#my shazam stuff is also all ages but i haven't worked on that in a while eep

[hibiscera]

now we have the duality of me developing my amethyst story which is all ages vs me developing my killer moth + gotham rogue stories which are for an older audience. my range.

also just the fun of being able to bounce between the two depending on what my mood is. (:

[davidmann95]

I haven't been able to tolerate a comics news site since ComicsAlliance shut down so what news out of SDCC is actually worth knowing about?

I’ve gotten so many questions regarding SDCC-related news that I figured I’d just do one big post, and this seems as opportune an ask to build that off of as any. To kick off, in terms of news that’s not for me but is a big deal, there’s a trailer for the next season of Doctor Who, and Star Wars: Clone Wars is shockingly coming back for a final reduced season years after the fact. Congrats to the fans of both franchises! Plus yesterday we got the announcement of Orlando and Foreman’s Electric Warriors for DC (as well as Orlando’s Dead Kings with Matt Smith at Aftershock Comics) and the Wonder Woman/Justice League Dark October crossover.

So first and foremost in terms of the reaction it picked up, OH MY GOD:

It’s like the Bat In The Sun team handed over their production to their shitty kids but made them work off a third of the budget. I kept seeing the jokes about it on Twitter, and I kept thinking they were surely hilarious exaggerations, AND NOT A ONE OF THEM EVEN SLIGHTLY WAS. At least it now makes sense why Hawk and Dove is here, given the Liefeld connection: this is 90s as helllllllllllllllllllllll, and while a part of me hopes it swerves unexpectedly in a couple seasons into Fun 90s DC with Starman and Wally West and an Electric Blue Superboy and Titans One Million, I can’t pretend I wouldn’t gleefully hatewatch this if it wasn’t behind a paywall. What it really comes down to is that, as I saw someone mention, the over-the-top content warning at the beginning isn’t actually by any means to get rid of anyone under 18, but specifically to appeal to them over anyone over it: there is nothing about this show not precision-crafted to appeal to teenagers watching something they technically aren’t supposed to, since anyone older than that will just laugh until the stars grow cold. And while it’s one line in particular that’s rightfully drawn all the attention, to me the clear defining moment is Beast Boy taking his big goofy dramatic leap, and you expect him to transform, but that ain’t happening (I fully expect he’ll just have claws and growl and do assorted Wolverine shit instead), because that kind of thing is for STUPID KIDS, whereas this is RAD. 

RAD, dare I say…to the EXTREME.

Also, the pilot Robin’s scene was presumably drawn from was written by Akiva Goldsman, Greg Berlanti, and Geoff Johns. So was it the guy behind Batman & Robin, the guy behind the CWverse, or the recent President of DC Comics who ushered FUCK BATMAN into the world? Because all three of those possibilities are equally hilarious. In any case, the rubicon has been crossed: easily one of the top ten, probably one of the five or so most iconic superheroes of all time said fuck in a piece of mass media. Where we go from here, nobody knows. But at the very least I’ll take the L for my original certainty that this would take place in the CW DCverse, because that clearly isn’t going to be the case. Though boy, imagine if it was. Personally I like to imagine this is a totally normal DCU, and suddenly going full 90s and murdering a bunch of people is their universe’s version of normal teen rebellion.

Additionally, it’s now seemingly set in stone that the fourth DC Universe live-action show alongside Titans, Doom Patrol, and Swamp Thing will be a Stargirl show where Courtney Whitmore learns about her legacy and tries to track down the Justice Society, described as in the flavor of Superman ‘78 and Wonder Woman. Again, if it wasn’t behind a paywall I’d check it out.

And before turning to comics proper, we learned from WB itself that there are no plans to idiotically pour millions into making a functional Justice League Snyder cut a thing, unsurprisingly making some of the worst people on the internet be just the absolute worst (I’m interested myself in it artistically even if I don’t think it would be very good, but at this point it would feel like a validation of some really rotten people’s behavior if this happened). Meanwhile the first trailer for the Dragon Ball Super movie dropped, and yeah, I’m still happy to see Broly. This looks big in a way Dragon Ball for all its action rarely gets, and seeing Paragus suggests Toriyama understood what worked about the original flick, which is a very good sign. Did they swap out Vic Mignogna as Broly though? Wouldn’t blame him, I know he’s said he hates the part, but surprising nonetheless. And the Spider-Man game dropped another trailer, along with a ‘Velocity’ bonus suit designed by Adi Granov.

The big comics news of the day was of course the long-awaited confirmation that Green Lantern is being relaunched - apparently as The Green Lantern - in November by Grant Morrison and Liam Sharp. What’s surprising is that Morrison’s currently insisting that since the last decade or so of the franchise has dealt with constant upheaval and cosmic apocalypse, his run is going to scale back down to a character-focused study of Hal (“He’s a loner and a drifter and he’s an unreconstructed man. It was nice to do that and to go a little bit old-fashioned with it. He doesn’t belong here at all, you know? He’s longing for the heavens, and to be back up as a Green Lantern. We’re doing Hal Jordan where, you know he’s a good cop, but is he really a good guy? And we’re looking into his relationships and how he deals with people. And also the fact that, if you’ve got a job as a space cop, it’s hard to be stuck on the planet Earth. He has other lives on other planets.”) amidst him going about his duties and dealing with weird alien crimes and space threats, such as stopping aliens from ‘parking’ a planet-sized artificial megastructure near a sun and causing damage to nearby worlds, and solving the murder of a gaseous lifeform.

I doubt it’ll necessarily stay there forever - his Batman and Action Comics runs, after all, were both initially marketed as staying on the smaller side by his standards, and the one idea we know of Morrison having once had for the Green Lanterns back in the day was making them a multiversal force. But it’s remarkable how, well, normal this sounds coming from Morrison. Clearly this must be a passion project if he’s doing a monthly again for the first time in 5 years, especially since DiDio mentioned he had to be persuaded (ultimately persuading himself as his attempts to brush off the proposition led to him thinking about the possibilities and rapidly talking himself into it) to make time for this amidst an incredibly busy schedule of surely more profitable and creatively unshackled projects, but on the surface level? This sounds like the closest Morrison has come since his JLA days to writing a regular superhero comic. At this point in his career, I’m very, very curious what that’s going to look like. Just hoping he read the King/Shaner oneshot on whatever reread he surely went through to catch up on current continuity. And also hoping this guy was right that it’ll turn out “the REAL construct that was limited by our willpower and imagination all along was…REALITY.”

On smaller notes:

* Kelly Sue DeConnick and Robson Rocha are taking over Aquaman, with an opening arc that shows him washing up amnesiac on an isle of forgotten sea gods. DeConnick seems to be like the Jeffs Lemire and Parker where my appreciation of their work is limited to very, very specific slivers: none of her Marvel superhero stuff I’ve read did anything for me even if I could see the talent behind it, but her Lois story in the last issue of The Adventures of Superman was pitch-perfect (and also had a great Aquaman bit!). This gets at least an issue from me.

* DC announced new titles for DC Ink and DC Zoom, including Cassandra Cain, Oracle, Dick Grayson, Creeper, and Wonder Woman books, while also announcing some artists for the existing titles.

* Geoff Johns is doing (ugh) Shazam with Dave Eaglesham, who showed off a really great, fun cover suggesting the possibility of a tonal shift away from Johns writing the absolute worst version of that character imaginable. On the likelihood of said possibility though, I think @intergalactic-zoo put it best. I might just check it out in trade if word of mouth is overwhelmingly positive, but then, lots of otherwise rational people liked or at least saw merit in his original crack at it with Gary Frank, and you were all deliriously, impossibly wrong back then, too.

* And finally, speaking of Johns, he’s doing Batman: Three Jokers as a 3-issue mini with Jason Fabok, a smart move given that is precisely as much as I’m willing to invest in this out of morbid curiosity. What’s really baffling though is that it’s being released under Black Label. It would seem to destroy the stated purpose of the line by immediately releasing Very Important Continuity Comics under it, but maybe this means Batman’s gonna follow in his protege’s footsteps and say a fuck. Anyway, I’m mostly just hoping it isn’t revealed Fun Golden Age Joker is actually not the original in order to rub out the prospect that he was ever truly anything but a terrifying sidekick-butchering murder machine at the center of very serious stories, because that feels to be like a real possibility. And absolute no question one of the three is gonna turn out to be the lost child of Marionette and Mime in Doomsday Clock.

[judedeluca]

BTW, not trying to convince you of anything, I haven't read Shazam! and feel... Complicated about Geoff Johns. Is that a sentence? Not a native English speaker.

Ah, my bad.

Please note if I get testy during this it is absolutely NOT aimed at you in any way, but it’s just how I feel about Johns.

Okay so Geoff Johns was one of the three current comic writers who got me into buying comics on a regular basis in 2005, alongside Grant Morrison and Gail Simone. I was following Johns’ “Teen Titans,” Morrison’s “Seven Soldiers,” and Simone’s “Villains United.”

What got me into Johns’ “TT” was, I was already a Titans fan, but I saw he introduced a version of Batwoman based on Bette Kane. Bette was the original Batgirl in the Silver Age, the niece to Batwoman Kathy Kane, but no one ever referenced that anymore and I love Betty so I wanted to know more.

I was supporting Johns’ Teen Titans as well as his Legion related stuff, JSA, and some of his Green Lantern writing too…

But then came Brightest Day and I began to realize the man had a disturbing tendency to rely on mutilating and dismembering characters, including a lot of Titans such as Pantha, Baby Wildebeest, Damage, and Tempest, as well as Legionnaires like Kinetix. Tempest especially bothered me because apparently Johns didn’t like him because he wasn’t “Bad ass” like Hal Jordan, so Johns went out of his way to kill Tempest’s entire family in “Infinite Crisis” before having his zombie girlfriend murder him.

Flashpoint and The New 52 only solidified my dislike for the man, as I absolutely HATED his Justice League and Aquaman stuff and only supported them because my friend worked on the titles as an inker.

Looking back on his older stuff I saw a lot of other stuff I disliked. There was his gross racist handling of Judomaster in JSA where he retconned out her ability to speak English to pair her up with Damage via having him teach her English, even though in Birds of Prey a year prior she could speak English perfectly.

With his Legion of Super-Heroes writing he retconned Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl, turning Garth into a hothead who barely went a single panel without screaming at someone while Imra could barely control him. The woman used to be called “Iron Ass Imra” and he essentially ripped out her spine. These two had one of the best marriages in the DCU and he ruined it with his toxic masculine bullshit. Thank God Paul Levitz managed to fix this mess.

He also tried to downplay and/or erase Lightning Lass’s queerness by putting her back together with her ex-boyfriend Timber Wolf, ignoring her steady relationship with her girlfriend Shrinking Violet. The two of them were one of the earliest lesbian couple DC had (even if they couldn’t outright say it) but nope, Ayla’s back with Brin like Violet didn’t exist. Again, Paul Levitz rectified this problem.

He turned Star Boy into a caricature of schizophrenics by retconning him into being mentally ill and having him serve as the wacky comic relief in the JSA when he wasn’t breaking the fourth wall or dropping foreshadowing. So basically a ripoff of Deadpool. His whole JSA run really hasn’t aged well.

His Teen Titans consisted of making Superboy obsessed with being a clone of Lex Luthor and Superman, made Wonder Girl obsessed with Superboy, and he drove Rose Wilson insane to make her the new Ravager which included her graphically gouging out her own eye after her father pumped her full of drugs.

His love for Barry Allen and Hal Jordan blatantly outshines his work with the other Flash and Green Lantern characters, and he’s essentially crafted a sequel to Watchmen no one asked for or needed in order to absolve Barry Allen, God of the Silver Age, of ruining the DCU by blaming it all on Doctor Manhattan.

He’s also obsessed with portraying morally grey men and downright evil men like Captain Cold, Sinestro, Black Adam, and Superboy Prime as flawed individuals who are, at the end of the day heroic, when they do completely horrible things and never get punished for them. Cold’s a hypocrite with how he’ll ignore certain Rogues breaking his precious rules but then makes a big deal of how other villains violate said rules. SInestro is a sociopath who murdered Kyle Rayner’s mother in cold blood just to break Kyle’s will, but still gets to be remembered as a great Green Lantern. Adam brutally slaughters people like the Psycho Pirate and almost no one complains. And Prime is a monster who’s murdered children and pregnant woman, including an entire world, but is still considered a victim. He’s now added Doctor Manhattan to the list, since he claims a man who orchestrated the death of Alan Scott and casually fucked up an entire universe simply to see what would happen is somehow not a villain.

Whatever small bits of writing from him I still like are not enough for me to still be an overall fan of him. I don’t care what he’s done with Shazam, I don’t care if people think it’s been really good. If other people like it I’m happy they’re enjoying it.

But really, fuck him. Fuck him a million times over. I hope there comes a day when DC throws his ass out the door along with Didio, Eddie Berganza, Tom King, James Robinson, Bob Harras, Scott Lobdell. Jim Lee, and all the other fake geek guy assholes who’ve practically ruined DC’s characters for all of us.

Geoff Johns makes me sick to my stomach as a comic fan, a writer, a man, and a human being.

Yet there is still a part of me that wonders, looking back on the stuff he did for Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E., what someone at that fucking company must’ve done to him. And I do feel bad his work keeps getting interfered with by editors, just not enough to absolve him of his own individual grossness.

[captainshazamerica]

Yeah it's the same anon 💜 dude my apologies for the amount of crap I've spewed in your ask box but in my defense no one I know gives a shit about batfam or gotham rogues or Alfred (I've gushed here about alfreds fabulousness too opps) anndd I partly blame you for me falling back into the titans trap cuz s1 was meh I forgot I even watched s2 😅 then I seen some titans stuff on your blog and boom my brain latched onto it and now here I am experiencing maternal fear for my son jason 😢you are 1000% right this jason is PERFECTION as robin like actual perfection I dunno why but I thought this robin was like 16? So I was thinkin how tf is 16/17 yo supposed to be redhood!? It work in comics/cartoon but live action 16 y/o redhood seems meh I kinda want the lazarus pit just I freakin want TALIA but I don't think that's gonna happen I dunno

Tbh (this may be biased) but I think the Gotham tv show is literally the best dc comics adaptation of anything ever! it is superior to all thier shows movies animations and the arrowverse at least in my books lol

Tumblr is my only form of 'social media' and I don't keep up with updates or anything about shows cuz I like to pretend the fiction is real and I don't want reality wrecking that for me like hahahaa so I had no clue about timmy or babs but I'm so happy

DUDE YES this is literally the only time I can see bruce ever killing the joker on screen aww please I want it so bad I mean they probably won't but they should cuz this is the only capacity in which batman can kill the joker live action like if down the line somewhere on another show/movie bruce killed joker he prob wouldn't be dead dead or they'd bring him back some way so the kill wouldn't even matter but old bruce killing the joker because he's finally had enough he's old now, jasons death finished him and he's not gonna be batman anymore it's a nice end for batman and the joker, it's the only way we'll ever get this end cuz like you said they'll never have the balls to permanently kill joker any other way in live action everything is aligning perfectly for this to happen so dang dc just freakin let it happen c'mon

Yo whose your first fav rogue? Is it riddler? I feel like mines riddler haven't really thought much about whose my fav gotham rogue but I'd probably say riddler, I prefer the central city rogues but the Gotham rogues are just pure chaos and I'm living for that hahaa

I'd rather superheros/vigilantes/villians in live action not have relationship drama just put them in a relationship or dont like I came for the action and weird super shit not the ordinary relationship drama thankfully titans seem to be doing okay in this aspect I do quite like dickkory a lot but I mean in the supergirl show ughhh I was like I came here for the flying and the dope laser eyes I don't give a shit about her getting a boyfriend like seriously whyyy

My brain decides to jump about obsessing over characters like one week Kory is my wife next week detective grayson is my husband and I AM NIGHTWING then my brain is like no Barbara kean is wifey just basically fictionally I'm married to everyone 😅

Yikes this was so long sorry girl

Omg, pls don't apologize! I get so dang excited whenever i get an ask, yours always make my day, you don't even know! Like same about no one i know caring about dc/batfam! And talking to someone about it is so much better than yelling into the wind here on a text post that no one reads xD Don't stop sending your asks whenever you wanna dump your feels/talk about dc/batfam omg.

And Im so proud I got you into this Titans spiral xD My work here is done hahahaha. But yes, I feel like his looking so young for red hood over shadows how great his jason robin performance was! Love seeing him get that recognition! But yeah, the age is def off, like I cant remember how old they said he was in the show, maybe 16? but too young for red hood in live action form. Like its hard cause in reality 16 year olds and 19 year old boys typically don't look too different, for the most part, while comics you can get get away with it more. Huh, yeah, it doesn't seem like Talia is gonna happen, maybe just maybe a cameo or something? Cause we also weren't expecting joker but here we are(tho it almost looks like he wont be a big plot point/even see him much, it almost looks like it is just showing how brutal gotham is? But like its just the trailer and doesnt always give the full picture so who knows!)

Omg YES about Gotham! I 1000% agree! Im also biased cause its what got me into batman, again like exactly a year ago! It got me into the world like no other media of dc had before!(well, Shazam did, i guess tech thats the start of my interest in dc/first time i read the comics, but gotham is what really got me into this spiral). I hate how much hate it gets, like yeah its not perfect and they took creative liberties obviously, but i 100% agree that its the best adoption of DC yet! 100%! Its so nice to see the characters and rogues fleshed out more. I feel like it successfully did what Nolan tried to do in terms of making it dark and realistic, but in a way that was more accurate and true to the comics! I wish it wasn’t canceled so early and thus the last season had to be so rushed :(

thats smart, i typically dont look for spoilers and stuff anymore but I just got so hyper focused that I had to look at least what the stars were putting out on social media, but yeah, i use to get so caught up in all that that it took the fun out of seeing it live.

Oh my gosh, that would seriously be the PERFECT end to batman and joker story in this universe omg. Amen about all that! And like it would hopefully show Jason how much he cares? So maybe Bruce would kill him after red hood emerges? It will be interesting to see hat causes Jason to be so dang pissed in this version.

ahaha yes riddler is my fav! (my header gave it away didn’t it xD) I love most Riddlers but ESPECIALLY gotham riddler, Ed is like one of my fav character of all time. Oooh, I don’t know central city rogues all that well(well, way more than Metropolis rogues, I know so little about superman world), like I know some from the first 3 and a half seasons of the flash (I watched a couple years ago but got busy with school and couldn’t keep up and just never caught up/didnt have motivation to finish(plus i forgot so much id have to rewatch everything again), but I saw they finally just introduced Bart Allen, so I have have to randomly jump back in for a bit cause Bart is one of my favsss), and the ones in the cartoons and stuff

Ha! true, i dont mind it when its for character development or if I happen to be super into the ship(like Nygmakins in Gotham omg, I know they are super unpopular but they are like one of my OTPs omg), I feel like it has to be balanced right/not too much focus on the drama of the relationship over everything else. Like a minor subplot is good but don’t make it the focus of the show. And yeah , supergirl never appealed to me cause of that reason! i like drama and not JUST action (I like psychological drama, as long as there is comfort to follow xD) but yea i get what u mean by too much relationship focus . I think, for the most part, Gotham did that pretty well.

omg i love the disaster bi vibes you are giving off xD But omg I feel the jumping around thing so much ahaha. Like right now the 4 robins are constantly on rotation on who I’m obsessing over at the moment tbh xD

Omg mine responses are just as long, don’t apologize!!!! <333333333333333