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makeste · 5 years ago

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BnHA Smash!! 01 and 02: Smash!!Might is a Fucking Menace

okay, so. I have about a million other things I should be doing instead, including (1) responding to asks and/or finishing in-progress metas, (2) reading Vigilantes, and last but not least, (3) actually making a dent in the ever-increasing backlog of Actual Work That I Really Should Be Doing Instead.

so naturally I’m procrastinating by taking my first stab at reading BnHA’s cute 4-panel omake spinoff series, BnHA Smash!! IT JUST MAKES SENSE. look, I have exactly one thing I felt like actually doing and not procrastinating today, so I might as well do the thing. basically it’s my attention span’s world and I’m just living in it.

anyway! so apparently this series was scanlated by good ol’ Fallen Angels. that’s right; prepare yourselves for some very creative cursing, fellas. other background info for anyone who, like me, is unfamiliar with this spin-off: this series debuted on November 9, 2015, a little over a year after the original series. said original series was currently at chapter 66, meaning the Final Exam arc was just wrapping up.

so now that we’re all properly oriented, let me go over a few disclaimers real quick and then we’ll get started!

all comments are my unspoiled reactions from my initial readthrough of the chapter. I did a quick edit for grammar and clarity afterward, and added a few ETAs in the process, but aside from that there are no changes.

I’m aware that not everyone may be familiar with Smash!! even if they’ve read/watched the original series, so I’ve tried to make this recap comprehensible even if you haven’t read the spin-off. that being said, it’s probably more enjoyable if you have, so you can either purchase the first volume from Viz here, or read the chapter online (I don’t want to link directly, but the spin-off is available on most of the usual sites. literally just google “read mha” and you’ll find some good options).

this readthrough contains a handful of sorta-kinda spoilers for the BnHA manga, although there are no direct spoilers. just an indirect reference to a joke in chapter 242, as well as a reference to a theory which as of now is in no way canon. but just to be on the safe side I’m posting a heads-up.

and I think that’s it! so here we go.

so we’re opening with a brief summary of the series. people have superpowers and shit’s nuts. you know the drill

there’s also a brief description of the way that the superhero economy works, complete with Mt. Lady’s employees unionizing and demanding better pay

...what

guys I keep staring at this and thinking that surely, SURELY it doesn’t say what I think it says. sidekick... what... manager??

you know what? Viz unfortunately doesn’t include this series as part of their subscription package (WHAT AM I PAYING YOU FOR, VIZ), but it does at least include a free preview of Smash, and I bet you that this, the first fucking page of the series, is a part of that preview. so... let’s see...

okay, see, this actually makes sense! so did the FA scanlating team collectively all have a fucking stroke?! just, what??

this is one of the reasons why I had difficulty reading Vigilantes too, tbh. those early chapter scans were, uh. but at least Vigilantes has a Viz scanlation too. I don’t want to spend 10 bucks just to read one volume of this, but we’ll see. anyways

so now there’s a strip about baby!Izuku watching his favorite clip of All Might saving one hundred people from a bus accident or whatever

lol Inko you should not have left your shrewdly calculating four-year-old son unattended omg

TWELVE MONTHS’ WORTH OF TEXTBOOKS HOW CAN THIS EAGER YOUNG MIND RESIST

and this is why you don’t leave your credit card info saved on the computer when you have kids. life lessons learned today

this is the first indicator we have ever had that baby!Izuku wasn’t perfect and was, in fact, capable of being a little shit and giving his mom plenty of gray hairs in his own special way. ngl, I fucking love it

also 12,800 yen is about $118 USD, which is honestly a really good deal for a year’s worth of textbooks. he got three boxes of books! I just googled the average cost of college textbooks, and the google article said the average student spends about $1200 a year. so this is a fucking steal tbh

OH MY GOD INKO HOW MANY TIMES MUST HISTORY REPEAT ITSELF BEFORE YOU LEARN

at least install a fucking adblocker ffs. you’re lucky quirk supplement ads are the worst of the ads he’s getting! PARENTAL CONTROLS

now we are cutting to a comic about baby!Izuku defending another boy from my problematic fave, as seen in page one of the original series!

lmaooo

I’m not clear on how much of this spin-off can actually be considered canon. my understanding is that it is Horikoshi-reviewed and approved, even though he doesn’t actually write it. but it’s obviously a humor series, so a lot of it is just going to be jokes. that being said, I think my approach is going to be “if it’s not completely ridiculous and doesn’t contradict the actual manga, go ahead and consider it canon”

(ETA: I might change this up after reading the first two chapters. most of these strips would have terrifying implications if they were actually canon sob.)

anyhoo, this actually does contradict the manga in that we saw this encounter play out very differently. but I kind of wish it was canon regardless because looool. these cocky preschoolers and their fucking Battle Tears

the next comic is Mt. Lady accidentally stepping on a guy’s face and the guy being way too fucking happy about it (read: having a fucking nosebleed and taking an upskirt shot). we’re just going to skip this entirely. this is another problem I was having with Vigilantes too. you know, for all my complaints about Mineta and such, BnHA as a whole is so much tamer than it could be, and I need to give Horikoshi credit for that. he mostly knows where to draw the line, and to his credit he’s also much, much better about this kind of thing than he was when he first started. maybe Mineta’s standings in the character poll results are helping to clue him in

anyway, I’ll mostly just skip past the iffy stuff because I don’t have patience for it and there’s still plenty of other stuff to cover. so on to the next strip

which features a bunch of reporters fawning over Mt. Lady’s flashy quirk while Kamui Woods laments in the shadows

and yet we know this kid will have a prominent rise within the next six months. it’s so strange to revisit the start of the series and see how much things have changed in such a short time

oh my god

no one who dresses up as a giant mushroom could possibly have good intentions. I. just

and look at the fucking disappointment in Deku’s eyes. KAMUI WOODS HE BELIEVED IN YOU!

now some strange man is coming up to Deku and is all HEY YOU, YOU’RE A HERO OTAKU, TELL ME WHAT TO BUY MY SEVEN-YEAR-OLD SON FOR HIS BIRTHDAY. better not ask him unless you’re prepared to shell out $120 bucks for some fucking textbooks

hey, what!!

WE DIDN’T EVEN GET TO SEE WHAT HE BOUGHT HIM? unless it’s the action figure the kid appears to be holding? but I’m just going to go ahead and assume Izuku recommended the number one best gift that any seven-year-old child would love, i.e. a giant sword

now it’s a sludge monster omake!

so Izuku is trudging home all depressed after CERTAIN INCIDENTS, and Sludgey is glooping his way out of a sewer towards him

oh no All Might

my biggest takeaway from this is the fact that the entire second half of chapter one takes place after All Might has emerged from a fucking sewer. I forgot all about that somehow. or maybe it never fully processed until just now. but omg. this entire chapter must have smelled so fucking bad. these poor kids

wow All Might

sure called that one wrong. ah well nobody’s perfect

looooool

lmao, Smash!!All Might appears to be quite a bit more vain than the original. wow dude

btw, friendly reminder (and I think this is something that was actually pointed out to me after one of the recaps; that’s one of my favorite things about doing these) that All Might, after saving Deku, actually read his notebook before signing it. super-fast, I guess, because he’s the best. but yeah, so he knew exactly how smart and observant Deku was, and how much he wanted to be a hero. his decision to pick him as his successor didn’t just come out of the blue; even before the “my body moved on its own” thing, there was a lot Deku had going in his favor. this is one of those little details of which BnHA has so many, and which I love

lmao what the fuck

ngl this version of the series would have been amazing in its own way. but yeah. so this is why we clearly can’t assume everything in Smash!! is canon lol. but I can already tell I am going to enjoy the shit out of this series

now we’re cutting to Deku running at Sludgey in order to save Kacchan, oh shit. the most dramatic part of chapter one. clearly no moment is sacred

sob what

I don’t understand this strip at all. is this supposed to be a serious moment inserted unexpectedly among this multitude of joke strips? or did I miss the punchline? heeeeelp

(ETA: okay so. my best guess is that All Might wrote all over Deku’s life-saving advice, and so the joke is that Deku no longer knows what to do when assaulting sludge men because HIS NOTES ARE RUINED. idk. what does 25 P mean??)

now All Might has Done The Thing and saved my boys, and now Mt. Lady is helping with the cleanup. scooping up all the bits of sludge and putting it in trash bags

oh my god

nope nevermind. nope. nope

-- shit. okay, you know what? this first chapter has been a real in-your-face reminder of the fact that the sludge monster was not made of cute sparkly 2018-trending-fad slime, but was in fact composed of RAW FUCKING SEWAGE. (ETA: to be clear, I’m pretty sure the joke in this strip is that she accidentally picked up dog-doo during her clean-up. but still, the fact that it was indistinguishable from the rest of the gunk speaks for itself.) I think I forced myself to gloss over this fact originally due to the nope factor. but just. Izuku and Katsuki were both choking to death on this shit?? and just, how the fuck did they make it out of this not traumatized

and also, like. All Might was straight up going to leave Izuku alone afterwards, just, “well enjoy your autograph, fine citizen” and blasting off out of there. and everyone fucking saw Katsuki almost suffocate to death later on, and after giving him a pat on the back they fucking let him go off on his own too? and you can’t even make the argument that this was Just Another Day In Quirk Society either, because more than a year later, Katsuki is still a bona fide fucking celebrity from the media coverage of his attack. it clearly was not something that happens every day. in conclusion, these kids are resilient as fuck, and thank god for that because people apparently just do not give a shit, holy christ

anyway. at least Mt. Lady had gloves

OH MY GOD

I FUCKING KNEW IT OH MY GOD. THE ROIDS. MUSCLES LIKE THAT DON’T JUST GROW ON TREES, I DON’T CARE HOW MANY LBS OF GARBAGE THIS KID HAULED OFF THE BEACH. THIS BOY BEEN HITTIN THE JUICE

Smash!!Might is so fucking shady omfg. probably sells cheap counterfeit electronics on Amazon

oh shit and that’s the end of the fucking chapter lol. that’s it?? that was only eight pages. fuck it, let’s read another. but first here’s Horikoshi’s note on the spin-off

so he really feels that Neda gets the spirit of the series and understands him. that’s very encouraging. the best spoofs and parodies are done out of love. I really think I’m going to enjoy this series

so! onward to chapter two

so here’s All Might dressed as Mr. 2 Bon Clay from One Piece, I guess??

“you know what’s funny? dressing a man in girl’s clothes LOL.” guys can we grow the fuck up. and also acknowledge that All Might can look good in anything, so this questionable gag wouldn’t have even landed anyway. you work that tutu All Might

lmao check out the past users of OFA here

All for One for All theory fucking confirmed lol. just look. that’s him in the back of the conga line. clearly

so Deku is all “hell yes why would I possibly say no??” but then

HIS LIMBS. lmao. sign here

in all seriousness, given the shit this kid has been through since the part of the series, All Might probably should have gotten him to sign a liability waiver of some sort. not that it would have stood, since Deku is underage! anyways Deku you totally have grounds to sue the shit out of the Symbol of Peace should you ever choose to do so. and the trend of Smash!!Might being shady af continues yes please give me more I love it

so now All Might is giving Deku his fitness plan which has a really elaborate name

given that this is Smash!!Might, I can’t help but wonder if this plan is in actuality some sort of MLM scheme. All Might are you trying to get Deku to do Herbalife

lol what in the fuck

the original series skipped right over a hell of a lot, it would seem. like the time Deku traveled to Arizona and fought coyotes in a poncho

I’m starting to suspect that Neda-sensei might be on some sort of substance. “let’s see what jokes can I make about chapter 2 of BnHA. I know, I’ll send the protagonist to a fictionalized version of the American Southwest in a sombrero, and then turn him into a 65-year-old oil tycoon.” naturally

lmao that’s really it, that’s the strip. moving right along. okay??

now Izuku is staring at the intimidating piles of Beach Trash and is all “I HAVE TO PICK ALL THIS SHIT UP?”

omg Deku no

somebody call Marie Kondo. Deku none of this is salvageable. not even to reuse in a color page photoshoot spread four years from now

OH SHIT

PROVED ME WRONG OH SNAP. SHOWED ME RIGHT WHERE I COULD PUT THOSE SASSY TAKES. MY BAD DEKU I’M SORRY

anyways I don’t know what Smash!!Might is so upset about. he probably wove some kind of clause into the contract Deku signed that allows him a percentage of the profits. unless Deku already spent it all on textbooks

what the fuck is this fucking series lmao

time for a round of “what is All Might casually crushing in this panel?” is it (a) a cardboard box, or (b) like, a mini-fridge or some fucking shit. IT COULD BE EITHER. IT MAKES EQUALLY AS MUCH SENSE EITHER WAY. “HEROES THESE DAYS ARE [FLEEEEEEX] OBSESSED WITH BEING FLASHY”

holy shit no wonder he ran away to the Sierra Nevada. it’s only a matter of time before this freak fucking kills someone

NOW WE’RE CUTTING AWAY TO KAMUI WOODS DRESSED LIKE A DAFFODIL, IN THE SAME FUCKING COMIC STRIP, BECAUSE REASONS

my jokes about the mangaka being high as a fucking kite when he wrote this are gradually becoming less jokes and more serious inquiries??

lol so he coincidentally just stumbled across All Might and Deku at this exact moment

AND IT WAS A FUCKING REFRIGERATOR OH MY FUCKING GOD

do you guys remember during the final exam when All Might beat the everloving shit out of Deku and Kacchan, and everyone was all “JESUS CHRIST WOULD YOU LEARN TO FUCKING HOLD BACK A LITTLE THEY ARE CHILDREN YOU MANIAC.” but now we can see plain as day that he was, in fact, holding back. anyways Smash!!Might is terrifying as shit and if this had been the main series I would have already pegged him as the final villain by this point

here he is now wearing an old-timey bathing suit but looking more like an escaped convict than anything else

this panel is actually canon. I’ve decided. this 100% definitely happened at some point. especially the swimsuit

now two bikini babes are walking up and they’re all “IS THAT ALL MIGHT??” with excited sparkly eyes because they don’t know that he’s actually a deranged con artist who crushes refrigerators like empty soda cans. this spin-off has truly opened my eyes

LOOK AT THIS SKEEVY FUCK. JUST LOOK

AND NOW HE’S RUNNING OFF AND LEAVING DEKU TO DROWN IN EXHAUSTION, SON OF A

“SUDDEN BUSINESS” KSJLDKF SMASH!!MIGHT IS A FUCKING MENACE TO SOCIETY AND ALSO DOES NOT GIVE ONE SINGLE FUCK. NOT ONE!! HE’S OUT THERE FUCKLESS, AND NO ONE IS SAFE

now Deku is approaching his mom all serious and says he wants to change up his diet

and she’s looking at the menu he prepared all impressed and thinking that she might join him. as long as it’s for your health, Inko. if this manga starts making jokes about your weight, I will beat it over the head with Deku’s textbooks

OMFG

THIS WENT IN THE EXACT OPPOSITE DIRECTION I WAS EXPECTING, AND THIS IS THE MOST AMAZING THING I’VE EVER READ WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK. the whole fucking family is on the juice. and the fucking mangaka is on some special juice of his own oh my stars

now we’re cutting to Mt. Lady stomping on a car

thank fuck no one was actually in there. also does she not wear shoes

and also, it only just occurred to me that she must be another person with a special quirk costume, because her suit shrinks and expands along with her. Hagakure and Momo are really getting shafted by the costume design team here. they need to fire some people

anyway so Mt. Lady slipped on this carelessly placed vehicle and fell down and crushed an entire building whoops

bruh, you think you’re “ow.” let’s hope that building was empty too

and now she’s toppling another building just fucking because, I guess. and saying she can’t do urban areas

lmao and now the sidekick [CENSORED] manager from chapter one is back to guilt-trip her omg

I need this man to show up in every freaking chapter. please. respect my wishes

and now Izuku is standing on top of his collected pile of garbage screaming in victory

I only just realized that there’s still a big old Pile O’ Trash on this beach, though. someone needs to haul all of this junk away. or else get All Might and Mt. Lady to crush it all with a combined effort

oh shit here it comes y’all, the famous “eat my hair” scene. potential comedy gold right here omg

lol what the fuck

this man is a fucking billionaire and he’s out here clipping coupons and deleting pictures of his son in order to make room for them smdh

okay now we’re doing the hair scene

oh. oh no. I know where this is going sob please keep this comic rated PG for the children Neda

motherfucker they really --

Smash!!Might is a straight-up felon. this man has no fucking scruples. that’s okay Midoriya-shounen, if you don’t want to eat my hair we could just try some REDACTED, jesus christ I am going to need some bleach for my eyes after this

OR LET’S JUST STRAIGHT UP GO THERE WHY NOT

lmao sob. well, two chapters in and we’ve established that no territory is off-limits here. it’s a brave new world. wow

so that’s it! our introduction to BnHA Smash!! I enjoyed it a lot and I will definitely be reading more! I’m not sure what kind of schedule I’ll keep, but this is a really good procrastination manga thus far, so knowing me I might actually work my way through this relatively quickly. especially since the Manga At Large is on break this week. anyways my deepest apologies to the many people who have been requesting for me to start Vigilantes instead. I just need something lighter right now, and this is a good fit. one of these days I’ll get my shit together with the other two spinoffs as well.

#bnha smash!!#boku no hero academia #midoriya izuku #all might #midoriya inko #mt. lady #kamui woods #bnha smash!! 01 #bnha smash!! 02 #makeste reads bnha #the pile o' trash is a legit plothole though you guys #are we just supposed to pretend it magically vanished #they really drew deku standing shirtless on top of a heap of garbage #and in the very next panel declared that the beach was spotless??#so what is the truth #someone #answer me

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hydrus · 5 years ago

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Version 377

youtube

windows

zip

exe

macOS

app

linux

tar.gz

source

tar.gz

I had a good week. I mostly caught up with my smaller jobs queue, just pushing on work that had piled up.

Thank you for the continuing Qt bug reports. I fixed a variety of typo-broken buttons this week, mostly buried in less-used UI, and if you have set a browser launch path override in the options, hyperlinks across the program should obey that again. I also believe I fixed the annoying issue where media viewer hover windows that needed to shrink (because of switching to a new media that had fewer info lines or known urls) would linger too tall for one frame. EDIT: I'm still having slight hover window resize flicker in my IRL client when I keep my mouse over the top-right hover, I'll give it another go next week.

Furthermore, all non-menubar menus across the program now open on right-click release instead of press. This sounds trivial, but there was a mix of down/up click handling here, now unified, and some things like thumbnail and tag selection are handled more naturally in the initial click down. This also fixes an issue where users who had menu styles with no significant border were sometimes accidentally activating the first menu item on a slow click (the click down would show the menu, the click up would activate it).

Last week's support for styles and stylesheets for Qt seems to have gone well. There is more to do here, but this week brings better error handling for unusual situations, better 'we already have this set, no need to waste CPU re-applying it' detection, and fewer hacky colour overrides, so custom stylesheets should be able to colour regular panels without lots of unintended grey or white boxes.

the rest

The shortcut system should now be able to support any text key. This includes extended characters like ø or æ. If you need to apply a modifier to get these keys (e.g. ctrl+alt+e), these modifiers are likely to show up spuriously in the shortcut's label (e.g. ctrl+alt+æ), but everything should nonetheless line up in the program correctly. Let me know if you discover any new bugs here!

There are also some new shortcut commands this week, for the 'media viewer' set. They are 'pan_top/bottom/left/right_edge' and 'pan_horizonal/vertical_center'. They move the whole image around to edges, or center it again, and should be helpful if you often look at tall or wide comics at 100% zoom. There will be more to come here in coming weeks.

The work on making the UI smoother is also continuing. Session saving and a variety of 'media refresh' events that occur on file import or maintenance are now significantly faster and do the bulk of that work in the background. Users with very large sessions should experience less juddery behaviour during both idle and heavy work periods.

full list

qt:

all non-menubar menus across the program now launch on click release. some previously launched on click press. a variety of related click event behaviour is cleaned up, particularly with thumbnail/tag selection on the click down. this also fixes some users' menus immediately activating the first entry on slow clicks in some ui styles

I think I fixed the annoying single-frame delayed size-down resize on media viewer hover frames when changing media!

the vast majority of old wx panel background colour hacks are removed, so custom stylesheets should now cover much more of the UI

improved the new custom style and stylesheet setting, resetting, and error handling code, particularly for not re-applying the same style or stylesheet twice, and for handling un-re-settable styles (seems to be defaults initialised by third-party OS-wide Qt style) gracefully

fixed hyperlinks not using the custom web browser launch path as set in the options

fixed the 'migrate entire db' and 'set thumb location' buttons in the migrate database dialog

fixed a typo bug when launching the url selection tree after adding an ipfs directory to download

fixed two typo bugs when editing regex favourites and simple downloader formulae

fixed an issue where custom shortcut sets could not be deleted

fixed a typo in the edit account type panel

fixed sorting the login listctrl when there are session logins mixed with non-session logins

removed some old media viewer hover window display/raise hacks

retired the 'always show hover windows' debug mode

the media viewer will no longer perform any drag calculations on anything but left-click drag

misc Qt code refactoring/cleanup

url searching:

the database now stores 'known url' domain information more efficiently. it will take a few moments/minutes to reshape the db when updating

system:known url's exact url search now runs extremely fast. this will only affect new predicates of this type, not those in existing sessions

system:known url's domain search now runs much faster and matches subdomains of the given domain. this will only affect new predicates of this type, not those in existing sessions

system:known url's url class search now runs much faster. this will only affect new predicates of this type, not those in existing sessions

when entering a regex system:known url predicate, the dialog will now not OK (throwing up an error dialog) if the regex is invalid

the rest:

the shortcut system now allows all text characters. if it has text, it should work, but it is the wild west in terms of modifier labelling. anything unusual on your keyboard like ctrl+alt+e to make æ will _display_ as ctrl+alt+æ, but the same key combination will match up in the program all correct

added shortcut actions 'pan_top_edge', 'pan_bottom_edge', 'pan_left_edge', 'pan_right_edge' to the media viewer shortcut set that will move the current image so the respective edge is aligned with the larger canvas's

added shortcut actions 'pan_horizontal_center' and 'pan_vertical_center' to do as above but center on that axis

session save now hangs the UI significantly less, whether triggered by user command or auto-saving 'last session'

saving of last/exit sessions on client close is a little faster

the call to refresh thumbnail file info (and redraw if needed) when a file is imported or has metadata-regenererating file maintenance done will now only call for files that are actually loaded, run faster per file, run faster when the client has large collections in its session, and not hang the ui thread when waiting for the new media info to arrive

like regular popups, modal popups (like those created when big vacuum/analyze jobs jump in) will now only appear if the main gui or an on-parent child has OS focus

the main gui/on-parent child OS focus test now includes misc child windows like the autocomplete results hover window

network jobs that fail for one reason or another will now be more reliably cleaned up, and their connections returned to the connection pool. this may fix the 'too many open file handles' errors some users were seeing after long term unreliable network traffic

fixed an issue where some thumbnails that were trashed or physically deleted were being removed from 'all known files' and file repository views when it was not appropriate

connection and downloader retry time options now have a wider min/max range when in advanced mode, with an accompanying warning label for the connection panel

checker options times now have a wider min/max range when in advanced mode, with an accompanying warning label

cleaned up some shutdown reporting text

misc debug improvements

next week

The holidays are coming up. As 379 would normally be due on Christmas Day, I will postpone that to New Year, which means next week's 378, on the 18th, will be the last release of the year. I am due for a 'cleanup' week, which will also make for a nice 'safe' release before the break. So I will clean up code, do some more Qt neatening, and otherwise catch up on smaller jobs like I did this week.

I never strictly marked down the day when I started working on hydrus, but December 14th, 2011, the date of the first non-experimental beta, has emerged as a decent birthday. This week marks eight years. It has been a lot of work and a lot of fun. There are a couple thousand things I would still like to do, so if I can, I would like to keep going as I have into the 2020s. I deeply appreciate all the feedback, help, and support over the years. Thank you!

If you would like to further support my work and are in a position to do so, my simple no-reward Patreon is here: https://www.patreon.com/hydrus_dev

#release

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raeloganthesonic06fangirl · 6 years ago

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Darkwing Comic Collection Update

So, I finally got "Capes and Capers"

Being pre-owned like the rest, this one appears to have a soda/coffee stain on the cover (the Classics book had a Charms Blow Pop wrapper in it when I got it!).

Ah, well, they did say it was in Acceptable condition. I get what I pay

Anyway, it brings the Darkwing comics to a fair size now. Most of the accessible comics, old and new, in compilations.

I'm really just missing "Dangerous Currency", then once I get that, I might consider tracking down the relevant Ducktales sister publication for sake of completion.

Now, what's so special about "Capes and Capers"?

Well...

Of the three included comic book stories in it, two are in fact reprinted into the big Classics (subtitled Volume One) book, so what this amounts to is an older edition of those reprints

The real incentive is the original version of "Kitty Cat Caper" that's in the book that hasn't actually been reprinted elsewhere, aside from the retelling that was altered to fit the Joe Books canon (with a notable difference being that QuackerJack is removed from the retelling on account of being MIA in the Joe Books timeline when this took place)

So, if you have the Classics book, then "Capes and Capers" amounts to whether your a completionist, or if you want "The Kitty Kat Kaper" (original title)

That said, here's all of QuackerJack panel appearances in this book. Short, yes, but amusing.

Y'know, it's really odd here, but I can't help but feel like I have a very distinctive memory of reading this story in Disney Adventures magazine as a little kid and accidentally dropping it in the bathtub because I snuck it in the bathroom during bathtime, and I essentially ruined the magazine, because the pages were so crinkly afterwards... Hmmm

#Darkwing duck #QuackerJack #Megavolt #Liquidator #Bushroot #Tuskerninni #Steelbeak #Launchpad mcquack

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thenightling · 7 years ago

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Meet Azrael / Death (Lucifer TV series related)

Okay, IF Lucifer gets picked up, one of the biggest rumors is that Azrael (Angel of Death) will be a character in season 4. This actually seems very likely.

Season 2 of Lucifer told us about Azrael in regard to how she works in the TV universe. Azrael is Lucifer’s sister and The Angel of Death. It was her sword that allowed Lucifer to cut a hole in reality so Mum could go off and create her own universe.

If season four happens, some of you may be curious to know who this character was in the Lucifer comic books.

Based on descriptions from Lucifer: Season 2, Azrael of the TV series is actually a combination of two characters.

Character 1: (Really only the source for the name) is The Azrael of lore (who is actually male or non-gender depending on your view of angels).

And

Character 2: The heavier influence. Death of The Endless created by Neil Gaiman (also creator of this version of Lucifer).

Death of the Endless is the living embodiment of Death incarnate. This character is who the Lucifer TV series version of Azrael seems most likely to have roots in.

Who is Death of The Endless?

Continue reading for some information about the comic book version of Death.

The Endless are seven siblings who are God-like entities in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman Universe. They are anthropomorphic personifications, meaning they embody certain aspects of Sentient life. They are actually more powerful than most Gods but are less powerful than The Presence (The God that made Lucifer) and they are less powerful than Lucifer himself.

This was confirmed in the Sandman storyline called Season of Mists. The Sandman, himself, Morpheus AKA Dream of The Endless discusses Lucifer with his raven servant, Matthew.

The Endless are:

Destiny (male), Death (Female), Dream (male), Destruction (male), Desire (Genderfluid), Despair (Female), Delirium (Formerly known as Delight, female),

According to the message Morpheus (Dream) had Cain deliver to Lucifer in Sandman: Season of Mists, they are actually cousins of Lucifer and the angels.

Death is actually the one Endless most like an angel as she does have wings of her own. Her wings are never shown in panel art but they are shown on the cover art of the issue of Sandman where she made her first appearance. “The Sound of her wings.” This is issue 8 of Sandman.

An audio play / motion comic version of The Sound of Her wings can be watched here.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHkqHsxqlHM

There is a non-Canon Manga that was published retelling Sandman: Season of Mists (the storyline where Lucifer quits ruling Hell) from Death’s point of view. It is called Death: At Death’s Door. You can see her wings in one page of that manga.

You never see Death’s wings in the panel art of the actual Sandman or Lucifer comics but Morpheus (Dream) can hear them (”The sound of her wings”).

It is implied that perhaps only the dead can actually see her wings and she only unfurls them when delivering a soul to the afterlife.

The version of The Angel of Death that appeared in “American Horror Story: Asylum” might have been inspired by her.

Death is also female in Mexican traditions.

There are multiple different afterlifes in Sandman, just like in American Gods.

Your afterlife is determined by your belief. Some people go to Heaven, some go to Hell, some are reincarnated, some go to the Elysium Fields while others might go to Tartarus, and yet others might go to Valhalla, ect...

Death physically resembles a nineteen-year-old Goth girl. Some of her own younger siblings actually look older than her. Dream, for example, is quite ageless, and most assuredly not a teenager. Sometimes he can seem young while other times he looks very old. It’s very hard to determine a specific age look for him.

But he has never looked like a teenager.

Death is always seen with black hair and has grey-blue (human looking) eyes. She often wears a black tank top and black form fitting jeans with black ankle boots. She is very pale (though not as pale as Morpheus) and under her left eye are the markings of an Eye of Horus Tattoo.

Often she wears black gloves that end at her wrist and instead of a scythe she sometimes carries an umbrella. She’s very fond of Disney films, including Mary Poppins and The Little Mermaid. For the artwork of the comics her physical appearance was inspired by a real woman, a nineteen-year-old girl named Cinamon Hadley, just as Lucifer’s appearance was modeled after rock star, David Bowie.

Like Lucifer, Death is a psychopomp, meaning she can transport souls to the afterlife.

Despite her purpose of delivering souls to the afterlife, Death is not a depressed or depressing character. She is friendly, perky and kind hearted. Death would actually prefer it if you end up in a good afterlife. She doesn’t judge anyone and she tries to be a friend to everyone.

It was revealed that a long time ago, for a while, Death had become cold, until someone asked her how she would like it. Realizing she had mistreated the souls she was attending, Death decided to humble herself, and remind herself of what it is like for them to be mortal (since she had never been human). After this revelation, Death decided to turn herself human once a century to always remind herself why she should be kind, and what people experience while alive.

A story of one of Death’s human experiences can be found in the stand-alone comic, Death: The High cost of Living by Neil Gaiman, which is available in Death: The Deluxe edition.

Death tries to be a friend to all and values the virtues taught in Disney films such as friends, family, love, compassion, ect.

It is for this reason that I felt the show Lucifer dropped a ball by introducing Ella’s brother and not having a surprise reveal that Ella was Death / Azrael in disguise. She actually fits the personality very well.

Here is death in her appearance in DC’s Action Comics 894 in 2011 talking to Lex Luthor. The Endless and their stories are canon to DC comics and Vertigo and they transcend universes.

As I said, Death actually prefers it when you end up with a good afterlife.

Each one of The Endless has a sigil, a symbol which represents them. For Death this is her ankh, the Egyptian symbol of Eternal Life.

She wears an Ankh as a pendant. The necklace itself has no power but the symbol means the world to her. And her family can call out to her by drawing an ankh and addressing her, or clutching a representation of her ankh in front of a mirror in their personal gallery (Each of The Endless has a gallery room for communicating with each other when they are not in the same realm).

An occult organization called The Order of Ancient Mysteries tried to summon Death over a century ago and accidentally summoned her brother, Dream (Morpheus AKA The Sandman) instead. Despite realizing their mistake they chose to hold him prisoner for over seventy-two-years.

When Morpheus finally escaped his prison he had to track down items stolen from him during his imprisonment, including his pouch of dream sand (He is The Sandman after all), his helm (a creepy battle mask carved from the bones of dead Old Gods), and his ruby dreamstone amulet. This was actually the very first storyline in The Sandman comics. Preludes and Nocturnes. Death’s first comic book appearance was toward the end of this storyline.

It is also during Preludes and Nocturnes that we see Lucifer for the first time in issue 4 of Sandman, “A Hope in Hell.” Morpheus (Dream) had to travel to Hell to retrieve his stolen helm. It is not until Sandman: Season of Mists that Lucifer quits ruling Hell like in the TV show Lucifer.

Death is not just present at the moment someone dies but also is there at births as well. Destruction of The Endless had a theory that all of The Endless actually represent a thing and it’s opposite. Desire is also hate, Dream is also reality as dreams can influence reality, Death is also life, Despair (whether she means to or not) also represents Hope, ect...

In Sandman: Endless Nights, there is a story set in the distant past where Despair spoke with the humanoid embodiment of Krypton’s sun and suggested that Krypton should bear life even though the planet was doomed to die. Despair felt that that it would be glorious if when Krypton died only one survivor was left to to mourn and grieve. Without meaning to, she orchestrated the creation of Superman, a living symbol of Hope.

Considering Death has wings and is a cousin of Lucifer, it actually makes sense that the Lucifer TV series appeared to have merged her with Azrael the angel of Death and turned her into Lucifer’s sibling.

As the embodiment of Desire is one of The Endless (one of Death’s actual siblings), it actually seems even more fitting. (”What do you Desire?”)

Death made an appearance in Lucifer’s solo comics.

Death appeared in Lucifer Volume 1 issue 25 and 26.

Neil Gaiman’s version of Death is actually a very well loved comic book character and is probably the most popular character in all of Sandman lore. There are people who would argue that she is more popular than Morpheus (Dream AKA The Sandman), himself.

Aurelio Voltaire even wrote a song about her for a Neil Gaiman tribute album called “Where’s Neil when you need him?” The song is called Sweet Death.

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He also wrote a song from Lucifer’s point of view called Almost Human (on the album of the same name.)

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Death was even the narrator of a safe sex / AIDS awareness pamphlet published by Vertigo comics in the early 90s that even featured her demonstrating how to properly put on a condom using a banana provided by John Constantine. It was called “Death talks about life.” It’s now available as bonus material in the Death Deluxe edition collection.

Here’s hoping that if the Lucifer TV series is picked up and Azrael (based on Death of The Endless) makes her appearance that she’s a little more accurate to her personality of the comics than poor Cain was...

#Lucifer #Lucifer on Fox #Fox's Lucifer #Death #Death of The Endless #Azrael #Lucifer Morningstar #Sandman #The Sandman #Sandman Universe #The Sandman Universe

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carridine-blog · 5 years ago

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The Perfect Stereoscope

This post features a collection of images that I’ve labelled “stereoscopes” over the years. Some are conventionally, some are unconventionally stereoscopes. Before jumping in I wanted to offer the chance to appreciate the perfect stereoscope. This stereoscopic image was constructed of no less than ten individual photographs. They were combined in photo-editing software and together compose an image both visually pleasing and analogically philosophical.

Stereoscopes: How to Make a Finger Hotdog

A stereoscope allows the perception of three-dimensions from two dimensional images. How it works: two images show the same thing from slightly different points of view mimicking binocular vision. One image for each eye. The two images unite in the mind and create the perception of depth. Many people people have difficulty seeing the desired effect. This most often turns out to be because they have difficulty allowing their eyes to see independently one from the other. If you have trouble see the depth here is a brief how-to do that.

1. 2. 3.

Starting simple:

This shape is excerpted from this larger one. I like the image because the high contrast makes it almost calligraphic which makes the sudden appearance of three dimensions all the more dramatic. Calligmagic!

You can make stereoscopic images simply starting with a video clip. A panning shot traveling roughly 10 centimeters (the space between the eyes) will provide the two images needed. Take screen captures until you find the ones that work. Here’s one I did of a bust of Dante I saw in a little cabinet in a big antiques place.

The following caption is a bit repetitive but repetition is good for learning, no? The difference in the screen grabs in the next one though

Here is the possibility of seeing William Blake’s life mask in three dimensions without being in its actual presence. I constructed this stereo-image by screen-grabbing two images from a video featuring the mask. The video camera was moving just enough during the shot to provide these two aspects. The two slightly different aspects simulate views from two different eyes. The video is for Patti Smith’s cover of “Smells like Teen Spirit.”

Here is a stereoscope or comic strip I made with Blake’s Lifemask and two of Messerschmidt’s sculptures.

This is from a post originally named “to stay near the well spring.”

Commenting on an old my post of mine, Nick Mullins said, “Looking through artists’ websites, I sometimes see a thumbnail that looks really interesting, but when I click on it to get the full-sized image, I find that the real image is nothing like what I thought I was seeing in the thumbnail. Sometimes I have gone back and tried to do a sketch from what I thought I saw in the thumbnail. Your discussion of the fish that became a man in a tarp reminded me of that. Sometimes an accident of vision is more interesting than the reality.”

(Here’s an elaboration of what I replied to him:) Yes my efforts have always included either accident or collaboration — you get to new places faster. Plus, employing accidents it’s easier to appreciate what others might see in my work. It’s only in recent years that I’ve realized that what I simply straight-forwardly produce is a new place to a person seeing it for the first time. It was the most obvious thing but it hit me like a thunderbolt.

Generally I like to think that the accident or other kind of unexpected input points us to a reality we wouldn’t have conceived without it. I don’t mean that in any mystical way. I mean in just the same way a new sound of music will direct our attention to or express a mood we’ve never heard expressed before. Novelty and re-cognition are wrapped up together. Our ability to invent ways to express our experience, to share our experience, always lags behind experience itself. When someone finds a way to say something new about something true, its like a gift we already possess.

I totally get the thumbnail experience. Very often I screen capture a thumbnail at the resolution I like it and then blow it up in photoshop. The resolution might be fuzzy but most times it retains the thing I saw in it.

It’s true of my own work. I like to work really small: I tend to make less marks and their interrelations are clearer. Then when I blow it up — used to be on xerox machines or cameras, now it’s scanners mostly — I work to catch the rhythms evident in the little one. Yeah, without projectors, cameras, etc., most of my work would be postage stamp sized.

Speaking of stamp-sized:

The first image in this post, which I’ve renamed “At the Waterfall” is based on this one here. This one is reproduced at it’s original size. I got the larger image from this small source by a kind of divination. I used to use this process all the time. It combines the two things we just talked about: seeing things in small things and seeing things accidentally. The larger image is a painting mind you: I started with a penciled-in grid and painted all those little dots myself. So there. The smaller image is from a photo from a black and white newspaper which I hand-colored and amended with pen. It is hard to tell now but the original photo was of a boy staring at the camera from behind a fence. The fragment I used shows (or used to show) his fingers poking through chain links in the fence.

Stereoscope: Artaud et le Momo.

William Blake and Robert Crumb: Neither Two Nor One

Blake illustrates a passage in Dante’s Inferno, Canto 25 describing a six legged snake attacking a thief, which Dante modeled after a passage in Ovid’s Metamorphosis.

Inferno XXV 58-69.

“Ivy was never so rooted to a tree as the horrid beast entwined it’s own limbs round the others; then, as if they had been of hot wax, they stuck together and mixed their colors, and neither the one nor the other now seemed what it was at first: even as in advance of the flame a dark color moves across the paper, which is not yet black and the white dies away. The other two were looking on, and each cried, “oh me, Agnello, how you change! Lo, you are already neither two nor one!“.”

Charles S. Singleton translation

“So never did the barbed ivy bind/ A tree up, as the reptile hideous/ Upon another’s limbs its own entwined;/ They clave together, — hot wax cleaveth thus, — / And interfused their colors in such wise/ That neither now appeared the same to us: / Just as in burning paper doth uprise / Along before the flame a color brown / Which is not black as yet, and the white dies. / The other two each shouted, looking on, / “O me, Agnello, how thou alterest! / Lo, thou’rt already neither two nor one!”

Melville Best Anderson translation

Style: visual identity & equivalence

I made this post card to send to James Kochalka when his daily comic AMERICAN ELF reached the ten year mark. My image is based on a photo of Kochalka and his kids and on a somewhat famous painting by someone else.

Here’re the same elements presented as a comparison, bits of multiply reproduced (degraded) GUERNICA and grid paper atop pages from Kochalka’s THE HORRIBLE TRUTH ABOUT COMICS. This is from a series of photographs I took: videotaped collages I made while I was designing a previous version of this web site (no longer extant.)

And here again a comparison involving the GUERNICA baby: this time posed against Minnie, Vinny, and some Mayan Glyphs. I appreciate glyphs, especially with regard to their foreignness. I am always looking to achieve in my drawing and writing the formal quality I appreciate most readily in markings that are illegible to me.

And finally, GUERNICA baby and some grafitti I copied from a barrier on the side of southbound Route 17, around Allendale, NJ. (Graffiti no longer extant, except in the series of photos I took. I believe this tag says or originally said, “Messiah.”)

Another Stereoscope: Bill and Lynda B.

Stereoscope juxtaposing Plate XI from William Blake’s ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE BOOK OF JOB (1826) and Panel 2, page 74 from Lynda Barry’s THE FREDDIE STORIES (1999). Separated by 173 years, sharing a similar vision. I’m sure Lynda Barry has seen this image of Blake’s. Does that make her’s a copy of his? Not necessarily. Blake himself found the poses and compositions for his divine visions in reproductions of Renaissance Masterworks.

I find this likeness wonderful and marvelous. I have notes for an essay I’d like to put up as a permanent page here. For now, though, I will suggest the direction the essay would take with a quote from Paul Piehler’s THE VISIONARY LANDSCAPE (pps 19-20):

“The major poets of medieval visionary allegory regard themselves as part of a cumulative tradition, in which each allegorist recapitulates, refines and develops the thought and imagery of his [sic] predecessors, exploring new dimensions of traditional topics, and, most important, attempting to integrate earlier thought and imagery pertaining to the topic into a coherent whole …”

Is 173 years a long time? A bit too long, I guess, for any one of us to endure. Whatever the number of years, Blake seems irrevocably long ago, from the age of revolution, the mythical time of our era’s origin. His words, images and ideas shine through history like a dead star. He has, it seems, joined history — that flat offensive significance of human life which the living are barred from entering.

Meanwhile, Lynda Barry has such a knack for the voices of adolescence and childhood she seems to resurrect a reader’s own past. The memories she stirs live again.

That makes THE FREDDIE STORIES all the more a marvel: in it Freddie undergoes a “journey to the underworld” which employs imagery familiar from Dante’s journey, even Virgil’s journey. But she builds Freddie’s journey of ” psychic redemption” out of such recognizable, contemporary stuff that she invites us to our own inside of a visionary landscape that has floated along with people for thousands of years.

Style Coloring Page.

“The deeper the influence of the formal, decorative element upon the method of representation, the more probable it becomes that formal elements attain an emotional value. An association between these two forms of art is established which leads, on the one hand to the conventionalization of representative design, on the other to the imputation of significance into formal elements. It is quite arbitrary to assume a one-sided development from the representative to the formal or vice versa, or even to speak of a gradual transformation of a representative form into a conventional one, because the artistic presentation itself can proceed only on the basis of the technically developed forms…”

— Franz Boas, “Representative Art,” pps. 82-83 Primitive Art (1927)

Stereoscope: Blake of the Shtetl.

Here is a stereoscope I’ve had in my possession for over 10 years. On the right is an illustration by Maurice Sendak (1928-2012). It is one of Sendak’s illustrations for Herman Melville’s PIERRE. Under the image is a caption that reads, “an unbidden, most miserable presentiment.” On the left is a doodle from a private letter by Henry Fuseli (1741-1825) an artist to whom William Blake admitted a debt. In the Tate Gallery’s catalog of Fuseli’s work this drawing is titled “Caricature of the Artist Leaving Italy.” The naming of Sendak as the “Shtetl Blake” I take from Margalit Fox in her obituary of Sendak in today’s New York Times. (May 8th, 2012)

Blake: Stereoscope as Comic Strip.

These are plates 9 & 10 from William Blake’s little book FOR THE SEXES: The Gates of Paradise. I grabbed them off of the wonderful site The Blake Archive. One way to read them is as adjacent comic book panels: ‘this happens and then this happens.’ Another is to read them as slightly different views on the same thing, as in a stereoscope. Another possibility is that they are completely unrelated.

One day in the maze …

the rat met the minotaur.

Seriously though

Style and Stereoscope.

Human creators do not have access to the atomic level (artists anyway) and must discover their own smallest building block. Each must innovate an idiosyncratic [mark] to which a life’s work can be devoted. Rilke speaks of it in terms of Cezanne, Rodin, and his own poetry: “Somehow I too must discover the smallest constituent element, the cell of my art, the tangible immaterial means of expressing everything…” After this discovery the artist is free to become a laborer and to spend every minute of life working at “expressing everything.”

I figured I might as well post one of my favorite all time comparison lessons on that style discovery. Above are two well known paintings by Van Gogh. One is painted by the artist we know Van Gogh becomes and one is painted before Van Gogh fully realized that transformation. I think the chief difference between these two paintings is how each painting relates to itself. The difference between these two painting styles is in the relation between what the painting conveys and how it is rendered. In the first, the smoking skull image, an idea of something is conveyed, however vaguely, without regard to how it is rendered. The idea is communicated then we notice how it is communicated, the calligraphy in which it is written. In the second one, the sunflower, what the painting conveys is conveyed through how it is rendered. It contains no abstract-able message by which we can paraphrase it and do without the painting. The painting is all. I like to think that both paintings have the same thing to say. They are both Van Gogh expressing something, but only in the second painting is the artist mature enough to say what he means. In that maturity he became capable of “expressing everything.”

When Worlds Collage.

This is a collage in white grease pencil (china marker) of drawings I copied from Lynda Barry and Robert Fludd. I chose Fludd’s drawing, which I saw for the first time on the front of a book catalog, because it uses the phrase “mundus imaginabilis.” I mistook his drawing as a diagram of Sufi mystic experience which I had just been reading about in books by Henry Corbin. It turns out that Fludd’s ideas were a bit different but by the time I found that out, the drawing had been made. I combined the drawing of the mundus imaginabilis (which now that I think of it may be the mundus imaginalis in Corbin) with drawings from Lynda Barry because it suited my abiding interest in the difference in accounts of visionary experience in different periods of history.

The Lynda Barry drawings I took from her 100 DEMONS, one of the most enjoyable books I have ever read. These panels come from the introduction where she describes the writing exercise which gave rise to the book (and the title of the book): intending nothing, leaving her brush free to record her every stray thought, she captures the demons that enter her mind. If you haven’t read 100 Demons, I’m not sure what you’ve been doing. You must read this book.

I did this drawing initially as a card for my friend Avy’s 30th birthday. I liked it so much that I made three prints of it, giving one to Avy, one to my friend Kat, and one to someone else (OF).

I post this drawing today because I spoke to Kat on the phone and because today, after years of waiting, I received my copy of Lynda Barry’s latest, THE NEAR SIGHTED MONKEY BOOK. Years ago, I put my name on a list so that I could have it as soon as it was available but its publication was repeatedly delayed. I kept getting little e-mails from Amazon saying, “Sorry, not yet” and “oop wait a second.” So the book finally arrives — with $7.50 due COD — and Kat tells me Kyle bought the book for her a week ago from the bookstore!

Kat and I spent the rest of our conversation talking about writer’s block, ways of breaking it and how Lynda Barry is the coolest. Always good to talk to you, Kat.

Two without captions.

And finally here’s a stereoscope of me

A life mask taken when I was 30 years old. Twenty three years ago.

A Variety Of Stereoscopes The Perfect Stereoscope This post features a collection of images that I've labelled "stereoscopes" over the years.

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