#spots a good omens fan comic

[croshnaloov]

“Spots” — a Good Omens fan comic

After another mundane dinner, Crowley gives Aziraphale a lift back to the bookshop whereupon he notices a brandy stain on his hand. A stain that reminds him of something.

(If I hadn’t posted this godforsaken comic now, I never would have. Not my best work, but this series and its fandom mean more than my dumb perfectionism to me <3)

[doodleswithangie]

For @leavingtoosoon, a winner of the @phandomgives fanworks raffle! She requested Dan and Phil meeting Aziraphale and Crowley! Thank you to everyone who supported and donated this year for Dan’s birthday drive!

[Image description: Comic of Dan Howell and Phil Lester cosplaying as and accidentally meeting Aziraphale and Crowley from "Good Omens." Alt text provided and copied under the cut. End ID]

Copied Alt Text:

Page one:

Dan ties the bowtie around Phil's neck and says, "Remind me again why we're doing this?"

"We're giving the people what they want, Dan," Phil says, and pushes a pair of sunglasses onto Dan's face. "And what they want is nice and accurate cosplay."

They are dressed in full cosplay as Aziraphale and Crowley. As Phil fixes his hair, Dan retorts, "Well I dunno why this Crowley couldn't post you the watch, instead of us legging it to Soho."

Page two:

"Something about being in between addresses at the moment," Phil says.

Something grabs Dan's attention. "Ngk! Uh, Phil?"

They spot Aziraphale and Crowley, the former waving to them. "Ah, hello! Are you here for the listing?"

The duos meet face to face. Aziraphale continues, "Crowley did say an amazing gentleman was interested in my pocket watch - don't you look spiffy!"

"Ha ha, thanks!" Phil awkwardly replies.

"Spiffy?" think Dan and Crowley.

Page three:

Aziraphale rummages through his pockets. "Now if I can just find- oh my! Where..."

Crowley clocks his act and goes, "...Please, no."

Aziraphale reaches for a weirded out Phil's ear - "Perhaps it's right... here!" - and pulls out a pocket watch.

"Oh!" Phil says, surprised. "Thank you, Mr. Fell!"

"You're welcome my dear boy!" Aziraphale says.

"Couldn't resist, could you, Angel?" Crowley sighs.

As they leave, Phil says to Dan, "Hey, we should bring back my magic act for the tour!"

Dan doesn't look back. "Hard veto."

End Copied Alt Text

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

Good Omens graphic novel update: June 2024

Welcome to the June update. A lot of behind the scenes work at the moment but we're grabbing the travel sweets, popping in the Bentley and hitting the road. More on that below.

Admin

Ongoing reminder that the project FAQ can be found here. 

I pledged using my Apple ID, or no longer use the address my pledge is attached to, or I cannot work out what email address my pledge is connected to. What should I do? Please contact us via your Kickstarter account where the pledge is connected; we will be able to see on our system which address it is. If it's one you have access to, great! The FAQ has information on how to resend your invite link to access the PledgeManager. If it's one you are not able to access, then you can let us know which email is preferred and we can update this on the system, which will automatically send a new invite.

Events

We've had a lot of queries about when the Good Omens team will be attending events more formally, after some Aziraphale and Crowley spotting at conventions we'd been to previously. Well, we're excited to confirm the first: Good Omens HQ will be at ACME Comic Con in Glasgow, Scotland this September.

We'll be bringing the actual-real-life-home-to-Crowley-and-his-plants Bentley from Season 2 of Good Omens, the first time the car has been made available publicly for fans to come see and get photos with, ahead of its journey back to the set and the start of Season 3 filming.

We also see Quelin Sepulveda, aka Muriel, has been announced for the event for some additional ineffable joy.

You can get your tickets for ACME Comic Con here. We hope to see some of you there.

While we won't be rocking up with the Bentley to this next one, we want to let you know about Ineffable Con which, though sold out in person, is also taking place virtually in July. The fan-run event hosts great panels, auctions and more, with money raised going to Alzheimer’s Research UK, in memory of Sir Terry Pratchett.

Where next? We have - not an exaggeration - a list of about 200 events somewhere from when we asked fans this on Instagram and while we can't promise quite that amount of convention attendance, we're certainly looking to do some more things in future with Good Omens at large. Watch this space.  

Good Omens items...

This month has largely seen prototypes and samples for the wider Good Omens merch store arriving, and while we can't share those yet, we are certainly excited to see more fan product suggestions coming to life. That does, however, leave our public item updates a little slim on the ground.

To make up for that, here's some new panels from Colleen:

Also known as, "What could possibly go wrong?" And:

Also known as, "Well why don't you ▇▇▇ ▇▇▇▇▇▇ ▇▇▇ ▇▇!@#▇" or words to that effect, we'd imagine.  

Update from Colleen

Following such a positive response to Colleen's piece last month, bringing you behind the scenes into making the Good Omens graphic novel, we are delighted to say that she has agreed to write something for our updates going forward! For June, she's going more in depth into the process of flatting and the technicalities of colouring on screen vs print. Over to you, Colleen.

---

I mentioned the other month that I use a flatter to help me with technical work on GOOD OMENS, and here is a great example.

This is my original, hand drawn line art.

And this is the flatting file which was created using the MultiFill computer program.

It will put your eyes out.

The raw image above demonstrates how the color art lines up solidly under the line art. If it doesn't do that, you get a weird phenomenon in print called ghosting, a tiny little line of white around each segment of color. I had this issue on one major project and ended up redoing every single color file after I got a look at the first printing. Nearly two weeks of work.

The same image with the line art on top.

The layer order looks like this.

Background copy is the clean, line art layer.

I scan the art at 600 dpi, then make the blacks pure black, the whites pure white. Then I convert back to greyscale, then RGB, then duplicate the layer. Then I delete the white on the upper layer so the line art layer is transparent but the blacks on that layer are not.

If you have blacks on a layer that has been multiplied, you can see slight color through those blacks. You want pure black.

The lower layer is where I use the MultiFill program to create the digital flats. First you use MultiFill to drop in the random colors, then the companion plug-in Flatter Pro to make those colors seal under the black lines.

This probably sounds like a silly thing to worry about, but if the flat colors don’t line up perfectly under the black line art, you get the dreaded ghosting I mentioned. You can see it below in this image. It’s a tiny little white line that will appear around the black lines and color areas.

This drives me nuts and is an absolute nightmare to fix.

It’s a very common problem, especially for people who work for web and don’t anticipate the problems going from web to print.

What looks great on your computer can cause big problems in print.

From here, my flatter Jul Mae Kristoffer, who is way over in the Philippines, does flatting that is more in keeping with the areas of color I want to isolate. As you see on Layer 1.

But again, this is still pretty ugly, and not what I would use for final color. Flatting is a technical issue, not a creative one, though in some cases a flatter will make choices you may use. Most of the time they don't.

Here is my final color page.

Sometimes my MultiFill flats are so wonky I have a hard time getting my brain to snap out of what I see before me. If I get stuck, it's a good idea to just pick at it and come back to it later.

If it really, really bothers me, I’ll take the MultiFill flatter layer and desaturate the color so it doesn’t poke my eyes out.

Here’s an example. The digital flat file.

The desaturated flat file that doesn’t make me want to poke my eyes out.

And the final color.

Sometimes I just put in a solid white layer so I don’t see the flats at all. Flatting is there to allow you to easily pick spots to color in, and doesn’t usually appear in the final work.

Sometimes I want to create my colors using transparent color over a white ground, which is more delicate in the final.

Here’s an example from Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. I also selected all black line art here and converted it to sepia to give it a vintage look. Except for the fairies. They’re green.

A colorist must also consider color settings.

Different clients can have different requirements. I find these color settings, which I got from the Hi-Fi Studio, to be pretty solid. I use them as my default for all my projects unless otherwise requested. If your publisher has other settings, they’ll usually send you a csf file which you can upload to Photoshop. The program will save your files and you can just switch between them as you need them.

This tells the printer things about the paper and the spread of the ink you will use. That’s what dot gain means - it makes printed color look darker than intended, so you set up your files to account for it.

When you hover your pointer over each box, it will tell you what each setting is supposed to accomplish.

Another really important thing to consider when coloring comics is color range.

I’m coloring this book in RGB range, but for print you use CMYK.

I’m about to confuse the heck out of some people with this post, I’m afraid. But here we go.

Here is this shot in RGB color setting.

And here is the same page calibrated for print in CMYK.

The biggest shift is in the reds. Print cannot match those reds.

You may not see much difference here, but it’s the sort of thing that drives artists crazy.

A computer should be perfect for conveying exactly what you want, right? It's all just 0's and 1's, binary information, and that information should be the same from one computer to the next?

Nope. Not even close.

First off, computer monitors must be calibrated. You can use a computer program or a tool that measures the color on your computer screen and then adjusts the color to an industry standard.

Have you ever been in an electronics shop where a bunch of TV shows were on display, all of them playing the same show, and have you noticed how different the color was from one TV to the next?

It's like that.

I freely admit I don't pay a whole lot of attention to calibration, but if I were a professional photographer I would. I'd have a little spectrometer attached to my screen and software would adjust my monitor to the best possible standard range. As it is, I just use the default setting on my computer and hope for the best.

If your monitor is properly calibrated and your art is shown on another monitor that is properly calibrated, the art will look almost identical from one monitor to the next.

YAY!

But from one monitor to the next, that's about where the resemblance ends.

Colors are calibrated to something called RGB, or Red, Green, Blue.

All colors come from a mix of red green and blue. At their greatest intensity, all the colors in the spectrum together become pure white light.

This is why RGB is called ADDITIVE color, because you ADD colors from the spectrum to get ALL colors, and all colors create the entirety of the rainbow, and pure white light.

Your computer monitor, your phone, your television, all images are created via light using RGB, a gamut that covers all possible colors that can be created.

That's a lot.

And that's why some of the colors you see on your TV or phone are so deep and intense.

For the widest possible range of color and intensity, you use RGB.

Unfortunately, there is what you can create with light, and then there is what you can create with pigment or ink. And that is why printing what you see on your computer almost never looks exactly like what you see in a book.

For printing, you must use a color setting known as CMYK. This stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key/Black.

In printing, the pure blue is actually Cyan and the pure red is actually Magenta.

CMYK color range is not created by addition, but by SUBTRACTION. In order to get the color you want, you reduce the percentage of one of the four colors for ink mixing. Mixing all colors, instead of giving you white, gives you black.

The gamut of CMYK is limited to what can be created with ink.

You've probably heard the term four color press? This is what that means. Four colors, with each color of ink run over the paper on rollers which, combined in varying layers of opacity, create all the printing colors you see.

But remember, what you see on your computer monitor and what CMYK gamut can handle are two different things.

Now, I’ve been really careful with the color settings on Good Omens, so there haven’t been any big surprises, but let me show you a snippet of a project I did for the French fashion house Balmain.

The RGB version:

And then this shot after it was converted to a CMYK file for print.

That's a pretty big difference.

Now, you see this shift mostly with vibrant colors, such as that pink there. But other colors hardly changed at all, right?

That's because this issue is about range of color. CMYK and RGB occupy a shared range which you can see demonstrated by this graphic I got from Wikipedia.

The graphic shows the RGB ranges supported by various digital formats. SWOP CMYK is the most common range my publishers use. Note that the bounding box line shared by the RGB and SWOP CMYK formats shares about half the range space. So whatever RGB colors you use that are outside that range will be digitally converted to the smaller SWOP CMYK range.

And you may not like what you end up with.

As you can see, some of the most ethereal and intense colors get lost outside of the SWOP CMYK boundary.

A look at the Dark Horse Comics color settings in Photoshop. Theoretically, this information should prevent your art from looking like mud on publication.

Now, after I just told you the dangers of coloring in RGB then converting to CMYK for print, I tell you I am coloring Good Omens in RGB anyway. There’s a couple of reasons for this.

Remember, RGB give you a greater range of color, so it can be to your advantage to preserve your original files using a format that gives you the greatest range.

Again, here is the unaltered file.

You can see what the CMYK result will be simply by clicking the Proof Colors button here. This will show you how the art will convert.

And the Gamut Warning will show you which colors are out of gamut range for print.

The intensity of that magenta and that purple in the top right are not going to print true.

This is how it will look in final.

So even if you do what you think is perfect color on screen, there is no way it can perfectly convert to print. Almost everything will involve a little bit of compromise.

Even though you have to consider the color shift issues, preserving your files in RGB gives you greater wiggle room, especially if you get lucky someday and get to work with a printer who can print in 6 colors. Or maybe some technology you don’t know about will pop up and make printing super glorious. Who knows.

Regardless, you should keep an eye on that gamut and color for CMYK print, while preserving your master files in RGB.

Until next time.

[curiouspupsicle]

Good Omens Fan Fiction Friday (11/28/24) - Banter

Just like Aziraphale and Crowley, I just love banter. Luckily, there are some fabulous fan fics featuring it. Here are a few of my favorite fics with amusing banter. In You Can't Un-See a Dog (T), humans summon Crowley. When Aziraphale shows up to save the day, there's some fun bits of banter as our clever Angel makes his plan to rescue Crowley. (The writer is @holycatsandrabbits on Tumblr if you want to say hello.) Writer @ezomind-the-other-one writes some fun back-and-forth in www. wahoo.com (T). The fun bickering goes even farther in this human AU when Aziraphale wins a literal pissing contest. Aziraphale offers neighbor Crowley use of his shower while the latter's bathroom is under renovation in What Aziraphale Wants (G). Witty human AU. In Wars of Attraction (M), Aziraphale spots a handsome, red-haired stranger on the Tube. What are the chances he'll ever see him again? Post season 1, Aziraphale makes a Christmas pudding. Charming bit of fluff by the always wonderful @hotcrosspigeon. Tomorrow Brings Love in the Shape of Things (T). In Radical Honesty (G), the witty banter is between Anathema and Crowley when the demon asks the occultist for romantic advice. Attheborder's It's a New Craze (T) is virtually all banter. And it's brilliant. Aziraphale and Crowley start a podcast. And enjoy the comic based on the story by @anotherwellkeptsecret on Tumblr. Best known for their human AU's, @klikandtuna wrote this canon adjacent story in which Aziraphale tries wine and Crowley tries oysters. Of course, it's an occasion for delicious banter. In Vino Veritas (G). Banter is a clever stand-in for sex. So if Smuts-giving was a bit much for you, you'll enjoy these witty (and often subtly sexy) examples of banter. And if you appreciate banter as much as I do, please share links to your faves in the comments.

[gomenseveryday]

The ineffable date for Good Omens series 2 has been delivered: JULY 28! This was announced along with a brilliant poster, which referenced the Buddy Holly song "Everyday". So let's find each other across social media and count down the days together!

Welcome to #GOmensEveryday!

Starting May 29, the 66th anniversary of Mr. Holly recording "Everyday", we want to see this fandom's excitement through:

Fan art, Comics, Fanfic, Poetry, Essays, Coloring pages, Phone wallpapers, Collages, Photography, Embroidery, Cosplay photo, Cosplay video, Fanvids, Video edits, Playlists, Baked goods

...and anything else you can think of that fits with the themes ("Everyday", countdown, series 2).

Fan works can be newly created or previously shared! NSFW art and fic welcome, just tag appropriately.

The song was originally intended as the Good Omens theme song, and is very special to Neil and Terry! We know it's going to be special to our fandom too.

To sign up for your day, use our form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdbwAyLf-Vio74JPuihjYE8xI0Oa7hS2cIbu38KCo8Hn25h_A/viewform (Let us know if the form stops working for any reason!)

We'll organize a calendar and let you know your official date to post your fan works along with the tag #GOmensEveryday so that others can find you!

We need AT MINIMUM 60 fans who want to join us. So don't worry you're taking someone's spot: EVERYONE will have a day. If we have more than 60, we'll start doubling up. The more the merrier!

Sign-ups close Friday May 25th at 11:59pm GMT.

That's only 1 week, so tell your friends! And let the GOOD OMENS SERIES 2 COUNTDOWN BEGIN!

[banavalope]

Hello, I'm a Homestuck and Good Omens fan and just saw your post about coffee. I came to the Homestuck fandom way late, though, and don't know what the coffee theory was. I was wondering if you'd be willing to share that story from the trenches if it's not too traumatic :)

I'll preface by saying, this all happened near about the time I began to step away from Homestuck, as this was late 2011 to early 2012. My recollection could very well be missing some juicier deets, because I always managed to avoid the worst of it. In all I had a pretty benign time floating about the Homestuck fandom, I'll say that. My knowledge is as a fly's.

If you want the short version: once upon a time, the Homestuck fandom was so stupid it had discourse over the way coffee was drawn in a single panel, because the stylistic choice used to show the way cheap potted coffee has that oil slick sheen on the top Really got the gamerz thinking Gamzee was putting troll blood in the coffee.

The long version is this: this Act was annoying. All the Acts had been annoying, there'd been rather more than six of them so far. The fandom's toxicity was at its most potent, and the main fandom exodus hadn't happened yet. But the stylistic choice brewing on page 4702 of A6I2 suggested a discourse was on the horizon, and it was the size of planet fucking Jupiter.

To understand the affairs of 2011/12 Homestucks, a few things are important to mention: first, nobody enjoyed Act 6. Ask anyone from the tumblr era First Wave, we all agreed that Cascade would have been a better place to start wrapping up the comic as a whole. When Act 6 opened introducing the alpha kids, a whole new plot derivative, and we all realized we'd have to go through the same slog again, that the story wasn't over, the collective exhaustion was palpable. SWATHS left unhappy; worse yet (for some), the alpha kids brought us away from the game of SBURB and the over-aching plot, to instead place our focus on their interpersonal relationships. It was a bad time to take your audience away from a well crafted climax.

Reading it now as a completed work makes this not so bad, because the book is wrote. You can consume it as a finished piece and clearly interpret a through line for yourself, start to finish. Skip it even, if you want. When you've no idea at what time the next update will come, while all the pieces remain necessary to tell the story, any pacing is bad pacing.

Second, while Homestucks are known for many things - all of them cringe - the one that goes overlooked most, in spite of the ripple effect we still feel from it today in every corner, is the sheer amount of over analyzing done to the story itself. Every panel, every inch of every pixel, was a part of a puzzle we all collectively made up. Theorizing was an integral part to the Update Culture era of Homestuck's fandom, that we Figure Out the Story, you had to be the one who predicted what came next. Impressive how none of us came up with some kind of fandom Nobel Peace Prize, for how much we lauded it as a lifetime achievement.

I'll give you, Homestuck does have a very rich narrative. Much of it, I'll favor, is even intentional. It made worldbuilding choices captivating enough to get people painting themselves grey, for fun, so surely it had a few right ideas in some places. And there's nothing wrong about analyzing your media, picking apart its references to tie together a background story, even if it's just one you make up based on how you experienced reading it. That's kind of the whole point of consuming art. It's to be discussed, share your personal conclusions on. Theory is the breath of creativity.

It's the whole part about wanting to be right, where Homestucks as a collective force wanted to start eating each other alive on the spot. We were fucking OBNOXIOUS with theory posting. I'll be honest with you, I really ate that kind of thing up, and even I was getting annoyed. People were beginning to stretch, likely to cope with becoming bored.

Finally, the sober Gamzee controversy. This came about a while before coffeegate, but the effect the inciting update had on Homestucks is comparable to a haunting. It was fucking chernobyl, and a bad day to be a nuclear scientist because now it was your problem. Vriska fans - equally insufferable, as we all were by some respect[1] - and Gamzee fans fought with each other VEHEMENTLY, just to see whos gang was better. Keep that in the background of your mind as the theme music to what's playing. Everyone was anxiously wondering what had happened to Gamzee, because for the last several some-odd panels, we'd lost the boy. He was full of murderous intent, we were down to precious few characters on the meteor left, and we'd lost the boy.

So here we are. It's 2011. We're standing now at the end of the world, we've lost the boy for several panels, and finally the plot is trying to move along. We're all tired, and irritated, and divorced, doing this song and dance one more time but god willing the LAST TIME, when a joke about the look of shitty potted coffee gets made.

And some harbinger of the fucking apocalypse takes to tumblr dot com, drafting up a post about how Gamzee - living in the meteor walls - is putting troll blood into the coffee. Because, otherwise, how is Kanaya as a rainbow drinker doing so fine? Dave called the taste metallic, like blood. Something something long forgotten theories about trolls blood here something something. People would chime in to say "that's just how coffee looks", somehow it dissolved into actual discourse of people violently discussing back and forth how it could ONLY BE BLOOD, because coffee drawn in a prior panel UPDATES AGO didn't have the film on top, only now AFTER SOBER GAMZEE. Etcetera. It was just the worst case of reading too hard into something that you done ever did see.

Shortly following this, many people who were already growing exhausted with Homestuck's narrative direction at this point decided to take this coffee theory as their sign the flood was coming and to board the ark or learn how to swim. Anyone who learned to swim subsequently left during the exodus of 2015.

Again, my memory is pretty hazy. Thanks to Requiem Cafe, surprisingly difficult to google these days. Certainly another old still following me will have something more to add that I'm forgetting, as your handy dandy unreliable narrator.

[1] Said the Eridan fan.

[darthbreezy]

After yesterday's mental and emotional shut down...

Today I got a massive dose of Good Omens Fan Kindness.

So it was announced that Micheal Sheen is going to London Comic con - the day I LEAVE London. For an hour or two, I wiggled and did the maths and tried to decide on if it was feasible to either add a day or try to squeeze in two hours at the convention before making a mad dash to Heathrow. *ug* On one of the many fan pages, one of the peeps mentioned she had a pass and out of desperation I asked if she could grab a spot in line or something (I was still frazzled and just was grasping at even phantom straws). Well, the short of a lot of long and personal, she's going to get Micheal's autograph for me (of course I'm making her a goody bag to say THANK YOU)... I'm not going to go into details, but I really can't emphasize that fact that kindness really matters...

[danielfeketewrites]

Not Normal About Doctor Who

Back in June, I went to a fae-themed picnic with my girlfriend and my girlfriend's girlfriend (not an official title, they're not dating (or are they?)) and my girlfriend's girlfriend confessed that next month she's not going to be normal about Good Omens. She just knew it. I guess a large portion of tumblr can relate.

I replied that I am definitely going to be less and less normal about Doctor Who when we get closer to November.

Well, I was right. It's like a full moon is for a werewolf. For the past month, there hasn't been a single hour when I haven't thought about Doctor Who for at least a little bit. Maybe when I'm asleep. Maybe. Sometimes, I'm just lying in my bed, thinking about Doctor Who for hours and hours.

I've started reading two Doctor Who books. The first is an eighth Doctor book called Alien Bodies by Lawrence Miles. The second is an anthology - The Target Storybook.

I've also been writing my own short story for a small Czech fanfic competition. I picked a more recent Doctor rather than a classic one, which is quite unusual for me. (It's a Thasmin story set in the Land of Fiction. Yeah.)

I've been scrollig through the eyespider website (check it out if you haven't already), spotting stories that I would place elsewhere. Thinking about making my own version. Again. I once tried to make my own version as a Czech translation of the original website, but now I actually want to do it as a way to track which Doctor Who stories from the EU I've experienced. Also, fixing the placements that I disagree with. That's a big reason as well.

Also scrolling through Altered Vistas again. And TARDIS Wiki, but that one's obvious. Although I do recommend checking out the old classics like Fire, Grass, and, of course, the best one.

I've obviously rewatched some stuff. Outside of The Mind Robber and Shada, I'm watching series four with my mum and my girlfriend in preparation for the 60th anniversary trilogy, because they haven't seen the episodes with Donna before.

I've also been listening to some Big Finish. Mainly Once and Future, but I'm also thinking about listening to 10th Doctor and Donna boxsets, as well as the Companion Chronicles stuff featuring Sara Kingdom.

Probably gonna read more comics very soon, it seems inevitable. Maybe that digital scan of Abslom Daak - The Dalek Killer that somehow appeared on my external harddrive? Some 13th Doctor comics too. I desperately need to find more stories with her that I actually like.

I can name every Doctor Who TV story in order. But the other day, I caught myself trying to also remember every writer to all of the stories in the 60s Who. I'm gonna have to memorise that one properly, I still have some gaps. The Space Museum was written by Glyn Jones.

I've been thinking about sharing my top 10 favourite stories for each Doctor here, on tumblr. And yes, those top 10s are gonna include EU stories. Some of them will have more EU stories than TV stories. I will obviously have to update them next year. Could be my new November tradition!

Oh, and I'm also writing a Doctor Who fanzine for a Czech Doctor Who by-fans-for-fans convention. I am also one of the organisers of said convention.

So yeah. I'm not normal about Doctor Who right now. And The Star Beast hasn't even aired yet! Meep meep!

art by Dave Gibbons

[cyberpilate]

True Stories from Comics Retail!

The year is... somewhere in the 2010s, I'm guessing. The place? Metro Entertainment, Santa Barbara's No. #1 Comics and Games store and here I am, working the register.

Now, please understand: the one thing I love more than anything in the world is recommending comics to people and, f I can allow myself a little sliver of pride, I think I'm pretty good at it. No complaints, yanno? There is literally nothing like showing a new fan or a new reader a comic book they never considered before and then BOOM - next week they're in for another one! I've made lifelong friends this way and it really warms up the soul.

So when this gorgeous woman, elegantly dressed and erudite, comes in and tells me that she just finished a class at UC Santa Barbara on comics and wanted to read more, I nearly vaulted over the counter to get her to our trade paperback shelves. She tells me she's read Sandman and my mind starts whirring with possibilities. We're looking for something with a high art quality, storytelling and myth, something dark and dreamy perhaps. I show her The Wicked + The Divine by Jamie McKelvie and Kieron Gillian and she shakes her head and says:

"No, I only read books by gay men."

This floors me. Wow! What a specific request! For the 2010s, mind you; it's not like I knew the personal love life of comic book authors at this time. Wracking my brain, I start to take her towards autobiographical comics, the only place I know where writers and artists had "come out of the closet", so to speak and she again says no.

"Books like Sandman!," she reinforces. So now I've practically blue screened thinking about who is a gay man in comics that writes dark fantasy?? I can't let her go with out a recommendation! She's so fancy! And she took a really rad course at UCSB and she wants to read them I can't gatekeep this young woman because *I* don't know enough about comics to know which gay men write dark fantasy-

-WAIT. Phil Jimenez! He was gay! And he was highly influential on Wonder Woman! (I just checked and no, the Omnibus hadn't come out by that time...) I think I have it!! Glowing with relief and pride, I take her over to the DC books and start explaining the mythological connections in Wonder Woman...

She interrupts me again. "No, books by <i>gay men</i>," she emphasizes.

That kinda puts me on the spot so I start to explain, "Well, Phil Jimenez is-"

"Like Sandman and the Graveyard Book, that author."

It hits me like a ton of bricks.

(Shout out to everyone who figured this out during the story - I am impressed by how incredibly smarter you are than like, 30 year old me)

"NEIL GUY-MAN," I say, totally pronouncing the man's name wrong to try and explain where I went wrong in this whole conversation. She does not agree with my pronunciation but I take her over to Murder Mysteries (when it was still in stock at Diamond, one of my most favorite short stories ever), the Sandman TPs, anything I can get my hands on. She does look them over, but doesn't want to buy anything and leaves me in my shame.

I guess I'm telling this story in hopes that Dark Horse puts Murder Mysteries back into print so I can sell the book to Good Omens fans and that maybe, just maybe, @neil-gaiman will forgive me for the butchering of his last name.

We can dream.

[ofmdbigbang]

Meet the Mod Team!

The ModTeam is currently made up of four people who also ran last year's event.

Ptera (pterawaters, She/Her) - Ptera has been in various fandoms for many years (Buffy, Glee, Teen Wolf, Hawaii 50, and Stranger Things most recently, aside from OFMD). She has been running big bangs, mini bangs, event weeks and the like for the last ten years, and loves bringing creative people together. Her favorite pirate is Ed, and she also has soft spots for Stede, Jim and Lucius, and she participates in BBs as a writer.

CS (poorlyformed, They/Them) - cs has been in fandom for a very very long time (comics, popslash, due south, spn, hp, hockey rpf, dragon age, and good omens being the major ones before ofmd.). They have been involved in numerous fandom events as both participant and organizer. You can find them at stupidlullabies on tumblr and twitter (or check out their art at poorlyformedart on insta and twitter, poorlyformed on tumblr) They are a huge ed/stede fan, but their favorite crew member is Frenchie

Charlie (Jockles, He/Him) - Charlie has been part of fandom for nearly 20 years, starting off in the Discworld and wandering around the Internet picking up hyperfixations and then writing about them since then. He is a chronic event organiser, being part of organising the Reverse Bang as well as last year's Big Bang, and a number of events in between. In OFMD he is an avid Izzy Enjoyer that wants to rattle the rat man around until he cries (affectionate). Charlie can befound on tumblr at multishipperpirateking and on twitter at OriginalJockles.

Sam (abirdonalilactree, They/Them) - Sam has always wanted to be a pirate (and a writer). Their favourite ofmd character is Lucius. Sam has also been in fandom for many years (Major Crimes, Death in Paradise, Midsomer Murders, Lewis, Endeavour, Person of Interest). They may be quieter, but they are always online. (abirdonalilactree on Tumblr and Insta, abirdonatree on Twitter. Feel free to just start talking to them, DMs are always open)

If you think you want to join in with the team and help out, please drop us an ask or email ofmdbigbang@gmail.com and tell us what you think we're missing!

[jackfromthefairytale]

No no go OFF kiran i wanna hear cause i'm also nosy and a very opinionated bitch

the most recent set of opinions i've got is about their current marketing strategy (or lack of) cus like. they've definitely got the money for some decent marketing and a social media campaign but they're doing nothing. which. is a strategy that hasn't exactly failed them before because they didn't do shit before just pretend went off, but that's a whole different story

take this ost album that just came out. v.a.n. banger song, banger music video, good idea getting poppy on the track etc. etc., and in terms of garnering attention they did those cryptic videos as a kind of "character introduction" and, in the days leading up, they had the guys deactivate their instagram accounts and it was this whole big thing (which, with the timing of it and three from sleep token taking a break due to doxxing was a little unfortunate but i digress) anyway. this all helped and v.a.n was a hit (maybe a slightly unpopular/controversial one, but it made numbers so. a hit)

then there was nothing. for the next month or so. then the drain got leaked and they did the tracklist announcement, which had a bit of fanfare but not much for one of the biggest bands in metalcore. and half of these collaborations were people that hadn't been heard of but hey it's something different, right?

then nothing for months. then they tell us they're cancelling the festival run due to noah's burnout, and a week later is when the album drops, and still there's nothing on the release side, no buildup no nothing. a couple social media posts/reposts from the collaborating artists and not much more from the band members themselves.

so. album drops. it's an experimental concept album, which most people didn't quite get since they were expecting a run-of-the-mill deluxe and not a 26 track release that had not a lot of relation to the previous album. there's a narrative that most people aren't clued in on because the average guy might be following the band on social media but isn't keeping track of every word uttered in the few interviews they do. to put it simply, there's a bit of confusion.

anything > human is the release day single, which i didn't actually know until i looked at their artist page and saw they put it out as a single but that was dropped at the same time as the rest of the album which kinda doesn't make sense and again, not much pzazz aside from using two lines from the verse as captions on instagram but it got it on playlists and on the charts

(which. the three singles all made the (us hard rock) charts, one hit the number 1 spot which is pretty good but other than that a tad underwhelming for a band who are considered to be one of the current biggest) (which also. poppy has a lot of fans and a lot of brand recognition, health are known in their vein of industrial metal and are professional shitposters and erra are known within their niche but have quite a different audience to bad omens and are generally a smaller band compared to poppy and health)

and maybe, maybe they did have some big marketing plan with music videos and just generally a lot more fanfare which got cancelled with noah not being well, but all of it being cancelled in favour of,, nothing? not even downsizing to a smaller social media campaign to get some eyes on them? the most they had were the visualisers (which are pretty cool, i'm not dunking on those) and whatever sumerian's social media guy was doing, which a lot of people block out anyway.

which bad omens are a big band. sumerian are a big-ish label. a concept-oriented album like this requires some level of concept to build off of that isn't contained in the four issues of comic books that the band wrote/published (and i think some people who read them said that they don't tie much into the ost anyway?) and they have a "creative director", who works in comics and worked on the comics and i just think there's a lot more they could have done to (a) clarify exactly what this release was supposed to be (b) highlight the artists they're collaborating with (c) put a bit more fun into it and (d) appeal to the nerds (like for example, how i managed to infodump about the comics and the concept behind the just pretend music video and got a friend so interested into the storyline that she went looking for live tickets and she doesn't even like much heavy music)

they have the resources/budget and some degree of personnel on the creative non-music side of things yet..?

it just seems really weird and lacklustre that they had just the visuals they commissioned and nothing else to put out on this side when release day came, because if you don't have a level of marketing strategy at this point in your career, is your album really ready to be put out?

(it is also kinda. iffy. how the only thing they've consistently been using their social media for is. merch drops left right and centre. which with the lack of anything else comes off as a slight cash grab (not a comment on merch prices, and i do get that it is the main way of making money as a touring band when not on tour) but maybe that's just me)

[divixxyy]

intro post ?!

basic:

☆ name's leo .!!! he/she mostly. some neos ok too, + 20 years old

☆ artist!! comics focus specifically.

☆ autism ftw LMAO

☆ my reblogs run on a queue for organisational + pacing purposes

- if you've posted qi rong fanart on this site know i will find it. #1 fan and defender.

中文：

☆ 叫日霞 / 他/她/TA

☆ 最喜欢：ATEEZ、《天官赐福》和韩流

☆ 我是大学生学中文，所以我的中文天天向上xswl。要是你想聊天发我打字！

commission info ☆ my store

more below the cut :]

recent & current spinterests!:

♡ DMMD / DRAMAtical Murder (since 2016)

- I have played some of Slow Damage and Sweet Pool but am not too interested in either; you can definitely talk to me about them though I do not consider them spinterests!!

♡ Devilman franchise (since 2018)

♡ Jojo's Bizarre Adventure (since 2020)

♡ Heaven Official's Blessing / TGCF (since 2021)

- I have also watched the MDZS drama and plan to read the novels after I finish TGCF! I lovethem

♡ Ensemble Stars (since 2023)

♡ K-Pop (since 2015)

- Separate special interest listing for ATEEZ lore

i also used to love (and have a special spot in my heart for...) voltron, homestuck, good omens, danganronpa, yugioh, hamilton, free!, and black butler.

i also have a bug blog @lgbugtq

side note: though i have 18+ interests i will never reblog n$fw fanart or fic

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

Good Omens: The Official (and Ineffable) Graphic Novel takes fans on a virtual treasure hunt before the launch of its campaign. ❤ 🐍😊

The upcoming graphic novel adaptation of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's beloved book of the same name is about to launch a Kickstarter campaign on August 1, 2023. To celebrate, the Pratchett Estate set up a "virtual treasure hunt" where fans can find tidbits from Good Omens: The Official (and Ineffable) Graphic Novel across many platforms. And, CBR can exclusively reveal the first clue.

Good Omens: The Official (and Ineffable) Graphic Novel will be the very first comic book adaptation of the best-selling novel. The comedic tale follows the demon Crowley and the angel Aziraphale who try to sabotage the son of Satan in England, in an attempt to stop the apocalypse. This iconic story will be adapted by Eisner Award winner, Colleen Doran. The illustrator has worked with Gaiman before on projects such as The Sandman. Doran has also won many other awards, including the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Graphic Novel

The Pratchett Estate said that fans already "spotted an early preview of the cover’s initial linework at ‘Colleen Doran illustrates Neil Gaiman’, an exhibition that showcases her work on titles including Snow Glass Apples, Chivalry and The Sandman, and runs until 29 July." However, the estate adds "But that is only one piece of the puzzle." Now, CBR is here to offer the project's first prophecy and a sneak peek at the upcoming comic.

The first clue in Good Omens: The Official (and Ineffable) Graphic Novel's treasure hunt is "The towne square of omens most pleasant / We crye in excitement / For come pale moonlight or glorious sun / All news of angels and demons are collated as one." More clues will be unveiled in the days leading up to Good Omens' Kickstarter launch.

This treasure hunt isn't the first time that one of Pratchett's stories has inspired an interactive experience. His Discworld story, Death and What Comes Next, was written for TimeHunt (a former online game). The story was designed to be a puzzle and if the reader solves it, they will receive the codeword for the virtual game. And, Good Omens continuing this tradition is very fitting.

Good Omens: The Official (and Ineffable) Graphic Novel's Kickstarter campaign will begin on August 1, 2023. Fans can sign up for the Kickstarter to be first to hear when the project is launched, and what treats and rarities will be available.

Follow @GoodOmensHQ, @neilhimself, @pratchettonline, @ColleenDoran, @terryandrob, @kickstarter on twitter for more details and up-to-date information.

(here on tumblr: :) @goodomenshq, @neil-gaiman, @colleendoran)

[popculturebuffet]

Wonder Woman 1984 Review “The Monkey’s Paw Wish of Superhero Movies”

Before we dig in,  I just want to properly frame how much of a fucking disapointment this film was to me. It was thanks to the first film that I became the massive Wonder Woman fan I am today. Thanks to that movie and it’s accompanying sale, as Comixology likes to put sales on to tie into things as you’d expect, I tried Greg Rucka’s run on the title.. and quickly bought the second volume and will buy the third which didn’t exist yet at some point, as it’s easily one of my faviorite comics of all time, one i’ll undoubtly cover, and one that throughly sold me on the amazon princess, and throughly defined what she is to me: a compasionate warrior. Someone who WILL fight, who will take on the bad guys without hesitation, and who WILL kill if she has to.. but also someone whose compationate. Who will genuinely try to reform foes, who only kills as a last resort and not as a first option like some adaptations and the new 52 seem to think. She’s someone who in said run went out of her way to help her old friend and currently brainwashed foe Vanessa Kapetlis get cured of being the silver swan. She’s someone whose wholhe purpose for writing a book wasn’t money but simply to spread her people and her gods teachings. Someone whose , kind, noble, badass, smart and easily every bit the pure soul superman is. The run sold me on the character throughly and made me a fan to this day, one currently pouring thorugh both Rucka’s second run, and George Perez’ equally good run and one who hopes the upcoming dc relaunch means she’ll stop swapping writers every few months and get the run she deserves.  I just wanted to sell how much I treasured the character now thanks to the first movie and thus how hyped beyond hype I was for this movie. It had a great cast, a great setting, cool trailers.. sure they didn’t show off the plot but it had to be good right? This couldn’t be say.. a giant, overly long mess of tangled plots, padding, terrible pacing, unfortunate implications and pedro pascal devouring the scenery in a manner galactus would be proud of right? 

Well that’s what we got. After a year of hoping it’d come out some way this year, after having it delayed and after a year where MANY projects I loved were necessarily delayed due to covid... I got what I wanted. I got the movie i’d been hoping to see for months and months and months... and just like the wishes in the movie itself... it went horribly, horribly wrong. What I expected was something great as the other recent DC Movies.. what I got was a huge disapointing mess capping off a huge disapointing mess of a year. So while i’m a bit late due to contracting Covid and all the “FUN” that comes with that, I still felt like tearing into this film to figure out why I didn’t like it, what good parts it did have, and what the hell went wrong here. Spoilers and full review after the cut. 

The Plot:  Unlike my usual summaries I do, i’m keeping this one short and susicnt for those who haven’t seen the film: After a cold open flashback to diana’s childhood that was an omen of the boring padding to come, we get our main plot: It’s 1984 and Diana is acting in semi secret and helping out where she can. After some artifact thefts she takes a job at a museum and meets meek nerdy nerdy and office punching bag Barbra Minerva. The two strike up a kind of friendship, with Barbra wishing she could be as cool as diana especially after Diana saves her from being assaulted by a creepy random asshole. 

Diana hasn’t moved on from Steve Trevor’s death in the previous film, and thus when encountering a mysterious stone wishes for him to come back. Barbra likewise wishes fto be just like diana. Meanwhile Maxwell Lord, a conman who has sold a bunch of bogus oil plots, plots to steal the stone himself and does so by seducing Barbra, and instead of wishing for more wishes, wishes to GRANT THEM instead, thus overnight making his buisness a sucess and using the inevitible monkey’s paw consequences of said wishes to benifit himself.  Meanwhile Diana is reunited with Steve who for some reason has hyjacked someone elses body, and even has sex with Diana in it which is all kinds of creepy and wrong that we’ll get into soon enough. Meanwhile everyone now notices Barbara.. and she’s also gaining Diana’s powers but slowly loosing her empathy.  Diana eventually finds out with Barba’s help that the stone is dangerous and it’s wishes backfire horribly, while Max continues to gain power with his as Diana chases after him, slowly loosing her own power as her consequence for the wish. You know instead of the fact her lover took someone elses body and life and they have to live with that. Eventually Max gets the power of a soverign nation and the satilte codes off the president, and plans to broadcast himslef the the world to offset his own wish consequence, his body slowly failing, by taking other people’s health.  Steve urges Diana to renounce her wish and give him up to get her power back, she reluctnantly and painfully does so, and then goes after Max. Barbra however has sided with max and has him give her even more power turning her into a cat person as you’d expect. Wonder woman and the now fully cat Cheetah battle, it’s really cool looking, but Diana barely wins. We do get a decent climax with Diana not fighting max, not that she can with how powerful she’s become, but using the lasso of truth to get him to see the damage he’s done, give up and go back to his son. The world is saved Diana is moving on and also Linda Carter is there for some reason. 

So now you have  general idea of what happens, I can dig into the films faults, and it’s one or two strengths, one at a time, ONE AT A TIME. First off the film’s biggest issue by far and one that wouldn’t come through in the recap Padding and Pacing: THIS FILM DID NOT NEED TO BE 2 hrs 41 min

I said it once before but it bears repeating now:

THIS FILM DID NOT NEED TO BE 2 HOURS AND 41 MINUTES LONG

I am a firm belivier a film should be as long or short as it needs to be. If it’s under the standard 90 minutes, that’s cool, if it’s say three hours like avengers endgame that’s cool too. After the theater it’s easy enough to watch it in chunks, and sometimes a film just NEEDS that space and scope. 

This film.. did not need that. This is not the cumilation of 10 years of storytelling, as slapdashidly planned as it was till phase 3, this is a film that feels painfully long to watch due to how padded it is. You could’ve cut those 40 mintues from this film EASILY and while you wouldn’t of had a good film, sadly, you would’ve had a way more enjoyable cheesy superhero movie. I”m tackling this one first because it just.. oozes all over the film. For every great and memorable bit in the movie and every questionable one we’ll get to, for every gloriously so bad it’s good moment... there’s about 10 minutes of scene that did not need to be there. It slows down the film to a crawl and given the original had pitch perfect pacing I do not get how Patty Jenkins screwed this up. 

I do think Patty Jenkins is a good director. I did like the first movie, I do think a lions share of the credit goes to her writing and direction for that one. And a LOT of the sequences in this film are utterly goregously shot and fun to watch. I also, even if I don’t like this film, am extastic she forced the stuido to pay her more money to work on the film, as she deserves as much as any male director, it’s bullshit they tried to short change her, and again she was the reason the first film was so good. She deserved equal fucking pay for making Warner money hand over fist. 

But I also say this because i’m disapointed in HER. She CAN do better, she already did the first time and the only real down spot, the spotty cgi climax, was not her fault. And hell here she did get the climax she wanted, and wrote one hell of one. I”ll go into it more later but the finale of this movie from the pitch perfect fight with cheetah, dodgy face work nonwithstanding, to the final speech to the world is just gorgeous to watch. Even in this mess of a film there are some really good really tightly shot sequences that i’ll get to.. but their broken up by padding and padding nad more padding. This film is bloated, it needed to be edited down but she clearly REFUSED TO, gunshy after the whole Ares thing last time... and thus shot herself in the foot repeadtly. I sitll have some hope for the next movie and Rogue Squadron, but Jenkins rightfully lost any blind faith I had in her this film would be good just as the directors of it chapter 2 lost it by.. making a terrible sequel to a great movie. Given this happened in the span of a year you’d THINK i’d of prepared myself for that.. but no. Sadly.. no. 

But back to the point of this section: the film is just really padded. A lot of it is just scenes going on longer than they need to but there are some specific bits, some recurring others all in one go, that just really get tedious and pad things out. Let’s rattle em off shall we? The Opening: Now the opening is gorgeously shot, and it is nice to see Thymesicra again.. but the sequence is twiece as long as it needed to be, often just devolves into frantic shots of running.. and really dosen’t need to be here. I love Thymesicra, I love Hipolita, I love this damn beautiful island.. but we did not need it for this one. I THOUGHT it was there because the climax would be Max and Barbra invading the island or something.. but no. It has nothing to do with the main plot other than selling the film’s message “Nothing good comes from lies and shortcuts” which is a good message.. but the film already conveys that well. For all it’s flaws it well conveys the fact that the easy way to get what you want ALWAYS comes with a cost. That you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you just might find you get what you need. So we didn’t need 10 minutes of amazons running around just to make a point that the film already makes and it wreaks of Warner wanting to put the amazons in the film because “that’s what people expect.” 

Steve Trevor Dinking Around for 20 Minutes: I will admit as dumb as it was.. I really loved the Steve Trevor 80′s fashion show. Oh it was dumb.. beyond belieif.. but it’s REALLY hard to hate a good 5 minutes of chris pine putting on stupid 80′s outfits. I do think like a lot of this film it was longer than it needed to be and it defintely needed a good catchy 80′s tune alongside it, just go full bollocks if your doing this, but otherwise it’s just hard not to joy, even if in a so bad it’s good kind of way, this kind of lunacy in a major stuido film

That goodwill died quckily as the next 15 goddamn minutes, 5 for the fashion show which while i liked it did not need to be in the film as long as it was, were just steve getting used to the new world of the 80′s. While I like the idea of Steve now in Diana’s roll as stranger in a strange land, instead of using it cleverly or having him ruminate over all his friends being dead Captain America style or .. a billion other things we could’ve used this time for if you really needed it, we instead just get Steve and Diana farting around for 20 minutes and Chris Pine making stupid faces. Chris Pine deserved better than this. He seems to be a steerling person in his personal life and I seriously doubt he’s done any movie bad enough to have earned this.. I mean he did do Star Trek: Into Darkness but NONE of those films problems were his fault. It’s just really, REALLY terrible, and even more boring in padded in places than this film but without the good bits or the haminess of pedro pascal to make it even remotely watchable. Point is i’m doing a blind look, and this is blind I just came up with tihs bit while I was writing and have not looked at chris pine’s filmography before, to see if there’s anything really bad enough to justify him being put through this buffonery. 

Turns out .. yeah yeah he did. Two films in fact are just bad enough that he did in fact sign on to something bad enough to justify this. There were one or two other contenders but Princess Diaries 2 was earlier in his career, Into The Woods much like Into Darkness was not his fault and honestly if I were offered a part in a glitzy hollywood adaptation of a beloved musical i’d sign on too without heistation, and while Wrinke in Time is kind of a mess, Chris Pine is easily one of the best parts of it.  No the two films that make him DESERVE the goofy terrible fish out of water stuff are this means war, a film I saw throughly savaged by Matthew “Film Brain” Buck, which is about two douchey cia agents competing over a woman without thinking that MAYBE the choice is hers, and also setting up CONSTNAT SURVILENCE over her and basically stalking her to sabatoge each others dates. And while I did mention that review, because it did give context.. even from the trailer I could tell this was sexist, bro douchey, and stupid and wanted no part of it. So yeah signing on this this, post star trek’s success where he had his pick of projects and was at the hight of his fame.. is inexcusable.  The other is just... the kind of embarassing dtv film a person does before they get famous but is so horrendously premised that I still can’t give it to him. Like I get needing work, I do comissions 10 for movies now and 5 for tv show episodes and issues of comics if you were curious, so I understand that.. but even at his most desperate... why would you possibly take... this?

.. wait is that Stephen Tobowsky in the credits? Good god his career is depressing some time.. but at least unlike chris I GET him being in this as he needs money and despite his long and storied career, has to take what he can get. Wheras Chris was a promsing young star who while needing a break, CAN’T of thought this would be remotely sucessful and can’t of paid that well. But since the poster might not convey the premise.. the premise is Chris is a Blind Man looking for love set up on BLIND DATES. 

It sounds like a fucking Adam Sandler film premise. I’m honestly suprised he hasn’t remade this film with himself, david spade, or rob schinder, whose apparently on good terms with him again, god help us all. And DON’T. TELL. HIM. He still hasn’t made that worst film imaginable he promised for getting Snubbed for Uncut Gems. Yes I know, Hubie Halloween came out but that was in production long before the promise and not that bad. Not great, pretty average, but not terrible. Point is do not tempt Adam Sandler to remake this film. He still owes us the worst film he can muster INTENTIONALLY, as Pixels, Rediculous Six, That’s My Boy? That was all him trying to make  GOOD movie. Be afraid be VERY afraid. The other point is this premise is just really bad, REALLY offensive to blind people to make being blind into a stupid punchline, and I.. will probably watch this at some point because i’m bafflingly curious about this terrible terrible thing Chris Pine probably wanted us all to forget about, but will now never have that luxury as long as I live. The Fireworks Scene: This one is just..really dumb. Like really dumb. Every bit of this scene was dumb and we could’ve just.. had them get on a plane to egypt like normal people or steal a jet off screen. So to get to Egypt, Diana and Steve steal a jet which Steve can somehow fly despite decades of progress in how planes work at this point and him not knowing what radar is. He also gets shot ot at because Diana FORGOT, somehow, that radar exists and didn’t tell him. They also steal a jet instead of just taking an airliner or her calling in a favor since while it’s been a good few decades and Etta is sadly long dead, the candy family probably knows and loves her well enough and probably still has some military personal who could pull some strings and bring a jet over from london. It’s a stretch.. but not much more than “let’s steal a plane and hope we don’t die. “

Why this is in the padding section is because we then get a way too long bit of the two flying through a field of fireworks.. which also apparently existed LONG before steve was even born, so I donn’t quite get why he’s so shocked. And while i’ts not a bad CONCEPT for a scene the fact the two are being persued by the military for stealing a jet AND have to get to egypt so urgently they had to steal the jet in the first place lest Max do something horrible, which he ends up doing anyway... to take 10 minutes to gaze at the pretty fireworks. It’s just.. a waste of time in a movie that wasted already too much time. 

Some of the barbra scenes: We’ll dive more into Barbra in a bit, and this is easily the least offesnive on this list, but a lot of the scnees of her discovering her new power could’ve been compressed. There are seperate scenes of her discovering she dosen’t need glasses anymore and picking up a ton of weight at the gym, while in 80′s workout clothes because of course she is. Both of those could’ve been one, either having her pick up something heavy like nothing casually or just having her glasses fall and break at the gym, have some cute guy help her up to help sell the wish making her feel noticed, and realize she don’t need em. It’s minor in comparison, but a good chunk of her plot badly needed to be streamlined. 

And those are just the main offenders. The film’s pacing in general is just attrocious. It takes half an hour for the plot to move along most of the time.. there’ ssome good character stufff but they could’ve better weaved it into the plot and in some Barbra scenes and most of Max’s they DID. It’s just for the most part there’s a lot of repttition of stuff we already knew and figured out and it takes forever for the plot to move to the next phase until the last half hour. And by then my niece was already in the kitchen playing with her new slime having enitrely checked out, my mom was asleep and my brother just wanted this film over already and both of us were only hanging in out of obligation. This film blows most of what little potetial it has taking too damn long to get to the point. As I said it’s fine for a film to be long.. but while Endgame had laggy sections and some of it’s own problems.. it USED the huge runtime effectivey, using the first hour to both show our heroes had truly lost, then to set up the post-time skip world and just what had become of our heroes and their arcs for the movies. The second hour is mostly the time heist, a fun tour through the mcu’s history that also helps progress arcs and the final act is basically one MASSIVE glorious battle featuring every single hero who hadn’t suffered a non-snap related death in one of the best big action scnenes i’ve ever seen. It was well crafted and it’s slower moments were for character stuff and not because they felt the film needed to feel as long as the rest of the year had felt.  But while it was the film’s main flaw and the main reason i’ts bad instead of mediocre..there’s one other massive flaw that utterly sinks the damn film and robs of it of a lot of it’s emotional weight The Character Assassination of Diana Prince:

Now we get to the part that really pisses me off one that was already kinda bad while watching but just got worse the more I thought about it: Diana’s Charcterization here. Despite being flawless in the first film.. here it’s just bad. It’s bad and it should feel bad. I can’t fathom how Jenkins lost touch so badly with the character, and I don’t think the Co-Writer Remotley helped.  The Co-Writer for this film was Geoff Johns, a dc wunderkind whose reinvented the flash, green lantern, the justice society of america and aquaman, all brilliantly. The last one was even largely the basis for his damn fun movie. I have a lot of respect for the man... but like a lot of creators he’s not immune to screwing up and has made a LOT of mistakes, the biggest being forcing Cyborg away from the titans and into the justice league not for diversity’s sake like he probably claims.. but really because he didn’t want to use John Stewart instead of Hal Jordan, who he has an odd obession with i’ve never gotten, something the incoming writer of Green Lantern, Geoffry Throne, turns out to have complained about for years, as well as apparnetly giving out about Jordan SO MANY TIMES, that an entire artcle was made revealing this... and I’m perfectly fine with that as it should be clear I don’t like Hal Jordan all that much and while he’s been in some good runs, the other earth lanterns are FAR more intersting than him and far more unique. Thankfully the new series seems to be focusing on multiple of them and while hal seems to be getting some focus, Simon and Jessica are the main stars of modern day. So hell yeah to that. Let’s get back to the actual point. 

The point being that one of his weaknesses as a writer.. is he really dosen’t get Wonder Woman. He just dosen’t. During Justice League he wrote her as a violent warrior and during Infinite Crisis, as expertly pointed out by LInkara during his review of it a few years back, he had her “not understand what being human is” .. despite this being at the SAME TIME as that Greg Rucka run I mentioned, meaning at the time of Inifnite Crisis, she had her own embassy for her people set up, had written a book, and had just spent a good chunk of that run trying to free an old friend who’d been brainwashed into a psychotic killing machine from her mechanical inhancments killing her and driving her insane. She willingly blinded herself with fucking snake venom to save the world from Medusa’s gaze and avenge a child THEN went on a long and arduous quest for the gods simiply to ressurect said child, with no intent of getting her sight back and only getting it back because Athena willingly gave hers up for being so noble. She is someone who is compatsionate, empathetic and noble. Not a kill happy warrior who loves fighting and blood. She fights because she has to, she does not hesitate and she does kill when needed.. but she is not some weird enigma to humanity. She’s throughly human despite being made of clay and not raised among regular humans. She’s a person, and Geoff just dosen’t get that. He get Superman, the flash, batman, other heroes just fine. He redefined aquaman well like I said. But for some damn reason he just dosen’t get Diana and can’t get a good grasp on her and while a good choice of co writer for practically any other dc movie and a good choice to right the ship for the dceu, he was the second possible worst choice to handle this character and likely is at least partially responsible for her character taking such a nosedive. By the way just in case you think better of him for only being second worst.. this is the worst. 

Yes that actually happened.. thankfully not in the main canon and likely because Frank Miller really REALLY needs to get some help. 

Point is he was a bad choice and while I still give Patty Jenkins some discredit for helping with this, I do feel Geoff easily could’ve agreed with or came up with some of the worse ideas here without really thinking them through because this simply isn’t a character he cares about what happens to her or knows that well.  Things START fine: in present day we get a pretty fun action sequence in a mall with what my brother called Dollar Store Micheal Keaton.. but because Max was already perfectly cast, there wasn’t room for this screen legend. Plus he was probably busy shooting Morbius for.. whatever his role is there. I hope it’s the vulture. My point is DSMK is delightfully hammy and weird and helps kick up an already fun mall sequence.. while I was apparnetly the ONLY one who enjoyed this cheesy but awesome sequence in my family aside from my niece, she hadn’t rightfully checked out at this point, I still love it. It does bring up the slight problem of Diana being active years before... but given The Suicide Squad with it’s vast colorful cast of supervillians and the fact the freaking Justice Society are getting introdcued and given their gimmick even if WWII isn’t involed this time they had to have been active for some time before they presumibly vanished. My point is the whole Zack Snyder thing of “Metahumans are new and you should fear them” has been quitely retconned out and this will all likely be explained with the whole flashpoint thing... (Shudders).. not the retcon the DCEU needs a good coat of paint and unlike the XCU I dont think their going to waste a second chance, I just want a flash film that’s actually about barry and not another adaptation of a storyline few people liked ot start with. Point is that’s not really a huge issue and I prefer DIana being active than the implication she did nothing and her doing small bits of heroisim, like saving a woman from getting hit by a car or resucing pets and bigger ones like the mall just .. fell like Diana. It’s all downhill from there though. For starters there’s Barbra. It starts well: Diana is the only person to not only notice Barbra but treat her nice, and the two strike up a friendship.. which I honeslty wish was more as there was a lot of potetial there and both have great chemistry, not to mention showing Diana’s bisexuality on screen would be a really damn good move forward for representation, but that’s more on me and given how homophobic big companies can be, i’m unsuprised Warner wouldn’t let Patty take that route. 

Point is it starts well enough.. but instead of the two actually having a deep freindship and possible relationship that is heartbreaking when it’s broken.. Diana just sort of forgets about her except when she needs her for the plot, and thus what should’ve been an emotionally breaking subplot leading to an utterly heartbreaking fight at the climax.. was just Diana being a dick, taking advantage of someone, and then getting a bit self righteous when the person you basically abandoned and didn’t notice made a wish till it was too late wants to keep the one thing that’s ever made her feel special. 

It dosen’t help the comics did this whole thing better and is likely where Jenkins got the inspiration: During Rebirth Barbara Minvera was converted from a vicious ruthless bitch and a half, if still a brilliant character, to a tragic figure: one who while a bit cold and standofish, was genuinely diana’s friend, tricked into thinking she was abandoned, then became the bride of a horrifying god who punsiheed her for the “crime”.. of not being a virgin. While removing the whole cat god thing is understandable.. they removed pretty much everything that made that intresting and Rucka worked hard to make for a cliche “Nerd becomes evil” plot that’s been done a milion times nad makes dsiana look horrible.  But while this is bad.. it PALES in comparisoin to the elephant in the room here. 

No no elephant sweetie not wild pig. No.. it’s once Diana makes her wish on the magical wishing stone form the trickster god.. and brings steve back. See her bringing him back only for her to have to give him up to save the world.. that’s not bad. It’s a great way to bring chris pine back, ratchet up tension and ultimately give her proper closure for steve so she can move on.  The problem.. is HOW steve comes back and how the movie handles that. Steve comes back.. by possesing some random guy. That itself is not a bad idea, as while it’s weird, A) I’m a weirdo and proud of it so i’mf ine with weird and B) it gives us a price to the wish like the other wishes: steve comes back.. but he has to take someone else’s life to do so. Diana has to sacrifice an innocent man she dosen’t know anything about in order to get her happy ending. That could’ve lead to some great drama, with Diana realizing how wrong this is and forcing herself to give him up with Steve’s blessing, as Steve would likewise not feel right about this. He could’ve had family or a girlfriend or something that were jeaporadzied if Diana kept Steve.  The problem.. is they handled it horribly. really horribly. Diana and Steve.. almost NEVER mention the fact that he’s basically taken a life. They don’t ask if the guy is dead, they don’t ask who he was and they don’t try to find a way to get him a new body or a dying one or some other ghost can’t do it style shenanigan. And the fact i’m comparing this subplot to ghost can’t do it should tell you this is very bad. And it gets worse as the two have sex.. and whiel I dind’t think about it while watching the movie... afterwords? Yeah.. that’s.. that’s rape. The guy didn’t consent to letting them use his body. Now granted if Steve could leave the body at willand the guy was like “Sure why not” then that’d be fine.. but he has no way of consenting. Sure STEVE did.. but this ain’t his property. This isn’t his body to decide who he fucks. It’s random guy whose body he stole. Hell they didn’t even stop to consider if this guy might be gay which given Diana is bisexual makes no goddamn sense. So that’s another possible layer of wrong on this sundae of what the actual hell. I mean.. how do you bungle writing so bad your main character ends up as a rapist? That’s a special kind of incompetence in 2020 I tell you. 

It just turns Diana from a kind noble woman who looks out for everyone.. into a creepy asshole who willingly sacrifices some guy she dosen’t know, something a well written Diana would NEVER do, to get what she wants. This is not diana prince. This is “out of the way sperm bank” levels of charactera assasination” and the fact steve has to talk her into letting him go just makes it worst. Diana here is selifhs, unsympathetic and terrible and it brings the whole film down despite Gal Godot’s best efforts to try and make this work. She fails.. but it’s not on her as an actress, she’s terrific, but on the writing for Diana being so bad. She just comes off as selfish and irredemible and i’ts horrifying to see. As one last note Steve is reduced to more of a cutout this time, so any possible emotinal weight not already destroyed by the rape is entirley missing. Just good god they did Diana dirty for this one. And it dosen’t help her villians.. are done much better. Speaking of..

Barbra: A Mixed Cat Out of a Mixed Bag As the title should make clear Barbra is kind of a mixed bag. On the one hand.. Kristin Wiig is fantastic. Like holy crap I had some small doubts about her being cast in the role but she nailed both the sweet put upon nerd at the start and the ruthless individual desperate to stay special at the end really well and the reason her scenes aren’t as draggy despite a lot being padding are Wiig just really sells the transformation, going from being giddy at a sudden influx of attention to feeling powerful.. to feeling dangerous and being deseprate to do whatever it takes to hold onto her power and being furious when she looses it.  The problem is.. it’s all in the acting. Writing wise the story is horribly cliche. It’s why her having feelings for Diana was a suggestion that popped into my head: that’s actually intresting. A put upon nerd who envy’s a hero but ends up instead resenting them and wanting to kill them isn’t new. Amazing Spider-Man 2, which I thankfully haven’t seen but has that plot, Incredibles, and the one that the movie steals from the most.. Batman Returns. While wanting to kill the hero wasn’t part of that one, the whole “blonde whose still attractive even before the makeover has some supernatural thing happen to her and turns into an extrovert with a cat motif who is determined to take what she wants despite the cost.” While i’ts not 1 for 1, mostly becasue Catwoman actually had a romantic relationship with the hero, it’s REALLY hard to ignore just how much it seems to curb from Returns. And I haven’t even seen the movie the whole way through, just about half, really need to, not the point. Point is, it just feels like a rehash of a better done version of the plot.  And the sad part is the comics GAVE Patty and Geoff two much better versions that could’ve followed the same path. Pre-Rebirth/Flashpoint, she was a ruthless woman from the getgo and simply could’ve been that, being friends with Diana.. but being too selfish and envious to truly let her in and thus relishing in her new power and showing off who she really was. The other, and better option for the narrative is the previously mentioned rebirth one: A sarcastic and hard but likeable woman who has had to scrape and claw to do what she loves, which is archelogy, despite her father being vastly against it because he’s a dick. Someone who through tragic misunderstanding becomes a tragic monster. That latter version would’ve fit in perfectly, having her like diana and just want to be her.. but a combination of her own inseucrites and the stone strip away her empathy and increase her jealousy and Diana neglecting her could’ve been a concious choice: Diana being too busy with steve and stopping max to see what was happening and thus be heartbroken to fight her true friend. Instead we just get.. catwoman but less good. Wiig tries her best and often succeeds but even she can’t really fix this.  It also dosen’t help that selfishness aside.. Barbra is far more sympathetic. She’s contantly put upon and ignored by her cowowkres nad even her boss, who oftne forgets she works there, and finally meets someone who seems to care.. onlyf or that person to ignore her and go off and have adventures and really horribly implicated sex. So she wishes to be like this person, to be confident and loved and able to walk in heels and strong and gets it and slowly looses who she was to it. Hell the moment where she apparently CROSSES THE LINE by possibly killing some guy.. is entirely ruined by picking the wrong target. Instead of it being her boss or one of her co workers who mockeda nd humilated her.. i’ts the same guy who tried to assault her out for revenge. She’s beating up.. a bad person. She’s doing what Diana would do in a good way..

Sure she does take a turn for the evil, after hearing about the wishing stone destroying civilizations.. she sides with max.. but she’s still more sympathetic. Her resintment of Diana which should just be the meta commentary Jenkins intended on relationships between women where it becomes competitive due to societal bullshit, instead comes off justifed. Diana abandoned her, Diana is also being selfish with her wish, diana raped a man, Diana wants Max to stop.. but has to be TALKED into letting her wish go. While Diana is trying to save the world you can’t fault Barbra for not trusting her. For someone who preaches honesty, all Diana is to Barbra is a liar. While she does side with Max who earlier manipualted her by seducing her and stealing the stone... she KNOWS he’s not a great person, and this time instead of being the used, she’s the user. She knows he can make her even STRONGER, knows he can let her keep being who she wants to be if not BETTER, and knows he needs someone on his side.. and knows he won’t screw her over with her wish since he needs Diana off his back to become powerful enough to face her. Barbra comes off as cunning, manipulative and way more likeable than the hero, instead of the tragic villian she was inteded as. If nothing else, if she shows up in the sequel I will watch it even after this one was pretty damn bad and hopefully sh’ell be better written next time to match Wiig’s hard work. Now.. i’ve saved the best for last as while i’ve compalined a lot.. there is ONE aspect of the film that is genuinely good and while I get not everyone liked it.. Is urea s hell did

Maxwell Lord: Perdo Pascal Saves this film by eating the set whole like galactus. 

Maxwell Lord.. is the best part of this movie. Easily. Unlike the other main characters, he’s written well, acted well if hammy as all hell, and is true to the comics. Part of this I freely admit is that when I heard Max was a villian here I expected none of his JLI version to survivie. I should explain.. in the comics Max is defined by two diffrent phases of how he was written; The first was in Giffen and Demattis run on justice league, which was more of an action comedy with emphasis on the comedy> There was still serious stuff and villians to face, it’s just our heroes were a bunch of likeable misfits and b-list heroes doing their best while cracking jokes and disfunctionally clashing with one another. It’s good stuff.  Max was the heart of that: a selfish manipulative buisness man who grew to like the league and rebelled against the robot intellegence that got him that far, earning him a fair spot on the team. Sure he was a sleazy, shady 80′s buisness man, but he has a good heart underneath the opprotunsitic nature. 

Come the run up to infinite crisis despite being a metahuman, he started irationally hating metahumans, claimed to have always hated them, and set up a vast conspriacty to kill em all. He also hyjacked superman, which lead to Wonder Woman being forced to snap his neck and being booed for it by superman despite the fact you know.. she was trying to stop him from killing batman and had no other cohice. The rest of the world got the clip out of context.. but even then she’d already killed months ago for the medusa thing I mentioned before, and despite Medusa only speeking ancient greek, the world, which tihs was broadcast too hence the danger of medusa killing trillions of viewers watching at home, they got the context that Wonder Woman was the good guy and was killing for good reason. It was just.. kind of stupid even if Rucka did his best with it is what i’m saying. 

Point is there were two maxes: the sleazy and manipulative but well meaning buisness man and semi-con man and the manipulative but well intentioned master mind. So the movie.. combined both beautifully. He’s a manipulator as always, having set up a ponzi scheme and getitng called out on it by what turned out to be Simon Stagg.. who for some reason is the virtious if assholish buisness man here despite in the comcis being an utterly corrupt asshole constnatly ttrying to prevent his daughter from marrying this guy

This is Metamorpho, the element man, archelogist Rex Mason who thanks to the orb of Ra turned into this guy, an embodiment of the elments who can transmute his body into anything on the perodic table. Why HE hasn’t been in a movie yet his nemisis now has been is beyond me and there are better dc businessmen to have used. 

Point is this Max is shady, ambitious and sleazy.. and badly failing his scheme falling around him. But his reason for wanting to be a rich, powerful man after growing up a poor immigrant.. is utterly symapthetic. He has a son in this adaptation and wants to make him proud. I’ts CLEARLY not his only motivation, he also just wants to be proud and the finale reveals hsi father was abusive, and his classmmates alienated him for being an immigrant. He has a chip on his shoulder due to having a rough life and just wanting his moment in the sun. It makes Max relatable: His actions are NOT okay but we get why he merges with the wishing stone: because this is his shot. And most of the people he fucks over with his wishes.. are bad people. he cons some good people sure but Stagg is an asshole and the prince he cons wants to kick foreigners out of his homeland. Max, like Barbra, while not a GOOD person still is more likeable than diana.  He just.. feels like Max. He’s what Max could’ve been if he gave into the power instead of fighting against it. If he'd teamed up with the alien robot thing to take over the world instead of resiting it. So while he’s a bad guy like he’s been sadly turned into in the comics.. he feels like a CONVINCING version of Max as a bad guy. Like he genuinely turned evil of his own will and his own ambition. 

It also helps he’s written compitently. Unlike Diana, whose entirely miswritten to a point NO amount of good acting and no amount of Gal Godot’s talents could save, and Barbra, whose great but only because her character had too little to be great but just enough to give Kristin Wiig room to work with Gal simply did not have. Seriously I feel terrible for Gal Godot, she’s a genuinely talented actress and a genuinely kind and great person whose a LOT like Diana herself when written properly.  But Pedro Pascal? Since his character isn’t too badly written, and he has room to work.. he’s allowed to just be awesome. Since I haven’t watched the Mandolorian yet, I know, I KNOW, trust me.. I KNOWWW. But since I hadn’t this was my first proper exposure to Pedro Pascal..and his talent speaks for himself. In a weak movie, he is the shining star.  He’s also hammy as shit, but it WORKS because the film is redicouls. The Wishin Rock plot line and Max merging with it.. it’s bonkers. But he has just the right mix of bonkers hammy acting that’s fun to watch, and actual character work in the ham. He’s eating the scenery hand over fist, utterly devouring it.. but it fits the character as while Max was more of a subtle ham, a guy who just radiated smug and who more got into histornics when things went tits up like the time Blue Beetle and Booster Gold took the JLU’s funds to build an island resort on an island that turned out to be sentient and didn’t like that much and yes, all of that happened and it was as funny as it sounds. Point is being a showman whose always on, always talking and always got a plan.. that’s Maxwell Fucking Lord, and Pascal’s over the top acting fits that kind of character like a glove. 

It also fits the film well: the film comes off more like a 2000′s superhero film, one that takes itself super seriously.. but is really, REALLY goofy in places. It honest to god feels like one of the Sam rami spider-man films, ones I REALLY need to revisit and the results of that you’ll likely see, but without the self awarness rami had.. for the first two I mean by the third with the whole saturday night fever sequence, he’d really lost it. Love the guy though, still need to watch Army of Darkness and yes you may boo me.  Point is the film is bonkers and cheesy and dosne’t realize it but Pascal does so he just.. has fun with it. His haminess when asking someone for a wish, his great ways of reversing those wishes so he benifits from the consequences, taking them off the board while furthring his own goals. Max is just.. awesome, and so is pascal. He got a life long fan in me from this performance. And of all people he took his inspriation from Nick Cage which is a perfect fit as Cage is fucking great at acting absolutely batshit while still acting his ass off. Pascal really deserves full credit for this film for more than just being lovingly over the top. He’s genuinely good.

And that shines through greatly in the climax. First off the final fight between Cheetah and Wonder Woman is awesome.. just one of the best superhero fights i’ve seen on film and i’ve seen some whoppers. Great back and forth, great coreography and brutal intensitiy the whole way through with Diana being forced to possibly kill Barbra despite not wanting to hurt her. Just a hell of one. But the real centerpice is the wish vortex. Pascal just drops all pretense and goes ultra instinct ham, just letting it all hang out as he ascneds to god hood... but how he’s beaten.. is easily the most brilliant part of the film and one of the few times Gal Godot genuinely gets to show off her talent in this one: Wonder Woman defeats the bad guy not with brute force, not that she can, or some cool fight.. though we did get the cool fight too so that’s nice.. she simply uses her head and her heart. She uses her head by taking advantage of the fact max is broadcasting to the world, as villians tend to, and giving his bogus offers to whoevers listneting. So Diana counters this.. by simply speakking from the heart, enrouging those watching not to give in and to renounce the wish.. so the consequences can be renounced too. Even if it’s hard, even if it costs you.. what your doing will cost others so much more. And she finsihses this by using the Lasso of Truth on max, making him tear down his delusions about himself and see that his actions, which have caused world war III by the way as he maniupated the president.. who for some reason was not Regan. While Regan was a bastard.. that’s exactly the reason I wanted hi mthere as this film would’ve been better had one of the parts of the climax been Diana fighting a 50 foot tall rouge ronald regan. Admit it you’d see that in theaters if it was safe to go. 

POint is max sees he’s only HURTING his son, that this is for HIM not for his boy.. and that if he dosen’t let this power go, if he dosen’t just accept a peaceful life and let the world spin the way it’s supposed to and not emplode jus tso he can be a god... his son will be gone. So he gives it up and goes back to his boy in a touching moment. Though for some reason his son somehow got from Max’s office to the middle of a fucking highway. How is he not dead? I dunno we’re almost done here. Point is max is easily the highlight of the film and the reason it’s not ALL horrible along with Barbra.  Final Thoughts: Wonder Woman 1984.. is a disapointment. What I thought would be an easy film of the year contender.. instead ended up being an ungodly mess with unfortunate implications, a messy slapped together plot and WAYYYYY too much filler. As I said it had it’ sbright spots especially max and barbra.. but hte ultimate product is WAYYYY less than Patty Jenkins is capable of and since a third film is apparently inevitible, I can only hope next time she learns from this and does better. Also get Pedro Pascal his own Justice League international series as Max’s grandson or something YESTERDAY. Seriously even people who didn’t like this film would love it and it’s not like he can’t do this between seasons of Mando. He did We Can Be Heroes for god’s sake.. which was somehow a better film than this one. I guess 2020 had to disapoint me one last time huh? Well we’re in a new year now... and hopefully the Suicide Squad won’t also be a huge diapointment. If you enjoyed this lnog rant on a movie from a week or two ago, follow me for more. I’m currently doing retrospectives on the life and times of scrooge mcduck, scott pilgrim, grant morrisons new x-men, and i’m soon going to finish up a Darkwing Duck one focusing on Just us Justice ducks. And once they come back this year I plan on reguarlly covering Ducktales, Loud House, Owl House, Amphibia, and Final Space. So keep an eye out for that and until then, Goodbye Goodbye Goodbye. 

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Three awesome post-GoT series I would commission if I owned any of the Big three Streaming platforms.

Yo! Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+, you have a problem: there are nerds like me who want to give you even more of our time and money, but you’re not making the stuff you should be.  Following the hugely disappointing end of “Game of Thrones”  there are a huge number of sci-f and fantasy nerds who are currently not getting our fix of epic adventure, and rather than commission a whole bunch of cool series that are just begging to be made to cash in on this, you’re all just sort of doing your own things. And that’s Cool, I’m loving the Netflix Witcher series and Disney’s Loki, and looking forward to the Amazon Middle Earth series with a mix of hope and trepidation (please be good), there are, however, a whole mass of cool book series that are just begging for release in an episodic fashion, and what’s more, I can think of which series plays to which streaming platforms strengths. And unlike Game of Thrones, there are series where running out of source material to adapt shouldn’t be a problem.

So, three sci-fi or fantasy series that play to the strengths of the big three Streaming services, as suggested by me, a big ol’ nerd. One: Amazon Prime. Strengths: successfully adapting darker comic-book or Urban fantasy works Like Preacher, the Boys, Good Omens and American Gods and making a profit. Weakness: has never successfully pulled of a big Grimdark fantasy series, despite having all the talent to do so because they’re working on the Middle earth series, which doesn’t seem a good fit for their brand image as the place you come for for comically dark works, and all their adaptations are too much of a slow burn, which necessitates padding the source material (look at how little happens in any episode of Preacher or the Boy vs the insanely fast pace of the comics). Solution: Malazan, book of the fallen. A deep, insanely dark, insanely Epic story that would actually lend itself to a slow burn and the grim-dark over the top violence of other Amazon shows, and fill the “Tit’s and monsters” gap left by GoT in many of our hearts. And unlike Tolkien, I have faith that the studio that cast Sweary Karl Urban as Billy Butcher could actually pull this off with the correct tone and feel. This would have the Witcher fans from Netflix defecting in droves, and could also pull in some new viewers who might enjoy the anthropology and political intrigue of this complex, multifaceted world.

 Two: Disney+. Strengths: near infinite money and ambition, the production team behind The Mandalorian and the MCU, great Hollywood clout to draw in big name stars, but willing to cast talented unknowns, the best mix of live action and CG in the business. Weaknesses: It’s Disney, so they can never go full grim-dark: they can imply or infer dark acts, but need to keep what’s shown on screen PG13 to fit their brand, which rules out a lot of modern fantasy. And they have no true fantasy serries in their stable.

Solution: Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn, and other Cosmere works.  A rare example of an excellent current fantasy and sci-fi writer who isn’t grimdark as heck, and manages to convey dark and adult themes by implication and hints rather than outright showing them, this is pretty much the only big fantasy series out there that is aimed at and enjoyed by adults but remains consistently PG13. It’s also so epic and super-hero-ish in this various magic systems, that I can’t see anyone other than the team behind the MCU pulling off a live-action version of this that doesn’t suck. In addition to this, the logical starting point for this, Mistborn, is by far the safest and most marketable, coming the closest of any of his works to a standard young-adult plot with Vin as an easily sell-able character to studio brass, being to all intents and purposes Katniss Everdeen with super-powers, which could get a big studio invested  and convinced this is a good idea before we get to all the “lets kill and replace god” stuff. If Mistborn was successful, other Cosmere works could follow, and I could see something like the Stormlight Archives working really well with the MCU effects team behind it, so long as they don’t white-wash it: No one on Roshar is white other than in Shinovar, and half of the cultures are based on either Polynesian or far eastern traditions, so cast Hawaiian, Māori, native American and east-Asian actors, and it could be both a great series, and also the most diverse Disney has ever done. You want a new, easily marketable but epic scale franchise, Disney? It’s right here.

Also for the love of god, do Wax and Wayne. I just need this, okay?

 Three: Netflix. Strengths: good at tapping into the prevailing nostalgia of Millennials and producing works that speak to them on a relatively small budget (see Stanger Things) and good at grabbing the rights to adapt good but slightly obscure works cheaply. Good working relationship with a ton of Japanese Anime rightsholders. Weaknesses: By far the smallest budget of any of the big three. Tends to produce awful live-action adaptations of beloved works (to the point that the Witcher was a pleasant surprise), but has good relationships with lots of animation studios.

Solution: Animorphs, but do what they always should have done and animate it. It boggles my mind that anyone would every try to pull this off in live action, as the transformations, which are the heart of the series, would be so hard to pull off well (look at the 90’s series). And yet, I’m aware they’re making a film, but dear god, why, when K A Applegate said form the get go that this series of books were written specifically as if they were a 90’s Saturday morning cartoon. This was always meant to be adapted as a series, not a long form film. So, don’t try to modernise it, or relate to “The kids” don’t whitewash the cast, don’t edit out the gore and body-horror, but lean into the 90’s and early 2000’s angst of it, and go balls to the walls insane with the concept. What music do you have playing for this scene? Is it Every day is exactly the same by Nine Inch Nails, and if not, why not? Do the transformation sequence genuinely scare you? No?  Then you’re doing it wrong.  Is that a happy ending? Get that the hell out of there. Go for the original time period and concept, and go hard, and if you do it now, you’ll just hit that sweet spot as the rolling 30 year nostalgia cycle moves out of the 80’s and into the 90’s. And as an apology to all the bad live-action Anime you produced, Netflix, get a Japanese studio to animate this: the Animorphs books were popular in Japan, with wonderful hand drawn illustrations throughout. Get Studio Orange on this: Beastars proved they can do flowing, fast-moving combat well, and make animal and other non-human characters look good, and what’s more they’d probably be up for it: Animorphs is basically a western Shōnen,  so the market for an Anime of it would exist in Japan.

 So there we go, the three series I would commission if I ruled the world of streaming sites. As ever, tell me why I’m wrong below, and have a great day!

[sleepymccoy]

Ideas for your thing instead of a calendar!

Sticker sheets? The paper is less expensive than I'd expect and you can print from a regular printer

Buttons of ur art? You may already do this but u can get ur own little machine to make buttons/badges with whatever you want on

These are all amazing ideas!!! It's so much and I have no idea what to do with it, so I'm gonna go through my thoughts on everything (and a few ideas I've had) and see if I come out with more of a concept

Sticker sheets

Yes, love it. It's been suggested to me before, and I think it would be within my grasp really. And it'd be an interesting thing to explore designing. I've never really used stickers on my own stuff before so I dunno if my designs will be spot on to start

Buttons

I would love to make buttons! That'll depend on finding the equipment I'd need, but it would be cool

Set of postcards

Yes! Very simple to accomplish, really. I also have this letter someone sent me once that's "reusable" in that there's a section inside that you can slip paper in and out of. I've always loved the design and would really enjoy doing something similar

Notepads

There are notepad type things with my art on the colour are already on redbubble (altho I don't upload often enough) so I don't feel a need to run that myself

However, designing little pages to put inside a planner could be cute. I'd want to check pricing options on that, cos it could get to be more than its worth

A similar thing I could do would be to make little stamps of my designs and do the printing myself. I've done some very good linocuts before, so that could be a cool direction. But it's moving away from the showcase of my art over a year idea, but might be something

A zine

Not sure i could pull that off. I like to adjust fandom art to something subtle and unrecognisable by the layman for my calendars so my family and friends can enjoy it as much as a good omens fan. I don't know how if do that with a short story

It is also close to an art book, and I'm just not that into myself tbh

Drawing prompt

That feels like flexing, but! I have not done a colouring book yet. I could very happily get the lineart of some drawing and include them as little projects

Post-it pad

I've never heard of that and it sounds genuinely gorgeous

Planner

Feels like a lot of work, most of which wouldn't be illustration. It'd be a lot of page design and layout, which I'm good for but it's not what I want to do really

Week to page calendar

Basically a planner, but I could make it much simpler. Would require a lot of art, but hey, I might have that much! Could be cute to do some short comics over the weeks as well as. Probably gonna run into the same low sales issues as the calendar tho

Address book

My thought here is I can do a different useful thing every year. So I can have an address book I can sell forever more! Cos you don't need a new one every year, but once is cool!

I'm leaning towards this year's November effort being a mishmash of new little things, cos those sound nice. Like, stickers, postcards, maybe badges, a short comic print, maybe a little notepad, a poster? That vibe would be nice.

I'll think about the others some more

If anyone has any further suggestions, let me know! I'm thinking now!