#i like making comics and i think im getting better but like

[erinwantstowrite]

bear with me here because i'm gonna ramble about something i've been thinking about for a while... and i'm not complaining, i'm just noticing

sometimes i think we've leaned so far into the vigilante side of the batfam that we miss out on what really makes their characters: detective work. we need more mysteries in their lives that don't lead up to some big bad "we already know who's doing it" or an "end of the world" or "yet again: this fucking guy." we need more stuff where spy movie music plays in the background and dumb adventures that don't lead up to some huge grand event with a big name villain. the shock factor stops being shocking or interesting in any capacity if we're like "Gah! the Joker! ... Again!" or whatever

does that even make sense? like "yeah sure they're blowing up a building again and there's hostages. oh look they're gonna poison the water supply." these aren't bad and that's not what i'm getting at because obviously this is a classic for comics. you need to have characters/antagonists that show up more than once and who can make a story better by being in it. and i did say to bear with me- that's because im tired. so like i hope im getting this across the right way? it's just that sometimes i don't wanna see a huge explosion, i want these motherfuckers solving a regular murder or a disappearance or regular corruption in a local office without it being tied to a grand reveal like "actually this person knows you as a long lost relative" or "they were at that circus can you guess which night they went?" that kind of thing? if you get me? like... more of the small time stuff makes the big stuff important, it makes it stand out more. at some point, the format gets repetitive even if you're switching up the villains. you can make these situations/mysteries still fun to solve for the characters and fun to read for the audience if you do it right

the concept of a detective dressed as a bat and having a sidekick in traffic light colors is inherently goofy as hell??? but that is what is so charming about it??? i think we have lost the balance between them being silly while also being intelligent with important conversations that criticize the world as we see it and teach lessons and can go over dark topics. nowadays it's always end of the world problems or just straight up the most gruesome true crime you can think of?? or they can ONLY do the dark stuff and the criticism without offering a balance of the good in the world. or we keep coming back to the FUCKING JOKER-

like yes they are vigilantes and with that comes a different level of their work, but their brand should be a mix between a black and white detective film that can get very nitty gritty and a classic spy movie, that kind of thing. at the end of the day, it's what makes them so different from the superheroes. that's what appeals to me.

seeing them in the big superhero groups is fun, don't get me wrong. it's always funny to see them standing next to people who are so powerful they never really fit in with anyone but each other, who chose to step up and use their powers for good. the Bats' specialty is Gotham and yet here they are stopping a god or whatever. and they do stop the god or whatever, all the while being an important leader and strategist to their teammates. they're important to have in these cases. but if there's a world ending event every time i pick something up, it's not as fun

the fact that they are so very human and not fantastical is why i like reading them. it's what makes the joke of people, even Gotham citizens, theorizing about them being cryptids, funny. they're fucking weird but that's because they're detectives. people who love to solve mysteries usually have a fatal flaw of curiosity. they forget the bounds between social interactions sometimes because they're used to working through problems or being intertwined with partners that understand them. but they're very much human. so human that it hurts them in many ways. and idk i've just been thinking about it lately and idk what point i'm trying to get across actually

it's just that in my eyes that's how it really is for Batman- a black and white movie narrated by a very serious man who took up a job to help people, one that has a deeper commentary on the world and viewed outwardly as pessimistic but actually has a deep hope for his city and who tries to help even the people who have wronged others. He's a stationary man in the belief that him being a constant can serve to soothe others and help them move forward. He stays in the middle of the path so he can tell everyone what is up ahead. he blends into the Gotham rainy night to serve justice but in a way that saves both the victim and the perpetrator. (the way he tucks a Robin into his cape is the same he does for Gotham with his mere presence.) and his background is actually so important to his story and yet people still somehow gloss over the lesson from it? he lost his parents because of a man who was on the opposite end of the spectrum to where he was in life. and yet he chose to help the people like the man that killed his parents. he could have done anything else with his power and money, but he instead is choosing to bring as many people up with him as he can. He's Mr. Serious that no one else can get a read on. and yet he walks into a room and he's already piecing together your life and what you're going through because he thinks it matters. he comforts people who have lost something or someone or themselves. I picture Batman and I don't picture a man trying to save the world, I picture a detective walking around a crime scene and trying to save at least one person every time he puts on the cape. and he put on the cape and became a vigilante because then he could go out of the bounds of what laws have been set up- and specifically, Gotham has other people in power who are corrupt, keeping the system that way. that's why Batman being a billionare and throwing himself into helping people at the risk of his own life is so important. he knows that if you are alive, you have something or someone to lose, no matter who you are. the dude is a bleeding heart but he doesn't know how to express it, in fear that if he gets too close, if he moves down the path with them, he'll be lost again

and then he's met with someone who should be a complete opposite, but isn't at all, because they're two sides of the same coin. his partner in crime, his son, a boy that is nothing like the black and white world that he sees. and that's the point in his life where he first sees that potentially getting lost is worth the risk. Robin is color and passion that needs guidance to move forward, but can not do so unless the stationary man learns to move with him. the kid is loud and reckless and you'd think he's from a different genre from the detective but they aren't so different, really. not when you look close enough. Dick grew up moving from place to place and seeing the world, knowing so many different people from different cultures. He's been learning to fly and jump and embrace the free fall his entire life. He's clever and he's sharp, and he thrives in the action and adventure. it's that perspective that compliments the stationary man. one is steady and the other pushes. he's the same genre but a different generation. and Batman introducing him to the way of life he chose for himself was another way he could save someone. because let's be real for a second? Dick would have gone down a very dark path had he not had Bruce, who understood, who saw not just himself in the kid but also saw who the kid has been his entire life until now. he saw Dick's parents, he saw the family he had in the circus, he saw the joy he had in what his family was doing. he saw the grief and the fire and the color that Dick's world was made of. because to Bruce, it always matters. Dick had to come to terms with Bruce's perspective to help anyone who they come across, to always give more chances, and it kept Dick from losing his color

what gets me is that the man who lives in the black and white world can actually see many different shades of gray (because black and white always needs the medium), whereas the boy in a world of color and light can get so focused on the bright that he can become single minded. and yet the boy sees a world of color and delves deeper into the lives of the peolle they come across and can be much more open minded, and the man in the black and white world sometimes forgets the shades of grey are right there. they are just like each other. they can exist without the other, but do they want to? because the black and white can be built up into the colored image, like the inking and shadows drawn on a comic book page before the colors are added in. they meet in the middle to complete each other. Bruce has been passing the story over to the next generation for a long, long time, even before his story was complete. and just like with the first Robin, it was so for every Robin afterwards. they each color in the lines differently, but that's what makes Robin so special, so unique. they are an art style that branches into their own life, but can not forget where they started: tucked into Batman's cape and the inky black of his world

and so detective work really frames their hunanity to me. the mysteries they get their hands on, the glimpses into the lives of Gotham citizens that they swore to protect, it's fascinating. it's what makes their story stand out compared to the people who can lift trucks or cast spells or run around the world in seconds. so yeah ig that's what i'm trying to say? that i want to read more of that? in both canon and fanon. cause even the small time villains we see can be like. AWFUL people and it takes out the fun of their gimmicks. and if it were any other day this would be a more coherent post but alas, it is not any other day

[superemeralds]

i think about ur piece with shadow captioned “welcome to the promised land” ALOT… with that, i wondered what your thoughts are on the sonic movies (both the ones that came out and the new one thats coming) in regards to their portrayal of the police/military/GUN.

I’m personally really disappointed in whats been done so far (with Tom being a cop, like cmon man what. and with the goofy portrayal of the military, especially that old general guy in the second movie) and im really nervous about whats coming, with team sonic working WITH GUN (and now Tom and Maddie wearing military uniforms) in the trailers. I have a suspicion that Maria’s death will be an “accident”, like a very MCU style “sometimes the military makes mistakes…” bullshit. itd really suck to see this series become another piece of copaganda, especially since like. its so out of character, like sonic is unique in the way its been blatantly anti military (for the most part) in the games. it wasn’t revolutionary by any means but it is arguably a core part of the original story.

What are your thoughts? sorry for the long ask, I’m a big fan of your writing and thoughts on sonic (huge heart of a monster fan!). Hope youre having a good day!

big same. I've made the comic in question as a response to the first trailer for sonic 3 actually.

the trailer made me feel a LOT of emotions, mostly negative if im honest, and the only thing that I liked from it was the scene of shadow bursting from his tank thing and being sloppin wet that looked like he was standing in the rain. so i went and made a comic of shadow in the rain. and i made it as anti military and anti capitalism as i could.

becasue sonic 3's marketing, in my opinion, especially after the second trailer came out, is a perfect axample of everything wrong with the current western (mostly USA, but the USA influences the entire world so.) society. it exemplifies capitalism, militarism, consumerism, a lack of emotional depth and the infantalization as well as mliking (for a lack of better word; i mean how advertizements are usually heavily marketed at kids because parents will buy anyhting to shut up their crying annoying meat bags and therefore spend money on shit they dont want nor need) of children (that detective pikachu bit was so painful). and let's not forget the fatphobia. it was so painful to go back and watch the first trailer to freshen my memory for this reply oh god.

when sonic 2 came out i was really happy with the movie. i think sonic 2 is miles better than 1 in terms of characters and fun, most obviously because there's more of actual sonic characters in it now then the first. the first felt mostly like a pilot honestly. the second one had much more fantastical details and elements thatreally leaned into sonic's world. Or at least... the environment artists tried with it. I remember being OBSESSED with the fact tehre was a mural of perfect chaos in that labyrinth for like 1 second and theorized about what it could mean. while watching the movie i even speculated it was foreshadowing that perfect chaos was gonna be the secret final boss of the movie as that was only the halfway point of the runtime. having sobered from the hype i understand its a neat detail from the cg department that means absolutely nothing.

the worst thing is that the movie (sonic 3 now) itself might be like. a well made movie with good (enough) writing and good visuals and whatever. sonic might betray the military and go his own way bc here he's a little younger and he's learning (he didnt grow up w military so he might be blissfull yunaware bc hes only been fed propaganda through hollywood movies so far) and him meeting shadow and learning about his fate might change his mind. we don't know yet.

The marketing sometimes is detatched from the movie itself so it'll misrepresent things for the sake of "bait" to get ppl to spend money to watch it (the teenage kraken movie suffered from that bc it was fun imo i liked it). Or even just to get people to make viral reactions to get even MORE news of the movie out and attract more people. Especially when adapting a story that already exists I think it makes them reveal a LOT of the movie (I saw ppl complain they reveal the entire movie in the trailer, i think given the fact we already know all those key moments shown it's fine)

actually. does anyone know if the us army funded this movie? i know it does a lot of movies ever since iron man

idek where im going w this rn im just. eghh.... def not gonna see it in cinema ♥ my money goes towards literally anything else

[the-exiled-comic]

I get what you mean, as a (different) ClanGen comic blog creator myself x.x It’s definitely gotten harder to manage the sort of public responses and interactions when it comes to those kinds of asks. People being rude or parasocial, or outright asking you to tell you the entire future plot over and over again, or jumping to crazy conclusions and not listening, or otherwise not treating you like you’re a living human being with a life behind the screen. The amount of asks I’ve had to delete or ignore (or even fans I’ve had to block) because of how bad the ask culture/“content consuming culture”/fan interaction has gotten, it’s exhausting. Very very exhausting. I’m surprised you haven’t turned off asks completely, I’ve had to do that multiple times now just to give myself mental health breaks from it all. I love drawing and I love creating so I don’t think I could ever stop creating comics, but my god sometimes I really wish I could upload my things to a vacuum where I could just create without ever seeing any of the fan responses to it haha

yeah its rough out here. theres a lot of very positive comments and thoughts directed at comics too, so its certainly not all bad. might be bold to say, but the world is a better place with our stories and i dont think we should ever feel forced to stop sharing them but there is a ratio of negativity thats much higher than we would all like, and i just wanna encourage people who may feel negatively to keep it to themselves unless the author outright asks for critique. and to just re-read or drop the comic if it is so confusing or frustrating

i actually did have the ask box closed for a while, i dont remember how long. it was after firespots betrayal, there was a lot of really upset people and at some point there were over 100 unanswered asks from weeks of build up that i just purged and closed it for a while. i dont mean to threaten to take away things bc i know i enjoy reading insight from creators i like. but sometimes i dont want to deal with it and sadly it IS because people are mean or they talk about my characters in ways that make me feel like im a bad writer or that they hate what i made

[chimeofthecomet]

Can we have Race with adventure for the request plz🥺

gotta post this before i go to sleep !! thank youu anon for the ask and apologies that it took so long to get to it fhdhsj but here we are,, tried to think of a pre-canon racetrack moment i hope this is alright for characterisation and stuff 🫶

[catgrandpa]

Is there a newer version of Tim’s origin canon? I’m reading A Lonely Place of Dying rn and it seems so different than what I’ve seen in fandom.

Y’all led me to believe he tracked Dick down to Blüdhaven, said ‘pls sir, Batman needs you! 🥺’ and was promptly shoo’d away.

My mans broke into his apartment when he wasn’t there, went through his personal shit, stole a family photo, and tracked his ass to Haly’s Circus. He then took out a bad guy, and somehow convinced Dick to take him back to the manor where he scared the shit out of Alfred. And then he said ‘pls sir, Batman needs you! 🥺’

God he takes after Bruce so much, no respect for personal boundaries and was a manipulative little shit from the very beginning.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

I'm sorry I let down my guard.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[greatestjubilee]

bleh

[luck-of-the-drawings]

[<==PREV PAGES] [NEXT PAGE==>(not out yet.wait a year.or maybe more.imagine.]

saw alot of comments on prev pages; saying 'i HATE that mean teacher! im gonna FIGHT HIM!!' & i LOVE the energy!! it WOULD be nice. to have that catharsis. but the story of young tidestrider is Not one of catharsis. it is a story of being so small and so special and sucking so bad.

[batboopp]

i like ghostmaker and batman as narrative foils not in the “ghostmaker is incapable of forming relationships with or feeling empathy for others, therefore batman is better” way but in the fact that ghostmaker IS better. literally. more stronger mentally, emotionally, physically. stronger in the way he carries himself and how he sees himself and how he treats others (depending on your definition of strong) and yet, he’s still so so miserable. he can lie to himself all he wants, or ignore everything but blatant fact, but it still doesn’t change the fact that even though he follows batman’s “I work alone” rule better than the actual batman ever could, he still loses to bruce in some way. bruce was willing to shoot someone for khoa, willing to follow and stay, and khoa straight up couldn’t handle it. therefore, he is worse in the one thing that makes batman, batman. that nothing will ever tie him down, no matter what. not Bruce or his city or his rouges.

except, that’s not entirely true anymore, is it? because this time, he does stay. he meets Bruce’s kids and indulges bruce in banter and playfighting and even fake ‘dates’. he stays, and leads, batman inc. and he does it considerably better than batman. of course, he still kills people. he can barely stand batmans kids and the feeling is entirely mutual. he still treats others as expendable next to his mission. but, he stays. he stays with bruce, with someone, in some way this time. he’s learning, he’s willing to learn.

[skrunksthatwunk]

love like you / maternal pang

bonus under cut:

the first stephanie + the maternal pang tone destroyer i couldn't include bc it's a serious comic

[skitskatdacat63]

Happy Birthday to Seb, and Seb only.

+ some explanations

I realized as I was making this, some of the little stuff probably only makes sense to me, and maybe people who have been following me for a while atp. So I wanted to explain some of the little details I included cause I really love them!!

First of all, I wanted to incude my original sketch for this(from like 5 hours ago lmfao), bcs I find it sooooo cute. Look at him!! Little guy!

I. Fernando's Gift

This is of course a reference to the Fernando teddy bear, but more specifically to the vettonso comic with the bear I drew a while ago. As you can see from my sketch, this is the first gift I came up, which I'm pretty happy about!! It's always so cute to me no matter its form. Though...I don't think teddy bears existed yet in the early 1700s, but Fernando found a way, okay? I like to think Fernando is all gruff in the beginning, but gives Seb this or something similar and remarks "to keep you company when I'm back in Spain," and then he has to pretend he has food poisoning rather than living with having said something so sappy.

II. Mark's Gift

I don't think this is really a reference to any specific post of mine. Dog!Mark is just an important Mark characterization in general, but especially in boy king au where he is really reduced to the status of dog by virtue of his upbringing and vocation. He definitely plays this off as wanting Seb to get another hunting dog(something he advocates for often. Seb knows it's entirely self motivated but loves to humor him bcs its cute to see how much he loves dogs. Well Seb loves dogs too, one dog in particular-)

III. Jenson's Gift

AAAAHHHH I'm so proud of this one bcs of how many leves there are to it!! I couldn't for the life of me think of what Jense would gift him but then I remembered I characterize him as horse obsessed(read: ye olde carfucker.) So this is basically the ye olde version of him getting Seb ultra detailed minatures of his cars. HOWEVER this is also a callback to one of my favorite posts I've ever made, back when I translated Seb's car names into Latin. So it was fun to actually get to canonize that in a way. ALSO! BTW! Those horses are specifically Lipizzans, which are a very iconic horse breed in the Habsburg Empire and Vienna specifically. A horse breed sought after by the Habsburgs for both war but also riding schools, and they still remain as the breed of horse trained in Vienna's Spanish Riding School today. The emperor Seb is based on comissioned the school's main riding hall, and his portrait still hangs above where the riders enter. So I thought that was a fun little easter egg to include!

Also the characterization in this is so funny. I guess I'd consider them a polycule, like they're a unit and all have interesting relationships between each other. But one of the main focuses is the kinda love triangle between sebmarknando. Like Mark and Fernando constantly fighting for Seb'cs undivided affection and attention. But as per usual, Jenson, who is on the sidelines, swoops in effortlessly with the most perfect gift ever. I feel like he understands and gets along with Seb the best out of the three, but just doesn't want to deal with such a complicated thing so he's satisfied being a bit distant(he secretly takes a lot of joy one-upping the other two. It's impossible to not crave your ruler's attention, no?)

[weaverofink]

Reading the archie sonic comics is such an Experience bc I'm always somewhere between "wow sally is such a cool character" and "girl you've GOT to put a shirt on"

[trincketbox]

So I've played that game with my brother were you're supposed to make a list of characters that remind you of each other and-

This is how I see him

This is how he sees me

What do y'all think? He's trying to insult me or make me cry out of tenderness?

[decodedparagram]

What If Oscar Was An Avatar Of The Eye Comic :)

I saw someone say that a priest would be the perfect avatar for the eye and my brain rotted and this came out of it

I have *a lot* of thoughts about Oscar being an eye avatar (most being that he would tell Arthur to fuck off in their first meeting if he knew how many strange shit he always has in his way) but I'm going to say it tomorrow because I'm to sleepy to form coherent thoughts and also the arthur in the third picture is the most arthur i have ever arthured in my career and im very happy about him.

Also get ready fuckers because I'm aligning every single malevolent character with an entity and I'm going to draw *so much*

[masterfuldoodler]

girlbossed too hard.... unless...

[lemongogo]

can i ask.how u guys practice ur creativity <3 how u practice ur imagination or like.. how u experiment with ur art, how u come to ideas and how u develop them.<3 pretty please <3