#fidelis comics

[lindalofbroome]

28 - Growth

'But we cannot knowingly leave someone at the mercy of the Granous!' Lief hissed. 'They will ask him their infernal riddles, and when he cannot answer them they will start biting off his fingers and toes. They will kill him, Jasmine!' 'Better that they kill a stranger than that they kill us,' Jasmine said. And Lief knew that she was repeating a lesson she had learned only too well in the terror that was the Forests of Silence. For a moment he hesitated. He knew that he should not let his heart rule his head in this. But then the piteous cry came again, followed by a scream of pure agony. 'No!' Lief breathed. He started forward. 'Wait! I will go back and fetch the guards,' said Barda, catching at his arm. Lief pulled himself free. 'There is no time for that!' he muttered. 'Come with me or not, as you like.' He began to run, and Jasmine and Barda followed, as he knew they would. DELTORA QUEST 3 Dragon's Nest Ch 7 Dragon Hunt

[ungoliantschilde]

some Semper Fi' covers by John Severin

[sesshaxiii]

LaS Ch.7 Pg.3 Introducing, Des! Co-owned by @trak-the-pichu First Page – PMD Las – Ch.1 Pg.1 Last Page – PMD Las – Ch.7 Pg.2 Next Page – PMD Las – Ch.7 Pg.4

[mariocki]

Stuart Damon guest stars as Texan oil baron (and Simon's new bff) Rod Huston in The Saint: The Ex-King of Diamonds (6.17, ITC, 1969); this episode was the direct inspiration for Roger Moore's subsequent series The Persuaders! (ITC, 1971 - 72)

[scarletspider2the2ndpower]

“The Uncanny Spider-Force: Breathe,” Spider-Force (Vol. 1/2018), #3.

Writer: Christopher Priest; Pencilers: Marcelo Ferreira and Ibraim Roberson; Inkers: Roberto Poggi, Ibraim Roberson, and Craig Yeung; Colorist: Guru-eFX; Letterer: Joe Sabino

[reasoningdaily]

Tracy Morgan: Bona Fide - Full Special

Lets Laugh cause Tracy is on a roll in this one

[heroesriseandfall]

Introduction to Batman: A Lonely Place of Dying, April 1990

Introduction by Dennis O'Neil for Batman: A Lonely Place of Dying (1990 collected edition)

Transcription below the cut/readmore.

INTRODUCTION by DENNIS O'NEIL

Robin was gone. We needed a new Boy Wonder. There had been two previous Robins. The original first appeared less than a year after a new costumed hero called Batman made his debut in DETECTIVE COMICS #27, to instant success. Some time within the next eleven months, his creators, artist Bob Kane and his writer-collaborator Bill Finger, decided to give their dark, obsessed hero a kind of surrogate son, Robin, who was hailed on the cover of DETECTIVE #36 as “the sensational character-find of 1940—Robin, The Boy Wonder.” Over the next 40 years, Batman’s fortunes varied: always, however, Robin was at Batman’s side.

He served a couple of functions. If Batman were real (and it may shock some of our more avid readers to learn he isn’t), and if he were the grim, obsessed loner he is often portrayed as, Robin, with some help from Batman's faithful butler Alfred, would keep him sane; a man whose every waking hour is focused on the grimmest aspects of society, who is unable to release the effects of seeing his parents murdered, whose life is an amalgam of sudden violence and lonely vigilance, would soon skew into a nasty insanity if he did not have someone to care for, someone to maintain a link with common humanity. But Batman is, of course, not real. (My apologies to avid readers.) He isn’t exactly a fictional character—more on that shortly—but he does not and could not exist as a living, breathing human being. That doesn’t make Robin any less useful: he serves the same functions in the Batman stories as Watson served in the Sherlock Holmes canon and the gravedigger serves in Hamlet: like Holmes’s faithful doctor, Robin is a sounding board, a person with whom the hero can have dialogues and thus let the reader know how brilliantly he’s handling matters and like the gravedigger, he occasionally provides a bright note in an otherwise relentlessly morose narrative.

Which is why I was a trifle uneasy when we—the editorial staff of DC Comics—decided to let our audience decide whether he would live or die. It came to be known in our offices as the “telephone stunt.” We had a character, Robin, the readers didn’t seem terribly fond of. This wasn’t the original Robin, the “character-find of 1940”; that Robin was Dick Grayson and he had graduated from sidekick to bona fide hero who fronted a group of evil-fighting adolescents, The Teen Titans. In 1983, it was decreed that Robin should grow up and assume a crime-fighting identity of his own—become his own man, as befitted the leader of the mighty Titans. He left Batman’s world to assume the name, costume, and persona of Nightwing. Gerry Conway and Don Newton replaced him with a second Robin, Jason Todd, whose biography was virtually identical to that of Dick Grayson. Why not? Gerry and Don were not trying to innovate, they were simply filling a void. The assignment they were given was simple: Provide another Robin. Quickly and with as little fuss as possible.

In 1986, Max Allan Collins inherited the Batman writing assignment and told his editor he had an idea for an improved Jason Todd. Make him a street kid, Collins said. Make his parents criminals. Have him and Batman on opposite sides at first. Sounded fine to the editor and, since DC was in the middle of a vast, company-wide overhaul of storylines anyway, Collins was told to go ahead. I was the editor; I did the telling. And I’d do it again, today. Collins’s Robin was dramatic, did have story potential. But readers didn’t take to him. I don't know now, and will probably never know why. Jason was accepted as long as he was a Dick Grayson clone, but when he acquired a distinct and, Collins and I still believe, more interesting backstory, their affection cooled. Maybe we—me and the writers who followed Collins—should have worked harder at making Jason likeable. Or maybe, I guessed, on some subconscious level our most loyal readers felt Jason was a usurper. For whatever reason, Jason was not the favorite Dick had been. He wasn’t hated, exactly, but he wasn’t loved, either. Should we write him out of the continuity? It didn’t seem like a bad idea, and when we thought of the experiment that became the telephone stunt, Jason seemed the perfect subject for it. The mechanics were pretty simple: we put Jason in an explosion and gave the readers two telephone numbers they could call, the first to vote that Jason would survive the blast, the second to vote that he wouldn't.

It was successful—oh my, yes. We expected to generate some interest, but not the amount or intensity we got. As soon as the final vote was tallied—5271 for Jasons survival, a deciding 5343 against—the calls began. For most of three days, I talked to journalists, disc jockeys, television reporters. We got a lot of compliments. They ranged from a critic’s liking our stunt to the participatory drama of avant garde theater to the brilliant comedy team of Penn and Teller expressing mock envy that we beat them to “the kill-your-partner-900-number scam.” But then came the backlash, ugly and, to me at least, totally unexpected: one reporter claimed that the whole event had been rigged—that, in fact, we had decided on Jason’s demise ahead of time and staged an elaborate charade; a teary grandmother said that her grandchildren loved Jason and now we’d killed him; several colleagues accused us of turning our magazines into a “Roman circus.” Cynical was a word used. And exploitive. Sleazy. Dishonorable. Wait a minute, I wanted to reply. Jason Todd is just a phantom, a figment of several imaginations. No real kid died. No real anything died. It’s all just stories—

I would have been wrong. Batman, and Superman, and Wonder Woman and their supporting casts are quite a bit more than “just stories” if, by “stories,” we mean ephemeral amusements. They’ve been in continuous magazine publication for a half-century, and they’ve been in movies, and television shows, and in novels, and on cereal boxes and T-shirts and underwear and candy bars and yo-yos and games—thousands of ventures. For fifty years. Fifty years! Although the circulation of our magazines is relatively modest, these characters have been so enduring, so pervasive, they have permeated our collective consciousness. Everybody recognizes them. They are our post-industrial folklore and, as such, they mean much more to people than a few minutes’ idle amusement. They’re part of the psychic family. The public and apparently callous slaying of one of their number was, to some, a vicious attack on the special part of their souls that needs awe, magic, heroism.

We had promised to abide by the telephone poll, and we would. But within a few days, it became apparent that we’d have to begin growing another Robin. We had forgotten that Batman exists outside the pages of our comics, is not the exclusive property of DC’s editorial staff; because he is both popular and imperishable, hundreds of others have some legitimate interest in him (not the least of whom are the readers who, for one reason or another, had missed the voting.) Our medium may have kept him alive, but others have added immeasurably to his success. When we began hearing from them, the consensus was that a Batman without a Robin wasn't quite a Batman. I wasn’t surprised. Nor did I disagree, particularly. So our problem became: how to create Robin III without generating the hostility that plagued poor Jason. Dick Grayson was the answer. If, as we thought, readers felt Jason had somehow usurped Dick’s place, then we should link the new Robin to Dick—give Robin III his predecessor’s stamp of approval. One writer had done almost all of the Dick Grayson material DC had published for a decade: Marv Wolfman, co-creator (with George Pérez) of the New Teen Titans. That made Mary the first, and really only, choice to undertake the task of giving Batman a new helper. And if we were using Marv, why not have some of the story happen in the pages of THE NEW TITANS, which he was already writing, and thus be able to take advantage of the very considerable talents of Marv's collaborator on the Titans, George Pérez? George volunteered to co-plot the story with Mary and do layouts on the TITANS episodes, and editor Mike Carlin enlisted Tom Grummett and Bob McLeod to complete George's graphics work. I asked the regular BATMAN artists, Jim Aparo and Mike DeCarlo, to handle the BATMAN issues. Finally, we chose a name for Robin III—Tim Drake—and, after a couple of editorial conferences, six gifted gentlemen retired to do what they do best.

The result seemed worthy of being collected between one set of covers, to be read as a graphic novel. We decided to do that and you’re holding the result. I hope you enjoy it. But please don’t think it’s the end of the Robin III saga. Dick Grayson’s lasted 50 years, after all, and Tim Drake does have his blessing.

Dennis O’Neil

April 1990

[celaenaeiln]

If you've watched the Young Justice show, what do you think of Bruce and Dick's relationship there? Seems to me that it's less "unhealthy" than the main comics. Just wanted to ask because to me, you're the bona fide expert on Dick and Bruce, and also one of my favorite people on this site. Love your blog!

THANK YOU!! 🥰💞💕!!!

To be honest it's been a very long time since I've seen Young Justice but I think I know what you mean. It's very supportive right? Like in the comics Bruce is very involved in Dick's life and actions to the point that Dick runs away or gets mad or cuts Bruce off because Bruce is just too much for him. And Bruce praises dick often and also places in extreme stress because he places him on a pedestal.

In the Young Justice show, there's much fewer interactions with Dick and Bruce. But he's much better at being a dad.

Canonically, people around Dick attribute his sometimes difficult personality as a consequence of his relationship with Bruce:

New Teen Titans (1980) Issue #28

The Titans (1999) Issue #15

Like comics Bruce has given Dick severe Daddy Issues and Dick internally constantly questions himself and seeks validation because of Bruce's hot and cold attitude. Dick sees it as a failure on his behalf because if he was excellent enough Bruce wouldn't pull away right? Things would go back to the way they used to be and Bruce would rely on him again. But Bruce is suffering from the worry of putting too much burden on Dick's shoulders but also distancing himself from everyone when something bad happens. Because not only has Bruce given Dick daddy issues, he's also given Dick an extreme case of Eldest Daughter Syndrome and Dick thinks it's his sole responsibility to keep this family running. Which doesn't help because Bruce ALSO thinks it's Dick's responsibility to keep this family running.

Batman (2011) Issue #14

"I can barely keep control myself, Dick! And I can't take the risk. I'm asking you to keep this to yourself for now. I'm asking you to help me protect them."

Bruce literally treats Dick like a parent to the rest of the family. But at the same time he oscillates between treating Dick like a son vs a partner and Dick as a result has developed so many complexes as a result of him filling in every single role Bruce wants him to play.

In the young justice show, Bruce doesn't place every single one of his responsibilities on Dick's shoulders. He tries to take care of them himself. He's self-aware.

So definitely healthier than in the comics. In the comics they're toxically co-dependent but in the show they're caring and independent. Both are interesting in their own ways but yes, you're very right that the show is a better way to depict their relationship because Bruce is a good dad there.

[miauta]

ajjaha idk if im Seeing stuff again but in the latest chapter of your happy ending qsmp comic, wqas cellbit 'fiding' doied scene inspired or a nod to the Iconic shinning scene ? if not it still cool to see the idea come back even if not voluntary kkk (great comic i love the dragons eggs design so much aaaaaa)

Yup! That one was intentional uwu We need to respect the classics

[tomcat-tapes]

Shamelessly posting my X-Men sona Pip Felidae aka Lynx

Made him years ago, just your average orphaned mutant that Erik finds and drops off at the school for Charles who in turns dumps them onto Logan cause as much as he refuses to get attached that man collects kids like nobody’s business. Wolverine is a bona fide girl dad with Rogue, Jubilee, and Laura. What’s one more adhd child right?

Pip is FtM in the works of making a coming out comic, just been rewriting it😭

They have a very noticeable feline mutation, while modeled after your average house cat I thought the name Lynx was just funny for a hero name.

Anyways imma stop blabbing about him now sory

[skaruresonic]

https://www.tumblr.com/skaruresonic/758528409170313216/yes-woolie-you-can-win-any-argument-if-you-just

I want to point this it. The person defending the comic unknowingly completely eradicated any ground their argument could have stood on.

"Criminals don't deserve to be free if they're gonna hurt people"

Then why does IDW Sonic keep letting his villains run off scott free when he himself acknowledges that they're gonna continue being evil and hurting innocents?

The single real and true answer is that this comic has abysmal writing. But stans don't want to accept that. They'd rather make up increasingly baffling conspiracy theories.

Exactly. It gets even worse when you realize Sonic presents himself as an arbiter of freedom: he wants people to do what they want, as long as it's the "right choice."

He is the one who decides what is right. He may not explicitly come right out and say so, but that is what he says through his words and his actions. And rather than accept the notion that some people will choose something other than what he wants, he'll punish you by chewing you out or beating you up, despite any mitigating circumstances, such as Surge's abuse at Starline's hands or Metal Sonic and Eggman TELLING HIM THE KILLER ROBOT HAS NO FREE WILL.

The only thing more dangerous than an authoritarian is an authoritarian who's a fucking idiot.

That may or may not be the comic's intention, but that's what ends up being the takeaway when we're given these lengthy lectures about the supposed sanctity of freedom, only for Sonic to betray his own principles.

He doesn't give a shit about anyone's pain. That much is clear.

He leverages Shadow's trauma against him to win an argument.

He ignores how Espio is grieving the loss of his friends to obnoxiously argue "oh so we should murder everyone, huh, Espio? is that what you're saying? we should never give anyone a chance?"

He makes fun of Belle at several points and even looks annoyed when she's angsting about her situation in one instance.

He claims he'd be willing to give "even [Eggman and Starline]" a second chance, only to eulogize Starline with "big oof."

He ignores Surge's pain just to say he'll kick her ass, then eulogizes her with a line so cold you'd think it came out of Eggman's mouth.

He shuts down Tails' misgivings about Metal's release not once but twice.

He drops the "Surge is dead" bomb on Kit without any real tact or follow-through to make sure the traumatized child is okay.

He tells Kit that Surge is "hurting herself."

Yet he throws a fucking pity party for himself in issue 23 about how Eggman "makes him pay" for daring to believe in the "good in people" every day.

Cry me a river. Kick rocks. Get bent.

IDW!Sonic lacks the emotional intelligence to distinguish when someone in pain is lashing out vs. a bona fide unrepentant asshole killing people for fun.

To him, both are the same errant children in need of a paddling. Just as he'd lack the pragmatism to seal the Erazor Djinn in the lamp because muh freedom, he'd lack the empathy to comfort Shahra afterward.

[sesshaxiii]

LaS Ch.7 Pg.2

Reenter, Lady Fidelis

First Page – PMD Las – Ch.1 Pg.1 Last Page – PMD Las – Ch.7 Pg.1 Next Page – PMD Las – Ch.7 Pg.3

[hopemariposa]

reasons why you should watch Ducktales (2017):

from a totally not mentally ill (/j) girl who has never ever obsessed over this show and has never ever seen it ten times over and has never ever had a bias towards this show :))) ily

the animation is lowkey a slay. I live for the faux comic book style. it scratches an itch in my brain.

I love Louie. I love Louie so much. he is precious, a cinnamon roll, and if anything were to happen to him, I would unalive everyone in this room and then myself.

the “found family” trope has been and always will be the best trope (imo). and this show has sooooo much of it and I literally cry over it (yes, I do cry over everything. back off)

launchpad mcquack.

precious precious man.

the storyline is kind of……… wonderful???? like there’s a lot of mirroring of the past, wholesome moments, and just… fun??? (Disney please bring it back or do a spin off I beg you 🙏)

this is one of those Disney shows that’s weirdly… funny? watch s3:e2 “Quack Pack” if you don’t believe bc that episode is a bona fide RIOT

also, the “filler” episodes don’t necessarily feel like filler episodes. most have some relevance to the ongoing plot, and if they don’t the adventure is too fun for you to care anyways

for instance? my fav episode “Quack Pack” (as listed above) is a filler episode. but it is semi-plot-relevant, and comedic perfection. it also gave us this screenshot:

need I say more?

yes. I won’t shut up about this show.

honestly, in a world full of tv shows that don’t give a crap about their integrity, Ducktales is a masterpiece. and I’m not just saying this because I wish more people would join the fandom. that’s a perk

once again I leave you with this:

me n the boys jamming out to the Ducktales theme song:

[isfjmel-phleg]

I'm always curious about how the original readership of comics responded to what they read--how they interpreted stories and characters. Here are some examples of early responses to Young Justice 1998 from the letter pages of #5-7:

"At the risk of having an angry mob burn down my front door, I don't care about Damage." Wow, harsh.

This same guy thinks that the three original members are an ideal team, but he will tolerate an addition to the group only if she is female. Because having a romantic interest will separate the boys! "See? Even with a new character, all the interest leads back to the Big Three."

(I hope this guy felt very silly when three, later four girls were added to the team and ended up with plotlines that a. were given more attention than the boys', b. very seldom involved romance but focused on these girls as individual humans and heroes in their own rights, and c. never once divided the boys.)

(oh, and apparently this guy is now a comic book critic!)

Someone else was initially excited about this team book with "great art" featuring Robin, Superboy, and Impulse, but was filled with "dismay" that it was "nothing but jokes and parodies" that "made a mockery of the book's three central figures, especially Robin, who has always been a serious hero." He says he will stick with each character's solo book instead. The editor assures him that the book can get serious when it needs to.

(Kon's and Bart's solos, although they could deal with more serious topics, generally had light-hearted, comedic tones in keeping with their protagonists' natures, so I'm not sure what's bothering this guy?)

Another guy, from England, strongly approves of the book and advises them, "don't bring in any unknown or second-string heroes into this book" since it "should be a team for established sidekicks."

He has a list of suggestions, including that each member should be sponsored by a specific adult hero who would train them. He thinks that Mary Marvel should join, that Wonder Girl might be allowed to but "she would have to get a cooler costume or Superboy would not be seen in the same room with her," and that Arrowette might also if she were sponsored by Green Arrow. The editor counters that the kids are doing fine on their own without constant mentor supervision, that Arrowette doesn't need Green Arrow because she's doing fine on her own, and "The current membership is filled: 3 guys, 3 girls and an android."

Another guy (are you seeing a theme) is excited about the addition of girls to the group because it will cause complications like dating and crushes. He asks for Cassie's costume to be changed--he "adore[s]" her, but her homemade costume and wig are "driving me crazy" and she should wear a version of Donna Troy's costume instead. The editor informs him that Cassie's look isn't changing and that it gives them "something unique" because she's "the first bona fide nerd super-hero." She's still adjusting to her role and will get the chance to change and mature over time.

(what is it with these guys and their obsession with female characters as divisive love interests only and hating on poor Cassie's costume?)

Another reader (female, for once!) writes a long letter examining the boys' interactions and how they "still have their rough edges." She critiques Kon in #3 for not realizing that Tim didn't need interference and for being a bad influence on Bart, who tends to follow rather than trying to lead "which is probably for the best. He's much less mature than his teammates." She appreciates Red Tornado trying to stay involved in his daughter's life and hopes Traya will be a regular supporting character.

She is concerned about Traya being out on Halloween by hereself, wonders how anyone is familiar enough with Robin to ask him to host a party since he's supposed to be an urban legend, and supposes that most people in-universe must assume that Kon leads Young Justice. She says that Wonder Girl reminds her of Kon and that "The bragging contest between these two should be amazing." She approves of Stephanie being included,* thinks Cissie is "a good character" and "a bright girl with heroic potential," and is pleased to see Secret again. She asks when Secret and Superboy will get real names. The editor assures her on most of these concerns, including pointing out that "Superboy only thinks he leads the team."

This same reader would go on to write a very nice letter regarding Kon's receiving his name in Superboy 1994 #59. It was good to see her name come up again.

*Steph, for reasons that I'm not sure of, was featured in the Secret Origins special that introduced each member of the team, but she of course turned out to be only an occasional guest star.

[cantsayidont]

I keep seeing people point to the STAR TREK: TOS episode "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" as an example of STAR TREK's progressive bona fides, which really gets up my nose because "Battlefield" is, along with "A Private Little War," "The Omega Glory," "The Paradise Syndrome," and a couple of others, among the half-dozen or so most politically unsavory TOS episodes, a statement of unvarnished white liberal contempt toward the civil rights movement.

First, like a lot of TREK, and like the superhero comic book stabs at "relevancy" in this period and afterward, the episode is, at a structural level, constructed to let the white middle-class liberal hero sit in judgment on contemporary social issues that only incidentally affect him, but which he is privileged to weigh from a position of presumptive neutrality. This is a common feature of the series, but it becomes especially pointed here because when this episode aired in January 1969, no viewer over the age of about 6 would be likely to miss what it was talking about; the episode originally aired just a little over nine months after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

It is noteworthy, then, that the script goes to particular lengths to distance Kirk and the other Enterprise regulars from the racial conflict between the black-and-white aliens Lokai (Lou Antonio) and Bele (Frank Gorshin). Spock goes so far as to insist that they are wholly outside known standards of "genetically possible" "gradiations of color" in humanoid beings! At no point does any of the crew express any sympathy or identification with Lokai; Chekov and Sulu regard racial persecution as an historical curiosity with which they have no experience, and even Spock, who experiences racial persecution on the regular, dismisses both Bele and Lokai as hopelessly irrational.

This is curious insofar as Lokai clearly describes conditions of material oppression that any Black person in America would immediately recognize: He says Bele's people "raided our homes, tore us from our families, herded us together like cattle, and then sold us as slaves," and that after slavery ended on their world, Lokai's people continued to be second-class citizens, "denied the simpest bit of decency that is a living being's right." They were even drafted into "a war on another planet," a clear reference to the then ongoing Vietnam War; this was the era when Muhammad Ali nearly went to prison for refusing conscription. Notably, Bele doesn't deny most of this except to chide Lokai's framing of it, telling Kirk, "They were savages, Captain. We took them into our hearts, our homes. We educated them."

Nonetheless, Kirk's primary reaction to both Lokai and Bele is annoyance. Kirk is not concerned with justice, or addressing historical injustice; his sole concern is the maintenance of Federation civil order. As is often the case on TOS, this is framed in economic terms: The Enterprise is supposed to be heading to a medical decontamination mission on the planet Ariannus, whose urgency is underscored by its importance "as a transfer point on regular commercial space lanes." (Kirk notes that the bacterial contamination he's supposed to address may "render it lifeless unless checked," but he presents that as an afterthought to the commercial urgency of the situation.) Kirk is also concerned with Lokai's appropriation of a Starfleet shuttlecraft, which appears to completely undermine any sympathy he might have otherwise had for Lokai. This also seems to be the position of Kirk's superiors; Uhura reports that Starfleet is entirely sympathetic to Bele and is likely to grant his request "after a hearing at Starbase," once the legal formalities have been observed. (Significantly, the possibility that Lokai might have a claim to political asylum, even temporarily, is never suggested.)

Kirk is SO preoccupied with maintaining economic, civil, and legal order that he's prepared to destroy the Enterprise himself rather than concede any ground even rhetorically. There is an apparently unintended parallel here with the revelation at the end of the episode that Cheron is now lifeless, its entire population wiped out by the racial conflict of which Lokai and Bele are the sole survivors, but the episode pretty obviously expects the viewer to find Kirk's position sensible and principled.

The episode's obvious thesis is that Black Power and Black protest are just as bad as the bigotry Bele represents, a kind of racial horseshoe theory underscored by Spock's eventual declaration, "To expect sense from two mentalities of such extreme viewpoints is not logical." Presumably, the "correct" course for Lokai's people would have been to accept their second-class roles in post-slavery Cheron society, work toward the furthering of economic order, and patiently wait for the "normal" forces of social evolution to bring about justice through legal means, and the episode unequivocally indicates that their failure to do so bears equal responsiblity for the apocalyptic genocide Spock says has taken place on Cheron. (There's an ugly parallel here with the racial politics implicit in the 1968 film PLANET OF THE APES, which kicks off what is at its core a very racist series.)

Throughout the episode, the script tries to play up the irrationality of Lokai and Bele by emphasizing that their conflict has taken place over thousands of years, but because we don't have any idea what their normal lifespan may be (there's no indication that their survival over the course of 50,000 years is due to suspended animation or time travel), or even how long they consider a year, this carries little weight, and it can't overcome the obvious familiarity of the conflict. In the real world, the American Civil War had only passed out of living memory about two decades before this episode was written, and until the passage of the Civil Rights Act less than four years earlier, it was still perfectly legal in many parts of the U.S. to refuse to hire, rent to, or sell to people of color, or to pay them less or charge them more based on race.

That Kirk's crew considers this ancient history is not the problem with the story; the problem is that the episode takes the obvious position that Black Americans should just get over still recent — and still ongoing, now as well as then — injustice and persecution. That's not a progressive viewpoint — it smugly exemplifies what Martin Luther King had called "allies more devoted to order than to justice." I imagine it was infuriating then except to the most self-congratulatory white liberal viewers, and it has not aged well at all.

[ao3feed-brucewayne]

Lost Bats

by collywog_5 SLEEP ALL DAY. PARTY ALL NIGHT. NEVER GROW OLD. NEVER DIE. IT’S FUN TO BE A VAMPIRE. OR “Oh, please.” Green Lantern cut them both off. “For one, Vampires aren’t real: not on Earth, and not in Gotham. I’ve scanned Batman, he’s a bona fide Earthly man. Secondly, Batman is never late, so WHEREVER HE’S LISTENING IN FROM, HE’S BEING AN ASSHOLE AND MMPH—” A figure dressed in a very distinct black and blue uniform tackled Green Lantern from above, rolling him to the ground. The attacker was already two steps ahead, immediately disabling any defensive attempts with his hand smothering Green Lantern’s reactive mouth. He moved with a wild and unflappable force, like a gargoyle, made to endure through centuries of war and frighten away unwelcome visitors. The Flash and Black Canary startled, taking defensive positions. “Shhh,” the man taunted, disturbingly still. Dinah caught the sight of a deranged smirk, and a bird insignia on his chest. “You keep yelling that loud, someone’s gonna come along and drain you of your blood. Do you read me, Hal?” OR, Another DC Vampire AU that is very heavily inspired by Lost Boys. Tags will change! Words: 2911, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English Fandoms: Batman - All Media Types, Nightwing (Comics), Robin (Comics), Justice League - All Media Types, DCU Rating: Mature Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence Categories: Other Characters: Dick Grayson, Tim Drake (DCU), Bruce Wayne Relationships: Tim Drake & Dick Grayson Additional Tags: Canon-Typical Violence, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Cryptid Batfamily (DCU), Unreliable Narrator, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Hallucinations, Mentioned Jason Todd, Batfamily Meets the Justice League (DCU), Dick Grayson-centric, Dick Grayson is Nightwing, Tim Drake is Robin (DCU), POV Alternating, Hallucinating Dick Grayson, Dick Grayson Has Mental Health Issues, Dick Grayson Has Issues, Inspired by The Lost Boys (Movies), Angst, Humor, Banter via https://ift.tt/LKaJUSB