut on the tail end of the 80s, her career opportunities were on their way to extinction

Days Of Future Past marks the triumph of the superhero comic that's pretty much concerned with no-one but superheroes. Where Ditko and Lee's Spider-Man featured a single costumed crimefighter in the context of a commonplace existence, the X-Men of the 80s focused on a huge cast of mutants who had little if any lasting involvement in the everyday world.

By the 21st century, the corporate superhero comic would largely - if not exclusively - concern itself with little beyond a large class of superhumans and their fantastical existence. I suspect there's a significant correlation between that and the continuing cultural  peripherilisation of the superhero comic - Colin Smith

Amanda Waller is one of the strongest characters in all of comics, she was as powerful as an non-superpowered character given center stage could possibly be, a perfectly designed character from which an entire corner of a shared universe was developed out of with her as the center making it work, but as the room for civilian casts and unpowered protagonists got smaller and smaller, so did Waller's options. If she was a Spider-Man character and somehow didn't get killed or made into a villain, they would have slimmed her up and given her a symbiote, because you're nobody unless you're web-swinging. Characters didn't look or act like Amanda Waller, and unfortunately, they still don't. It's just instead of making more characters like her, they gutted Waller to be more like the rest. If she couldn't make it, who else even could.

Keep your eyes peeled for this summer when she'll team up with two meaningless robot baddies to burn down the Justice League and I guess the universe for the next reboot or something.

[wilwheaton]

One very simple question :)

(Tv/comics)

Marvel. Or DC?

I have liked them both and disliked them both, at different points in my life, for a variety of reasons. At the moment, I'm not paying attention to them at all.

When I was a kid, I was all about Xmen and Fantastic Four from Marvel and, Batman and Justice League (Marv Wolfman's run in the late 80s) from DC. Never really cared for Superman. The 1967 Spider-Man was awesome as a cartoon, but I rarely read the comic book.

In the 70s, I was only allowed one comic per week, usually picked out from whatever was left on that spinning rack at the drugstore. So more often than not, I ended up with something like House of Secrets or House of Mystery or one of those horror anthologies that didn't need me to read the issues before or after, like the serialized superhero comics did. I got a lot of replay value from those books.

In the 80s, I had my own money and the ability to drive myself to comic conventions, and that's when I fell in love with Sandman, Watchmen, pretty much the entire Prestige Format that became Vertigo. I recall feeling like Marvel was for kids, then, and DC was serious. I was only 16, so take that for what it's worth.

But speaking of being 16, I'm gonna focus on Batman for a sec. I loved Batman 89, and I think all the efforts to make a Batman movie ever since have fallen short in ways I couldn't predict back then. It's gotten better with age and by comparison, for me. Michael Keaton is my favorite Batman, the way Christian Bale is my favorite modern Bruce Wayne (they both pale next to Pure. West. if anyone asks me).

The OG Batman series is maybe my favorite series of all time not called Star Trek or The Prisoner, and the 1966 movie is my favorite of all the Batman movies. Of course I love the animated series, and I get to be Blue Beetle in Brave and the Bold, so that's pretty awesome and its whole own thing.

Turning to the current moment, with rare exception, all the MCU and DCU movies do nothing for me. I thought I must have been missing something, so tried really hard to give them a chance to knock me out. I watched as many of the MCU movies as I could stand, and I just felt exhausted and bored by all of it, by the time I got to ... I can't even remember. Something with maybe Thanos and Ant-Man? I felt like it was a big, complicated mess of fan service and meetings that could have been e-mails, resulting in in a stew full of interesting ingredients that have all blended together into a flavorless paste. I do enjoy all the James Gunn movies, though, even if Chris Pratt is the worst Chris, because James always centers the characters and their conflicts, then uses the action and stunts to support the story.

I feel like a lot of this sounds harsh, but even Star Wars, my favorite movie when I was a kid, has grown into something I don't recognize or care about. I'm old. I know what I like and what I don't like. I'm not patient like I once was, and it's clear I'm not the person those studios want in the theatre, anyway. I could make that joke about how it's the children who are wrong, but I accept that I am not in the demo, and I am genuinely happy for everyone who loves the spectacle and the experience of seeing those films with an enthusiastic audience. I just won't be there with you, but you can find me in the parking lot, yelling at a cloud.

...wow that's a very big answer to a very simple question.

[wisteriavines]

I just realized!!!

This means that Tim spent more time with the Alternate Batfamily — more time raising, loving, and being loved in return knowingly and unconditionally — than he ever did with his original bat family

Would he ever wish to return to them? Stay up late contemplating what it would take to return to them after a bad day, a day of too many reminders of how different everything- he is? Does he ever need to spend several minutes convincing himself of why he can’t-shouldn’t return? Does it get harder every time he does?

Most of these questions are asked on the assumption that Tim’s mental health and view of his placement in the family improved positively— he had to set up a good example right?

Just time travel, tim is bruce's dad AU.

There's so many ways this could go.

Whatever got tim in the past. wether killed the Drakes or they ended in the future.

Tim with 20, kinda lookin like his grandfathee took his persona. And adopted little bruce wayne recently orphaned. Tim stayed a month or a year, make your take.

The bats manage to get tim back, and little Bruce ends alone again.

Older bruce only have vague memories from that time.

Tim remembers everything and it only reinforces his thinking about seeing Bruce as his son.

Oh!

Tim, who's used to taking care of Bruce anyways and kind of seeing this older adult as his son, ends up in the past. He finds a depressed, angry, and bitter child who's lost his parents and ultimate alone.

Alfred doesn't trust Tim at first, but eventually, Tim manages to become a staple older figure in the household. He talks to Alfred about emotional bonding, where he should involve himself in Bruce's life more (instead of being on the outskirts like an employee), and overall Bruce hacks (Tim is and isn't surprised that the hacks he's built up for adult Bruce work for child Bruce as well with minor adjustments).

Overall, Bruce starts to come out of his grief of losing his parents.

He even considers calling Alfred or Tim "dad."

Then Tim disappears.

[weirdosreignhere]

DP X DCU PROMPT #2

——

Instead of Summoning the Ghost King, they summon his Weakness

——

The Justice League has heard rumors of the Ghost King Pariah Dark, and coincidentally they interrupt a summoning of said Ghost King, but after subduing the cult the group discovers that the runes are different but can’t understand their meaning. With no way to stop the madman from arriving, the Bat Clan waits with dread, hoping the containment shield holds.

What they don’t know is that the previous King had been defeated and now another, much kinder, king rules: Danny Phantom. They also don’t realize the runes have changed. Summoning not the king himself but his closest ties to the mortal plane; his greatest weakness.

What the League does expect is a mad king hellbent on destruction, but what they don’t expect is a child’s corpse, blackened skin barely hanging onto the charred bones that now lies at the center of the summoning circle.

Elsewhere, a certain young halfa suddenly goes absolutely batshit, the only thought running through his head is ITS GONE ITS GONE THEY TOOK IT WHO TOOK IT WHOTOOKIT—

Cue: chaos.

——

@thatrandomsarahchick @hnymp @alinmenttreasure @demon-cat-goes-woof @tiblii @yukkikatsuki @skulld3mort-1fan @thewondersoflebanon @spectralstardustandphantomnights @silvergreeneye @apointlessbox @gin2212 @idontgetpaidenoughforthisshit @dannyphantomphan @arc-777 @akikoyuii @persephoneblackrose @rosecinnamonbun@chaoticchange @undead-essence

STORY NOW POSTED BY @thatrandomsarahchick

[kingdomcomicscenter-blog]

[artbyblastweave]

So I recently had the thought that Superman as depicted in the DCAU canon probably has the best-articulated-by-the-narrative and most-consistent character flaws of any Superman I’ve seen, in a way that’s enabled by the long-formedness and consistent creative vision of the series.

He’s got an Atlas complex that grinds the gears of his equally-durable, equally-capable colleagues in the Justice League. He has deep-seated fears of moving the wrong way and breaking something or someone, which is then upstream of some moderate control issues. He’s got anger problems, although it’s rare for someone to push him far enough that this takes center stage; you see this with Prof. Hamilton in the series finale of STAS, but also in a number of fights against opponents strong enough that he starts getting frustrated. When the stakes are lower, he can be cocky bordering on genuinely vindictive; there are lots of examples of him rubbing his opponents' noses in it when he finally gets them on the back foot, and it’s shown in flashbacks that he was genuinely kind of a dick when he was a teenager and hadn’t completely sorted out what proportional responses looked like. He doesn’t always think through the implications of his grand projects, be that the implicit threat-escalation posed by the expanded JLU, or the massive disarmament project he spearheaded that turned out to be part of an alien invasion scheme. There are probably more of these that I’m forgetting. The final roundup here is that he’s a good guy. He’s far and away from a perfect guy, with perfect judgement. All of this amounts to something that’s more coherent and specific than the contradictory, subject-to-eternal-revision mess you could assemble from his 60-something year publication history in the comics, but nonetheless with a substantial-enough runtime that all of these traits can be put on display again and again.

In turn, this allowed the collective DCAU continuity to get away with at least three “what if Superman went rogue” plots- four if you count the mind-control situation in Legacy- specifically because they did the legwork to establish the concrete neuroses and psychological vulnerabilities that might cause this specific version of Superman to go rogue. It was never completely insane that Luthor might figure out the exact set of words, actions, and personal losses necessary to coax this depiction of Superman into an authoritarian partnership for the supposed greater good. It’s not completely insane that this depiction of Superman, if pushed far enough, might lose faith in the collective judgement of humanity and decide to put the world and all his loved ones in a bottle. And when the Cadmus plot rolls around in JLU, it’s as effective as it is because they’ve already advanced two roads-not-taken, established what levers you need to pull to make this specific version of this guy cross the line, and that Cadmus and Luthor are pulling all of them. 

I emphasize the specificity here, because the flipside of this are Superman-gone-rogue narratives that jump right to that as the cornerstone of the continuity, with no real opportunities for juxtaposition. A major issue I eventually developed with the Injustice franchise is that despite its pretenses of being an alternate universe, there’s no established continuity that it’s deviating from, bar its own. To some extent I feel as though it’s banking on the audience transposing their gestalt-understanding of Superman and the broader DCU- hell, their understanding of the Justice Lords arc in particular- in order to elide that they’re playing extremely fast-and-loose with the specifics of what has and hasn’t happened to Superman in this continuity. The DCEU is a runner-up- jumping right to the Damocles-sword of a bad-future after two movies is jumping the gun, in the same way everything about the 2010s DCEU was jumping the gun. I think you could plausibly attack TDKR’s portrayal of Superman under this logic, although I personally wouldn’t- but that’s its own post.

Point being that you can’t sell me the upset of a paradigm if you never established it-you need to set up the pins before you can bowl worth a damn.

[batbabydamian]

DC July 2024 Solicitations - Comics Featuring Damian! 🦇

BATMAN AND ROBIN #11

7/10/24

Written by Joshua Williamson

Art by Juan Ferreyra

Cover by Simone Di Meo

Variant Covers: Juan Ferreyra, Travis Mercer, Christian Ward (1:25)

Bruce and Damian plan the perfect father and son getaway…to DINOSAUR ISLAND?! When the dynamic duo uncovers a deadly family secret, their investigation takes them on a fun-filled adventure to rescue one of Batman’s greatest enemies!

THE BOY WONDER #3 of 5

7/3/24

Written by Juni Ba

Art and Cover by Juni Ba

Variant Cover: Khary Randolph

The cunning Tim Drake has always been the smartest of Batman’s sons…and the most comfortable matching wits with the most sinister geniuses on Earth. Damian Wayne doesn’t like feeling outsmarted—to him, no smugly-written insult could ever be sharper than his sword—so when he’s forced to infiltrate a super-villain gala alongside the sneaky Red Robin, the biggest danger the two of them face might not be Lex Luthor but Damian’s own temper!

*John Timms Variant Cover appearance(?) + potential cameo

ABSOLUTE POWER #1

7/3/24

Written by Mark Waid

Art and Cover by Dan Mora

DC’s epic summer event kicks off with a bang, as the combined might of FAILSAFE and the BRAINIAC QUEEN has at last given Amanda Waller the ability to steal the metahuman abilities of every hero and villain on planet Earth. As chaos erupts in the streets and a massive misinformation campaign sways public opinion to her side, the founder of the Suicide Squad methodically targets each superhero dynasty one at a time, starting with SUPERMAN. But even in this darkest of hours, a resistance is forming…and BATMAN is out for vengeance. It’s a shocking blitzkrieg across the globe that is decades in the making—and will shape the course of the DC Universe for years to come! Brought to you by the superstar talents of MARK WAID and DAN MORA—it all starts here!

*John Timms Variant Cover appearance(?)

ABSOLUTE POWER: TASK FORCE VII #1

7/10/24

Written by Leah William

Art by Caitlin Yarsky

SUPER NO MORE! With the assault on Metropolis’s heroes complete, Amanda Waller’s latest living weapon, the Last Son, sets his sights on the other most powerful supers in the DCU…the Marvel Family! Will their combined powers be enough to survive this terrifying threat? In this biweekly series we'll see the ABSOLUTE POWER event through the eyes of evil—as told from the point of view of the TRINITY OF EVIL!

*Rian Gonzales Variant Cover appearance

NIGHTWING #116

7/17/24

Written by Tom Taylor

Art and cover by Bruno Redondo

Everything Dick Grayson has built is crumbling around him. His life is spiraling out of control and Heartless is at the center of all of it. Now Nightwing must leave his city. Can he take back the power he’s lost? Or will Blϋdhaven and its citizens be lost to Heartless forever?

[dahliadew]

Little baby man goes to jail (dp x dc fanfic prompt)

Recently I've been seeing a lot of little baby man Danny content, and I love it. But most of it centers around Danny's relationship with either the Wayne family or the justice league, and I've wanted to see other character dynamics.

So I thought that when Danny in little baby man form comes to the DCU, instead of being found by Damian in an alley or something, he takes the time to wander around Gotham—becoming the equivalent of the local homeless cat to the residents. Wandering around where ever he wants with no one knowing who he belongs to or where he came from. And during his wandering, he can get into some bizarre places with the help of his intangibility. And during one of these adventures, Danny finds himself in a really weird place with a LOT of strange people. But hey, there's a lot of ectoplasm and the people seem to need an emotional support cat. And all the while continuing to wander around the rest of Gotham.

His interactions with villains like Solomon Grundy, Mr. Freeze, and Scarecrow would be interesting because different parts of himself would interest each of them. With both himself and Grundy being semi-death beings, his ice powers may interest Freeze, and even though he's in his little baby man form, he still radiates cosmic horror, so Scarecrow is interested. But this could also be the chance to include lesser-known dc villains like calendar man or the Gentleman Ghost. As well as others that he could either meet in Arkham or around the city.

Maybe even running into some of the bats with none of them able to catch him; this, in particular, makes Damian angry and more determined to do so. And when the joker catches wind of the city's new pet, he knows he needs to see it for himself. Danny, for his part, the little chaos gremlin that he is never not going to take the chance to fuck up a clown.

[moonlight-stalker]

# Dcu x Dp 142

In the center of Gotham there stood two unique and strange statues.

One of the statues was of a humanoid man that stood up straight at 5 feet 8 inches both of his hands resting on the top of a sword that was in front of him. He wears a cape that was sculpted to look like there is fur on the edges a chain holds the cape in place, where the chain meets the cape there is a human-looking skull on both sides. His head is slightly tilted down so if you stood a couple of feet away he would be looking at you, he has a soft open smile on his face if you look closely enough you can see he has fangs. His hair looked as though it was floating, on top of his head sat a crown, he had pointy ears the hands that rested on top of the sword had nails that looked like claws. He wears a bodysuit baggy pants and what looks like combat boots, on the center of his bodysuit there is a D with a P inside symbol.

At his feet lays the other statue, a big Rottweiler. The dog came up to his hip while lying down and was at least 7 feet long, his head was by the man's hip and his body was curled behind the man's legs. The dog had his mouth open partially with his tongue hanging out you could see his teeth when looking at him the dog's head was looking at the same spot that the man's head was looking at. The dog wore a collar with spikes at the front there was a tag that had the name Cujo and on the back of the tag the same symbol that was on the man's bodysuit. One of the dog's paws was resting on top of an actual dog toy made of rubber.

They both are on a stone pedestal that is about 3 feet tall and 6 feet wide the pedestal is decorated with symbols of death and protection. You can find other humanoids sculpted into the pedestal and over time people have noticed that you can also find the Bats and Birds symbols on the front of the pedestal and in the corners you can find symbols that represent the rogues.

The statue had both precious gemstones and metals decorating it. The statue of the dog had the least, the dog's eyes are made of rubies the claws are made of obsidian. The spikes on the collar seemed to be an actual metal, in between each spike a star sapphire sits. Under each spike, a small chain is attached and connects to the next spike.

The man had much more, his eyes were made of Alexandrite stones but changed from Emerald to Sapphire and they changed at random. His freckles are a combination of Opal stone and Moonstone that are spread across his cheeks and nose, and his claws and sword are made of obsidian. The cape outside of the cape has small silver spots, and on the inside, there are many different gemstones that are decorated to look like stars in the sky. Crown is made of a combination of Amazonite and Malachite and is decorated with Ammolite, papagoite, shattuckite, and star sapphire. Bracelets are made of Azurite with grandidierite, he has Paraiba tourmaline earrings with one star sapphire earrings hanging from his right ear. He has three rings one made of Garnet, the second one is made of Grandidierite, and the last one is made of Jeremejevite. On his left hand, there are some cracks that disappear underneath the sleeves of his bodysuit and appear again on his left cheek the cracks seem to be filled with emerald ( the bats know it's not emerald it's crystallized LaArus water ) it is like a kintsugi.

Several things make these two statues very unique

1. No known history there is nothing about who made the status or why they were placed there

2. Destroy or steal no matter how many times people try to blow up the statues or smash them no damage can be done, and no one can remove any of the gemstones that are on them. The person would also become sick or be injured after trying

3. Can't be Recorded or take pictures it's difficult to get clear pictures and videos unless they're from an older model

4. No one can buy or take them many wealthy people have tried to buy the statues and take them but every time that's happened the machines and cars that were there to move them were shut down and the person who tried to buy them would get extremely sick and be haunted by nightmares, night terrors and paralysis.

5. Crused and blessed as mentioned before people would get sick be injured get nightmares, night terrors, and/or paralysis. People that stand in a 15 feet radius of the status can't get infected by any of the gass that are release and people that are already infected by them are inside the radius will get cured, and has also protected people from getting attacked inside the circle .

[dcufans4palestine]

Last days to sign up!! 🇵🇸 🇵🇸 🇵🇸

If you're a creator interested in participating in the DCU Commissions For Palestine event, now's the time to sign up HERE!!

Sign-ups close on July 17‼️

With your help, we can raise money to help Palestinian causes in exchange for DCU commissions.

For more information about the event, you can check out our pinned post or join our discord.

Don't forget to share and spread the word even if you're not participating!!!

[ID: an old-style comic panel of wonder woman leaping into battle. she is a pale, muscular woman with long curly black hair. she wears a red bustier with a gold double W emblem across the chest, blue underwear with white stars, a gold belt, red boots with a white stripe down the center, silver wrist cuffs, and a gold tiara with a red star in the center. she is saying “so long as life remains, there is always hope; and so long as there is hope, there can be victory!” End ID]

[endlich-allein]

Till 🩵 DCU Center, Worcester, USA, 29-04-2012 © Evil Robb Photography