#stressful comic reading

[tasteless-lemonade]

Stressful Comic Reading: The Human Target

My pilot chapter of Stressful Comic Reading, All-Star Batman & Robin, was pretty much just angry splutter about the infamous "Batman: Year One" sequel. To this one, I'd like to make a more structured text. At the core, I'm still complaining endless about shiny spandex people comic book, but now with more coherence.

Synopsis: Christopher Chance, The Human Target, disguises himself as Lex Luthor to see who is trying to murder him. Due to that, Chance ends up taking a poison that was meant for Luthor, and now has 12 days to live. He spends his last days looking for the killer, who is someone among the Justice League International.

If you never read a JLI book, maybe you will like The Human Target. If you are a JLI fan like me, it probably won't be the most enjoyable experience

Tora is written as a femme fatale, "good girl actually bad girl" style. Not only that, she openly despises being a nice sweet girl. She clearly hates it and her actions throughout the book are motivated because she doesn't want to be nice anymore. She gets angry to be referred to as kind and sweet.

Now, a storyline that deals with how Tora feels with the common view of her being shallow "sweet" would be nice. But this whole story seems to hate the idea that Tora might be a sweet girl. Tora doesn't has to be a femme fatale bad girl in order to be interesting and Tom King obviously hates this version of Tora, as he is always trying to show his Tora is better, his Tora is way better than boring, nice Tora.

Because oooh, my stories deal with MURDER and SEX so they are Deep™ and much better than your kind-hearted heroism.

The same way he is trying to say his Tora is better, he is trying to say his Tora relationship is better. Yes, now we talk about Guy Gardner.

This whole characterization of Guy is based of him at his absolute worst moments. Calling Tora a bitch, stalking her, beating up Chance for dating her. People can argue that Guy was indeed an asshole during his first JLI moments, but The Human Target canonically takes place after Tora came back from the dead. It makes no sense for him to be acting the way he is acting, unless years of character development have been magically erased.

Actually, it makes. In an effort to make Chance/Tora look better and to make the author's self insert Chance look cool, Guy is written as a abusive, jealous ex who has an unhealthy obsession with Tora and a hatred towards Chance for "stealing his girl"

Then the book falls into the typical of "Man beating up girlfriend's ex to prove how he is such a Better Man For Her". Sigh.

There's a scene where Tora and Chance kill Guy and go fuck while the corpse is melting downstairs, for fuck's sake.

It would later be confirmed Guy faked his death here with Tora's help, but it still clearly a scene to show how Chance is awesome and this cool action hero and the man Tora needs that I feel like someone kicked me in the balls again. This trope never sounds good.

"What about the rest of the JLI?" you may ask. Well, they are certainly here.

They just show-up in the story, do what is needed for the plot to move and then disappear, not being given actual characterization or development. For a book supposedly about the JLI, I was waiting for them to be more than plot devices. AND STILL.

Bea??? Had an affair with J'onn???? Cause he liked being burnt??? But felt guilty for it??? Why???

Other than that, Bea doesn't do much other than be Tora's friend (still queercoded) and a suspect for Chance's poisoning. Almost all of J'onn moments is just "J'onn you did something bad you slept with Bea" and basically no depth other than that.

Ted has a nice moment of team-up with Ice and talks to Chance to give him information for the plot to move forward. Booster shows up and eats some bagels and that's it. There's also this take on Booster and Beetle relationship which is... questionable. At best.

Rocket Red is the only one who seems to care about Guy (because despite referring to the team as family, no one, not even Tora seems to at least like Guy throughout the whole book). He asks Chance where Guy is, because he wants to at least bury his brother. I gotta say, it was a good scene.

G'nort is also there to... uh... be a plot device for... take them to Oa and... that's it.

That's it. During 12 issues, we got beautiful art and some wonderful mischaracterization of these guys, well done!

To quote the words of @shoesofthefishermanswife

[artkaninchenbau]

People keep on asking for more Baby Robin and Papadile so here is more Baby Robin and Papadile. Now never ask anything from me ever again

[peacockrulz]

An Well Made Excuse To Post My Specific Headcanons I've Had Since The Show Came Out

[rad-roche]

BIOMASSE

WHEN BETTY WILKERSON FOUND HER HUSBAND TORN LIMB FROM LIMB IN THE SITTING ROOM, EATEN IN PARTS AND SMEARED ACROSS THE CEILING, SHE ROLLED HER EYES AND LEFT FOR HER BOOK CLUB

WHEN IT BECAME CLEAR HE WAS NEVER GOING TO CRAWL OUT OF THE BIOMASSE AGAIN, SHE CALLED ME

THESE DAYS, THERE’S ONLY ONE MAN CAPABLE OF MURDER

BUT THE THING IS…

IS THAT I WAS SOMEWHERE ELSE

[tapakah0]

[hijinxinprogress]

Billy definitely thinks about random things during fights and decides the internet needs to know immediately

[farshootergotme]

"Dick Grayson has anger issues-" okay, but does he actually? When I thought that was true I come to find that most of the evidence to make that claim come from a time in which Dick was being mentally controlled by Brother Blood or right after the death of his parents which obviously would cause anger after finding out they didn't even die naturally but were murdered on top of that.

[hamandeggbun]

I hope this isn't weird but I've been reading this by @batmanisagatewaydrug and I had like the sudden, strongest urge to make art properly for the first time in ages, so uhhhh have some Jessie (or Jess? Can I call her Jess because I love her?) who is a terrible wet cat of a woman!

I wanted to get this done fast and human anatomy is not my forte so I traced a picture of Natalie in the City, who's a fashion blogger and has some cute fits, though no supervillain ones as far as I'm aware :3

[cuephrase]

reading this page:

and immediately thinking about this:

and legit having to pause briefly because !!!!!

only to slide to the next page and get hit with THIS:

omg i’m unwell. i’m UNWELL. and bruce is just like “i’m leaving” EXCUSE ME. OH. OH.

i was not prepared for this. i’m having the time of my life rn. everything hurts.

[purplebehittindifferent]

What do we do now? Is this the end? Unfulfilling? Failed?!

Masterpost

Prev (3::7) // Final update

[magicalcreeks]

I wish Kon and Kyle Rayner interacted more outside of the issues where they teamed up because Kyle was probably one of the rare adults at the beginning of Kon’s career who didn’t want anything out of him.

Instead, in the short time Kyle was in Hawaii for a work assignment he talked to Kon and offered to teach him how to draw. Kyle recognized that Kon was a kid who did not have an outlet outside of being Superboy and he wanted to help him out.

This interaction is so important for Kon’s character at this point in time because a major theme that he constantly deals with is “who am I?”

Green Lantern #94

We then see Kon giving this art thing another shot despite being so frustrated with it in the beginning. This also shows the small impact that Kyle had on Kon in that short period.

Superboy #47

[tasteless-lemonade]

it IS that bad it sucks absolutely

did fr*nk m/ller really wanted to make a criticism to cops by making this fucking lunatic of a batman be all acab?

this is not black canary. there's no way

every single moment a female character is drawn it is in a sexualized position. she has to be sexy putting her hips up or showing her tits and its every single time a woman appears. the only exception is barbara gordon batgirl and thank God for that cause she is 16

i would say no woman is good written there but actually absolutely no character is good written there. everyone that shows up on this book is horrendously mischaracterized

why so many slurs

"I'M THE GODDAMN BATMAN" is so horrible holy shit

as a hal jordan enjoyer, every single moment hal appears is like if this writer came directly into my house and kicked me in the balls

bro really wrote a whole scene of batman humilating green lantern for absolutely no reason and thought it would show how his batman was Cool and Badass. what are you frank? a bully?

also in the most unbelievable way possible, like this is peak Idiot Plot that only works because hal is written so offensively out of character to be dumb and weak

you really want me to believe Green Lantern can't beat this fucking child?

this only made me want to beat bruce wayne with a black baseball bat with little bat ears

stay tuned for my next Stressful Comic Reading: The Human Target by Tom King!

interrupting my nice read of hal & pals to read all-star batman & robin

[zu-is-here]

TRAPPED [ Error ]

Previous • Masterpost • Next

[luck-of-the-drawings]

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

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

[twilight-zoned-out]

Edwin Payne is a dweeb who gives terrible weak comebacks, who can be unnecessarily petty, or overly smug, who is inordinately pleased with himself when wearing detective gear and using scientific gear, the thought never crossing his mind that he might not look as cool as he thinks he does, who carries a continual and utter absolute delight at acting like the characters he loved to read about, who was enthralled by his magazine detective and adventure stories and who wears a similar smile when he sits on the bed watching Scooby Doo with Niko, 'these detectives are terribly clever,' whose board game collection is mostly variations of Clue, who requires payment (because any good detective is worth some kind of payment) but whose idea of payment is whatever interesting object the client offers to add to his collection, who has encyclopedic intelligence he clearly dedicated hours to learning, who has a particular way of acting and speaking like everything is of vital importance, because to him, it is.

[welcometogrouchland]

Batman #149 by chip zdarsky is mostly unremarkable, but I'm really fascinated by how it makes a great case for 'good' endings not saving 'bad' stories*. Because there's a lot of interesting concepts in this issue (bruce having to deal with his rapidly aging and decaying clone making him think about his own life, re-establishing a 'nest' so to speak for his family after pushing them away, etc) but bc of the OOC slog that came before it, almost every moment w/ the batfamily comes off as unearned and disingenuous imo.

Like, everything with Damian is the perfect example in this. Because in isolation it's...fine. admittedly it's a missed opportunity to not go deeper into how Damian would feel about a clone of his dad who tried to kill considering Damian's relationships with clones of himself (the heretic rejects and respawn) or with former enemies who wanted him dead but who were manipulated and/or brainwashed (like suren and maya).

Zdarsky doesn't go into any of this but you could maybe excuse it as the issue not being about Damian. However, coupled with the previous bizarre characterizations of Damian in 147 and 148, it ends up not being fine- instead it starts to feel...icky how Damian (who, despite often being drawn and written as white, will never have his connection to the non-white al ghuls forgotten and will always be effected by racism even when not portrayed as a poc) is constantly written as overly violent, uncaring and narrow minded in this run. Coupled w/ trying to recanonize the morrison origin for Damian it's like. OH this is badly written and laden with subtle bigotry, sick**

That's me going into detail on it with Damian but it's applicable to other things in this issue- the way Cass, Steph and Duke have all been ignored or turned into jobbers makes their inclusion in the 'family' here feel hollow instead of satisfying. Bruce proclaiming that Zur was still a part of him and he needs to accept responsibility for his actions (when it means taking in clone son) wrings hollow when just last issue zdarsky was bending over backwards to separate Bruce and Zur bc otherwise the Jason thing would get really awkward. Ends are achieved through means that feel hollow or strange. I'm at my destination but damn why'd the bus have to do all that???

I only really have opinions on this latest arc of zdarskys Batman bc it's the one I've read the closest (bc I'm a hater, masochist and avid follower of even the bad damian storylines) but it's not saying great things.

Bc zdarsky can do one thing good in this book, and it's write Bruce and Tim. And yet this entire story, whether of his own volition or editorial mandate, includes other characters who aren't Bruce and Tim, the fabric starts to unravel in very telling ways.

(p.s, I think pennyworth manor is an interesting idea but I feel like in execution it's just gonna be 'bruce living in a house haunted by the memory of the people he couldn't save' but with a different dead guy this time. Illusion of change and whatnot)

*whether or not the ending is good is up to you ofc, as is your opinion on the proceeding arc! I saw some ppl complain that the ending was too "WFA" for them, which I get even if I dont think it'll literally be the same premise. If anything it's probably a lead into the new tec run. Likewise many ppl who aren't in the weeds of Damian and Jason characterization liked the previous arc! But I have my opinions and rest my case before the bench

**disclaimer, I'm white and portrayals of bigotry in comics are complicated and subjective, but I am basing my point here off what other poc comic fans on socmed have been saying about 149. Also the "sick" is sarcasm incase that wasn't obvious