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ghosthan · 4 years

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hello!! i saw that you made a lot of stuff for 1872 and i was wondering if 1872 tony is similar to regular comics tony?? i know mcu and comics tony are different and i want to get into 616, but if 1872 comics are more easy to read i might try those first! 😅

Hello, hello!

Thank you for asking, and sorry it took me so long to get back to you! I wanted to think about it and put together a thoughtful response because I am desperately trying to convert MCU fans to 1872. Or comics fans who just haven’t gotten into 1872.

This post will contain some 1872 spoilers, but not the Big Spoiler that you probably already know about anyways.

Anyways, let’s get into it. Yeehaw.

What is 1872? It’s Steve/Tony in the wild west.

1872 comics are very easy to read, very short, and you need absolutely no prior knowledge to get into them; I highly recommend these as a start point for MCU fans who are curious about dipping their toes into some of the other Steve/Tony universes. And 1872 is, indeed, a Steve/Tony universe. It’s really gay, (and dramatic.) Uh. So gay, in fact, that one of the comic artists who drew pages even occasionally shares Steve/Tony shipping memes. So.

Marvel 1872 is a four issue series released as a part of the Secret Wars event; you really do not need to know anything about this to enjoy 1872, because it is a self-contained alternate universe in a “pocket dimension”, meaning it’s totally separate from the 616 cannon but technically exists in the expanse of the multiverse!

Here’s the summary:

In the Battleworld zone of 1872, Sheriff Steve Rogers faces corruption and fear in the boom town of Timely. Can Anthony Stark pull Rogers' fat from the fire? Probably not, since the only thing he seems capable of pulling is a cork from a bottle. Things in Timely are bad, and getting worse — and when a stranger arrives in town, Timely will be changed forever.

Now, to compare “regular comics Tony”, or 616 Tony, with 1872 Tony.

The main difference? 616 Tony wears this sexy little under suit (or nothing) under his armor, like this:

And 1872 Tony wears dirty, stinky one-piece pajamas under his armor (not sexy):

He’s so gross, he’s a mess. I love him. You’ll love him, too.

No, okay. Being serious.

616!Tony’s backstory is a lot more complicated just due to how long the character has existed, and the decades of cannon (much of it self-contradictory at points.) Like MCU Tony, 616 Tony used to manufacture weapons, experiences something life-changing, and becomes who he is as a result of this as a catalyst. 616 Tony’s backstory has been rebooted a few times, and I’m definitely not the definitive source on Iron Man lore compared to people who have read all of his comics, but I’ll try to touch on the basics.

Originally, 616 Tony Stark is shaped by his experience in the Vietnam War. This is later rebooted and changed to war in the middle East (we see this in the MCU when Tony is held captive in Afghanistan.) In both circumstances, he is taken captive after being in the air for war technology, and then he creates the suit to save his own life (losing a beloved mentor in the process, the guilt of which stays with him after.)

Tales of Suspense #39

In 1872, Tony’s formative event is the Civil War in some ways, but in other ways, this is only half of it, because this is not the event which causes him to build armor or set him onto his “become a better person” trajectory, like in the other comics. Mainly, the Civil War functions to cause Tony to stop weapons manufacturing and throw his life away down a bottle.

We get a flashback of Tony in the year 1862 with his female companion, picnicking and about to watch a battle, (rich people from the North did this in real life. If you’re interested, read more here!) We don’t get much of his past, but we discover that he is a rifle manufacturer and that he has created something called the ‘Stark Repeating Rifle’, and it seems that he has done so with the hope of encouraging a cease-fire, more than a slaughter.

Well. We don’t always get what we ask for.

Tony vows to actually never touch a weapon ever again, and this personal oath means so much to him that he gets creative at times during 1872 when he’s being chased by baddies:

Witnessing the extreme bloodshed of the Civil War, and feeling responsible for a huge amount of deaths, Tony turns to drinking, (and presumably moves to the west to escape the Pain of his Past, but this is not shown explicitly on panel; I have assumed, though, that Tony’s weapons manufacturing company was in the East, probably Boston or New York, since he comes from family money and because the American West was still “young” at this point in time so it would be unlikely that an established business would be supplying a war from lawless territory with little infrastructure.)

In 616, it’s worth noting that Tony builds the armor to save himself from danger in a war scenario; this is not the case in 1872, things unfold a bit differently. The Civil War certainly sets in motion the chain of events that eventually lead to the creation of Tony’s armor, but he’s not in physical danger or physically traumatized by the war in this verse as he is in other verses, and 616 Tony seems to have a stronger sense of duty than 1872 Tony, but this might be a complication of the depression/apathy related to the alcoholism.

What I mean by this is that both iterations of Tony struggle with alcoholism, but differently. Mainly, while 616 Tony has several alcohol themed arcs, and hits rock bottom with his alcoholism to cope with his trauma, he is sober more than he is drunk in the comics. His drinking almost kills him, and he almost loses everything because of the drink. It’s a source of enormous shame for him.

In fact, during this time in 616, I think Tony at his lowest reminds me a lot of 1872 Tony; 616 Tony is not an apathetic person and he holds himself accountable for an obscene amount of responsibility, but during what is referred to in fandom as The Second Drinking Arc, Tony basically gives up. This is the most “like” 1872 Tony, at least at the start of his arc. Rhodey takes over the mantle of Iron Man, and 616 Tony spirals, not caring whether he lives or dies, not hero-ing certainly.

We see both versions of Tony express similar sentiments, a certain cavalier attitude about their lives (and outright suicidality at other points) with nothing left but the drink.

Iron Man Vol. 1 #182

Compare with:

And you can certainly see a resemblance between this set of panels from IM v.1 #176 and in 1872:

Iron Man Vol. 1 #176 and Marvel 1872 #1

It’s a little different in 1872, where his drinking really is purely a result of his existing despair, and it doesn’t cause enormous problems for him, (minor problems, sure. He spends a lot of time drunkenly singing to Sheriff Rogers, or bothering him from the inside of a jail cell.) But this Tony lives at rock bottom, whereas 616 Tony only stays at rock bottom long enough to get his life back together (as many times as it takes.)

This Tony really doesn’t show any outward shame about his drinking; presumably, the people he knows in Timely have only ever known Tony as a drunk, and none of the people from his old life are here to see him like this.

This is a Tony who has essentially given up on himself and has moved out West to hide from his shame and his past; this is not a Tony who is scared of letting down his friends by drinking, or scared of shirking his “duty”, because this Tony has moved away from all of his friends and has given himself no duties. He’s a bit more apathetic, but I would argue that this is not because he inherently is a less moral version of Tony, but because in this verse, he was drinking for a very long time and circumstances unfolded differently so it took him a longer time to find that sense of purpose and responsibility (beyond just shutting down manufacturing guns,) which is awakened in him by Steve Rogers.

616 Tony’s sobriety is a major part of his character, and a conscious choice that he makes, even during some lowest points:

Civil War: The Confession

He takes some amount of pride in his sobriety, and when he does fall off the wagon at times (or magic makes everyone think he did,) it absolutely tears him up because 616 Tony cares very, very much about his sobriety and does not like who he is when he’s drinking. We do not know if 1872 Tony’s father had been a drunk or not, but we know 616 Tony’s father was, and that the drink lead to him treating Tony abusively.

Iron Man Vol. 1 #285

Avengers Disassembled #1 (This was when ~magic~ made Tony drunk and it wrecked him breaking sobriety without ever having actually drank. Oof.)

616 Tony’s long struggle with alcoholism is a major part of his character and he has had relapses over the years and throughout the reboots, but in general, he does not drink.

1872 Tony starts drinking in 1862 and doesn’t stop until the last pages of the story, so in terms of the cannon we have for him, he is a current drunk, rather than a former drunk. This isn’t to say he doesn’t stop; but since it’s in the last page or so, it sets the reader up to imagine his sober future, rather than exploring his sobriety as 616 does. (Calling all fanfic writers!)

Anyways, both Tony’s are excellent. Both are damaged and traumatized, both are Iron Man in their own ways, both (eventually) find sobriety, both have some cute, quippy dialogue (though 616 Tony tends to be more reserved/polite for sure, in general).

The last thing I’ll point out, is that both Tonys’ narratives are intertwined with and influenced by their respective Steve Rogers. I’m not saying soulmates but I’m saying soulmates.

Anyways. Sorry this post got super long, and I apologize if any of it is confusing or redundant, I am not functioning at my highest capacity currently. Please read 1872. Let it rock your world. Create & consume the fanworks, I would love to see a boom of 1872 content (more than the fics and art I keep making!) And my ask-box is always open!

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maxparkhurst · 4 years

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How did you create your characters? What was your process?

TMI Tuesday: How did you create your characters? What was your process?

// <offers out a chair> You’re going to want to sit for this. It’s going to be a LONG story. For those who’re looking for a short answer: I’m actually in the middle of creating these two. Edits and tweaks are always being made to make them appear real and true. And it’s thanks to everyone on here and in-game that they’ve progressed so much.

Now for the long version.

Evolving as an Author:

Maxinora and Augustine Parkhurst are a culmination of ideas inspired by a myriad of things. The process of creating them isn’t linear. It has a lot of pit falls, unexpected twists and turns, and a ton of hills. To understand how we got the current versions of these two, we need to go back a couple years ago.

It’s the summer of 2012. In efforts to get me off of his account, my Dad gifted me my own. This was when I made my first ever serious roleplay character- a hunter named Evelon Holmwood. Well, at the time I spelled it like Evavllyn but...Yeah. We’re going to gloss over that fact. Now, Eve was my pride and joy for the last several years. I played this character nonstop, refusing to play or write about anyone else. In retrospect, I used this character more as therapy than anything of creative merit.

Eve’s story was basic at best. But I got better with story-telling the older I got. Unfortunately, her story got so convoluted that I had hard time salvaging anything from it. Now, you’re probably asking: How does this relate to Max? Fear not. I’m getting there. It was around this existential crisis that a mutual friend of my boyfriend and I convinced us to leave WoW and hop on SWTOR. My boyfriend was more than eager to make the switch but I was skeptical. Leaving WoW meant leaving Eve. And was I ready for that?

He assured me I was and helped me make a character on SWTOR. This was the first iteration of Max. A bounty hunter from Nar’Shadda named Maxinora Fenrik. My intentions was to make her a lowkey copy of Eve. At this time, I wasn’t very confident in my writing abilities and liked to stay in my lane. But, the more I roleplayed this character the more she took on a life of her own. She evolved past Eve and exceeded my expectations. Playing a new character bolstered my confidence and while I no longer play SWTOR -due to OOC reasons- I still have fond memories with this character. I enjoyed this character so much that I reused several components of her design when making Max. Some which include her name and being blind in one eye.

I flipped between the MMOs when Legion dropped. Expenses started to pile up and between the two subscriptions I didn’t have the time to play both. In the end, WoW won my affection and I made a Blood Elf because I had friends on Horde Side. Rorien Hawkthorne was her name. A drunk artist and master assassin. She’d be the second iteration of Max. She had an older sister complex, an affinity for being melancholy, and it was my first experience with playing a character who could kept secrets- or tried to at least. Another new character under the belt and I was feeling a little more confident in my story telling abilities. I’d probably would’ve kept playing that character if not for OOC drama happening in a guild I was in. The fallout had me jump back to the Alliance where I indulged in creature comforts. It was back to Eve.

Tumblr made an entrance in my life around then as I ventured forth with a refreshed look on my hunter. I salvaged what I could and made a half-decent story. A lot of her misadventures are still posted up on her blog @evelonholmwood On the side I made the third iteration of Max. A fire mage and blacksmith combo by the name of Rowan Celwick with her younger brother Thomas Celwick. They were just two orphaned kids trying to make a life in Stormwind. Rowan was an arcane drop-out and blacksmith wannabe and Thomas...Was...Well? Thomas? A glorified side-piece? A way to garner pity for Rowan. I didn’t place a lot of emphasis on them or their characters. My main focus was Eve. But these two would be the underlying foundation of Max and Auggie’s characters.

I eventually took a hiatus from WoW and focused on more personal writing. The details are boring so I’ll gloss over it by saying that creating a character completely from scratch was the final push in the right direction for me. Fast forward several months to a year aaaaaand BOOM! Pandemic.

Writing is an escape for me. It’s one of my best coping mechanisms during trying times. And when nothing else works, I over indulge in some Warcraft. So, I resubbed. There was hesitance when re-entering the RP scene. I didn’t leave Eve’s story off on an convenient note. For lack of better phrasing, I wrote myself into a hole I couldn’t get out of. So, with the help of my boyfriend, I decided it was time to give Eve her happy ending and shelf her for good.

Which put me in a dilemma! Who was I going to RP? Well, you remember the Celwicks? They became my newest project.

The Creative Process:

I knew the Celwick story was weak and read much like a middle-school fanfiction. Revising was a must. But there were integral pieces to their story which I enjoyed:

Familial Sacrifice

Juxtaposing concepts

Intertwined Fates

These were themes I could work with and evolve. Keeping these in mind, I started to deconstruct the Celwick story line. They were no longer Gilnean but Kul’tiran. This prompted a name change from Celwick to Parkhurst. And I won’t lie, I like the sound of Parkhurst better than Celwick. Thomas became Augustine and Rowan became Maxinora (Mainly because I actually HAD the name Maxinora and not Rowan). The little changes got me hyped for the characters.

Next, I started to trim away the unnecessary details that bogged down the narrative. Things that either didn’t fit or made the timeline too convoluted were replaced. Pyromancy was a great example. The age I wanted Max to be wouldn’t yield to her understanding of Pyromancy. At least, not to the level I WANTED it to be. SO, I turned it into lament’s magic. Alchemy. (I also always wanted to play an alchemist since watching FMA)

A girl with two professions seemed excessive as well. I had to look at why I wanted her to be both an Alchemist and a Blacksmith. The answer was simple. I just liked the juxtaposition of an intelligent woman being rough and tumble. Which made me ask: Was Blacksmithing necessary to achieve that imagine? The answer was no. To pay respect to her previous iteration, I made their parents blacksmiths. It also let me keep themes of fire in her concept. The change in profession brought on a change in her appearance. I made her a little more slender to fit with the alchemist appeal.

Max’s aesthetic was brought on by my previous characters. Rorien inspired more internal facets of Max while Fenrik inspired outward appearances. Max’s auburn was strictly a decision made on the fact that I had one too many character’s with black hair. There wasn’t any other reason for it.

Designing Max was easy. The real challenge was with Augustine. Up until that point, all I had to go on for his character was Tommy Celwick and...Well. There wasn’t a lot there. He wasn’t much more than a poorly used trope and I considered doing away with him all together. But I realized that I REALLY liked the trope and I liked what he did for Max’s character. So, I buckled down and made myself think through all the reasons why Thomas Celwick -AKA Augustine Parkhust- needed to exist.

I decided that I needed him in order to present themes in Max’s story. He was the foil to her character. Cynic older sister? Meet optimistic brother. He also appealed to not only the three themes listed above, but also the newest one I wanted to explore: two sides of the same coin. Max and Augustine are simultaneously the same, having similar traumas, and yet different. If for nothing else, Augustine could help propel Max in the right direction. Be her moral compass, you know? With a bit of half-assing here and there, I managed to get a decent character out of Augustine. Took the cliche nerdy brother idea, physical design and all, and ran with it. Shortly after I made their Tumblr account. In no way did I expect this BOY to take on a life of his own. Like, Auggie knocked on my brain’s door and was like, “Yeah. No. I’m not a side character. Give me my own story...”

Which will bring me into my final point!

The Characters Write Their Own Story:

I’ve never been able to sit down and plan a story. My mind doesn’t work in such a structured fashion. It wanders and explores. When I’m creating, I’m watching. Watching the scenes play out before my eyes as these characters take what I’ve given them and grow into something almost independent of me. The basic pieces of Max and Auggie’s back story, along with character design, were purposeful. Yes. But everything that came after was THEM.

It’s cliche, I know, but I can’t describe this experience any other way. These two grew outside of my influence and now dominate a space in my brain. They talk, work, and interact without me. I mean...Not REALLY. But...It feels like that. It feels I’m watching through a keyhole and just recording what I see as their story plays out.

I guess a better analogy is me being the director. I’m watching the movie in the stands as two actors improv. On good days, I’m in control and rework scenes until I’m satisfied with the results. Try this. Move here. Say this. On bad days, I don’t see anything. My actors went home. The lights are off. Show’s cancelled for the day. These days make me sad...But they’re worth it because on the BEST days...The best days Max and Auggie run the whole show, and I am watching through the keyhole as their story unfolds little by little.

It’s truly magical.

The last part of their creation was the voice. Character voice, for me, is like building muscle. You need to work out. Start small and work your way up in weight. Every little piece I wrote made their voices stronger; and that’s including asks and threads. Interacting with other characters helped to flesh them out as people. And while it was hard and intimidating at first, it’s started to become easier.

Wrap-Up

My method is messy and untrained. I don’t claim to have any secrets. My knowledge of writing is mediocre at best. But I’m having fun. And that’s were the real magic of any character comes in. Fun. Because if you aren’t writing about something that sparks your soul- either with love, happiness, hatred, etc- then it’s nothing more than a forced, hollow husk. Writing is meant to evoke emotion. At least in mind. And want to express complex emotions and share them. In a perfect world? My characters -any of my characters- resonates with someone. They become the escape someone needed. That’s the ultimate goal.

It’s thanks to all of you that Max and Auggie have come this far. It’s from their interactions with others that they’ve managed to evolve into something incredible- especially Augustine. He just kept shining brighter and brighter until I felt obligated to make him an in-game character. So, you all are just as much a part in the creative process as me. Thank you!

And a special thanks to my boyfriend for always being a sound board for my rambling ass <3

THANK YOU FOR THE ASK, ANON! Sorry I posted an essay...<3

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teatitty · 5 years

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SO ABOUT BRUCE’S LOVE-INTERESTS

First of all I think we need to address why he has so many compared to other DC characters. Well, my good people, this is very simple: his writers are bad. A lot of his love-interests simply existed for the sake of a story and most of the time the reason they don’t work out is because, and I’m not bullshitting here, it’s part of Batman’s nature to be so obssessed with solving crime that he can’t maintain a serious relationship with women. And Bruce Wayne’s relationships fail because of his constant absences and secrets.

That being said, sometimes his relationships fail for other reasons. So let’s get this started shall we?

Category One: His Major Relationships

These are his relationships that have consistently shown up in many continuities and were, in fact, attempts on giving him some kind of serious girlfriend, regardless of how the writers failed.

1: Julie Madison. Julie’s character has changed a lot in the different continuities but originally she was an actress who broke up with Bruce because he refused to stop his “playboy ways” even when she confronted him about them. In one version she goes on to marry a man in Europe. In New Earth her hair was changed from black to auburn and, instead of being an actress, she was the daughter of an entrepeneur.

She broke up with Bruce when she learned he was Batman and that her father had been killed as a result of Batman’s action. She moved to Africa and became a missionary. In current continuity, Julie is an artist and her father is an arms dealer who sold the gun that was used to kill Bruce’s parents. They first dated as teens but met again when Bruce lost his memories (amnesia stories yaaay). Bruce was so passionately in love with her, that he was even ready to settle down and marry her. Unfortunately, in his absence, Gotham’s crime had skyrocketed and Alfred and Julie had to, regretfully, give him his memories back so he could be Batman once more. This also erased his memory of being with Julie.

In The New Batman Adventures comics, Bruce and Julie dated right up until Bruce found out she was only after his fortune. That’s just how it be in comics sometimes. She also appeared in the Batman And Robin movie but her character added little to the plot and most of her scenes ended up being edited out in the final cut.

2: Victoria/Vicki Vale. Vicki Vale was created to be Bruce’s version of Lois Lane (yeah it’s no wonder this never worked). They got involved because she made it her life’s mission to expose Batman’s identity and ended up dating Bruce in the process (it’s also worth noting she was already suspicious of him being Batman). Her character hasn’t had a lot of changed over the years and, surprisingly, has managed to keep most of her original characterization.

She disappeared from the comics when Julius Schwartz took over the editorial office in 1964. She was re-introduced in the early 1980′s by Gerry Conway but idea was ill-advised as her character had very little development and was instead the same old concept of someone finding out Bruce’s identity. Doug Moench was mainly responsible for slowly removing her as Bruce’s love-interest, though she has since returned to that role. In Batman: The Road Home, Vicki finally got proof that Bruce was Batman but decided to keep it to herself and instead became a confidante and ally of the batfamily, rather then Bruce’s girlfriend.

She appeared in Tim Burton’s Batman as well, but was a damsel in distress throughout the film and only learned his identity through happenstance rather then because she was seeking it out.

In various other continuities, she’s been shown as an occasional date for Bruce Wayne.

3: Selina Kyle needs to introduction but her influence in his life is so long and extensive she’d need a post of her own to cover it all. You’ll be pleased to know that there have been quite a few stories where they’ve managed to sustain a relationship and be happy together.

4: Talia Al Ghul. Obviously we all know her for being Damian’s mother, whoever Ra’s himself has encouraged her relationship with Bruce, because he wants to try and recruit Batman into the League of Assassin’s.

Originally, Talia was very devoted to Bruce and loved him as much as she loved her own father, even saving his life on multiple occasion’s, though she always returned to her father’s side afterwards. They had a sexual encounter that lead to the birth of Damian, as we all know, but over time Talia became more antagonistic towards Bruce, seeking to fulfill her father’s goals and rule with Batman by her side instead. However, he rejected her proposal and she declared war on him (yikes.)

In Batman: The Animated Series, her character was practically the same as her comic iteration. She returned in Batman Beyond where Bruce was horrified to learn that she’d given up her body for her father (yeah. That’s a thing).

In Batman: Arkham City, Talia and Bruce had a romantic background and cared very deeply for eachother, even willing to risk their lived to save the other’s.

On Earth-16, Bruce broke all ties with Talia due to her conflicting morals; her love for Bruce vs her loyalty to Ra’s.

In the Dark Knight Rises film, Talia is an executive member of Wayne Enterprises who becomes romantically involved with Bruce. She eventually takes over the company and tries to destroy Gotham per her father’s mad design.

Category Two: Minor Relationships

These are his love-interests who have only appeared sporadically as options for him over the years, rather then being a consistent thing.

1: Amina Franklin. Originally someone who worked as a nurse at Leslie Thompkins’ clinic, Amina met Bruce at a party and they started dating shortly after. Her brother, Wayne Franklin (I know), was the villain called Grotesk (original name there buddy) and Amina was killed during a confrontation between him and Bruce.

2: April Clarkson (Midnight). If the name Midnight strikes any familiarity to you, then you’ll know who April is. She was a GCPD officer who briefly dated Bruce and helped Batman track down the gruesome murderer Midnight (yeah his track record is great isn’t it? In her defense April only killed the corrupt dudes but like. Still). Bruce was pretty torn up when he learned this because he had very strong feelings for her! Alas what can ya do, right?

3: Bekka. Bekka saved Batman’s life from Darkseid’s forces on the planet Tartarus and the two shared a mutual attraction (Bekka is also Orion’s wife. Yikes.) She was later murdered (in my mother’s own words “another one bites the dust”).

4: Black Canary. Yes seriously. Despite her long-standing romance with Green Arrow, Dinah has shown attraction to Bruce on numerous occasion’s and the two have even shared kisses before (Batman: Brave and Bold #166 and Birds of Prey #90). On Earth’s 31 and 37 this attraction is way stronger.

5: Charlotte Rivers. A news reporter in Gotham, Charlotte wanted to leave the city which put a rift between her and Bruce. After her twin sister, Jill, made an attempt on her life, Charlotte dumped Bruce and took a job offer in Paris. Ouch.

6: Dawn Golden. Dawn was the daughter of cult leader Aleister Golden, who practiced Dark Magic. Dawn was a childhood friend of Bruce’s who dated him in college and apparently broke his heart (lmao). She became a socialite and then her dad murdered her as part of a dark ritual to give himself eternal life. Yeah.

7: Harley Quinn. YEP HERE’S ANOTHER ONE. Harley has had occasional romantic encounters with Batman over the years, specifically in the Animated Series when she kissed him in the episode Harley’s Holiday. In recent N52 canon, there’s been a couple of stories where Harley has ended up infatuated with Batman or Bruce Wayne. They’re all one-sided feelings as far as we know, however.

8: Jaina Hudson (White Rabbit). Another name that might be familiar to those who know Bruce’s villains. Jaina was a socialite of Indian descent who met Bruce at a charity fundraiser. Later Bruce found out she could duplicate herself into two beings: herself and the scantily clad (its comics what do we expect?) criminal White Rabbit, who had, more than once, lured him to other villains like Joker and Bane.

9: Jezebel Jet. A wealthy woman of African descent, Jezebel was a model who owned an African province and secretly worked for Black Glove. She gained Bruce’s love as a ploy to destroy him during Batman R.I.P and was later killed on Talia’s orders.

10: Jillian Maxwell. Jillian met Bruce at a costume party in Batman: Legends of The Dark Knight Halloween Special #1 (wow thats long). It turned out, however, that she was actually a woman who used many different personas to seduce wealthy men before orchestrating events that led to their deaths so she could take their wealth. Wild. When Alfred told him this, Bruce was heartbroken. Jillian used the name Aubrey Marguerite in Brazil and Bruce, as Batman, tracked her down and left a note ordering her to confess her sins.

11: Julia Pennyworth. Daughter of Alfred and French Resistance fighter Mademoiselle Marie, Julia was introduced to the comics in by Doug Moench in the early 1980′s. Efforts to make her a romantic partner for Bruce proved difficult with the presence of Noctura and Vicki Vale (guess why he writ her out of comics lol).

12: Kathy Kane (Batwoman). Strap in lads this one gets Weird. Kathy was made in the Silver Age to be Batman’s female counterpart and romantic partner. Many stories showing the two getting married were published though in the main canon at the time her feelings for him were one-sided. On Earth-Two, Kathy resigned herself to live without his love and on Earth One she was murdered by the League of Assassins. Grant Morrison wrote stories featuring her in New Earth canon bc he liked using Silver Age comics for inspiration. She was eventually replaced by Katherine “Kate” Kane, a lesbian who got discharged from the military for homosexual conduct (in New Earth as well). In Prime Earth canon, Kate Kane is Bruce’s cousin. So yeah. There’s that.

13: Linda Page. Adapted from Batman serial (1943), Linda came into the comics during the Golden Age and was a former socialite who worked as a nurse for the elderly, disproving the idea that rich women were lazy and spoiled. She dated Bruce for a few issues but fell through the cracks and disappeared.

14: Lorna Shore. Lorna is a Museum Curator from the Lovers and Madmen story in Batman Confidential. Her relationship with Bruce was love at first sight and he was able to find peace with her for the first time since his parents’ murder (look. I know). However, after his first encounter with Joker, Bruce broke off their relationship to keep her safe and Lorna left Gotham soon after feeling that the city was no longer safe bc of Batman and Joker.

15: Mallory Moxon. Daughter of mob boss Lew Moxon, Mallory was a childhood friend of Bruce’s who dated him for a short time when they were kids (I know) before they drifted apart. They dated again as adults even while Bruce suspected her of continuing her father’s criminal operation. He never found conclusive proof.

16: Natalia Knight (Noctura). Another character created by Doug Moench in the early 1980′s, Natalia was the most remarkable of Batman’s love-interest’s at the time. A jewel thief who briefly adopted Jason Todd and knew Bruce’s identity, Natalia had a rare light sensitivity disease that bleached her skin white. She used a special narcotic perfume that caused men to fall in love with her and Bruce was no exception (yeah...). They started dating because they were both “equally fascinated” by eachother (Y E A H). Bruce realized his love for her was because of the perfume and struggled to stop thinking about her. Nocturna was stabbed by her brother during Crisis on Infinte Earths and floated into the sky on her balloon, presumed to be dead. Other versions of her character have appeared since but none of them are the same as the original pre-Crisis version.

17: Natalya Trusevich. A Ukranian pianist, Natalya grew frustrated with Bruce’s closed-off demeanour until Alfred had him reveal his secret to her. Abducted by Mad Hatter soon after, Natalya was tortured in an attempt to get her to spill Batman’s identity. When she refused, Mad Hatter threw her off the helicopter to her death.

18: Pamela Isley (Poison Ivy). Here we go again lads. Ivy, as we all know, uses seduction and pheromones to get men to fall for her and obey her commands. This is no different with Batman, who initially confused the lust caused by her methods for love. Ivy has a love/hate relationship with him: sometimes she claims to love him and desires his affection and other times she has no problem wanting him dead. They had a brief but genuine relationship when Bruce cured her condition but this ended when Pamela seemingly died trying to turn herself back into Poison Ivy. Yikes.

19: Rachel Caspian. In Batman: Year Two, Bruce fell in love with Rachel. Unfortunately her dad moonlighted as a murderous vigilante who committed suicide. Bruce was prepared to end his crime-fighting career to marry her but Rachel broke off their engagement and enrolled into a nunnery to pay her father’s penance after learning of his evil deeds.

20: Sasha Bordeaux. Assigned as his bodyguard, Sasha deduced Bruce’s identity as Batman and briefly fought at his side. Framed for the murder of Bruce’s girlfriend, Vesper Fairchild, Sasha later joined Maxwell Lord’s Checkmate Organization. She was turned into a Cyborg during The OMAC Project but this was resolved later. Though she did kiss Bruce near the end of OMAC Project their relationship passed on.

21: Silver St. Cloud. Appearing in the late 1970′s in the story Strange Apparitions, Silver was a socialite who, despite deducing Bruce was Batman, couldn’t handle dating someone with such a dangerous life-style (fair enough actually). She left Gotham but returned years later in Batman: Dark Detective where she and Bruce tried to make a serious romance work. This fell apart after she was kidnapped by Joker and later on Silver was murdered by the criminal Onomatopeia.

22: Shondra Kinsolving. A psychic and half-sister of Benedict Asp, Shondra had a brief romance with Bruce when she helped heal him after Bane broke his back. Before they could fully commit to eachother, Benedict kidnapped her and turned her abilities to evil use. Batman defeated him but the damage to Shondra’s mind was too great and, after healing Bruce’s injuries, her psyche regressed back to childhood. Bruce paid for her to have the best intensive care for the rest of her life in a psychiatric institution.

23: Vesper Fairchild. A popular radio host in Gotham, Doug Moench (jeez dude chill) established her romance with Bruce during his second run of Batman in the 1990′s. During the No Man’s Land Crisis, Vesper left Gotham and was killed by David Cain on Lex’s orders. This started the Bruce Wayne: Fugitive storyline.

24: Diana Prince (Wonder Woman). Briefly dating in the comics, nothing actually came of their romance and they both decided to simply stay good friends. They did, however, still care deeply for one another and it was this love that allowed Diana to become a Star Sapphire during the Blackest Night storyline. They were also paired together in Justice League Animated.

25: Zatanna Zatara. Bet you weren’t expecting this one huh? The first time they had romantic interest was in Batman: The Animated Series where they met in their youth. Bruce gave priority to pursuing his training to becoming Batman and they met again as adults but nothing came of their interest. This was later introduced in the comics. They had a major falling out when Bruce discovered Zatanna had windwiped him after he’d caught her mindwiping Doctor Light at the JL’s instruction. Bruce made it clear he didn’t trust her anymore but they later resolved the issue and became close friends again.

Category Three: Other Media

These are still minor relationships but as a whole they didn’t really happen during main continuities. Basically these are romances specifically from films, crossovers and the DCAU.

1: Andrea Beaumont. In Batman: Mask of The Phantasm, Andrea was engaged to Bruce before he became Batman but she broke off said engagement when she fled the country with her father to escape the mob. She then became the title villain of the film.

2: Barbara Gordon (Batgirl). Probably the most infamous for making everyone go “wtf”, Barbara had a heavily implied past relationship with Bruce in Batman Beyond and had sex with Bruce on a rooftop in the animated Killing Joke adaptation.

3: Lois Lane. In a crossover between The New Batman Adventures and Superman: The Animated Series, Bruce and Lois dated eachother to Superman’s annoyance but Lois broke up with him after learning his identity as Batman. During a 3-4 issue long amnesia storyline in the Batman/Superman teamup comic, they also shared romantic feelings for eachother and kissed right before Bruce restored his own memories (dont. Ask).

4: Rachel Dawes. She was his childhood friend and love-interest in the Dark Knight Trilogy. Like. That’s it.

And there you have it! All of Bruce’s gf’s aired out for everyone to screw their noses over! This wasn’t worth any of my attention but fuck it! It’s done!

#random facts #bruce wayne #the suffering i went through for this #tw: suicide mention

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gothamloveforever · 5 years

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May 3, 2019 Great article about how the Gotham cast wants to reprise their roles!

In closing out its final season, Gotham launched viewers to the point in Gotham City's future when Bruce Wayne finally returned to his crime-ridden home turf in full Dark Knight glory. Of course, the episode held its focus on all the other colorful and iconic characters that have populated Gotham throughout its five seasons, granting Jim Gordon, Barbara Kean, Oswald Cobblepot, Ed Nygma and others a fond comic-book-infused farewell. But could these characters return in our future one day?

The #1 hope, of course, is for another network or studio to hurry up and pick up where Gotham left off, but even if it takes time, there are feasible ways to jump back into Gotham's story. It's not likely that every single cast member would be able to pick back up where their characters left off, but CinemaBlend asked a handful of stars, including Cameron Monaghan, if they would be down to return. Let's run through their answers.

Cameron Monaghan - Jeremiah / J / The Joker

Of all the elements that made Gotham such a blazing romp, its greatest weapon was the sporadically utilized Cameron Monaghan, who inspired increasingly Joker-esque pandemonium as both Jerome and Jeremiah Valeska, as well as the finale's Mr. J. Oker. (Not the actual character name, but wouldn't that be a hoot.) Thinking about Gotham returning in the future without Monaghan's sadistic villain – or even just his laugh – is a bummer, so it's a good thing we don't need to do that.

CinemaBlend spoke with Cameron Monaghan for this year's Television Critics Association winter press tour, which took place ahead of the finale's airing, but after the principal photography was shot. The actor was very pumped for fans to get a load of Jeremiah's final turn, and I had to ask if he would be interested in reprising Gotham's version of The Joker in the future. His response:

“Yeah, maybe. I think that it just depends on the context that it's within. I think that this specific version probably wouldn't be used if I was to return to it. It would be in a different capacity. It's like one of those things, because The Joker, to me, is like the most distilled version of an antagonist ever, and he is the counterpoint to whatever he's in a scene against. And he needs to shift depending on the context around him. So if I was to return back with these characters, he would probably be different, and reinvented again, you know? It's one of those things where he has to be completely tailor-made to the tone and the story of whatever it is he's a part of. So I would be willing to go back if the story was good and it made sense, but it would probably be different.”

The last time we got to see Cameron Monaghan's Joker was in his first face-off against Bruce Wayne's Batman, although it was a severely short-lived one. The scarred-up J took a Batarang through the hand, and then one to the top of the dome, which knocked him clean out, though it definitely didn't kill him.

Considering the finale was viewers's big introduction to the post-Arkham Jeremiah, it would make total sense for his next appearance to head down a different creative route. Assuming the next Gotham project would get to feature more of Batman, that would automatically change the writers' approach to weaving a Joker storyline into it. And I'd love to see it, if someone can just make it happen. Someone?

Ben McKenzie - Commissioner Jim Gordon

If there was a load-bearing character on Gotham, it would definitely be Ben McKenzie's Jim Gordon, as close to a working-class superhero as there is. The fact that the finale even hinted at him trying to quit the GCPD was surprising, given the character's legacy, but the story obviously worked itself out in Gotham City's favor. Even if he had to shave to make it happen.

I also got to talk to Ben McKenzie during TCA, where we talked about him facing fellow former teen hunk Shane West as Bane. McKenzie is a pragmatic actor who loved his time on Gotham, even if he didn't flip out with excitement over Batman's arrival. But would he return to play Jim Gordon again someday? His answer:

Sure. Possibly. I mean I think that, in the right context, sure. I think this, for what we were doing here, we really bookended it in a way that feels true and honest to the characters that have been fleshed out here. So this feels like a real ending. But if in the future, it were to come back around again in some way, yeah of course, I'd always be open to thinking about and talking about that, and doing it possibly. I mean, I've mainly played three characters in 15 years, you know? Three different shows, and each of them kind of stick with you a little bit, and it's fun to re-explore and think about again, if you haven't thought about them a lot.

Three different shows that might seemingly have three very different fan demographics, too. Ben McKenzie starred in both the teen drama The O.C. and the non-comic cop drama Southland before hanging his hat in Gotham City, and I've no doubt that fans of both of those shows would love to see them get revived in some form or fashion.

Regardless of any of that, though, Ben McKenzie sounds like he'd be willing to slick his hair back anew to lead the GCPD against whatever dangerous threats lie over the horizon. Just imagine if the newest recruit on the squad was his Southland character Ben Sherman, and if Joker's newest henchman was The O.C.'s Ryan Atwell.

Robin Lord Taylor - Oswald Cobblepot / The Penguin

After five seasons of watching Robin Lord Taylor committing some Penguin-lite acts as Oswald Cobblepot, Gotham fans were introduced to the most genuine iteration of The Penguin that TV has seen since Burgess Meredith waddled around for the 60's Batman series. The penultimate episode injured his eye to set up the monocle, and a rough decade in Arkham Asylum led to his weight gain and heightened levels of frustrated anger.

I got to talk to Robin Lord Taylor on the phone just ahead of the finale's airing, and he seemed to still be riding that one-of-a-kind Gotham high, championing the work he got to do alongside Cory Michael Smith as Ed Nygma. When I asked Taylor if he would ever want to get uncomfortable in The Penguin's signature garb again in the future, he was down, but only if his co-stars were making the return with him.

“Absolutely. I totally would. It would have to be the right circumstances. I don't think I could do it...in fact, I know I couldn't do it unless the actors I worked with on Gotham came back as well. It's like, there's no way I could be in a scene with a different Riddler. I couldn't do it. It wouldn't be justice. It would be blasphemous to what we had done before. So again, if the circumstances were right, in a heartbeat I would be there.”

As great as Oswald and Ed were in Gotham's first 99 episodes, seeing them in pure Penguin 'n' Riddler glory was a gloriously batty punctuation mark on the series' run. (A question mark, of course.) Any follow-up version of Gotham would be severely lacking if Taylor's Oswald and Smith's Ed were absent. However, Robin Lord Taylor wouldn't begrudge another team picking up where the Fox drama left off. In his words:

“You never know. All I put out there is that whoever takes up the mantle of the Dark Knight or any of the amazing characters that we got to put in Gotham, that they have as beautiful a crew and cast as we have. Because that's really the success of the show. It was built on the backs of many. No one takes full credit for being successful in this show. We all came together in this spectacular moment, and I feel like we just made something really amazing, and I'm just so proud of it.”

Again, it should be stated that any future Gotham-y project that doesn't have Robin Lord Taylor's Penguin and Cory Michael Smith's Riddler is not the ideal iteration of that project. So other decisions should probably be made. Soon.

David Mazouz - Bruce Wayne / The Dark Knight

David Mazouz's potential to return to Gotham's universe would a little trickier than what would happen for the others. As viewers witnessed – or didn't witness, as it were – Mazouz's Bruce Wayne was completely absent from the series finale, which wasn't announced ahead of time like Camren Bicondova's absence was. (She was replaced as Selina by Lily Simmons.) That was, of course, due to the actor's young age not exactly matching up with Bruce's for the finale's flash-forward.

As such, I didn't directly ask him about reprising Bruce Wayne for a future Gotham project, I did ask if he'd be down to play Batman on the big screen. His answer did not take long to formulate.

“Oh, absolutely. I think I would need to be a little bit older, a little bit taller.”

"I know there's a new Bruce that's going to be cast soon. I'm sure whoever they cast is going to do an incredible job. All I can say is that it's my philosophy that if you're going to do something, do it well. There's no point in doing something a half-assed. That's kind of always how I've functioned. So I feel because of what I've taken on, I sometimes decline challenges because I say to myself, 'I know I'm not going to be able to do my best on that.' And that's not acceptable to me. If I do something, I'm going to do my best. And I think this job was no exception, and it's pushed me to some limits and it's challenged me in ways that I'm forever grateful for. I feel like this role has changed me in so many ways, and this experience has changed me in so many ways, and all for the better. And I know it sounds so cliche and like, you've heard it a million times, but I'm just so grateful. It really comes down to that.”

All that said, David Mazouz spoke so highly of his experience on Gotham, especially in the final season, that he would very likely return for more small screen vigilantism should anyone come calling. Now, someone, start calling!

Gotham is over on Fox now, but there's always the hope for more in the future. While waiting for Season 5 to hit streaming, you can watch the first four seasons on Netflix, while Hulu is still hosting the final five episodes of the series.

#Gotham #Cameron Monaghan #ben mckenzie #Robin Lord Taylor #David Mazouz #interview #life after Gotham #save gotham

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alterlifes-a · 6 years

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tag muns you want to know better; repost - don’t reblog.

What inspired you to try/create that muse/s: well , if you’ve been with me long enough then you know that tooru started out as an AU ! o.ikawa t.ooru, where instead of attending s.eijou , he went to s.hiratorizawa ! to be honest , i kind of just wanted to try my hand at writing that kind of thing ? it was the very first time i had made a tumblr rp blog , so i had no idea that people rp different verses of the same character on one blog !! i originally rp’d on deviantart , and it was very commonplace to have different blogs for different verses ... i had over 70 rp blogs on there and most of them were literally the same 2 characters but in different AUs LMAO ... so imagine my surprise when i saw people rp’ing different AUs on one blog ... RP’ing multiple muses on one blog ... !! but i kinda just stayed with my iteration instead of playing canon ! kawa anyway , since i didn’t really see the point in starting over . as tooru developed more , though , i began to use him as a venting tool because this was a part of my life where i was really depressed . but as time grew on and i eventually made him into an OC , he became a much happier character . he really is my best friend ; he’s been there for me through it all , and even though he’s just fictional , i really owe him a lot for helping me out during rough times .

What is inspiration for that muse/s: well , currently , a lot of things ... lots of music , japanese culture + religion , and also my own experiences . in general , i have a p.interest board for him , so ... maybe you could say i draw inspiration from that , too ! i also rly enjoy the band MILI . their songs really fit tooru , like ‘ bathtub mermaid ’ . i’ve also been listening to hello , again and am planning on drawing something based on it for him ( + the song’s prequel , “ goodbye ” ) . i mainly tend to daydream while listening to songs , so ... yeah . as for characters who serve as inspiration for tooru ... well , i think that’s an artist meme , so i might just fill it in in lieu of answering this properly lol ... but two i can think of off the top of my head are leon from f.ire e.mblem e.choes and n.eferpitou from h.xh !

Thread/AU that made you really happy: B.NHA AU ... !! i’m hyperfixating sm on that one ... idk , a lot of planning and plotting goes into it , esp since a lot of my mutuals are in the fandom . in particular , i love love love the story i’ve created with @noquirk . i literally cannot envision a more perfect plot for tooru in this verse . heck , it’s literally my main go - to timeline when i draw / write for it . tooru is , quite literally , not very much in this AU without deck .

Something really special on your wishlist: sh ... more ships ... ships to draw and animate and make animatics to ... also i need to get my butt into gear and finish my JRPG AU group lol .

Something you are looking for in short future for your muse: blease tooru help me get thru the school year ... also i have some animatics in the back burner so i’m looking forward to getting those done !

Share something related to your muse!: his canon story , in parallel motion , deals with existentialism and alternate universes . ultimately , it’s a story that serves as a physical manifestation of my own struggle with depression , and while it’s sombre in tone , i want it to tell whoever’s reading it , “ you matter . ” it’s why tooru is placed into so many marginalized groups ; he’s fat and trans and biracial and bi and suffers from bpd + depression + anxiety but he’s a good person through it all ... his story is tragic because he’s not allowed to exist and will be forgotten when he dies , but his existence impacts so many other characters’ lives ... it’s a butterfly effect kind of thing . because you exist , you’ve made so many peoples’ lives better . and i understand it’s rough and i understand depression + sucky real life aspects try to convince you otherwise , but just ... think about it . there’s an alternate universe where , because you don’t exist , something huge was probably impacted . and even on a smaller , more intimate scale --- if you hadn’t existed in another life , then one of your friends might not be here . they might not be as happy as they are now , because you make them happy . life can be awful . but it’s wonderful and beautiful , too . that’s what i want tooru to be to others . someone to look up to and relate to , and someone who tells you , “ it’s okay ! ”

What do you think about character’s design/how do you came up with this: he’s ... kinda generic LOL mainly cause he’s based off of o.ikawa looks - wise due to his origin ... but part of his looks also derivate from an old ask blog muse i had :

i just really like that bangs - over - one - eye hairstyle ngl ... also i have no idea how / when his hair became maroon - brown since o.ikawa’s hair is chestnut brown , but ... yeah . also have no idea when he gained red eyes HDKJSFS,,,, i find fangs appealing on a character though , so that’s why he has fangs and does the :3c ... honestly i think i kinda just slapped together what i like in a design and put it on him , so even though he may look like an NPC ( lol ) , he’s still appealing in my eyes .

What your muse taught you: how to love being alive ... ( i’ve actually written an essay for a class about how he’s helped me through depression haha ... he means a lot to me , can you tell ? )

What is roleplay for you: all of you are awful and yet here i am anyway so really this says more about me than anything else .

Just say something nice about other mun!: @onfaith you are my ANGEL you mean sm to me and i wish u all the best with your studies / @tikkvn i love u sm cass ur an amazing person n a wonderful existence never forget that / @juuheart notay is my fave bleach chara also ur art is so cute / @wuvlite if i die all my money goes to u so u can keep drawing holy SHIZ ur art is #inspiration / @queznak ur very interesting and charismatic as a person !!! / @uzvisen idk how to spell ur url this took me 3 tries but also ilysm / @conhnhaketon i also cant spell ur url but i hope ur doing well n ur eid was good , ik we’ve both been busy but i would live for u / @quirkthief ur one of my fave ppl i will forever tag u in shibes also i’ve supported u in u saying afo was hot even when he looked ugly n now i get to watch everyone who made fun of u writhe bc he is rly rly hot hahaha / @noquirk you’re so talented pls never stop what ur doing / @aerve you’re rly cool !!! 100% support u in everything u do ! >:0 / @starbooms aries ur so creative ugh ... ur mind !!!!!! ik we don’t talk much but ur v fun / @bendsair i forget what other blogs ur on but chris ur the coolest #TalkRomania2Me / @creatied we don’t talk much either but ur graphics r so aesthetically appealing wowzers !! / @daimnas i’m wuv you amari !! also my french sucks but uhhh comment ca va ( i’m too lazy to find the accented ‘c’ dsfhi ) ?? / @soarsun i’ve only known u for a few weeks but if anything happened to u i would kill everyone on this website n then myself / @quirkgifter nanners is the coolest n nana is the best grandma in town / @natsutodoroki im so jealous u got a canon url as ur rp url LMAO but also ur rly cool n fun even tho we dont talk too frequently ! / @lechors LINNEA I WILL DIE FOR U RIGHT HERE RIGHT N--- / @ YOU READING THIS BC I’M ABOUT TO FALL ASLEEP : YOU’RE AWESOME AND GREAT !

Tagged by: stole it from @queznak Tagging: whomstever

#no formatting im heading 2 bed bye bye shkfjs #long post /#long post #meme .#what’s up —– i’m ru ‚ i’m 19 ‚ and i never h*ckin’ learned how to read . / ooc.

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ayankun · 6 years

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GOTHAM

insanely rambley HUGE spoiler-ridden seasons 1-4 thoughts under cut

FIRST OFF LET ME TELL YOU I GOT CHILLS

Secondly, let’s think back to how I felt about season one. A little loose in the narrative, not so much weaving threads as having threads, ones that you keep expecting to pull tight but more often than not just get dropped for other, shinier threads. All leading to a surprisingly effective character-driven season finale that hopes to prove to you that a few meandering plot points can still add to a sum greater than the parts.

(Oswald goes from umbrella boy to King of Gotham, Bruce Wayne starts at the site of his parents’ murder and ends up taking his first steps into the Batcave, Jim enters as this black-and-white idealist and winds learning from a mob boss that even good men sometimes get their hands dirty to get the job done. A socially awkward unrecognized genius has a psychic break, leading ultimately to the fall of Edward Nygma and the rise of the Riddler.)

Season two is a blur. A period of transition from Jim “Good Cop” Gordon Fistfighting Corruption into... Gotham City: Arkham Asylum’s Backyard. Think how much season one was about only Fish Mooney vs Falcone vs the GCPD and Cobblepot doublecrossing everyone he meets, and how much seasons two and three and four were about the Riddler and Valeska and Tetch and Ra’s al Ghul (and Valeska). We have the bring-everyone-back-to-life at Indian Hill period to thank for the sudden left turn into the Strange.

WHICH IS NOT A COMPLAINT.

There are so many types of Batman stories, and there’s a time and a place for both Joe Chill and Killer Croc. Gotham started in one and always knew it was headed for the other.

And B.D. Wong as Strange is a DELIGHT and I really appreciated his dynamic with Miss Peabody. Speaking of, the bomb defusing scene was a real gem omg lololol give the woman some damn water already.

At the same time, the Fish storyline was like WHOA what EVEN is haPPENINg at any given moment. And it ultimately didn’t amount to much? There’s so much waffling between the surviving gang camps where everyone’s either got a kill-on-sight order or a owed-life-debt to each other and the pendulum swings back and forth so quickly it’s not really worth holding onto how anyone feels about anyone else. That dead/MIA character will come back or the rivalry will be revived or the long-held grudge will be recalled if and when that plot point is going to be drafted, but other than that everyone’s friends and that’s ok.

And like. Ivy??? Ivy Pepper??????? Why is that ride so wild??? There is no cause and effect, only next next next. It’s insane. Maybe watching this all at once rather than over the course of four years lends a different perspective, but holy cow. Such a ballsy way to do whatever with a character you never had a plan for.

Which brings us to Barbara Kean?! Season one she was there because they knew she was a Mythos Character but then they were like, wait, whateven is she for though? Which is a fair question, since having her be the Little Lady Trophy Fiance meant she was a boring and needless character wasting space, not standing on her own and hardly informing Jim’s character either. So what to do, what to do. How about we kidnap her, put her through some insanely cruel physical and psychological abuse, make her a psycho-revenge-bride, put her in a coma, have her come back as a 100% Arkham Villain, give her a hench(wo)man, have the henchman KILL HER, have Ra’s al Ghul waltz up out of literally nowhere and say “lol, borrow this arcane mojo for a minute, I’ll want it back later or will I” and now she’s a kingpin of Gotham’s underworld with her own mini League of Assassin?!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Like. Even if they never had a plan going into it, I’m pretty okay with most of what they came up with. Better than the lil wifey hanging out at home and having one passing remark about curating a gallery that we never saw and was never mentioned again.

Better off a once-crazy, once-dead mafiosa than the less inspired handling of Miss Kringle. I won’t even get into that trainwreck I-only-exist-to-validate-manpain-of-my-murderer wait I said I wasn’t going to get into it.

So Nygma! Like I said when I got started with the show, the season one Edward Nygma was crafted as this painfully unsympathetic offbeat loser and I think they fully succeeded with that characterization. The emergence of the Riddler persona was a welcome change, an upgrade, a spit-shine into something clean cut and confident and stylish. But I like that, compared to the Penguin, the posterchild for evil-psychotic-villain!Protaganist, for example, they held on to a lot of Nygma’s unlikeablilty in that he’s still an ass, even more of an insufferable egoist, and SO CRAZY he can’t even read himself (which was a big thing about the character before he split in half, so in itself that’s pretty great).

I don’t know. Maybe you like him and I’m supposed to like him. I think he’s exactly what he ought to be, and while I'd never want to see him marched off a peer with a bullet in his back, I’m more than happy to see his fellow villain-Protagonists knock him around once in a while. Penguin and Mooney and now Lee (?!) and Zsasz even are the kind of villan!Protagonist you really root for. But if it’s any one of them vs. the Riddler, they’re definitely not going to lose. Nygma’s like in his own category of villain!Protagonist Antagonist.

Of course, the post-Arkham-proto-Riddler who was running Oswald’s mayoral campaign, now HOT DAMN that was a storyline I could get behind. I almost actually believed they were going to do something great in the Nygmobblepot arena and that was a magical moment. I think the resulting blood feud, as painful of a 360 as they come, was a sounder storytelling decision and more in line with the show’s Schroedinger’s Frenemies mentality.

And his season four storyline with the Ed Nygma persona challenging the Riddler was a nice full circle. Sort of closing the gap between this raging banana nutball and the razor-sharp criminal mastermind he could be if tried. Not SUPER THRILLED with his creeping on Lee but, with all due respect, that’s par for the character so again I say I don’t think I’m meant to like him??

I just spent half this rant on the Riddler so I guess they’re doing something right.

Ok so Cameron Monaghan’s VALESKA TWINS. Let’s get right into it, shall we.

Holy smokes they did everything right on this one. Loved the Primal Fear treatment of his introduction, and the way this random circus kid just so happens to start displaying jokey traits that astute viewers will start to suspect that this could be the big bad we’ve all been waiting for --

and then they kill him.

WOW

I was so ready for this kid to grow up to be the Joker, and they rip that dream away and replace it with an idea that anyone can grow up to be the Joker, and damn if that isn’t the nicest treatment of the character’s fractured and obfuscated origin story. But. THEN!

THEY BRING HIM BACK and it’s everything you wanted him to be. He’s just so good. There’s just the right amount of (IMO, anyway) Hamill-homage in what is otherwise a fully imagined Character who is instantly recognizable as one of many iterations but at the same time outclasses them all. The high-level narrative and dialogue stuff, the stuff they create for him to do, I mean, is all great. And then Monaghan brings this manic A++ game to the table and blows it out of the water. Best Joker performance? Arguably so, especially when you consider

JEREMIAH VELASKA because this kid can’t stop having stellar Joker performances. He’s like, two and a half, three of the best Joker performances on the books. Jeremiah’s distinct visual style, the characterization, AGAIN with the obfuscated we-are-legion origin story hocow. NO COMPLAINTS HERE.

Anyway so if that’s what we get in return for sending Fish Mooney through a narrative meat grinder, then I guess it’s an even trade.

Pengiun. What to say about Penguin. I loved what they gave him in season two, a ton of character stuff because his plot stuff of rags to riches had played itself out. I felt real bad for his mom, but I really liked that he went and made himself mayor, and even while his story arcs tend to go riches to rags and back again, it’s never not a pleasure watching him claw his way up to where he thinks he ought to be.

For the most part they do a good job stringing together these different Protagonist story-groups, keeping in mind that most of these groups serve mainly as antagonists amongst themselves (when they’re not being buddy-buddy to serve some winding end). So when you get the villain!Antagonists you can really tell the difference. I got a little yawny while we were setting up Fries, and by the time we finally locked Tetch up for good I was very grateful. These will never be main characters and the show knows it and wants you to know it, too. So while they’re the main on-screen villain, it can get a little stale because the same effort isn’t being put into their lasting appeal.

Um. Jim Gordon. Another thing I liked about season four was a strong return to GCPD bidniss. Season two there was a lot of GCPD, but with Captain Barnes and the strike force and Galavan, so it was a completely different narrative animal than what Gordon was throwing down with in season one. Then Gordon goes to prison and after that he doesn’t go back to GCPD until well into season three, and by then the story’s about Mario and Tetch and Lee and omg I forgot about Valerie Vale until this very moment whoops.

As was hinted in the season one finale, Jim Gordon went on a very twisty path through the mud before he figured himself out again. Killing Galavan was like WHAT JIMBOY and that wasn’t even the worst of it. What I liked most about his stint as a PI was the character’s eventual acceptance that the law isn’t the be all and end all of righteousness, and that there are other means available when enforcing peace and justice. Not necessarily by killing every evil mayor you come across with your own two hands, but the eye-opening to the virtues of vigilantism is super important when you realize he’s going to be Batman’s main ally down the line and this time in his life is going to be what ultimately allows the future police commissioner to legitimize this kind of shadowy ninja behavior.

Anyway, in season four, Jim kind of comes back to roost at the GCPD, and finally ousting Bullock as Captain was rough but obviously warranted, and with only one season left that was a good time to do it. Harper was a nice addition and I’d like to see more of her as a standalone character. (Similarly, Fox has fit in nicely with the cops, but I’m not overly hankering to see more of his day to day antics.)

What was my real point? I really liked the Gordon vs the GCPD dynamics of season one, and while obviously that’s not a story you can tell forever, it did inform the sense that the police force is a living entity that can serve you very well if it trusts you, but before that can happen you really have to jump on its back and break its will LOL.

Also, remember Renee Montoya and Harvey Dent? Yeah, I don’t either.

SO BRUCE WAYNE, MY FRIENDS.

Gotham is my very most favorite Bruce Wayne story, and much as Batman: TAS is my forever-reference for most Batmany things, Gotham is going to be my heart-canon for Bruce Wayne origins.

It’s one thing to say, “ok so this rich kid watches his parents get murdered in an alley, and from this moment on he vows to do something about it and makes himself a master detective/martial artist who puts on a mask and a cape and runs around at night smashing thugs’ heads in for justice” like it’s a foregone conclusion, a straight-forward A-to-B process, and a wholly other thing to show us, step by step, how he learns to become the thing we all know he’s going to become.

In season one he was this quiet, morose but driven child who didn’t know what to do with this crisis he’d been handed. He’s a kid who sits in a pool with his whole clothes on, trying to hold his breath for as long as possible because he has no idea how else to become better prepared for handling his issues. But he has Selina and he has Alfred and he has Fox and he has Jim Gordon, and he will have the Court of Owls and the Valeskas and Ra’s al Ghul who will all play a part in handing him pieces of himself until he has a full set.

He started with this strong sense of right and wrong, a deeply seated desire to put his talents and his money to some sort of use, an earnest diligence towards bettering himself in all ways, and little by little he gets shown just how much of a fragile and defenseless baby he is. That time Alfred accidentally-on-purpose clobbered him in the eye -- that was the moment Bruce found out they’d all been pulling their punches with him and that he still had so so so far to go.

Of course, at the particular moment, he was going through a well-earned rebel without a cause phase (which will do him well when he calls on those behaviors for the benefit of a wider audience), so I don’t think that realization hit him at the time. BUT I NOTICED. Sure he’s got a bulletproof suit and he can look Jim Gordon straight in the eye now and he can fling himself off rooftops like a champ (and when Alfred gave him the keys to the Batmobile I cried a little), but he’s no Batman. Not yet. Not quite yet.

But you can see without a shadow of a doubt that he’s gonna be! Instead of this “Bruce Wayne woke up as Batman” story, we get a look at all the day by day choices and experiences that inform, shape, and depend on Bruce Wayne’s core identity and the way that they will collectively create Batman.

Now, David Mazouz may not have the character acting chops of a Pinkett-Smith or a Taylor or a Monaghan, and he may not be as comfortable living in a everyday character like Pertwee and Logue do so effortlessly, but there’s a steeliness a Bruce Wayne should have, a hauntedness, an idealistness, that Mazouz emotes in spades. Sometimes his Bruce Wayne does a stunt or pulls a pose that Mazouz KNOWS is Batman territory, and while his awareness of “I’m doing a cool thing look at me doing it” is a little distracting--it’s also SUPER EFFECTIVE and I fall for it hook, line, and sinker.

I’ve always been one of those fans who’s way more interested in the lives and characters of the secret identities (compared to the heroics of the super identities) so hot diggity dog is this the show for me. All Bruce Wayne all the time. When we he does put on the mask, it’s all the more powerful for knowing who exactly is wearing it and what’s driving him to do these borderline insane things.

Not 100% sold on Ra’s’ “I saw this in a dream” strong-arm prophecy, feeling like it steps on four years of Bruce Wayne’s self-determination. Not 100% on how they introduced him and his aims and his baffling reincarnation(s). But I am 100% on the pronunciation of “Ra’s” because I’m aware that Kevin Conroy et al figured it out somewhere between TAS and Arkham Asylum, but it’s something that they never quite got in Arrow. (Oliver consistently uses “raysh” but everyone else is a grab bag between that and “rawz”.)

For that matter, David Mazouz consistently pronounces Ra’s with two syllables, so there’s also that. Wait, hold on. In Gotham they also draw a hard line between Ra’s al Ghul, the man, and “the demon’s head,” some sort of mystical power of time travel and flashlightiness. Give one point to Arrow for not being that bizarre.

Long story short, the shot at the finale where Gordon’s waiting on the GCPD rooftop with the spot light and Bruce Wayne stalks up behind him was BEAUTIFUL. (They also did the thing some episodes earlier where Bruce peaces out on Gordon when Gordon’s mid-sentence with his back turned and I laughed a lot)

Looking forward to their take on No Man’s Land. Here’s a short story for you at the end of this long story:

One time I was reading No Man’s Land volume by volume from the library. It was tough because I checked the first time and they had the full set, but then you never knew that the next one was going to be available when you went in for it.

So I get out of the car one day and look there’s a quarter on the ground. Neat. It’s mine now!

Going into the library, there was a cart of used books for sale by the door. 25 cents each. Hell, I’ve got a quarter now, let’s see what they got.

What they got is the No Man’s Land novelization. For 25 cents, or, in my case, free.

So I read that instead, and turned out I liked it way better than the source comics. I have a hard time reading comics? I tend to not look at the pictures, and certain art styles aren’t my jam. Also when it comes to narrative capabilities, there are different tools and effects inherent to each form, and I appreciated the literary treatment and the internal voice it brought to the table that the comics couldn’t.

Also the author said in the note that his method was to sit down and jam out minimum 2000 words a day and that’s still a feat I admire.

Anyway, that’s my long winded take on Gotham. Not perfection, but certainly a respectable and authoritative representation of a subject matter we all know and love. I give it my second favorite Batman portrayal (behind Kevin Conroy and above Adam West) and my absolute favorite live-action Bruce Wayne, hands down.

#Gotham

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douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years

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AN ALTERNATIVE THEORY OF ADDICTIVENESS

Why do readers like the list of n things. Larry Page and Sergey Brin were grad students in computer science, which presumably makes them engineers. A few months ago an article about Y Combinator said that early on it was so fragile that about 30 days of going out and engaging in person with users made the difference between success and failure. Kids are good at telling that. Programmers don't use launch-fast-and-iterate out of laziness. Because a good idea in the harsh light of morning and ask: is this something people will pay for. Much of what's most novel about YC is due to Jessica Livingston.1

They'd prefer not to deal with tedious problems or get involved in messy ways with the real world. There's a name for this compiler, the sufficiently smart compiler, but no one person would have a complete copy of it. Immediately Alien Studies would become the YC alumni network. What does the Social Radar, and this special power of hers was critical in making YC what it is. Organic ideas feel like inspirations.2 It was a lens of heroes. Having the Social Radar. Combine that with Pirsig and you get: Live in the future to say this replaced journalism on some axis? It was English.3 In my case they were effectively aversion therapy. But in that case I often recommend that founders act like consultants—that they do what they'd do if they'd been retained to solve the same problem there.4

People would order it because of the name, and you just have to be at least some users who really need what they're making—not just people who could afford to go were VCs and people from big companies. A name only has one point of attachment into your head. It's not something you read looking for a cofounder. VC will feel about your startup is how other VCs feel about it. We did the first thing you build is never quite right.5 They're not part of the training of engineers.6 So unless you discover a competitor with the sort of lock-in that would prevent users from choosing you, don't discard the idea. Like a lot of developers feel this way: One emotion is I'm not really proud about what's in the interest of the shareholders; but if you have a hunch that something is worth doing, you're more likely to be an old and buggy one. Apple is the channel; they own the user; if you want to do will constrain you in the opposite direction.7 If you don't understand YC. Surely many of these people would like a site where they could talk to other pet owners. The bust was as much an overreaction as the boom.8

At YC we use the term Collison installation for the technique they invented. There's another thing all three components of Web 2. In 1958 there seem to have looked far for ideas. If you do that you raise too many expectations.9 For many, perhaps most, graduate students, it remained for students at specific colleges for quite a while. Considering how much time deciding what problems would be good to solve?10 Would that mean too much due diligence? Programmers don't use launch-fast-and-iterate out of laziness. Gradually it dawned on us that instead of trying to make a more deliberate effort to locate the most promising vein of users. We felt pretty lame at the time.11 And now that the web has evolved mechanisms for selecting good stuff, the web as a platform, developers make or break you.

That spirit is exactly what you want to do will constrain you in the long term, because if you don't get that initial core of users, you can make even a fraction of the size it turned out the idea was on the right side of crazy after all. They'll just lose the de facto monopoly on certain types of learning that they once had. They're clearly made more as a way to please other people.12 The most surprising thing I've learned is how conservative they are.13 If learning breaks up into many little pieces, credentialling may separate from it. They just wanted more than acquirers were willing to pay.14 Which means if letting the founders keep control stops being perceived as a concession, it will show up on some sort of push to get them going. That helps would-be founders. My current development machine is no more miraculous by present standards than the iPhone? If you'd proposed at the time. There will be many different ways to learn different things, and some may look quite different from their own; and its very uselessness made it function like white gloves as a social bulwark. It sounds obvious to say you should only work on problems that exist.15

And while 110 may not seem much better than me. None of the existing solutions are good enough salesmen to compensate. But I'm uncomfortably aware that this is the truth. You build something, make it available, and if they take it, they'll take it on their terms. That was not a unique feature of Airbnb. The person who needs something may not know exactly what they need. Moore's Law back, by writing software that could make a large number of people want a large amount. They may know, because they read it in high school and no time at all to practice the new bits.16 One advantage of Y Combinator's early, broad focus is that we can warn them about this. YC unique, the very qualities that enabled her to do it mean she tends to get written out of YC's history. There are more digressions at the start is to recruit users, and after 2 years you'll have 2 million.

But when founders of larval startups worry about this, I should be working. The most dramatic remnant of this model may be at salon.17 Force him to read it and write an essay about it. VCs told him this almost never happened. This is an extremely useful question. Airbnb is a classic example of this phenomenon, ask anyone who worked as a consultant building web sites during the Internet Bubble.18 I asked more to see how little launches matter. Fields that are intellectually unsure of themselves rely on a similar principle. Airbnb, we thought, let's make it an effort to understand him. Doctors discovered that several of his arteries were over 90% blocked and 3 days later he had a quadruple bypass. Occasionally it's obvious from the beginning when there's a path out of the bust, there would be a bad sign when you know that an idea will appeal strongly to a specific group or type of user.

But if you're looking for. Actors don't face that temptation except in the rare cases where they've written the script, but any speaker does.19 One wrote: While I did enjoy developing for the iPhone, you could succeed this way. In private there was a new version of the web emerging from under the broken models that got imposed on it during the Bubble, a startup meant a company headed by an MBA that was blowing through several million dollars of VC money each. What problems are people trying to solve by sending you email? Or the would-be app stores will be too overreaching, or too technically inflexible, and companies will arise to supply payment and streaming a la carte to the producers of drama. If you do that you could spend no more time thinking about each sentence than it takes to say it. It's a worrying prospect.20 When you feel that about an idea you've had while trying to come up with a cartoon idea of a very successful businessman in the cartoon it was always a man: a rapacious, cigar-smoking, table-thumping guy in his fifties who wins by exercising power starts to lose the ability to win by doing better work. Drew Houston did work on a less promising idea before Dropbox: an SAT prep startup.21 But when Bill Clerico starts calling you, you may as well do what he asks, because he is not going to be entering a market that looks small but which will turn out to be more precise than we're going to do initially to get the attention of an audience than as a reader.22

Notes

So during the Bubble. Often as not the sense of the problem and yet in both cases you catch mail that's near spam, but that's a pyramid scheme.

To be fair, the world in which practicing talks makes them overbuild: they'll create huge, analog brain state. In every other respect they're constantly being told that they consisted of three stakes. Or you make it to profitability before your initial funding runs out. But in practice money raised in an absolute sense, if they make money; and if you aren't embarrassed by what you call the years after 1914 a nightmare than to read an original book, bearing in mind that it's bad to do tedious work.

You'll be lucky if fundraising feels pleasant enough to incorporate a prediction of quality in the sale of products, because for times over a series of numbers that are only arrows on parts with unexpectedly sharp curves. That's probably true of the 1929 crash. Sometimes a competitor added a feature to their software that was really so low then as we think.

One to recover data from crashed hard disks.

For the computer, the switch in mid-sentence, but the nature of the founders enough autonomy that they kill you, they wouldn't have the concept of the things we focus on building the company. Spices are also exempt. Interestingly, the more accurate predictor of high quality. Currently we do at least 150 million in 1970.

It was born when Plato and Aristotle looked at the end of economic inequality is really about poverty. Currently the lowest rate seems to me like someone adding a few unPC ideas, they say. Though nominally acquisitions and sometimes on a weekend and sit alone and think.

Don't even take a conscious effort to extract money from them. But be careful here, since that was actively maintained would be to write an essay about why something isn't the last step is to write every component yourself, because they could then tell themselves that they think are bad news; it is. Because the pledge is vague in order to avoid collisions in.

How to Make Wealth in Hackers Painters, what you really have a standard piece of casuistry for this is mainly due to recent increases in economic inequality in the Baskin-Robbins. Then you'll either get the answer to, but in practice signalling hasn't been much of the Nerds. A company will be silenced.

Cit. Starting a company just to load a problem later. Ideas are one of the largest in the definition of property. This is a facebook exclusively for college students.

Whereas there is the kind of secret about the millions of dollars a year to keep tweaking their algorithm to get fossilized. That's why the series AA terms and write them a check.

Economic History Review, 2:9 1956,185-199, reprinted in Finley, M. Maybe not linearly, but I couldn't convince Fred Wilson for reading drafts of this process but that's overkill; the critical path to med school. You can have a better story for an investor makes you much more depends on a form that would scale.

Y Combinator is we hope visited mostly by technological progress, however. Believe it or not, don't even sound that plausible. We could have used another algorithm and everything I write.

Don't be evil. Com.

Some graffiti is quite impressive anything becomes art if you get of the reasons startups are competitive like running, not how much they'll pay.

The ironic thing is, this paragraph is sales 101. Whereas when you're starting a startup to sell things to be employees is to say they prefer great markets to great people. You have to keep tweaking their algorithm to get as deeply into subjects as I explain later.

And even then your restrictions would have been sent packing by the Dutch baas, meaning master. But he got there by another path. It's not only the leaves who suffer. Stiglitz, Joseph.

An investor who's seriously interested will already be working to help SCO sue them.

But there is one you take out order.

That's the lower bound to its precision.

A round VCs put two partners on your thesis. I'm pathologically optimistic about people's ability to predict areas where Apple will be interesting to consider themselves immortal, because any invention has a sharp drop in utility. Picking out the words we use for good and bad technological progress is accelerating, so I may be exaggerated by the PR firm admittedly the best high school writing this, I can't refer a startup in question usually is doing badly in your country controlled by the Dutch baas, meaning master.

Not one got an interview, I'd say the raison d'etre of prep schools is to do tedious work. Ed.

One way to put it would be on the partner you talk to mediocre ones. 35,560. It wouldn't pay.

Thanks to Patrick Collison, Sam Altman, Max Roser, Trevor Blackwell, David Hornik, Jessica Livingston, and Aaron Swartz for inviting me to speak.

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recentanimenews · 5 years

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Hit the Streets of Kamurocho Again as Yakuza 3 Returns in HD!

It should come as no surprise that when I heard that Yakuza 3, 4, and 5 were getting HD treatments, I was thrilled; after all, Yakuza is one of my favorite game series, and as a die-hard Majima fangirl I could hardly contain my excitement! Then, Sega announced that not only would the rest of the games be released gradually, but Yakuza 3 Remaster was already unlocked for us all to play and enjoy on the PlayStation Store. The fine folks at Sega sent a review copy our way, so it seemed like fate was on my side: it was finally time to take a look at Yakuza 3 in HD.

But how does the game hold up? Since its release in 2009, a lot has changed in the video game world, and even more has changed in the Yakuza series, with Yakuza 4, Dead Souls, 5, 6, Kiwami 1, Kiwami 2, Yakuza 0, and Judgment all released since then. So where does Yakuza 3 stand in the series now that the series has been reborn? Does the weight of newer iterations and remakes like Kiwami help or hurt the the 3rd game in the original series? Well… the answer is a bit complicated.

Yakuza 3 picks up right where 2 leaves off, with Kazuma Kiryu and Haruka visiting the graves of their loved ones, reflecting on things that have transpired so far. Kiryu has decided to take over the Sunflower Orphanage in Okinawa, taking Haruka with him, as a way to get away from all of the crazy antics and potential dangers that may still be searching for him in Kamurocho. After convincing best boy Majima to rejoin the Tojo Clan to watch over Daigo Dojima, now head of the gang, Kiryu takes his leave and starts his new life in Okinawa.

Sadly, barely 6 months pass before trouble rears its head once again, and Kiryu finds himself embroiled in another twisting plot of danger, intrigue, double crosses, and shocking deaths. Yakuza 3 follows Kiryu as he moves between two locations: Okinawa, where the orphanage is located, and the familiar streets of Kamurocho, finding himself entangled in various sub stories, diversions, and of course the dramatic action of the main story missions. Without going into too many spoilers, the story spirals quickly in the way Yakuza stories usually do, with twists, turns, and unexpected events throughout the entire story.

People familiar with Yakuza will find most of the same types of activities and game systems that they’re accustomed to, but for newer players, Yakuza 3 is a third person action adventure game that pits in the role of Kazuma Kiryu. You’ll level up your fighting abilities, unlock sub story paths and meet various colorful characters, play various mini games, arcade game emulations, and many more in your time in Okinawa and Kamurocho. Yakuza games have always billed themselves as something of a mixture between a simulator and an action RPG, with you guiding Kiryu to do whatever activities you feel like in a recreation of Japanese locations; you’ll even see popular, real life businesses and landmarks in the backgrounds, and returning players will get a kick out of seeing how Kamurocho is rendered this time around.

The new location, Okinawa, gives players a chance to explore a somewhat brighter and more tropical location, but you’ll still find various activities to participate in (and fighting action) as you explore your surroundings. Many of the Okinawa activities revolve around Sunshine Orphanage, such as doing missions for the children, playing with the adopted dog, and more, giving a bit of a change to the seedier, more urban appeal of Kamurocho. In what would become a series staple, this ability to move between locations helps keep the “sameness” of Kamurocho at bay; while the map and general area of Kamurocho doesn’t change, some of the activities do, but it is easy to see how giving players new places to explore helps expand the enjoyment of the games. Even the newest game in the series, Judgment, has the exact same map that Yakuza 3 has, as the city of Kamurocho doesn’t change very much between titles!

However, it does need to be said that Yakuza 3 might be one of the weaker games in the series narratively. Yakuza 1 and 2 were written by author Hase Seishu, with 3 being the first game in the series written by Masaoyshi Yokoyama, who would go on to write the scripts for all future Yakuza games, and rewriting Seishu’s scripts for Kiwami 1 and 2. This leads to some noticeable differences in tone for long time Yakuza fans, but even newer players coming into the series will notice some differences. While the Yakuza 3 Remaster has a newly redone script and localization, some of the core parts of the story are still a bit weaker compared to other iterations of the series, and it certainly feels like a bit of an oddball sequel in some ways.

The orphanage bits, while heartwarming, take up an enormous amount of time in the game, and there is some real dissonance between Kiryu, the former yakuza, and Kiryu, the orphanage owner. The game seems to denote this even harder by the very different locations of Okinawa and Kamurocho, with strict limits on the types of activities you can do in one location versus the other. If anything, Yakuza 3 occasionally just feels narratively slower than the rest of the games, mainly due to this disconnect between the two storylines; when they finally do merge, things do so in shocking fashion. But that disconnect still remains, as sub stories will have you trekking between the locations to do specific events in specific places, and some of them require particular timing in the game, or you’ll potentially miss out on them, meaning you’ll need to use Premium Adventure Mode after beating the game’s story to go back and pick up sub stories you may not have completed the first time.

While that may sound negative initially, it still goes without saying that the story of Yakuza games are some of the best crime dramas available in video game format, and even though Yakuza 3’s story is occasionally a little wonky or disjointed, you’re still going to get a solid drama to enjoy. The returning characters help continue that level of connection between titles in the series, and once you’ve started investing in the various people who call Kamurocho home, it makes seeing them in each new iteration all the more fun to see how they’ve changed since the last time.

This doesn’t just apply to Majima and the other yakuza members; characters like detective Date, Kazuki and Yuya from Stardust, and other locations all make their usual appearances, and familiarity with the cast really starts to breed a level of connection between player and game that’s hard to find in other series. When you meet up with Date for the first time in Yakuza 3, it feels like meeting up with an old friend, and in some ways the city of Kamurocho is similarly your friend, welcoming you back with the familiarity you expect, while wanting to tell you all the new things that have happened since the last time you visited them.

In this regard, a lot has changed in the Yakuza 3 Remaster from the original. The graphical update alone makes this a fantastic investment for Yakuza fans, and newcomers to the series curious to try out the titles between the Kiwami games and Yakuza 6 will find the facelift much appreciated. While it does still show its age at times, the character models, which already looked amazing, generally look much smoother, and textures overall have really been improved (the seat cushion in Daigo’s limo was so textured it almost looked real!). Even when the game dips a bit in the graphics department (smaller characters, like children, and one off NPCs, or tree textures), it still looks good, and the HD aspect really shines through.

The game loads far faster than it ever did before as well, which helps bring some of the slowdown that would come from ending up in too many battles on the streets; not only did the fights take time, but each fight would have to load in a title card and have some sort of ending flourish. In the Yakuza 3 Remaster, fights now take far less time to start and finish, helping to make the game flow better. Load times between areas and such are also reduced, making the game feel a lot more modern and faster by today’s standards. Controls, too, are better, with fights seeming much more fluid and responsive than they were in the PS3 edition of the game; I remember my frustrations with the battle system and throwing enemies, finding that grabbing them would sometimes be inconsistent, but in the Remaster version, the controls feel much more responsive to what I want to happen. While it doesn’t quite meet the level of complexity that Yakuza 0 or Kiwami introduced to the series, these slight changes mean that the Yakuza 3 Remaster feels much more in line with newer versions of the game than older.

The other big changes to the Remaster version are a redone script, and the addition and change to some sub story and additional content. The script changes may not be as easy to notice for newer players, but those who played the 2009 version of Yakuza 3 may notice that characters talk and act a bit more naturally in this new version, with the dialogue feeling snappier and more alive to match modern tastes. Characters retain their dialogue traits, and the localization of terms and attitude feels more in line with what modern players expect from the series. Also, the speed in which the text appears on the screen has changed to match the same speed as recent Yakuza releases, making those “...” moments more bearable.

The biggest change, though, is the reintroduction of many of the sub stories and activities that were removed from the initial version of Yakuza 3 in the West. Originally, the game lacked Mahjong, Shogi, and most importantly to newer fans, the Hostess bar minigames, as well as various amounts of missions that could be taken throughout the game. In some estimates, the game had likely 10% of its content removed for the PS3 release, and adding those back in really feels like a treat to people who played the original but never got to see this content. Personally, I’m thrilled to have the Hostess club game back, as those minigames were some of my favorite parts of the previous Yakuza titles, mixing in a management minigame with a dating sim style game. As a bonus, the Yakuza 3 Remaster adds in 2 new hostesses, meaning that we actually get more content than before, which felt like a nice reward!

Other changes include altering the unfortunate Michiru sub story, which felt outdated and cruel even when the game came out in 2009; this was a change series producer Toshihiro Nagoshi had wanted to make when the Remaster was first planned, and frankly it is a welcome update to the game and tone of the series overall. Having played Yakuza 3 in its original incarnation, I can say that I don’t miss the Michiru storyline, and its removal is a net positive for the series for sure.

There is also so much to do now in the Yakuza 3 Remaster that you’ll be able to really take your time in completing all of the possible sub stories and activities the game has to offer, and the game never really closes off anything to you. If you do happen to miss a sub story, you can always revisit it once the game is completed, and the Premium Adventure Mode that you unlock after beating the game lets you see all the sights and sounds of Kamurocho and Okinawa without needing to worry about pesky things like the fate of your orphanage or the life of the Tojo clan leader!

So where does that leave those curious to know whether the Yakuza 3 Remaster is worth their time and money? Well, if you’re a Yakuza fan, you probably owe it to yourself to play through the remastered versions of 3, 4, and 5, and 3 really does set a good standard of what to expect out of the remaining two Remastered editions. While this isn’t a Kiwami style remake of the game from the ground up, it is a welcome change to the older game that helps it feel more in line with the cinematic feel and quality of the rest of the series.

As a jumping on point, I don’t really suggest Yakuza 3 Remaster; instead, if you’re curious to try out the Yakuza games, my suggestion is to pick up Yakuza 0 and start from there. If you’ve already played Yakuza 0, Kiwami 1 and 2, and want to continue the story of Kazuma Kiryu, then you absolutely need to grab Yakuza 3 Remaster as soon as possible. While the story is a bit weaker than the previous games (and some of the later games), it's still an amazing Yakuza game, and a necessary chapter in the development of Kiryu and Haruka as they move towards future installments in the series. Now the only real choice you’ll have left to make is whether you’ll get the digital edition, or wait for the physical edition of 3, 4, and 5 to drop next year! Or, be like me and just get both! Either way, get back on the streets of Kamurocho and show them what the legend of the Dragon of Dojima is all about!

REVIEW ROUNDUP

+ Upgraded graphics and controls make this installment feel more up to snuff with newer titles.

+ Load times have been greatly reduced and help make the game flow far better than before.

+ All of the cut content, and even more new content, have been added, making this the definitive version of Yakuza 3.

+ The Michiru storyline being removed helps the game and shows the care RGG studio have for their audience.

- Yakuza 3’s story is a bit weaker than 0, Kiwami 1, and Kiwami 2, and certainly feels a bit like a middle chapter to the overall series.

Are you excited to get back out onto the streets of Kamurocho as I am? Who is best Yakuza boy and why is it Majima? Let us know what you think of the game in the comments!

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Nicole is a features writer and editor for Crunchyroll. Known for punching dudes in Yakuza games on her Twitch channel while professing her love for Majima. She also has a blog, Figuratively Speaking. Follow her on Twitter: @ellyberries

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: [email protected]

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

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vaanibct · 7 years

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Movement and Motion

Reflection...

This semester, I have undergone a rollercoaster of emotions. From feeling confused about what the word “Movement” meant to me personally, to feeling proud now of what my group and I have created in the matter of 8 weeks. WOW! Time really does fly. To me, this has been the most fast-paced Semester I have experienced, mainly because our Project was semester-long, and having to focus on one outcome for 8-9 weeks, compared to 4 Projects in 12 weeks in Semester One. Due to this, I had been feeling that I have not achieved much in this Semester compared to the first one. However, after finally submitting our work on Monday morning (and getting quite emotional afterwards), I have come to realise how much I have changed and learned throughout my journey and experiences in Studio this Semester.

What skills have I gained?

Teamwork and Communication Skills - Working with 4 (5 including Karen) unknown people on a Semester-long Project was a bit overwhelming. As I had mentioned in my Group Proposal Blog (https://vaanibct.tumblr.com/post/164587372341/group-proposal) our team was formed due to us being the leftover students without a group. Starting with a quick brainstorm of ideas and our interests, we later progressed into forming a group of our own. Now, I hadn’t even talked much to Kelvin, Karen, Matt, Simon and Shades before, let alone work with them, so this was a huge step for me. Seeing as I didn’t know any of them quite well, I kind of took charge and lead the group. All of our ideas were so different that it was difficult to integrate and come to a single solution, nevertheless, we agreed upon working towards the brief - “Our proposal is to evaluate the effectiveness of screen-based interactive multimedia artwork as a method of communication of emotional content. Through iterative processes we will build a multi-sensory interactive work to stimulate the senses to evoke emotional response within the participant(s). The criteria of engagement, enjoyment, retention of experience and level of distraction will be evaluated using various qualitative means.” It was after the break that I started to feel a part of this Group. And through working together, delegating tasks and understanding each other’s strengths and weaknesses, we were able to design and develop our final concept, which has now been successfully constructed for the Showcase. As a group, we also decided to contact each other through a Facebook Messenger group chat, in which we discussed our ideas and made plans. In my opinion, this was very beneficial as it meant that we didn’t have to spend Studio II time discussing little matters instead of progressing with our work. And for me, this definitely improved my communication skills because I was able to express my opinions digitally as well as verbally.

Friendship - Not having known the rest of the group members properly before, I’m now so surprised by how quickly we all understood each other. During the early stage of this Project, we started to know each other’s strength and weaknesses, likes and dislikes, skills etc. and I can now proudly say that we have formed a friendship amongst us. Although we may not work together after this Project, there will be a bond between the 5 of us. I have created so many memories by working with Kelvin, Matt, Simon and Shades this Semester and we share inside jokes and happy times, and I know that if I ever need their help, they will always step up. Friendship is not something that can be evolved quickly, but it is very important, especially when working in a group, because we have to be able to understand where a person is coming from. And in our case, we started the this journey soon after we formed our Group. This experience has made me feel more closer to my teammates, and classmates in general, because I feel like I have a friendship with everyone. And for me, this means that I am comfortable with working with anyone next year.

Time Management - To be honest, I really believe that my time management skills have improved immensely over the Semester. Compared to last semester where I used to struggle with Blogging and procrastinate moat of the time, I have now started to Blog regularly and minimise procrastination. I guess what has really helped me is using Trello, as well as writing weekly Time-Management Blog posts (https://vaanibct.tumblr.com/post/166283382746/time-management) (https://vaanibct.tumblr.com/post/166057816481/time-management) in order to stay on track, list the incomplete tasks and measure the level of practicality for completion. I know that these skills can still be improved but right now, I am very proud to have finished my work on time. Next year, I will focus more on reducing the time spent on procrastination as it is another thing I struggle with.

Coding/Programming - Having to start this Project knowing that we are creating a visual screen based installation, I was a bit nervous because my coding skills are as good as my whistling ability (FYI, I can’t whistle properly, I can only blow air through the mouth which creates a very soft sound). So, being in-charge of coding for the visuals projected onto the screen, I was feeling even more overwhelmed. I started looking through some codes from the “Programming for Creativity” lectures from last Semester, which helped me remember the coding style and possibilities. Working towards one theme - Space - made it easier for me, because I could start focusing on particular aspects of the theme, instead of learning basically everything first and only using a little bit of the learned knowledge (https://vaanibct.tumblr.com/post/165993484421/movement-and-motion) (https://vaanibct.tumblr.com/post/166057834511/movement-and-motion) (https://vaanibct.tumblr.com/post/166070078141/movement-and-motion). Seeing as Kelvin was coding the Kinect, he was also a huge help when coding for the visuals because he introduced us to a new and contrasting idea, for which I am very grateful to him because we ended up using that as part of our final Visuals coding (https://vaanibct.tumblr.com/post/166319762556/movement-and-motion). So, making constant iterations and looking online for solutions, I can now proudly say that I have become a better coder than I was in Semester One. I am actually very happy to have taking lead in this aspect of the project, because it has helped me improve my skills, gain confidence, while also learn new knowledge about coding in Processing.

Handling Textiles? - When we knew that our screen was based off a piece of fabric, I was confused as to how we would stretch it properly. After coming up with a few ideas, we concluded with sewing velcro to the fabric and then attach it to the frame. Now, sewing was actually such a daunting task for me, to start with, however, I soon started to get over my fear of the sewing machine and we managed to complete the screen (https://vaanibct.tumblr.com/post/166765564111/movement-and-motion). Although Miranda helped us greatly, I was still quite proud of myself for learning a new skill and growing out of my fears. This experience has also taught me that “Life does, in fact, start outside our comfort zone.” And getting out of my comfort zone is a huge deal for me because, in some cases, I’m usually scared of trying new things, however, I have now decided to take more risks and learn new things next year, in order to up-skill myself and teach me to become better than I was yesterday.

What have I learned?

To sum it up, I have grown miraculously over the course of this Semester. As a student of Creative Technologies, I believe that I now have more and improved skills, as well as the knowledge of using, understanding and integrating different practices from multiple domains in order to work towards an outcome. I have also learned to be more resilient and being comfortable to work with people other than my friends. This is because I have understood the importance of diversity in teams and would like to find and work with both like-minded and different people in order to experience the difference of ethics between each experience, which will help me choose my teams wisely for bigger Projects in third year of BCT and also in a workplace in the future.

One aspect of this Project that I would have liked to improve is the “research.” Due to Matt being the conceptual researcher of the group, I think I relied solely on him to explain his research and results rather than exploring the concept myself as well. This could be due to the lack of time I had, because I had other tasks to finish, and that built up the pressure of researching for precedents and the reason behind our concept during the last days of the Project. Usually, I feel like I’m good at researching and analysing information in order to assist my Projects, however, this was a huge project for me and I think that I prioritised other tasks first when I really should have conducted a research to help us forward.

Overall, I am happy with the end result. I am also very proud of all the group members, Matt, Simon, Shades and Kelvin, because we all have put in so much effort and time into the construction of the Installation, along with working together, helping one another, and having each other’s backs. Yes, there are some aspects that could have been improved, however, a lesson I have learned is that, “In the future Group Projects, I will ensure to delegate tasks fairly, so that we all are contributing our 100% to the group, as well as forming a smaller group.” The reason for a smaller group is that - last semester, I was in a group of two, which did built up the workload, however, we were able to make decisions much quicker and move on. However, in a group of 5, it is a bit difficult to agree on one thing, therefore leaving us less time to get on with our work. I think that a good group should consist of 3-4 members as it is much easier to work together and avoid the lack of quick design-making.

Here is a video of Shade’s picture library from over the Semester…

youtube

Where to now?

Next year, I plan on working in teams with students I have not yet worked with, in order to learn new knowledge and also gain experience of working with a diverse group of people. I will also work towards building my skill-set over the holidays, which should help me to improve my habits and allow me to have a range of knowledge from various domains. My goal for next year, for the first semester at least, is to challenge myself and take risks because I have realised that it plays a huge part in self-improvement and also learning to be resilient. I also plan on working towards my iteration skills, because it is crucial for the development of a Project. Due to me being one of the visual coders, I had to code various designs in order to decide which ideas best suit the concept behind the Project. And due to my lack of iterating, we were glued to a single idea. So, I intend on learning to unleash my creativity and think of more relatable ideas in order to arrive to the best design.

To end, I’d like to say that Year 1 of BCT has flown by extremely fast. I still remember my first day in Studio, being confused yet excited, happy to make new friends and take on the challenge of the ‘Cards for Play’ Assignment. I can proudly say that I now have definitely evolved as a Creative Technologist, because I have gained more knowledge of the variety of practices in this field and also developed my way of thinking. I have also seen the students around me, my friends and classmates, develop and change overtime, for good. They have also come on this long journey wiht me and I am also very proud of them.

I can’t wait of the Showcase and I know that we all have achieved an immense amount to be proud of. I also know that we all will do great and get the results we deserve.

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#Movement #Motion #ctec503 #ctec503Movement #ctec503Final

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brandonrucker · 7 years

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Note: this is a re-posting of an interview I had published nearly five years ago on a different website (that web archive is no longer available, making this re-post necessary for posterity, if nothing else). The following Q&A session was drafted October 17, 2012.

Patrick “Patch” Zircher [pronounced: zer-ker] is the artist and co-writer of Valiant’s all-new SHADOWMAN series, launching November 7, 2012 from the resurging publisher. Co-written with Justin Jordan (THE STRANGE TALENT OF LUTHER STRODE), the new Shadowman series is about New Orleans’ worst nightmare coming true. As these dark forces begin to claim the Big Easy as their own, Jack Boniface must embrace the dark legacy he was born to uphold as Shadowman. He will become the only thing that stands between his city and the legions of unspeakable monstrosities. Zircher, Jordan and Shadowman are poised to not only occupy the darkest corners of the revised Valiant Universe, but perhaps shine some light and hope there as well.

Zircher, In Passing

Earlier this year I met Patch Zircher somewhat in-passing at my local comic shop. I didn’t know who he was at the time until an old former colleague at the store informed me. He was there mainly to purchase comics for his preteen daughter (trade paperbacks of Marvel’s Runaways, I recall), but was also there searching through the back issue bins for some oldies-but-goodies. He, the store staff and I geeked out in a brief conversation about when exactly the transition from the Silver Age to the Bronze Age of comics supposedly occurred. As we departed the store I was left with the impression that Zircher’s a humble, laidback and rather approachable fellow (the kind I suspect would talk with you forever should you meet him in Artists Alley at a comic con someday), and was jazzed that this awesome artist is a fellow citizen living locally in a suburb neighboring mine. A few Twitter conversations eventually led to the following interview you are about to read.

Hey Kids, Meet Patrick Zircher!

BRANDON RUCKER: Are you a native of our ‘great state’ of Indiana? If so, where did you grow up?

PATRICK ZIRCHER: I grew up in Ohio and Arizona, but moved to Indiana when my kids were born. I actually missed fall and winter.

RUCKER: How did you get your start as an illustrator of comics? How we’re you finally discovered?

ZIRCHER: That’s hard to answer because there were a lot of stops and starts. Right out of high school I was published in paper and pencil role-playing games, then inked, wrote, and drew comics for smaller comic companies like Eclipse, Blackthorne, and Caliber. Art became a full-time job when I started drawing Green Hornet for Now Comics. Back then, I sent art samples (photocopies) in the mail. I would draw on the envelope to get submissions editors to notice. A few years later I was hired by DC at the San Diego Comic Con and a short time after that by Marvel for New Warriors. This is all in the ‘long ago and far away.’

RUCKER: I’ve seen your early pages for this new series, and Patrick, I have to say that I’m blown away. Admittedly I’m a latecomer to your work having discovered it at Marvel the last couple of years. You’ve recently alluded that your work from 5-6 years ago is not worthy of your name. In what ways do you feel you’ve improved? Do you feel like you turned a certain corner when you went digital?

ZIRCHER: I was joking a little, but I do try to improve each year. I’ve never been satisfied with having a ‘set way’ of drawing. As far as improvements, I think my storytelling and panel compositions are stronger, as well as anatomy and gesture, spotting blacks and contrast. Ha, everything I guess. To be honest, improvement came when I began inking my own work. It isn’t that other inkers aren’t talented, but inking is, to some extent, redrawing for me – a second chance to improve on the pencils and layout.

RUCKER: Since I’m a follower of your Twitter feed, I’ve come to realize that you are a kindred spirit when it comes to music. What positive affects does music have on your artwork?

ZIRCHER: I’m a music geek, as a listener – I can’t play at all – and tailor what I listen to with what I’m drawing. Drawing involves long hours at the board so I’ve been putting together a ‘mix tape’ with hundreds of songs that keep me in the zone when working on Shadowman. It’s how I justify my passion for “Daemon Lover” by Shocking Blue.

RUCKER: Do you have any favorite artists among your peers?

ZIRCHER: Many. But listing them only makes me regret the ones I left out. I will say the overly-flashy art, the absurdly detailed art, the no-attention span- jumbo-figures-on-every-page kind of guys usually leave me cold. I’ll take a great storyteller who can frame and compose panels, pages, and sequences over the loud guy every time.

RUCKER: You recently said on Twitter: “Never say never, but that’s my last Marvel piece [AVX Consequences #1] for a very, very, very long time.” I assume that this, well, one: refers to your exclusive contract with Valiant, and two: you’re as happy as a fat kid in a candy store at Valiant.

ZIRCHER: I love working at Valiant. I was unhappy at Marvel. It happens. As far as exclusives, as I said, I love working at Valiant, but I just don’t sign exclusives anymore. I’m working exclusively for Valiant because I want to – not out of a contractual obligation.

RUCKER: There’s a huge boom in creator-owned comics these days, perhaps the most ever in the history of the medium. Do you have any interest in possibly doing something creator-owned in the future?

ZIRCHER: Yes, but co-writing and illustrating Shadowman is a full plate. And the plate’s full of good food. There are so many projects at Valiant I’d be happy to be a part of that making a creator-owned book isn’t a priority right now.

Shadowman #1, pg. 1

Shadowman #1, pg. 4

Shadowman #1, pg. 5

RUCKER: What was it about the Shadowman character that attracted you? Were you a fan of the 1990s version as well?

ZIRCHER: I was a fan. Like a lot of fans though, sometimes you’re as much in love with a character’s potential as you are their actuality.

RUCKER: With all due respect to all the previous creators who worked on the character, what is it about this new iteration of Shadowman that you think makes it just as good as, if not better than the original?

ZIRCHER: Well, first, I admire the talents of the book’s previous creators. Bob Hall wrote and drew quite a few issues and you can see he put a tremendous amount of energy into the work. Comics have evolved a different style of storytelling since then and the work Justin Jordan, myself, and colorist Brian Reber are doing on the book reflects that.

RUCKER: The return of Valiant Comics is obviously great for fans of the characters and the industry overall. What was the main aspect about the all-new Valiant that attracted you to the point where you decided to stop working for Marvel?

ZIRCHER: I’m very attracted to working at a company that’s really in touch with its talent. Everyone at Valiant is excited and enthusiastic and I wanted to work with people who felt that way.

RUCKER: The Valiant re-launch has been executed very methodically and with great care and precision. Given your relationship with Warren Simons, were you (and writer Justin Jordan) hand-picked for the Shadowman series, or did you two have to pitch against other creators in consideration/contention?

ZIRCHER: I was under contract with Marvel at the time Valiant was putting together its initial titles so we didn’t get together until later. Fortunately several of my favorite Valiant characters were in the early (re-) developmental stage. Warren and I wanted to work together on something with equal enthusiasm so we discussed a variety of characters. Comics is a business, but I think it’s a key element, an often neglected one, to match talent with titles and characters they want to work on. As far as Justin, he’s a writer both Warren and I really wanted. We had read Luther Strode and both saw a personality in Justin’s work that would enliven Shadowman. When Warren told me Justin had pitched for Shadowman, I couldn’t believe the serendipity of it.

RUCKER: Did you, along with Justin, have a lot of freedom to revamp and re-design the character and his world according to your shared vision?

ZIRCHER: I think so. It’s a team effort that includes editorial. Valiant is building a cohesive universe and an editorial perspective is part of that. Personally, it’s thrilling to be in the early stages of comics universe-building. Co-writing is a fascinating process because, in many ways, a third writer is born, with a style that is different from the individuals and yet, not.

RUCKER: Have you had to do any specific research for this new series, perhaps research on New Orleans, or jazz culture or what have you?

ZIRCHER: A lot of comic creators research and I’ve been doing that for years. With New Orleans, so many clichés are used in comics based in the Big Easy that we’re purposely taking it easy on the New Orleans-specific references. They’ll come, you just won’t have Mardi Gras, the French Quarter, jazz, the bayou, voodoo queens, and above-ground vaults all thrown at you in the first issue.

Shadowman #2, pg. 2

Shadowman #2, pg. 4

RUCKER: In your own words, how would you pitch the new Shadowman series to prospective new readers – the on-the-fence fan or the naysayer?

ZIRCHER: Shadowman is about a guy named Jack who is bonded to a supernatural spirit. After that, everything in his life changes. I’m having a crazy, good time making the book and that DOES show in the pages. If you’re on the fence after seeing the previews there probably isn’t a whole lot I can say. Justin’s dialogue could charm a cat out of a tree. Brian’s colors are gorgeous. If you want a very good comic, you’ll find it here.

RUCKER: For those unfamiliar with your work, what of your previous work would you recommend people check out prior to Shadowman’s release –something you’re proudest of?

ZIRCHER: Captain America Vol. 3 [trade paperback of Ed Brubaker’s recent run], or Batman: The Man Who Laughs with Brubaker. Terror Inc. with David Lapham; Mystery Men with David Liss; Hulk of Arabia with Jeff Parker. Or pick up Thor: Ages of Thunder with Matt Fraction. Warren [Simons] gave a copy of the Thor book to Valiant’s publisher, but his son took it so he had to get another one. That’s as strong a recommendation as I can think of.

UPDATE: Currently Patrick Zircher’s work can be found on the DC Rebirth Action Comics series from DC Comics where you can find him having a ball drawing Superman and Lex Luthor-Superman, plus a dastardly host of supporting characters and villains.

Patrick Zircher: Into the Shadows, Man | Q&A Note: this is a re-posting of an interview I had published nearly five years ago on a different website (that web archive is no longer available, making this re-post necessary for posterity, if nothing else).

#comic book art #Patrick Zircher

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