#rev reads dc comics live

[thesummerstorms]

You could write a pretty lengthy paper about the dynamics between Jason, Dick, and Bruce in this issue and I’m definitely going to have to go back and do a close read analysis.

But right now it’s midnight so join me in giggling at Jason calling Dick “Mr. Nightwing “.

And in the next panel Dick calls him “Mr. Robin”

[maxwell-grant]

There's a trend people have pointed out in superhero stories over the past 20 or so years that is the death of "regular" supporting casts, an increasing absence of un-powered sidekicks or people involved who aren't in the thick of the action or in the hero's secret. Everyone who interacts with superheroes is a couple issues away from becoming one, every story involves a supervillain encounter or several dozen, every hero's gotta have a lunchbox-ready "superhero family" made from these characters, and every side character that doesn't join them is either going to die or become a supervillain.

The defining example people use for this is Spider-Man's supporting cast, with every Spider-Man cast member short of Aunt May and J Jonah Jameson getting some kind of powered upgrade or symbiote, and I'm gonna say Amanda Waller is an excellent case study of how this kind of thing happens, and I think it helps to explain why Amanda Waller has been, Like That, for the past 30 years.

She’s wearing a grey shirt underneath a blue blazer and it’s tucked into a similarly blue skirt that stops at mid calf. She reminds me of the neighbourhood aunties I used to see leaving for church every Sunday morning.

My mom used to say that you are the company you keep. So what kind of person does it take to keep a variety of bruised, battered, and dangerous personalities in check? - Amanda Waller: DC's Most Terrifying Woman

To those of you who haven't read John Ostrander and Kim Yale's Suicide Squad, there once was a time where Amanda Waller was something more than a powerful antagonistic force able to butt heads with the biggest superheroes, and something other than a heartless establishment face out to make superheroes miserable for ill-defined reasons. Structurally speaking, Suicide Squad is a comic about marginal DCU characters forced to deal with actual real life problems, and it's central character is a marginalized person forced to deal with DCU problems and characters. The members of the Squad are a rolling parade of costumed misfits and maniacs assigned to go around the globe to fight and kill and die on dirty missions to deal with dirty laundry and stop war zones from erupting, while Amanda Waller is forced to shuffle around her cadre of D-list supervillains and disgraced superheroes and get into stand-offs with secret spy societies, living nukes, voodoo cartels, and Batman.

Amanda Waller neither looks nor acts like the kind of character that stars in a superhero comic, and she is the central character throughout the 66 issues of the run and we follow her character arc from beginning to end as she's forced to spin plates to accomplish her goals and prevent bad situations from getting worse. She is the most fully realized character in the run and everything rests on her shoulders. We spend a lot of time inside her head, her team, her associates, she is the center holding together an extremely chaotic book with no two characters on the same page. She is, and has to be, an extremely powerful person, someone who stands her ground no matter what, an unbeatable force of will because that is the only way she's going to survive the situations she's in, the only way she can be "The Wall", the kind of person who can repel Batman, command a platoon of monsters, talk her way out of Deadshot's contract, someone who can stare at Darkseid and credibly threaten the President into letting her live.

That's the part that everyone is more or less familiar. But there is, or at least used to be, much more to Amanda Waller than just being The Wall, not in the least because being The Wall is also hampering her effectiveness as well as straight up killing her.

"Amanda's toughness has taken her a long way" "It's taken her as far as it can. But it can't take her no further. It's actually starting to drag her down. I'm scared for my baby sister, rev - scared that the anger in her is congealing into hate." - Suicide Squad #31

We get to know her backstory, her plans, her points of contention with the system, her relationships with people around her, and how deeply she cares about things and people even as she sends them to the meatgrinder. From the start we learn that Waller staffs her team with people she's prone to getting into disagreements with, like Simon LaGrieve and Rick Flag, specifically so they can cover her moral blind spots and pick up the slack in emotional intelligence she's lacking, be the heroes that she can't afford to be. It is unspeakably crucial that the Squad is led by Rick Flag as well as Bronze Tiger, a fallen hero who owes Waller for his recovery who eventually takes Flag's baton. Waller stands up for her team, gets into fights with her superiors when they decide to terminate them, and takes the fall for them when necessary. Waller is a person who does Bad Things - but she is not a Bad Person.

The book in no uncertain terms frames the Suicide Squad's existence as monstrous in a scale Waller doesn't understand until the very end, and it digs deep into the unethical things Waller has to allow for and perpetrate in order to keep it running no matter how many lives it saves, and she spends the first half of the book on a downward spiral. But then there's the 2nd half of the book:

In the first 39 issues, Amanda’s flaws are her undoing. As she pushes away the people she hired to act as a balance, she grasped tighter and tighter to her uncompromised vision of the Suicide Squad despite the constant changes and derailment. Her choices had consequences: the death of Rick Flag, her demotion, employees quitting, and finally, the disbandment of the team.

The last 27 issues have Amanda rising up from the ashes after a year in jail. She’s less in her own way – she communicates, her anger isn’t driving her, she’s more receptive of alternative perspective and recognizes when she’s wrong in real time – but she’s still just as scary.

Waller rebuilds her relationships with the people she drove away, takes a different tack to how the team works, and starts going out into the frontlines with the Squad. She brings Oracle (who actually made her debut in this comic) into the fold, saves her life and plays a big role in Barbara making progress in overcoming her Joker trauma. She genuinely puts in the work to improve as a person and do things a better way than before, even if there is an inescapable immorality to the very existence of the Squad and what they do. That immorality never goes away, and it only further horrifies her when learning how badly her project has gone. In fact, it's that very inescapable immorality that ends her arc.

She learns that the CIA has started using a new Suicide Squad to support a brutal regime in South America, and when faced with the full extent of her complicity in Western imperialism? She decides right then and there to end the Suicide Squad for good after they liberate the population of said regime from said Squad. She is the only person who gives a shit about the country enough to start the assignment for free once she knows about it, force the Squad along, lead the mission in field, and personally (and even gently) usher the villain to his death at the end, to end what began with her.

She does bad things, and she does good things. She cares about people, and she uses people. Her decisions ruin as well as save the world. She spins a million plates to match wills and wits with the strongest, wickedest, most cunning humans and superhumans alike, and she still has superiors to answer to and people close to her she hires to judge her for what she does. She endured racism and misogyny and poverty for decades and rode whatever she could to attain as much power over her own life as someone like her could possibly attain, and to have it, she must be a willing tool of the state and bend the knee to Ronald Reagan, the man she derides for what he did to her community, hating every minute of it.

She lost her family to sexual and racial violence, and now she wrangles a penal battalion comprised of some of the worst people on the planet to inflict violence on her orders. She has saved and redeemed people, and she's haunted by the corpses she's left in her wake. She is oppressed and oppressor, someone who could only escape the ravages of American imperialism by becoming one of it's chief enforcers, and still she rebuilds herself into a better person from it upon confronting and challenging her role in it. She is not a bad person, she is not a good person either, she is just afforded a degree of agency and complexity unpowered characters in superhero books simply don't get.

Okay cool, now what is she up to these days?

That, I guess. That is what a strong but unpowered person who does not allow themselves to be bossed around by superheroes or supervillains looks like now. Everytime there's a call for a military bad guy, Waller gets tagged in to be DC's Henry Gyrich. There was a point where Waller was made to contrast the likes of Sarge Steel and Wade Eiling, someone who butted heads with them because she was a well-meaning person working for and committing evil as often as she attempted to stop it. These days, the most consistent beat with her is that she is the most dangerous person alive and worse than the villains she wrangles into working for her. She is a thing to be overcome, a hypocrite to be exposed, a challenge to the natural order of the universe, and she is too terrific at it to be shuffled off quietly. She is a Bad Person and so everything she says and does is Bad (and thus can be ignored).

Integral to Suicide Squad's structure was the fact that Waller was the center holding everything together, the ultimate third party: spinning plates working with, for and against all of the others so she can bend rules and be bent by them. Bent, but never broken, because The Wall doesn't break, others break first. Waller was a one-of-a-kind character, and that broke her, because beating Sarge Steel and Wade Eiling at their own game means replacing Sarge Steel and Wade Eiling. Waller doesn't look like them, she doesn't look like the superheroes either, and so she can't be one of them. She can't even look like herself a lot of the time, they try to slim her up everytime they think they can get away with it.

Suicide Squad was preoccupied with exploring a perspective from a world outside the superhero worldview, but we no longer have her perspective or that of people around her, we only know her through the superheroes she inherently defies and has had an adversarial relationship against from day one. She is someone with a viewpoint that is charitable to neither superheroes nor institutions, and thus, the universe is increasingly less sympathetic to her, the less utility she has to the grander narrative where everyone has to pick between one of two options. If she wasn't powerful and assertive, she'd be another Leslie Thompkins, another Jiminy Cricket the heroes passively ignore. But because she is powerful and doing morally compromised things without asking Batman's permission, she must have a personal grudge. She must be a government monster. She must attack the superheroes for no reason, no ideology, no motive.

So now she's just The Wall 24/7, the mean icy establishment boot who is strong and clever and cruel and hates superheroes and wants to destroy superheroes and rule the world from the shadows. Everything she does is a fuck-up she refuses to take responsability for, everyone is right to hate and distrust mean old Waller, and now everyone gets to look good by dunking on her. They couldn't make her a superhero, so they made her a generic supervillain instead. And now that she's a bad guy, she no longer has to believe anything, she doesn't really have to mean anything, they don't have to write stories about something other than superheroes and supervillains, and they don't have to let a fat woman of color take up space and screentime they could be giving to Harley Quinn and Slade Wilson instead.

Even by the time of Waller's debut on the tail end of the 80s, her career opportunities were on their way to extinction

Days Of Future Past marks the triumph of the superhero comic that's pretty much concerned with no-one but superheroes. Where Ditko and Lee's Spider-Man featured a single costumed crimefighter in the context of a commonplace existence, the X-Men of the 80s focused on a huge cast of mutants who had little if any lasting involvement in the everyday world.

By the 21st century, the corporate superhero comic would largely - if not exclusively - concern itself with little beyond a large class of superhumans and their fantastical existence. I suspect there's a significant correlation between that and the continuing cultural  peripherilisation of the superhero comic - Colin Smith

Amanda Waller is one of the strongest characters in all of comics, she was as powerful as an non-superpowered character given center stage could possibly be, a perfectly designed character from which an entire corner of a shared universe was developed out of with her as the center making it work, but as the room for civilian casts and unpowered protagonists got smaller and smaller, so did Waller's options. If she was a Spider-Man character and somehow didn't get killed or made into a villain, they would have slimmed her up and given her a symbiote, because you're nobody unless you're web-swinging. Characters didn't look or act like Amanda Waller, and unfortunately, they still don't. It's just instead of making more characters like her, they gutted Waller to be more like the rest. If she couldn't make it, who else even could.

Keep your eyes peeled for this summer when she'll team up with two meaningless robot baddies to burn down the Justice League and I guess the universe for the next reboot or something.

[renaroo]

Promises (12/30)

Disclaimer: Batman and associated characters are the creative property of DC Comics. Warnings: One Year Later/Evil Cass allusions Rating: T Synopsis: For an entire year after the Crisis which threatened to wipe everything they knew and loved off the Earth, after so many hardships and loved ones lost, Cass and Tim find themselves battling on different sides of the globe not only for the fate of what’s left of the world, but for the sake of once again feeling purpose. [A One Year Later fixer upper]

A/N: I would give a big long explanation as to why this chapter took so long to publish but, in all honesty, I’ve probably ran the full gambit of excuses at this point for this poor neglected story. My only real explanation is a significant lack of free time lately this year. Man 2018 sucks eggs.

Special thanks to Aingeal98, @secretlystephaniebrown, @mitchthebat, and kiyomisa on tumblr, ffnet, and AO3 for the feedback and support!

Children of the Revolution

Cassandra didn’t have all that much use for the BatCave — at least not when she compared her methods to Batman or Robin or even Nightwing. And she was certainly nowhere on Oracle’s level. And Cass was constantly comparing herself in the hours and nights after crossing paths with Two-Face at the scene of the most recent murder.

So even without knowing how to use it in the inventive and perfect ways that the other, better vigilantes did, Cassandra stood at the cave’s center, mask in her hands, and looked toward the equipment, vehicles, and computers that were of no use to her at all.

Her clutch on her mask only tightened all the more.

When the door behind the grandfather clock opened, Cass only mildly listened, just long enough to verify that it was Alfred’s familiar steps, then she began to pull the cowl over her head. Her lone batcycle was waiting for her and she had a patrol to do. A patrol that was unorganized, without map directions, and without consideration for the so-called gathered evidence.

For all intents and purposes, Cassandra was off the case.

Batman — Bruce — had made clear where his faith lied. And it was not with her.

It might have never been with her.

And there was something about that information, learning it and letting it break down in her very soul, that made the symbol on her chest burn with scorn. It was like the suit itself did not want her to wear it.

“Miss Cassandra,” Alfred called, halfway down the stairs. He was carrying a silver tray with food cold enough that its scent barely wafted Cass’ way. “I cannot help but notice that you did not eat your dinner. I would shudder the thought that you would think of going on your nightly excursion without so much as your basic calories.”

She glanced back at him, her apologetic look lost beneath the barrier of her mask. “Not hungry.”

“I am not hungry,” Alfred corrected lightly.

Eyes squinting slightly, Cass tried to ignore the ferocious instinct to snap back. Even in her foulest moments, snapping at Alfred seemed unfathomable and unforgivable. “I’m not,” she insisted.

“Then perhaps you are feeling ill and should stay in for the night,” the butler urged.

Biting back on her molars, Cassandra was too angry to speak. All she could hear from Alfred’s pleading was that Gotham didn’t need Batgirl. Because, surely, if that was what Batman thought then it was what everyone who she believed to have faith in her must have thought as well.

Her blood boiled even as she quickly made her way to the waiting cycle.

“Miss Cassandra, please consider it. You have not had any break since Master Bruce and the boys left,” Alfred continued, putting the tray of cold food down and walking toward the carport behind her. “I worry for you.”

“Don’t,” Cass finally snapped, slinging her leg over the cycle and immediately revving it once her computer connected gloves gripped to the handles.

In the rearview mirrors, Cass could see the despondent look on Alfred’s face, but Cassandra was nothing if not highly committed. And she wasted no time in pushing herself forward with the same  powerful anger and scorn which was still heating her chest.

And with that, Batgirl was on her way to Gotham, without any tactics or plans other than to punch every person in the seedy underbelly of the city. There was no one to give her guidance or to have her back. And the further she drove, the more she felt that ominous pressure.

Without much of a plan and without a partner directing her through the commlink in her cowl, Cassandra was moving from rooftop to rooftop rather pointlessly, loathe as she was to admit it.

Petty crimes in Gotham were not difficult to locate, even without a centralized location, but the more she found, the more Cassandra could not ignore that the bigger crimes, the ones that would be the focus of Batman’s night, that were what the signal was reserved for, were piling higher and higher without solution.

At least, without Cassandra providing a solution.

Her mind rattled with anxiety over that failure until she found herself landing on the decorative, garish architecture of Gotham’s highest sanctuary. Then she was paused, stopped in place with no ability to move. She was locked in, staring at the city below with the abject sense of failure. She was failing. She was a failure, and it made her throat and mouth dry and wither.

Cassandra could hardly breathe as she put her head in her hands and curled toward her knees.

What was she doing? Why couldn’t she do better?

The ache in her chest only grew stronger with the internal demands when she heard a snap in the air.

It was a crisp night, cold, and leather was tight and pulled more, resisted movement more. And when rope or the like were pulled taut, that signature snap of the line was unmistakable to Cassandra.

Uncurling from her insecurities, Batgirl looked to meet the source of the sound and found someone rather unmistakable in the wait.

Catwoman.

It had been a long time since Batgirl and Catwoman met in Gotham, last time had been unpleasant and after Catwoman had been framed for the shooting and attempted murder of Barbara’s father. The time before that, Catwoman worked with Batgirl to stop some of the Penguin’s improprieties during Gotham’s reconstruction.

There was almost no telling what the circumstances were for the current meeting.

“Hey there, Kitten,” she said lightly with a familiarity that wasn’t quite earned. She brought her hands up to the sides of her head and pointed upward with her pointer fingers. “Saw those long ears and thought you were someone who could use a break from brooding.”

A little confused, Batgirl knitted her brows together and stared suspiciously at the thief. “Wasn’t…”

“Honey, as long as you wear that,” Catwoman pointed toward Batgirl’s chest, “then you certainly were brooding, ‘fraid to say.”

There was something light and teasingly warm about Catwoman’s tone, but it only served to bother Cassandra more. She didn’t know what brooding was or if she was doing it. And not knowing only made her feel all the more sour.

“Go away,” Batgirl said flatly.

“Fine, was a boring conversation anyway,” Catwoman shrugged. “I’ll just have to find someone else that can explain all of these murders going on recently.”

Snapping back to attention, Batgirl got to her feet and looked in surprise Catwoman’s way. “You know… the murders?” she tried to clarify.

“Read about them in the paper,” she answered. “Some of them were taking place in the East End. That’s my neighborhood. I’m not a fan of things happening in my territory that are outside the bounds of hard living.” She paused and looked curiously at Batgirl through her shade heavy goggles. “Do you have anything to go off of?”

Defensive to a fault, she stood warily. “Maybe.”

“Quite the conversationalist,” Catwoman sighed. “Seriously, though, if you have anything that’d be helpful for calming my nerves, I’d appreciate it.” She waited for a moment more. When Batgirl wasn’t responding, she gave a long sigh. “Good ol’ silent types it is then. I don’t know what it is that attracts the to me.” She began to walk away casually, a sly glance over her shoulder. “Still, I take some comfort knowing you are behind some of this stuff and not just that backstabber former-and-ever-current Harvey Dent. Never did trust lawyers.”

For as dumb as Cassandra felt she was, there was one thing she was always confident in, and that was her ability to read people. And that included reading people when they were purposefully manipulative.

With a curl of her nose, Batgirl leaped forward, somersaulting over Catwoman’s head to cut her off.

The sudden change in atmosphere seemed to give even Catwoman pause.

“You… know about Two-Face!” Batgirl hissed. “Who… told you?”

Catwoman blinked in surprise before attempting a causal shrug. “Isn’t it common knowledge by now?”

Not at all amused, Cassandra took a threatening step forward which immediately forced Selina to step back herself.

“Calm down, kid,” she warned. “I’m a friendly. Ask Oracle, she’ll vouch for me. Most likely.”

It all clicked together at once, like a jigsaw puzzle coming to completion.

“Oracle…” Batgirl huffed angrily. “Of course.”

Turning, Cassandra faced over the edge of the building. The sweeping depths of the city below her, her emotions roaring inside, Cassandra felt as unsettled and insignificant as the traffic below. Untrustworthy. Not smart enough. Not good enough.

Not anything…

“Okay, look, I came as a favor to a kind-of-friend,” Catwoman admitted, stepping forward and reaching for Cassandra’s shoulders. “And I did it because I knew that that person, as much as we may not get along, obviously really worried about you, and needed to know that you would be okay. I think that’s something a lot of people would want. That means something. Don’t… don’t you think?”

Eyes narrowing, Cassandra lowered her head. “I… I think,” she hesitantly said, then turned angrily and smacked away Catwoman’s hand in one motion. “I think… adults suck!”

With that, Batgirl pulled out her grappling hook and took off in a well positioned dive. Her motions were so quick and natural it would have been difficult for even Catwoman to follow if she had tried.

She didn’t try, though.

And Batgirl went to practice her brooding, as it were, elsewhere.

Gotham had never been lonelier in Batgirl’s eyes.

She stood solemnly and without direction.

There was crime to stop, there was a serial murderer to be found, there were villains and horrors beyond imagining that should have been her responsibility that night.

But all she could think to herself was how… how those things weren’t her responsibility. Not really.

For the first time since the time she had left Gotham, Cassandra truly felt as though she did not belong there. They were not hers to care for anymore. But if they weren’t, then where was she meant to protect?

The thoughts were so confounding and so stark in her mind that she almost missed the whispers of an approach.

Almost.

With a hiss, she ducked beneath the swing of a sword, buckled her knees and rose up with a push of her hands against the rooftop’s concrete. It was a swift, brutal full body kick that would have hit another challenger squarely in the chest.

But her opponent wasn’t any other challenger. It was Deathstroke, and he twisted with the kick to decrease its impact and land a body length away from Batgirl’s new position.

They stared at each other silently.

“You haven’t lost step,” he announced, less than impressed. “You haven’t improved either.”

“For you… don’t need to,” she spat back.

Batgirl readied herself for a retaliatory attack at any moment. She had only bested Deathstroke before twice — once by surprise, secondly by proxy through Ravager. And Cassandra was not eager to see what her prospects were without those two counters. Her old self would have valued the opportunity to fight a genuinely impressive fighter, someone who had the capacity to best her skills.

Old Cassandra had not been given life by Shiva for the third time yet, though.

Readied as she might have been, she could not have expected for Deathstroke to completely relax his muscles, sheathe his weapon, and straighten up to stand.

She did not move, fists still up, legs spread, but her head tilted in confusion.

“Believe it or not, I am to here to fight today,” Deathstroke announced. He then looked over her. “Obviously you are going for not.”

“Why?” Batgirl snapped. “Wait… Don’t care. Just leave.”

Just beneath his mask, Deathstroke grinned. “That’s why,” he declared at once.

Cassandra squinted in confusion.

“You’re confused, I understand,” he continued, nearing  her step by step. “I want to help you. I want to help you be better — be as strong and as lethal as you were meant to be.”

The words rang in Cass’ mind, her heart pounding. They were familiar words, words she had heard before even if it had been ages ago.

“This? Being a sideshow to a freak like Two-Face is not what you were meant to be. You’re limited by his ideals. By his sheltering. He sheltered you from this opportunity to prove yourself, and  he shelters you from the rest of the world. The real world, outside of Gotham,” Deathstroke commented lowly. “And beyond that? He’s kept you like a child — naive and ignorant. Unable to read even. Others — people like me, we wouldn’t keep you like that. We would teach you in every art that he refuses you now.”

There was a tremble in Cassandra’s body that she couldn’t suppress no matter how much she felt it coming on.

Deathstroke saw it and he acted on it immediately, feeling he had won the ground he was seeking.

“It’s true. We have an entire organization now—“

With one swooping open palm, Batgirl nailed an uppercut just beneath Deathstroke’s jawline. His teeth crunched together and his head snapped back, though non-lethally.

It was a cheap shot, but Cass felt so rewarded by it as she stood over Deathstroke. Her third victory was through deception, continuing the trend of them being less than how she would consider wins to be respectful.

“Reading… better now,” she informed him as she stood. “Also. Tell Nyssa… it was better speech first time.”

Heart still pounding, Batgirl left the rooftop with her grappling hook, ready to call this particularly awful night to an end.

[wbwest]

New Post has been published on WilliamBruceWest.com

New Post has been published on http://www.williambrucewest.com/2017/08/18/west-week-ever-pop-culture-review-81817/

West Week Ever: Pop Culture In Review - 8/18/17

  I swear, as much as I love pop culture, some weeks it’s just really hard to pay attention to that stuff with everything going on in the world. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know about everything that went down in Charlottesville last weekend. I don’t need to recap it, but I’ve got to tell you that I’m scared. Yeah, we’re supposed to stand up to the Nazis and #Resist and all that, but I can still be scared, can’t I? I’ve got to raise a kid in the world. I don’t know how to explain shit that I don’t even understand. We really judge people because of their color? It’s like the Chris Rock joke about VCRs and girls who don’t perform oral sex: “They still make you?” It’s crazy to me, and I tended to just go through life without really thinking too much about it. I had that luxury, and I knew it was a luxury. Part of what made it great was that these folks that are loud and proud used to just be keyboard warriors in their moms’ basements. But they’ve come out of the basements, y’all, and this shit is REAL.

About two years ago, I was driving us all home from the airport. I get to an intersection for a left turn, and the guy behind me keeps honking for me to go, even though he couldn’t really see that I saw cars coming. Eventually, he just speeds around me, and we end up next to each other at the next light. I see him mouthing something at me, so I roll down my window. Then he proceeds to ramble off a bunch of stuff, but what stood out most in my mind was him calling me a nigger. Oh, and my wife a bitch. But mainly him calling me a nigger several times. And it all went black for me.

I seem to remember calling him an asshole, because racial scientists have yet to discover the perfect counter to being called a nigger. White folks are like Teflon when it comes to slurs, as most of the ones about them have lost their effectiveness over the years. And then he challenged me to a fight. Wanted me to pull over into a parking lot. Like I said, I was GONE at this point. Plus, this was the longest red light in history. My daughter started crying in her carseat, and he told me to “go on home and don’t be a deadbeat nigger”, and Lindsay was urging me to just ignore the guy. Engines started revving. The lanes narrowed, and I think I wanted to run him into the median. That was my plan. As Evie’s cries got louder, I realized I had responsibilities and shit, so I let him speed off when the light turned green.

He wasn’t some good ol’ boy redneck. He pretty much looked like a regular White dude with a shaved head. At that point, I didn’t know what the Alt Right was because I hadn’t really heard of Gamergate and all that. But I can say, today, that he was the same type of dude that was down in Charlottesville, and that scares me. It scares me because I don’t like what they’re capable of. But it also scares me because I don’t like what they’re capable of making me do. Bad shit all the way around. Who’s to blame? Well, you be the judge of that. Some of you are still fooling yourselves, but you know exactly how we got here, and didn’t even stop think of what the ramifications would be. Fuck it all, ’cause “emails”, right? Anyway, here we are. Question I have for you is how are we gonna get out of here? And are you part of the solution or part of the problem?

Whew! OK. So, who’s ready for some pop culture ramblings, huh? Huh? Yeah, let’s get to that.

  In a pretty big deal, Netflix acquired comic creator Mark Millar’s Millarworld comic imprint. You know, he’s the guy behind Wanted, and Kick-Ass, and Kingsman. Oh, what’s that? No, those properties aren’t part of this deal. Still, he’s quite the prolific writer (so prolific, in fact, that I’m not convinced he’s the one actually writing all this stuff, but I digress…), so there’s a lot of material to pull from. There’s Nemesis, which is basically evil Batman who dresses like a Klansman. There’s Superior, which is basically just Millar’s riff on the Shazam story. There’s Super Crooks, which is about, well, super crooks. I know I sound sarcastic and all, but I actually did enjoy all of these series. They may not have been the most original things I’ve read, but he’s found what works for him, so more power to him.

To me, the real winner here is Netflix, as they basically acquired a comic “company” without any of the hassle. You see, Millarworld isn’t a publisher like Marvel or DC. No, it’s an imprint, which is just a fancy branding tactic to let you know that all the stories spring forth from the same voice. Millarworld comics are currently published by both Marvel and Image. As an imprint, all of the heavy lifting is done by the actual publisher. So, Netflix gets the intellectual property without having to worry about comic shipping schedules, retailer outreach, or anything else that publishers should be doing. With this deal, they essentially get to have their cake and eat it, too. Part of me is scared that Netflix is being a bit too aggressive in the marketplace, and can’t sustain this level of success, but what do I know? It’ll be interesting to see what they end up doing with all of this.

Speaking of big deals, Shonda Rhimes – creator of the hits Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal – has signed a multiyear production deal with Netflix, moving her Shondaland production house from ABC. Her ABC contract was set to expire in May 2018, but word on the street is that she negotiated an early exit. A lot of folks are wondering what this means, especially for ABC, which had built the Thursday night TGIT lineup around Rhimes’s shows. It could be good, and it could be bad. For all of her success (the aforementioned shows), she’s also had some misses, including Off The Map, The Catch, and Still Star-Crossed. And for all the buzz surrounding its star, How to Get Away With Murder struggles to find the audience that Grey’s and Scandal have attracted.

There’s no doubt Rhimes is a powerhouse producer, but I think this move came at the right time, as TGIT was starting to get stale. Grey’s is on season 13, but could continue as long as Ellen Pompeo wants work. Meanwhile, Scandal ends this season, and I really don’t know how much more rope they’re gonna give Murder. I’m sure ABC would love to retool the night, without having to cater to one producer, so this will give them a lot more options. There were some potentially difficult decisions on the horizon that can now be avoided since Rhimes took an early out. As for what she’ll do for Netflix, we’re really just gonna have to wait and see.

So get this: apparently some lawyer bought the rights to My Cousin Vinny just so he could release Back to Brooklyn, a novel that follows the characters 25 years later. Now, I’ve never seen the movie in its entirety, but it’s certainly not one that ended with me wondering what happened to them next. According to the synopsis, not much. According to Deadline:

In the update, Vinny is working on a new murder case. This time, it’s set in his native Brooklyn. But domestic issues still plague him – he hasn’t married Lisa, and his career as an attorney really hasn’t taken wing, despite the Alabama triumph, leading to financial problems. Finally, he is hired to help a woman accused of killing her boyfriend, whose brother is the deputy mayor of New York City.

“Taken wing”? I’ve never heard that before. Is that like “Taking flight“? Anyway, that sounds boring as shit. This reboot/revival industry has really gotten out of hand, and this just takes the cake. I can tell you one thing about it without even reading it, though: 25 years later and Marisa Tomei is still a total smokeshow.

Not only has Chrisley Knows Best been renewed for a 6th sesaon, but it also scored an aftershow, According to Chrisley. Hey, at least it’s not another Hardwick talker! From the description, it’s really just a late night version of a daytime talk show, as Todd Chrisley will interact with the audience and give advice on marriage, parenting, and sex. Yup, good ol’ vaginal intercourse. I’m sure Todd knows TONS about that…

They say the third time’s the charm, and that’s exactly how many times they’ve now tried to make How I Met Your Father happen. This time, the show is being developed by Alison Bennett from a show that I love, FXX’s You’re The Worst. So, tonally, don’t look for the kind of humor you’re used to from HIMYM.

In the world of comics, Wizard: The Guide to Comics is returning in the form of WizPop, which will be yet another pop culture website in a crowded pool of pop culture websites. They say that a quarterly print version will follow at some point in the future, but I really don’t see that getting off the ground in today’s print marketplace. Apparently, WizPop will be a “digital daily video news service”, and I hate videos, so this already isn’t for me. I feel a lot of folks film shit that would’ve been more compelling written. Plus, I’m sure they’ll find some hot girl, get her to talk about Pokémon once a week, and expect the clicks to roll in.

The editor in chief of this project is Brian Walton, formerly of Nerdist, so I’m sure he knows his shit. The associate editor, however, is Luke Y. Thompson, who’ll I’ll always refer to as “the guy who killed Topless Robot”. Back in the early ’00s you wanted to have the popularity of 2 major sites: Topless Robot and X-Entertainment. Rob and Matt ruled the geek set, and when Rob left Topless Robot – a brand he had built – it really should’ve ended. Instead, Thompson came along and simply didn’t have feet big enough to fill the shoes he’d been left. I remember when the call went out for a new editor for that site, and I considered it briefly, but thought to myself “Nobody knows me, and it’s not like I have that big of a following”. Then they chose Thompson, whom I’d only heard of here and there, and who had basically the same amount of social media followers that I did. Son of a bitch! Anyway, I’m probably being too hard on the guy. I can say with certainty that I wouldn’t have fared any better than he did, as there just wasn’t, nor should there have been, a Topless Robot without Rob Bricken. Can’t begrudge a dude for needing to work, but I really don’t know what Thompson or Walton can bring to the Wizard brand to set it apart from everyone else who’ve already staked a claim to the digital world.

Things You Might Have Missed This Week

Everything’s coming up Jetsons, as DC Comics announced a new miniseries, while ABC announced they’ve picked up a pilot from Robert Zemeckis for a live action sitcom. I say this show dies on the vine like the Seth MacFarlane Flintstones reboot, but we’ll see…

The season 7 Suits finale will serve as a backdoor pilot for a spinoff starring Gina Torres, and set in the world of Chicago politics. I really hope it’s called Da Skirts.

Marvel’s Runaways are about to be DOOMED, as the former movie doctor (and Nip/Tuck butt model) Julian McMahon joins the Hulu series as some worthless adult character. Seriously, if you’ve read the book, you know you can’t trust any adults in their orbit.

Fringe‘s Kirk Acevedo has been cast as “Ricardo Diaz” next season on Arrow, who will be the Arrowverse adaptation of DC Comics martial artist Richard Dragon.

Unwillingly to let a little broken neck stop him (um, spoiler alert?), David Tennant will reprise his role as The Purple Man in season 2 of Jessica Jones.

If you’re looking for conversation fodder for when you talk to your grandma, you should probably know that Daphne Oz, daughter of the Dr, is leaving The Chew. Like I said, your grandma will have something to say about it.

If you’re a 15 year old girl and you stumbled across this site because you found me in one of your chat rooms, then you’ll want to know that the Teen Wolf 100th episode/series finale will air September 24th. No word if Michael J. Fox or Jason Bateman will make a cameo. Oh, you don’t know who they are? Fuckin’ Generation Z, man…

Paul Scheer will now spearhead the Amazon adaptation of Galaxy Quest, which can only mean one thing: Rob Huebel is gonna be the commander. Mark my words!

Lost executive producer/co-showrunner Carlton Cuse just inked an overall production deal with ABC. Spoiler alert: all the characters in all of the upcoming shows have been dead the whole time.

Michael Douglas is in talks to star in a Netflix sitcom created by Chuck Lorre, which means everyone will “hate” it but it’ll still be the highest rated comedy on the streaming service. I mean, Lorre is KING of the Guilty Pleasure.

NBC announced that there have been “talks” of a Frasier revival, though they aren’t sure if the creators want to do it without co-creator David Angell, who died in the September 11th attacks.

Not to be outdone, Fox announced that they’ve been in talks with Mike Judge to bring back King of the Hell. While I’d love to know how Hank Hill would regard Trump’s America, I feel the original run of that show is nearly perfect and wouldn’t want a lackluster follow-up like Futurama 2.0.

Bad Boys 3 is clearly never happening, so it just lost its release date to Will Ferrell & John C. Reilly’s Holmes & Watson, hitting theaters November 9th, 2018.

Nia Vardalos, of My Big Fat Greek Wedding fame, is developing Suburbs Famous, a TV series loosely inspired by the Chewbacca Mom thing. I’m not sure what to call it. It wasn’t a phenomenon. It was just a thing.

Hold onto your butts, children of the 80s, as there’s a reboot of The Two Coreys masterpiece License to Drive. This time it’ll be a female-led ensemble, being called a “female version of Superbad“. Um, OK.

You know that coworker who clearly hates his job, and really doesn’t go out of his way to make you think otherwise? That’s Daniel Craig with the James Bond franchise and, as much as he claims to hate it, it’s a job, so he’ll be back in the next installment.

Get your towels, fangirls (and fanboys, if that’s your thing), ’cause Star-Lord is back on the market! After 8 years of marriage, Chris Pratt and Anna Faris announced their separation. He’ll get custody of the family’s successful movie career, while she gets the car and her job on Mom.

I thought this was pretty clever

In a rebranding move, Chuck E. Cheese’s is getting rid of the animatronic band that we all grew up being terrified of. But fear not, as the chain will still base their image around a rat serving you pizza, so if that ain’t classy, I don’t know what is!

This week I joined my good pal Classick for another round of the Classick Team-Up Podcast. This was my first show with his new cohost, Amber, and I think we all gelled really well together. You should definitely give it a listen, but listener discretion is advised!

To say that the new DuckTales is good would be an understatement. In fact, it might be too good. Like everyone else, I’m beginning to tire of all of Hollywood dusting off old properties for new money, so I was a bit apprehensive about a DuckTales reboot. I mean, Disney had come a long way since then, so did they really need to return to that well? I grew up with the Disney Afternoon, so I know some DuckTales. It was never my favorite show or anything, but I enjoyed watching it. Even saw the movie in theaters. I would’ve been more intrigued by a Darkwing Duck or, believe it or not, a Goof Troop reboot, but I was willing to return to Duckburg to check things out.

As the news started trickling out about the reboot, I began to get a bit more interested. The character designs were updated, yet faithful to the original. And the cast! They could’ve just gone with some unknown voice actors, but instead they went for Purple Man David Tennant, and SNL guys Bobby Moynihan and Beck Bennett. Hell, they even got Community‘s Danny Pudi in the mix. Even if the show sucked, it wouldn’t be due to the folks behind the mic. Then they announced that the show would premiere on 8/12, and air for 24 hours. And for 24 hours did it run!

I actually didn’t get to watch it until the marathon was over, but when it was over, I couldn’t believe what I had seen. It was great. I was surprised that Huey, Dewey, and Louie actually had personalities now. That’s something I don’t remember being true about the original show. I liked the personality upgrade that Webby received, and I now find her more endearing than annoying. There’s clearly a story behind the new Mrs. Beakley, as she’s not just some doddering housekeeper anymore. And Donald’s even featured this time! There were a ton of Easter eggs referencing the old show, including shout outs to Cape Suzette (Tale Spin) and St. Canard (Darkwing Duck). Hell, they even had Roxanne from A Goofy Movie in it. What’s not to love?

If I had any squabble at all, it’s that I kinda wish Donald had subtitles. I know that’s part of his gimmick, but during the first half hour, for whatever reason, I found him downright incomprehensible. It didn’t seem as bad during the second half hour, so I don’t know what the difference was.

Anyway, the series properly debuts with new episodes on September 23rd, and I think I found my new favorite Saturday cartoon. If you didn’t see it, you should definitely check it out. It might not be your speed, but you can’t help but marvel at what they accomplished. That’s why DuckTales had the West Week Ever.

Oh yeah, I’m still trying to make Sarahah happen, so leave me some comments!

[kevinpolowy]

'Wonder Woman': Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, and Patty Jenkins on the Invisible Jet and Jumpa the Kangaroo

There have been some odd elements and storylines in the Wonder Woman comics over the years. Most (in)famous, of course, is her invisible jet. But did you know Wonder Woman once ran for president? Or that she had (and rode) a pet kangaroo named… Jumpa?

You’ll find none of these in the new movie Wonder Woman, directed by Patty Jenkins (Monster) and starring Gal Gadot as the stunning Amazonian superhero. But some of the weird elements could make their way into a sequel — at least if Jenkins and her stars have anything to say about it.

Chris Pine, for one, is all about Jumpa. “We have to see that on screen,” Pine laughed. “[There] absolutely [has to be] a kangaroo in the next one.” Pine, who plays WWI pilot Steve Trevor, took it a step further by volunteer to play Jumpa… and as you can see in the video above, he even workshopped the Australian accent he would use because we guess it would be a talking kanga.

Gadot was more in favor of the invisible jet, as was Jenkins — who could very well have a hand in revving up a sequel if the upcoming movie does as well as expected at the box office.

“The invisible jet is very important and ultimately we have to have the invisible jet,” Jenkins told us. “That’s a very big part of Wonder Woman.”

Wonder Woman opens June 2.

Watch Chris Pine explain whey Steve Trevor is NOT a dude in distress:

Read more on Yahoo Movies:

Gal Gadot Responds to Critics of ‘Wonder Woman’ Costume, Discusses How Close She Came to Quitting Acting

Wonder Woman Faces Mysterious Stranger in DC’s Free Comic Book Day Offering (Exclusive)

Watch Chris Pine Break Down All the Movie Chrises on ‘Saturday Night Live’

[aion-rsa]

Harley Quinn Destroys DC Continuity in Anniversary Issue

https://ift.tt/2MMa9wG

Harley Quinn is messing with the DC Multiverse in Harley Quinn #50. We have the inside scoop.

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Interview Marc Buxton

DC Entertainment

Sep 18, 2018

Harley Quinn

It’s Harley Quinn’s world, we just live in it. Harley Quinn is everywhere. From movies to animation to video games to comics to cosplay, Harley Quinn rules the world of pop culture. As if that’s not enough, it’s almost time for Harley to celebrate the 50th issue of her comic book series.

Here to guide everyone’s favorite wackadoo siren through this milestone is writer Sam Humphries and an all-star team of artists. I mean, take a deep breath and check out this line up: Whilce Portacio, Babs Tarr, John McCrea, Scott Kolins, John Timms, Dan Jurgens, Tom Grummett, Brett Booth, Kelley Jones, and more. And with that who’s who of artists, you know this isn’t just any ‘ol Harley story.

Harley Quinn #50 is “Harley Saves the Universe!” and features just about every DC character you can imagine. We’re not kidding, in issue #50, Harley goes cosmic and must navigate the DC Multiverse to save her mom. Along the way, Humphries satirizes every DC icon, era, and genre as he celebrates this Harley milestone. It was our pleasure to sit down with Mister Humphries to discuss the fiftieth issue, his views on Quinn and her world, and his love of the entirety of the DC Universe.  

Harley is certainly one of the most versatile of DC’s pantheon. What makes her fit any genre?

Great question! Issue 50 is a giant-sized answer. "HARLEY QUINN DESTROYS DC CONTINUITY!"

No one has EVER read a comic like this before. Nearly every art jam sequence in the issue illuminates what you're talking about, but Dan Jurgens' sequence in particular is a crystallization of this.

Harley can be true to herself in any situation. She doesn't feel like she has to hold her true self back. She can always be 100% Harley Quinn. Which makes her incredibly versatile. She can go anywhere, fight anyone, team up with anyone, and always be who she is. She can ping pong through any genre, any iconic story, any twist of continuity and, because she's always herself, we get to see all those things through her POV, we get to see it all in a new light. 

And that's Ms. Quinn, thank you.

Speaking of genre, what led to Harley Quinn #50 becoming a big cosmic blowout rather than a Gotham-centric anniversary?

Gotham ain't big enough to contain Harleen the Queen. We had to destroy continuity itself to tell a Harley story worthy of a giant-sized anniversary art jam! And we had to get the biggest artists to draw it, too! Starting with Tremendous John Timms. He's been drawing Harley for awhile, but his work on the framing sequence of this issue is just outstanding. Some of his best work, especially with the colors of Alex Sinclair!

Harley Quinn #50 is more than a love letter to Harley; it’s a love letter to the DC Universe. It feels like you had some unscratched itches when it comes to certain DC characters and other DC genres.

We drove the DC Universe like a stolen car. I made a series of lists, I guess you could call them "wishlists." One was a LONG list of characters I wanted to write or include in some way. Some were obvious, like Wonder Woman. Some were not, like Waverider. Then I also had a list of genres I wanted to play with, everything from "pirate adventure" to "game show." And then the third list was classic DC stories/titles we could twist or build on, like The Death of Superman or The Sandman. Once I had those, I started playing mix and match until I had concepts I couldn't believe. I even had the Six Flags roller coaster The Riddler's Revenge in there, although it didn't make the cut. 

Even though we're DESTROYING continuity, this is also a LOVE LETTER to continuity! No, not just a love letter, but a LOVE SONG, one of those slow funk jams from D'Angelo that you turn up when the lights go low. Continuity is such a weird, singular thing - what is REALLY at the core of continuity? What MATTERS about continuity? The amount of energy in the universe is constant. But every Wednesday, continuity keeps growing without end. HOW?? And finally, why do we love continuity so damn much? These are the questions at the center of Harley Quinn #50.

If only you could have been a fly on the wall during conversations with editors Alex Sinclair and Andrea Shea. You'd understand all the crazy ideas we built on to get to the final insane product of issue 50, a comic where DC continuity is deadzo. Every other page you're gonna say to yourself, "I can't f***ing believe they got away with that!"

  Harley Quinn #50 is also an all-star jam session with a ton of top notch artists. Did you come up with the concepts of the issue first and then find an artist for each one or did you have the artists on board first and then tried to find story directions to match each artist’s strength?

All of the above. It was a really complicated process. We didn't just have an all-star line up of artists, we also had an all-star line up of editors in Alex and Andrea. They put in amazing work to corral everyone, keep the issue on schedule, and keep this wild-ass story straight. 

Above everything else, I wanted three things: I wanted a mix of stylistically diverse artists, I wanted all the artists to have fun, and I wanted them to do something we've never seen them do before. And every single artist grabbed onto the crazy, anything goes spirit of this issue in a gigantic bear hug of love. The Easter Eggs alone will curl your toes! This whole issue is full of surprises. 

Sometimes matching artists with concepts was a no-brainer...like, of course we're going to have Kelley Jones do some spooky, horror-inflected stuff. But he surprised me with the humor he put into it, he's a real stealth comedy artist! Sometimes it was a matter of playing to an artist's loves. I know Babs Tarr has a deep and unyielding love for shojo manga. So I created a sequence where she could let her inner shojo fan run wild. Sometimes it was a bit of personality match. John McCrea is a delight to talk to, a bit of a mischievous guy - I felt like a pirate adventure would suit him, you know? Like he might have been a pirate in a past life!

And other times, we just got lucky. Who knew Brett Booth is not just a dinosaur freak, but an astounding dinosaur artist? Well, Alex knew. But I didn't know when I came up with that sequence! 

It's completely unlike any comic you've ever seen before. It's a writer's dream to be in a huddle with a group of artists like this. They all have my gratitude. 

I really, really need to see your Adam Strange concept come to life on a monthly basis. I just think you should know that.

HA! Thank you. Yeah, Jon Davis-Hunt just did an incredible job on that, didn't he? I am so thrilled he's in this issue - I think The Wild Storm is the finest comic being published by DC right now. So I'm a fan, but I knew we're both WildStorm nerds, so I knew we'd find some common, creative ground together. I'd love to do more work with him, but Warren Ellis would figure out some way to poison me from orbit or something. No thank you!

Talk about the legacy of Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti. This version of Harley by way of Little Annie Fanny has certainly found a lasting direction for the character. 

Well, any milestone like issue 50 is an achievement. But I've been writing Harley for the past five issues, Amanda and Jimmy were writing her for the past FIVE YEARS. So the lion's share of the achievement belongs to them. I tried to pay tribute to Amanda and Jimmy's run by making it a spectacular art-jam issue (something they did a couple times) and by making it as wild and funny as I possibly could. It's a victory lap for them in absentia. Me? I'm just revving up the engines.

Were there any parodies that didn’t make it into the final issue? The Lobo by way of Gaiman was just brilliant.

Oh yeah. Tons. I've got lists of concepts and stories and characters and genres I was hoping to include. A lot of them were too difficult to pull off in two pages, or too obscure, or too hot, or too cold, or whatever. A lot of them sounded like a riot in my head, and then ended up falling flat on the page. So it goes. I'm going to keep the leftovers to myself for future use, but there's one I'll spill the beans on. I wanted to do a Three Musketeers-style sequence with Booster, Beetle, Guy Gardner, Martian Manhunter, Fire, and Ice. But that would have been too much historical research and detail to expect out of an artist for a two page gig. Luckily, Mirka Andolpho was game to include it as an Easter Egg on her pages!

So, the issue ends with a reveal of a very obscure Golden Age character. Why that character?

He's only appeared like six times since World War II. No, not in continuity-time. I mean, he's literally only been in a handful of published comics since the 1940s. I thought, let's shake him up, let him shine in 2018.

So why no Mister J in the final issue?

I've got a Harley/Joker story I really want to tell - a big one, a story that would rewrite the rules of their relationship. I pitched it to DC and they loved it, but for a lot of reasons the time isn't right. All good. You can't rush a story like that. One day...

Where is Harley going next?

After issue 50, she's gonna need a nap. But she's not gonna get one. In brief, here's what's coming up:

- Captain Triumph

- Minor Disasters

- Christmas with the Quinns

- Batman

-THE SEVEN TRIALS OF HARLEY QUINN

To you, who is Harley Quinn?

HARLEY QUINN IS LIFE!!!

Harley Quinn #50 hits stores like an oversized mallet on Wednesday, September 19.

from Books https://ift.tt/2piJaPS

[swipestream]

Sensor Sweep: Shannach- The Last, Hero Kids, Solo, E. R. Eddison

Books (Haffner Press): “Picking up where Lorelei of the Red Mist: Planetary Romances left off, this volume collects the final 17 stories of strange adventures on other worlds from the undisputed “Queen of Space Opera.”  Drawn from the last years of pulp magazines such as Planet Stories, Startling Stories, and digests magazines like Venture Science Fiction, Shannach – The Last: Farewell to Mars sees Brackett at the peak of her talents.  Oddly, it is at this point where she abandons the “planetary romance” sub-genre and embarks on a small string of stories tinged with social relevance. This departure didn’t stop editors asking for some of “that old Brackett magic” and she offered up two latter day tales (“The Road to Sinharat” and “Purple Priestess of the Mad Moon”) before returning to chronicle further adventures of Eric John Stark in her final “Skaith” novels. Closing out the collection is a trio of tales written on commission from the ‘king of anthologies,’ Roger Elwood.”

  Comic Books (Of Wolves and Men): “There’s an awful lot of people in Comicsgate who almost get the Culture War (1). So I do have to admit that there’s a certain ironic humor in seeing a number of people who were quite critical of Vox Day’s Alt-Hero project having to nut up and do the exact same thing six months later. (2)

The main (if usually unstated) goal of ComicsGate has always been to force a reform on the existing comics industry, truly a worthy goal. People want the old Marvel and DC comics back. However it increasingly looks like this noble goal is impossible. The old rotten institutions are simply too corrupt and converged.”

  RPG (RPG Pundit): “Today, the RPGPundit goes after a group notorious for how well they handle the slightest criticism of anything they do: Parents. Oh, also, millennial hipsters, who are just as renowned for their thickness of skin. Let’s do this thing.

I really have to question why it is that the makers of what are supposedly “RPGs for kids” always end up making an RPG when you play kids?”

  Games (Table Top Gaming News): “Honestly, I don’t read a lot of fiction. I’m much more interested in non-fiction. So the upcoming The Board Game Book looks to be right up my alley. It’s all about last year’s greatest hits in terms of games, including interviews with the designers and insight into what made those games such a hit. Expect to see it on Kickstarter in June.From the announcement: A group of leading games writers has unveiled an upcoming book exploring the biggest tabletop hits of 2018.

The Board Game Book – coming to Kickstarter in June – will be a high-quality hardback featuring over 100 games from across all sections of the hobby. Weighing in at over 250 pages and 120,000 words of original games journalism, it will combine insightful critical reviews, designer interviews and stunning studio photography.”

  Pulp Rev (Jeffro’s Space Gaming Blog): “Inappropriate Characters is a new youtube series on tabletop games featuring some of the guys from the scene that are most likely to take flack from the culture police. Appendix N and the Pulp Revolution get mentioned in the inaugural segment during the Barsoom discussion– it’s at the 20 minute mark and runs for about ten minutes if you want to catch that. But hey… why not live large, put on a pot of coffee, and kick back with the whole thing? It’s a good show!”

  Cinema (Reactionary Times): “The answer is, no. It’s too early for that. Sorry. Deadline Hollywood has it tracking at about 160 million for Memorial Day weekend. Now they are turning Memorial Day into a four day weekend so it can do that kind of business but none the less, it’s going to make at least that much money. There is nothing else opening that weekend and I doubt if Deadpool can suck all the air out of the room.

Realistically it’s going to end up somewhere in Suicide Squad territory at seven hundred million, plus or minus fifty million.

  Fiction (Tokien and Fantasy): “The history of Ballantine Books publishing the works of E.R. Eddison (1882-1945) is rather complicated, especially as one delves into the Pan/Ballantine editions and Canadian printings.  It involves only four books: The Worm Ouroboros (originally published in 1922), followed by the three volumes of Zimiamvia, Mistress of Mistresses (1935), A Fish Dinner in Memison (1941), and The Mezentian Gate (1958). The Ballantine Books editions of Eddison’s four novels came out in the U.S. between 1967 and 1969. Interestingly, the first edition of A Fish Dinner in Memison had been published only in the U.S., so the Pan/Ballantine edition of 1972 is the first edition of the book published in the U.K. Conversely, The Mezentian Gate, originally published only in the U.K., had its first American edition in the 1969 Ballantine paperback.”

  Magazines (Murania Press): “Webster’s Dictionary describes Potpourri as “a miscellaneous collection.” Murania Press describes Pulpourri as “a miscellaneous collection of well-written, impeccably researched essays on pulp fiction and how it influenced American popular culture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.”

This latest volume in the Blood ‘n’ Thunder Presents series has been assembled by Ed Hulse from contributions by some of today’s most distinguished pop-culture scholars and archeologists. Their lengthy, informative essays are profusely illustrated with pulp and book covers, interior artwork, rare photographs, and movie posters. These writings are all new to Murania Press and were not previously published in back issues of Blood ‘n’ Thunder.”

  History (Osprey Publishing): “Armies of the Italian Wars of Unification 1848–70 (2)

PAPAL STATES, MINOR STATES & VOLUNTEERS

MEN-AT-ARMS 520   Author: Gabriele Esposito  Illustrator: Giuseppe Rava

Short code: MAA 520 Publication Date: 23 Aug 2018”

  Sensor Sweep: Shannach- The Last, Hero Kids, Solo, E. R. Eddison published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames

[thesummerstorms]

Government agent going after the Titans with every legal loophole he can to get them to comply with his wishes. Going after Donna's husband, Raven's mother, Joey's mother, Gar's stepdad, Vic's grandparents AND the scientists working on a project with him. And then we get this panel:

[thesummerstorms]

Seriously, I fucking love them.

[thesummerstorms]

So Jason Todd dies. Dick panics and gets scared/angry immediately upon learning it. Then he goes to comfort Bruce… who punches him so hard he falls to the ground despite the fact Dick is still walking on an injured leg (with a cane, no less) and wasn’t attacking *Bruce* physically at all.

Bruce then rips open ALL of Dick’s insecurities. The ones that he wasn’t already deliberately opening pre-punch anyway.

Which leads to Dick firing Danny Chase from the Titans, not because Danny Chase is a jack ass (although he is) but because Dick is afraid of being responsible for another kid dying after Bruce implied that Jason’s death was Dick’s fault for leaving.

And to Dick suddenly becoming fixated on protecting his identity, not simply out of caution, but to protect Bruce. Like, yes, he always had to worry about Nightwing being kept a secret but this is the first time it’s tied so explicitly to Bruce-

- and it leads to him moving out of his girlfriend’s apartment for fear that living with her will compromise his identity. And like. He’s had other issues about living with her before marriage before! But it was never, ever framed this way, as a matter of secrecy, until after his disastrous visit with Bruce.

He’s even seeing a therapist! He recognizes that he has a tendency to self-blame. That getting punched by Bruce has lead him to be full of self-doubt and criticism!

But my dude, it is not stopping the spiral here.

And yet when Kory worries over him going to Gotham to see Bruce, he tells her not to. He got punched to the ground last time, but “we go way back”.

He thinks to himself that he’s been avoiding Bruce, that seeing Bruce causes him all kinds of insecurity, that the thought of seeing him feels like “World War II is being fought in [his] stomach”… and yet also that he loves Bruce and caress about him. That he has to try.

My friends, their relationship is just…. So much during this period in time. I haven’t read the Batman comics from the same era to see if Bruce manages any emotional processing about any of it, but Dick is trying so fucking hard, and actively sabotaging himself in the meantime.

[thesummerstorms]

So I read Batman #416 last night...

They haven’t talked in a year and a half according to this issue. Bruce literally did not attempt to talk to Dick once after “firing” him in this version of the continuity? Phones go two way, Bruce, especially if you’re supposed to be the parent/adult in this situation.

And Dick looks so sad. Like for all people like to talk about JT being “replaced”, I don’t know that I would have it in me to get over it if my father figure knew I was alive and well after he basically cut me off, didn’t bother to speak to me for 18 months or attempt any kind of communication, and I had to go find him when all of a sudden he gave the job I was fired from, that had defined our relationship, to a teenager, who was even more at risk than I had been.

“It was Alfred who forced money on me so I’d have something to live on. You couldn’t even be bothered to say goodbye.”

“ I was involved with a case. I didn’t…”

This is so much sadder than the original New Teen Titans/pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths version??? Like this is so fucking sad.

Then instead of leaving school on his own, Dick fails out because he’s too distracted and is asked not to come back? Like eventually he has the Titans, but taking away this being his choice and making it something he experienced because Bruce felt guilty he was shot makes it so much worse.

And then this set of panels…

“ It didn’t matter to you that I didn’t have any life other than the one we shared .”

Ymmv on whether Dick leading on his own terms or because he was fired as a change for the better or the worse, but holy God, does it change the dynamics of this relationship.

The way Dick reaches out for him… and Bruce shuts him out and tells him to leave. Just like he will after Jason actually dies, except this time, he only punched the glass and not Dick. Dick is trying to be the first one to reconcile, but Bruce won’t let him. Calling him Nightwing instead of by his name as a form of distancing him and everything.

And yet, for all the five trillion posts and fics I’ve seen about how Dick supposedly treated Jason badly due to jealousy and felt bad after he died, his next move? Is to go help Jason, give him his approval, and then offered to talk to him when Bruce wouldn’t and things were difficult.

TBH, I'm pretty sure that Dick Grayson is a way better fucking person than me. Because I like to think I wouldn't have taken it out on Jason directly, but I also would not have gone to find him, reassure him/give him my approval, and offer him a support network in the immediate aftermath of that conversation either. I would not have had it in me after ... *points to all of Bruce's bullshit*

[thesummerstorms]

Dick & Kory being cute in the epilogue.

[thesummerstorms]

It's so fucking weird reading the '80s comics where Dick Grayson is talking about how he feels uncomfortable living with someone he's not married to, or earlier in the comics being with Kory despite her technically being married, etc etc, and then seeing the fandom try to make him into some sort of playboy.

[thesummerstorms]

Dick was stabbed only to escape and find out that Kory had been critically injured by what was essentially a villain turned unwilling suicide bomber.

[thesummerstorms]

Ok, but I love the detail of Dick over analyzing fucking Scooby Doo of all things.

[thesummerstorms]

So I’ve seen the first panel several times, but I actually love it so much more in context? Dick casually perched on Kory’s bed, checking on Donna via phone while she watches bad soap operas makes me soft. They need a soft moment after the massive shit show of the last few issues, even though I know it literally goes back to shit on the next page.

Lol, what did Donna say that Dick was all “nah, you can tell her that one and maybe get hit for it yourself”?

Also Dick casually telling Donna “I love you, too”. ❤️