#take a bunch of scientists outside and we start geeking out...

[sunmontuewrites]

Chenier Plains, Firth of Thames, New Zealand. 31st March 2024.

[aion-rsa]

Army of the Dead: How Advanced Are Zeus and His Alpha Zombie Society?

https://ift.tt/2RBBQk8

This Army of the Dead article contains spoilers.

It’s not a subtle image. But then who comes to a Zack Snyder movie for that? During the bloody and marvelous opening credits to Army of the Dead, the alpha zombie they call Zeus (Richard Cetrone) earns his nickname while staring up at a statue of the ancient Greek god of thunder in front of the fictional Mount Olympus hotel and casino. Our Mr. Zombie+ may not be an actual god, but one alpha can clearly recognize another’s game, and as we eventually learn, “Zeus” will make the Greco-Roman themed high-rise his home in the months to come.

Olympus is again the seat of power for those who seek to rule over all.

Such is our early introduction to Snyder’s update of zombie lore in Army of the Dead, the filmmaker’s second zombie movie after his debut film nearly 20 years ago, the Dawn of the Dead remake (2004), and his first original project since 2011’s Sucker Punch. Obviously, Snyder is still playing with genre in his new undead adventure, embedding a heist movie into the trappings of a more traditional zombie survival horror. However, the closer one examines the zombie hierarchy of this new movie, the more evident it is that there’s little you could call “traditional” about Zeus and his brood.

“I think the conversation I was starting to have with myself is: What will people allow in this genre of film?” Snyder told Den of Geek earlier this month about Army of the Dead. If audiences are receptive to the film, the answer will be a lot since Snyder’s movie seems to suggest zombies can be highly intelligent, successful at problem solving, and even in some ways more evolved and egalitarian than us. And if they can ever get outside of the ruins of Las Vegas… they really might just be the new gods of this world.

Of course on paper, the idea of a “smarter zombie” is not entirely new. The grandfather of our modern conceptualization of zombie lore, George A. Romero, even began toying with his image of mindless undead shamblers with his third zombie movie, Day of the Dead (1985). In that film, a zombie they call Bub is trained to solve rudimentary puzzles and even use a gun by humans; he then develops affection for the scientist who taught him. Romero further built on the idea in Land of the Dead (2005) when a zombie nicknamed “Big Daddy” leads a pseudo-revolution by organizing fellow walkers to storm Dennis Hopper’s high-rise citadel of power.

However, both those films, particularly Land, were far more intrigued with the allegorical aspects of the undead workers of the world uniting, as opposed to deepening the definition of a zombie itself. Big Daddy and his cohorts represented the “have-nots” of capitalism and 20th century geopolitics, with Hopper’s character a thinly veiled caricature of then-U.S. President George W. Bush (he is killed by oil at the end of the film).

Other fictions have also somewhat explored the idea of an intelligent zombie, but it’s always been in a format meant to feed into other genre tropes, like the romantic comedy in Warm Bodies (2013) or high fantasy in Game of Thrones. Still, Thrones is probably the best comparison to what Snyder is going for in Army of the Dead since the White Walkers (or “Others” in George R.R. Martin’s novels) are the top of a hierarchical food chain with the ability to magically command the more mindless Wights. They even kept pets like undead horses and bears—which is not dissimilar to Zeus’ own undead mount and tiger in Army of the Dead.

Nevertheless, the White Walkers are essentially a fantastical catchall for any force of nature (or inescapable death) that overwhelms and obliterates the petty grievances of man. Hence the countless think pieces about the Night King being the harbinger of climate change. By contrast, “alphas” in Army of the Dead are not allegorical creatures at all. They’re envisioned to be the next step in evolution among the undead and (perhaps) humanity as well.

We don’t technically know where Zeus comes from in this story. There’s some cheeky lip-service paid in the cold open about the zombie king hailing from Area 51, yet these details are intentionally left vague and dubious. The point is that he was in the military’s custody and they rather hilariously lost control of the zombie. Now every person he bites becomes an alpha—which is odd since it raises the question of where the traditional walkers came from if Zeus is the proverbial Patient Zero of the zombie outbreak.

Be that as it may, after the new normal sets in around Vegas, we learn Zeus rules on high from Olympus, sending out his zombie tiger as if it were both a hunting dog and a herald to announce his power. And his elected ruling class of zombies have developed the ability to communicate and barter with the living humans who occasionally slip into their domain. We learn from Lilly (Nora Arnezeder) that she only successfully ferrets materials in and out of Vegas by sacrificing “shitheads” to her alpha zombie gods. And when she feeds one such sexist pig to the alphas, Zeus’ zombie bride (Hera?) communicates with the humans through a series of vocal cues, making it clear she accepts that these mouth-breathers are buying safe passage.

Which raises the question: just how smart are the alpha zombies in Army of the Dead?

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The answer appears to be very. Zeus is able to organize his fellow alphas into an army that attacks in waves, like the Night King in Game of Thrones. Yet each alpha appears to have its own personality and ambition. They are not extensions of his will, but creatures with their own individual thought processes—they just fear the real alpha among them. Maybe this is the only element of allegorical heft in the film, since Zeus has organized zombie society around a group of powerful producers who take what they want through virtue of their talent (the alphas) and a bunch of underachiever shamblers who don’t complain about getting scraps. One even wonders if there’s an undead Atlas to shrug among Zeus’ cohorts?

In any event, Zeus is able to problem solve enough to build a seemingly magic helmet that no high-powered bullet can penetrate, thereby protecting his sensitive brain tissue, and he can strategize how to lead an assault with both alphas and shamblers. Most importantly though… he can grieve.

In another significant departure from typical zombie fiction, Zeus procreates in this film the old-fashioned way. His new species still increases its numbers via zombie bites. Yet Zeus and his proverbial bride also conceive a child who is still in utero when she is decapitated. Zeus is able to be anguished by the desecration of her body (and later her final death), and he can be outraged by discovering his zombie child died for realsies in utero.

We have seen “zombie babies” and zombie children before, including in Snyder’s own Dawn of the Dead remake. But we have never seen zombies conceive a child, which seems to suggest zombies can actually age and grow in this universe. After all, the baby Zeus and his lover intended to birth could grow from an apparently zombified embryo, so can Zeus and his minions grow older themselves? Zeus’ hair certainly grows out over the length of the movie.

In which case, are the alphas in Army of the Dead really dead at all? In a biological sense, yes. Their hearts stop beating and they can apparently take any form of punishment except a bullet or blade to the cranium. In a philosophical sense, however, the differences between the living and the dead appear to have become moot. The alphas can procreate, strategize, and build a society of their own.

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As even Lilly says, this isn’t their prison; it’s their kingdom. A realm for a new species that in some ways is an improvement on ours. For starters, they are a lot harder to kill. Zeus’ lover is outright decapitated and her head’s still going. But, on a more serious note, they also display fewer deficiencies of character. If Martin (Garret Dillahunt) hadn’t screwed over his compatriots to get to the roof alone, most of the cast of characters in Army of the Dead would’ve survived. In a plot point straight out of James Cameron’s Aliens, at least the alpha zombies aren’t “fucking each other over” for a percentage.

Additionally, the alphas can overtake entire communities in the span of a few days. If not for the wall erected by humans during the movie’s opening credits, North America would be swarming with zombies. So, in a way, putting Zeus down at the end was the best thing our heroes could’ve done for their obsolete species.

But—as teased by Vanderohe (Omari Hardwick) surviving just long enough to get out of the irradiated ruins of Vegas to notice his zombie bite—life, much like death, will find a way. And among the alphas, those distinctions are becoming almost meaningless.

The post Army of the Dead: How Advanced Are Zeus and His Alpha Zombie Society? appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3wojqSO

[queerwordnerd]

A brief overview of first 5 min(+ some) of season 1 of Stranger Things (w/ MoEm)

Me: I'mma re-watch Stranger Things. S2 is coming out on Netflix soon *excited*

MoEm: I don't like scary movies

Me: Well, it's not a movie. And it's not that scary.

Well...the first like...5 ish minutes are kinda scary. And then there are a few creepy scenes peppered throughout the season. And the last episode is like OMFG WTF?!?!?

But it's cool.

MoEm: Oh?

Me: Yeah. It's really cool because it focuses more on plot than on jump scares, which is what scary movies tend to do these days.

It takes place in this small town (they always do) where the highschool and midschool are basically the same building and there's a sheriff and his PD and that's it for law enforcement. Well, there are these 4 midschool boys who are complete geeks and nerds (I know there's a difference, and I know they often go hand-in-hand. In this case, they're both) and they're some of the main characters. There's Mike, Lucas, Dustin, and Will. More on them later.

Meanwhile, there's this private US military base thing on the outskirts of town (but it's like, totally normal right because it operates as something else--like sewage cleanup or something, idk), and inside they do all these weird experiments with people who possess slightly telepathic/telekinetic abilities. One such person is this girl, Eleven. They do all sorts of experiments on her and whatnot and discover that she can access different dimensions. It's all cool because it's all in the name of science and she's perfectly safe and whatnot. Well, she gets to this dimension where there's another life form. And she flips her shit. But they keep forcing her to go there. Well, I guess the more you go to a dimension, the weaker the "walls" between the two dimensions become..? Eventually, the life form comes out of its dimension and into ours.

And the scientists are like "well shit. we fucked up. BUT we can't let anyone know we fucked up." So the whole thing is them trying to fix it under the radar.

Which leads back to the 4 boys

Because the same night the life form thing is released and Eleven escapes, the 4 boys are having a 10 hour DnD campaign. Well, long story short, they come to a Demogorgon and it gets to Will's turn and he can either fight or cast protection. Well, he chooses to fight, but he "dies." Blah, blah, blah, they ride their bikes home in the dark after the game, and Will lives the furthest away because his family is poor so they don't live in the suburbs. Since he lives on the edge of town, guess what he runs into on his way home.

Dun, dun, dun.

Other dimension life form. AKA. Demogorgon.

Well shit! Will, being a nerd/geek is surprisingly resourceful for being like...12? years old. So he books it home, locks the door, and calls 911. Uh oh, there's something wrong with the phone?! It's just static. Shit, the Demogorgon is standing right outside the window!? Holy FUCK it has telekinetic abilities too?! Well apparently since it's somehow unlocking the door from the outside.

So Will, running out of options, runs out the back door and into the shed. He grabs the gun and starts loading it. Okay, it's loaded. Okay. Cool. Waits in the shed whilst staring at the door. Hears demonic growling/clicking. WTF? Turns around all wide-eyed. HOW THE FUCK DID YOU--?? And then the lightbulb goes out (or something. don't quite remember).

And that is the last we see of Will.

MoEm: am I getting the first ep in a nutshell?

Me: Hahahaha, oh Honey, that's like the first 5 minutes!

I mean, then there's shit with Mike's older sister, Nancy, and her bf and her bff, and blah blah blah and, long story short, this thing is attracted to blood. (which is why it went after Will. poor kid crashed his bike when he saw it, and scraped up his knees). So Mike's sister and Will's brother (love triangle warning) set a trap for the thing

Oh, and Will's mom goes absolutely INSANE

She figures out that Will is trapped in this other dimension

And that he can communicate through lights

So she sets up a bunch of Christmas lights with letters painted under them on the wall, and Will actually understands wtf is going on, and they communicate like that. And mom is like "Will, what should I do?" And you see the lights light up above the letters:

R

U

N

AND THEN THE FUCKING DEMOGORGON COMES OUT OF THE FUCKING WALL AND ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE AND HOLY FUCK

MoEm: I def need to watch this WITH you not by myself.

[shawnsjames]

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mK2g9ll9Oq8)

    I took a moment to watch ABC’s new Inhumans series last Friday. And it’s just as bad as everyone says it is. I thought Marvel studios was in trouble after seeing the dreadful back six of Luke Cage, Netflix’s horrible Iron Fist, the wretched Spider-Man: Homeciming and Netflix’s awful Defenders series.  However, Inhumans shows me how much worse things are getting at Marvel Studios. If they keep putting out crap like this, the nails are going to be put in the Marvel Studios coffin sooner rather than later.

  Just like Spider-Man: Homecoming Marvel’s Inhumans decides to make compromises and take liberties with the source material. And those liberties they take with the Royal Family of Attilan make for an absolutely unwatchable show.  

  Marvel executives mistakenly believed that the Inhumans would be the next X-men, unfortunately this show has NONE of the elements that made the X-men relatable to readers for generations. The X-men were regular joes like you and me. They’re on the ground. They go to school like any other kid. They’re different. Just like the outsider kids who sit in the back of the cafeteria like the punks and the Goths, and the other people the world calls freaks. They want everyone to know they’re people and they just want to be left alone to be themselves do their own thing.

  The Inhumans on the other hand are like geeks. And they exhibit the worst traits of Geeks and geek culture. They think they’re smarter than everyone else. They think they’re better than everyone else. They’re a bunch of elitists who walked away from humanity to form their own little perfect society on the moon. It’s hard for a Joe average viewer like myself to relate to a group of people who act like a bunch of assholes from minute one. I almost rooted for Maximus until he started Simpin on Medusa during his coup. That showed me that there wasn’t one redeemable person on this show.

  What adds insult to injury is the fact that no one on this show looks like the Inhumans in the comics. No one acts like the Inhumans in the comics. And there isn’t a single soul on this show you can relate to or identify with. Instead of us getting an action packed show that’s as entertaining as the recently cancelled Agent Carter, Inhumans is a by the numbers formula show with flat characters and no plot.

  Black Bolt has been named King of the Inhumans and Maximus has led a coup to overthrow him. And over the course of two hours he overthrows the Royal family who are teleported to safety by Lockjaw on Hawaii’ s islands. Only he teleports them to different places. So everyone is Lost and trying to find each other.

  SERIOUSLY, YOU CANCELLED AGENT CARTER FOR THIS BULLSHIT?

  Seriously, Kevin Fiege needs to fire the head writer of this show. He FUBAR’D Iron Fist and now he’s fist fucked the Inhumans in the ass.  his guy has dropped the quality bar at Marvel studios in the shitter and his career in making superhero shows needs to be OVER ASAP.

  Unlike previous Marvel Studios projects, Inhumans doesn’t doesn’t feel like a comic book come to life. It doesn’t even feel like a prime-time TV show like CW’s Arrow or Supergirl. If anythin it feels like a shitty syndicated 1990’s superhero show like Night Man, Sheena, or Adventures of Sinbad.

  Man, the bar for Marvel Studios has fallen so low to the ground it’s getting ready to touch DC’s bar for cinematic quality.

  Damn. Just Damn.

  What really makes me sad about Marvel’s Inhumans is the confirmation that the SJW poison that has infected Marvel’s publishing division has now corrupted Marvel Studios. First Spider-Man: Homecoming was filled with shoehorned diversity that disrupted its flow, and now Marvel’s Inhumans has been corrupted by that same SJW plague. Black Bolt and Medusa and her sister Crystal are White, But we get an Asian Karnak and a Black Gorgon because…Diversity.

  I love how all the lead characters are white, but the characters under them are minorities. In their passive-aggressive attempts at diversity these SJWs just shows me White Supremacist they truly are. 

  Shit.

  What really pisses me off is that in this SJW attempt at diversity is the racism we clearly see in the stereotypes presented on the so-called “Diversity” characters. Karnak is Asian because Asians are supposed to be smart. And Gorgon is Black because Black guys are supposed to be strong and angry. And since Negroes are savages they can have hooves like Gorgon does.

  FUCK YOU Marvel Studios. FUCK YOU.

  Y’know what’s sad? On Agent Carter Season 2 we had Howard Stark, and Peggy Carter working with a Black scientist in Season 2. And that Black guy was presented on the same level as Howard Stark and as a love interest for Peggy. An actual picture of diversity in The Golden Age of Comics, one of the most racist periods in comic book history.

  But thanks to racist fanboys, and racist Disney, ABC wouldn’t show a Negro swirlin’ it up with Steve Rogers’ sexual fantasy before he could wake up out of the ice and get him a taste of the atomic waste in them Peggy’s golden age granny panties. So he got emasculated in the same way James Olsen and Finn were on Supergirl and Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

  And to add insult to injury, Agent Carter, one of the BEST ABC superhero shows was cancelled at the end of last season. And instead of a fun look at Marvel’s Golden Age, we get this shit show calling itself Inhumans as a consolation prize.

  Again, FUCK YOU Marvel Studios. FUCK YOU.

  Marvel’s Inhumans is nowhere near the level of Agent Carter in terms of writing, characterizations, costumes, or set design. It’s a sloppy forced together show that makes many of Greg Berlanti’s shows look like Marvel Studios movies. It’s one of the worst things to ever come out of Marvel Studios.

  I said in numerous blogs and videos that Marvel Studios was in trouble. And clearly the brand is in decline based on what I’ve been seeing coming down the pipe since Diamondback shot Luke Cage with a Judas bullet. Since then we’ve gotten films and TV shows that are a complete betrayal of what Marvel Studios used to stand for, adaptations that made every effort to stay true to the source material and capture the spirit of what a Marvel Comic was onscreen. If things get any worse for Marvel Studios, we may need to call an undertaker for the Superhero movie and TV genre sooner rather than later.  

 If you want to see the REAL Inhumans, pick up 1994 Fantastic Four cartoon on DVD and wach the 2-part episode that features them in Season 2. Those 2 episodes blow the doors off this dreadful TV series adaptation.

[preserving-ferretbrain]

Soon I Will Be Invincible - Review

by Wardog

Saturday, 08 September 2007Wardog dusts off her cape and puts her pants on outside the rest of her clothing.~Soon I will Be Invincible is a book written by a loser for losers. Perhaps I'm being slightly unfair but the guy on the back is aggressively bald, over-educated, a computer game designer and has written an over-angsty, over-affectionate novel about superheroes and supervillains. I'm not saying he's not somebody I would love to hang out with but then I'm not saying I'm anything other than a loser too.

I'm a fair-to-moderate reader of superhero comics but I'm no authority on the genre so what I'm about to posit could be either a) so obvious it's not worth stating or b) completely wrong but I do think there's been a bit of a change of focus. Back in the day, it seems to me that superheroes were deliberately presented as everyman figures, community-spirited boys-next-door who just so happened to get gifted with exceptional powers. They seemed to be saying: "This Peter Parker fellow, he could be you, you could be the superhero."

But, of course, moral values have shifted with time. We're no longer all about the wholesome friendly neighbourhood superhero, we want the dark and the driven and morally ambiguous. The people who read comics are, for the most part, people like me (weird, unpopular kids) and, here on either side of the millennium, superheroes - those gifted by pure chance or cruel circumstance to be more attractive, more powerful and more popular than, say, me - are beginning to look rather like the kids who laughed at me at school. Thus you start to pay more attention to the villains, initially just larger than life foils to set against the unyielding virtue of the superhero. But, unlike the hero, villains tends to be self-made men who have progressed down the long road to world domination by dint being more intelligent and more determined than everyone else around them. A familiar motif for weird unpopular kids, I'm sure. The superhero belongs to the realm of the blessed and the accepted. The villain is the perennial scorned and derided outsider. I could take over the world, you know. If I wanted to.

SIWBI takes place on an alternative earth that, although rife with aliens, fairies, superheroes and supervillains, future tech and magic, is recognisably our own. The first person narrative alternates between the point of view of Dr Impossible, brilliant scientist turned supervillain and Fatale, a newly created cyborg who has just been invited into The Champions, a famous group of superheroes, previously led by Dr Impossible's arch nemesis. The plot, such as it is, is typical superhero fare: Dr Impossible escapes from prison and hatches the usual supervillain scheme to knock the planet out of orbit and herald in a new ice-age. Meanwhile CoreFire, the leader of The Champions, has disappeared and the group must to struggle to re-form into an effective unit and deal with the events of their past. As is practically de rigueur these days in anything dealing with people with super powers, the self-consciously trite plotline and the comic book archetypes are there primarily to illuminate the recognisable human dimension to it all. Thus The Champions battle not only Dr Impossible but their own very human failings and, even as he flounces around in scarlet cape and helmet, Dr Impossible angsts over the whether "the smartest man in the world has done the smartest possible thing with his life." It's not exactly ground-breaking but it seems to work well enough and adds pathos to Dr Impossible's obsession with invincibility, not so much to protect him from those with superpowers but to protect him from the very ordinary world that has always excluded and derided him and never loses its power to hurt him.

There's a lot to like here, if you're into that kind of thing. The chapter titles are all stock phrases ("Foiled Again" etc.) and most of the secondary characters are nods to various comic book characters. In fact the whole style and approach of SIWBI is incredibly affectionate and genial, although I do have to wonder what it's doing presenting itself as literary fiction because I can't imagine you'll get it, or indeed see the point of it, unless you're also fond of and familiar with the genre to which it offers itself as an homage. And I know that Grossman wanted specifically to write a book but it seems a peculiar choice to me. His writing style is brisk and punchy, favouring a lot of dramatic statements that would look absolutely perfect floating above a character's head in a speech bubble ("It was time for me to stop punishing myself and start punishing everyone else") but when they're just a just a line on a page they occasionally fall somewhat flat. It's kind of the equivalent of writing POW just like that. In fact, the blatant attempt to "literary-ise" the book, and through association the genre, is one of the more irritating features SIWBI. You like comics, dude, just accept it. Some people will laugh at you, some people will agree, and some people will start to talk about Maus. Regardless, Watchman will never be Ulysses.

As well as occasional stylistic difficulties the narrative jumps between the present and the past in a rather jarring manner. Although it's interesting to get (some of) the backstory, it does completely ruin the pace to the extent that what ought to be an adrenaline-saturated rush towards the final stages of Dr Impossible's plan bog down in a lot of superhero dithering and bickering. For the most part, Grossman is at his best in his supervillain's head. The attempt to give Dr Impossible a reasonably credible psychology for behaving as supervillains behave within the genre (always explaining his plans to the good guys, shrieking I AM A GENIUS at every slight provocation and so forth) does not entirely work because if you were actually capable of such self-awareness one would hope you would also be capable of behaving in a moderately sensible fashion. Nevertheless, Dr Impossible's seemingly unflinching commitment to a role he knows must always be the losing one does generate a certain emotional resonance and bizarrely, as the novel stutters to his inevitable defeat, a certain tragic force.

Dr Impossible, painted with all the narrative garishness a supervillain deserves, is not a subtle character:

For a second I stand at the fulcrum point of creation. God, I'm so unhappy.

But he is complex. Grossman writes him with genuine flair and appreciation. And, one loser to another, it's impossible not to empathise with his broken and lonely desperation:

If you're different you always know it and you can't fix it even if you want. What do you do when you find out your heart is the wrong kind? You take what you're given and be the hero you can be. Hero to your own cold, inverted heart.

Villain he may be but he's probably the arrogant, articulate poster boy for every geeky comic lover out there.

Sadly, the other characters can in no way live up to him, so much so they seem almost like afterthoughts. The Champions bitch and moan like a bunch of sulky teenagers and, even if that was partly the point, it didn't make them easy or pleasant to read about. As for Fatale, new superhero on the block, who narrates with Dr Impossible, she's tedious beyond expression. I had a feeling that, as a woman, she was probably meant to be saying profound things to me but her narrative voice is pedestrian at best and offers none of the exuberance or emotional engagement of Dr Impossible's. I skimmed most of the superhero sections.

Even so, Dr Impossible is worth the price of admission alone. If you're even remotely interested in the superhero genre or have ever contemplated world domination while sitting by yourself in maths, you'll probably find something to enjoy here.

PS - Please note the views expressed within the article are solely those of the author. Ferretbrain as a whole does not believe Mr Grossman is a loser.

Themes:

Books

,

Sci-fi / Fantasy

~

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Arthur B

at 18:32 on 2007-09-08I'm sorry, but there's only room for one "arrogant, articulate poster boy for every geeky comic lover out there" and it's

this guy

. :)

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Wardog

at 16:05 on 2007-09-10Oh come on, geeks need all the help we can get :)

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Jamie Johnston

at 12:59 on 2007-10-01Aside from the merits and demerits peculiar to this book (which I haven't read), I wonder whether it was a good idea to try to do superheroes in a novel at all. They grew up in comics, which are basically a dramatic form like plays, films, or television. They seem to get on fairly well on film and television (never seem them on stage), but throwing them into continuous prose narrative strikes me as probably unwise and possibly self-defeating.

If Grossman has, as you guess, done it in the hope of giving the genre literary credibility, then he's rather missed the point, hasn't he? Putting superheroes into a novel doesn't make them into literature any more than doing 'Richard III' as a comic would make it into childish pulp.

'Heroes' is a pretty good example of an intelligent transfer of superheroes from one literary form to another because it recognizes and deals with the differences between the two forms. The scale of television (both the size of the screen and the length of episodes and series) means it can't cover the whole range of dramatic action that comics do, so it concentrates on what television does well, which is the drama of personal relationships; but it also remembers that saving the world is the point of superhero stories, so it uses the flash-back / flash-forward structure to suggest a larger drama going on without having to indulge in the big colourful battles which do the same thing in a comic. It also recognizes that on television, with live actors and real-time action, superhero costumes simply aren't going to be credible, so it simply ditches them.

I'd say a superhero novel should probably ditch costumes too, for different reasons. In comics, costumes solve three problems: first, how do we easily distinguish different characters when the simplified style of the artwork makes all faces and bodies look very similar? second, how do we make every page look exciting even when nothing much is happening? and third, how do we make it easy to work out what's going on when up to a dozen different actions need to be depicted on a single page smaller than A4?

The advantage of solving those problems outweighs the disadvantage of a slight loss of credibility. But in a novel none of those problems arises in the first place, so costumes have none of the advantages but retain the disadvantage of implausibility (which is in no way reduced by the traditional internal narrative explanation: "I must protect my secret identity by wearing a costume which incorporates a mask... and bright yellow tights and a billowy green cloak").

Gosh, if I look behind me through a telescope I can see the point where this comment stopped being relevant to the article... Oh yes, that's right. Well, I think that's probably why I'm very dubious about doing superheroes in a novel at all. The whole point of the superhero genre is that it externalizes the drama and symbolism of the story. The way the identity of each character is made explicitly visual through his costume and is expressed in action through his superpower is a prime example of that. The whole point of the novel, on the other hand, is that it internalizes the drama by taking the reader into the minds of at least some of the principal characters. Action in a novel is secondary - it affects the characters and triggers internal change. If there was ever a narrative form which was unsuitable for superheroes, it's got to be the novel, surely?

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Wardog

at 10:49 on 2007-10-04I think I read in the introduction or the acknowledgements or somewhere that presenting the story as a novel rather than a comic was a carefully thought through decision, and one the author felt strongly about. On the other hand, I do think the interactions of various literary (or artistic) forms is interesting and, for that alone, perhaps I feel more supportive of it than perhaps it deserves. I was possibly being quite unfair when I suggested it was a doomed attempt to confer a literary validity on a popular form. As you point out, books / comics hop easily to the big and small screen and back again and books do, in fact, turn readily into comics (I've even seen a comic version of Proust for God's sake) and it seems peculiar that it's always been an unspoken one-way street i.e. that things can be turned into comics and comics can be turned into movies but never the other way round.

For what I've read about Heroes, I think it was always designed primarily as a drama rather than a slightly more high brow than average contribution to the superhero-genre. Tim Kring claims explicitely that his inspiration was Lost, he has no geeky nostalgia for the days of X-men or whatever ... essentially he started with television and incorporated superheroes rather than starting with superheroes and incorporating television. If that makes sense.

And there are some quite amusing sequences about costumes in SIWBI in fact! I think the point is that the novel - regardless of whether you think it's an appropriate experiment or not - deliberately attempts to offer a plausible psychological landscape to the external superhero world. Thus, Dr Impossible has an outrageous costume to allow him to put aside the vulnerabilities (or attempt to) of the man behind the mask and become a supervillain capable of delivering the usual array of hysterical villain lines. And one of the themes of the book is the clash between the external and the internal, the visual and the psychological. It doesn't *quite* work because you can't actually offer up a credible explanation of supervillainous compulsions i.e. why do they always pour our the details of their dastardly plans at the slighest provocation.

But it was fun.

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Jamie Johnston

at 16:37 on 2007-10-07Perhaps my reaction comes partly from my continual annoyance at the use of the novel form in general. I feel that a lot of storytellers write novels not because that's the best narrative form for the story they want to tell but because either they prioritize being a novelist over telling the story to its best advantage or, worse, it simply never occurs to them that there are any other narrative forms at all.

But certainly I don't want to say that a story can't be transferred from a comic to a novel just as well as the other way round. In principle any story can be told in any form, it's just that some forms are going to be better suited to the nature of some stories. But genre is a horse of a different colour. Still, I mustn't be too categorical since I haven't actually read the thing! If he's trying to explore the inside of the characters minds then the novel is certainly the form to do it with, but I would tend to think that all that would really achieve is to expose the psychological implausibility of many central elements of the superhero genre. Which, from your comments, sounds more or less like what happened. But it's interesting to find the edges of a genre.

As for 'Heroes', I'm interested that you say that Kring (not a bad supervillain name, that) wasn't particularly interested in superheroes. I hadn't heard that, and judging solely from the content of the series so far I'd have guessed the exact opposite. I can count on one finger the concepts, super-powers, characters, and plot developments in 'Heroes' which aren't almost identical to things I read in the X-Men comics when I was 15. And I notice that the producer of 'Heroes' (and the script-writer of a couple of episodes) is Jeph Loeb, who was a writer on X-Men for a long time, if I recall correctly.

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Arthur B

at 17:12 on 2007-10-07I think that just shows Kring recognised that he doesn't actually know much about superheroes and was wise enough to hire people who did.

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Wardog

at 10:19 on 2007-10-09On a rather tangential note, it's interesting really that the novel, once the bastard offspring of better literature, is now very much established as, perhaps, the most authentic and recognised of all literary forms - perhaps in a few hundred years the comic will supplant it. I mean, there's not exactly much call for epic nowadays - what sort of narrative forms did you have in mind, Jamie? And I suppose the major point of interest for SIWBI is that it's a novel, not a comic. As a comic it would be sub-standard post-Watchman fare I'm sure. As a novel at least it doesn't get lost among a morass of very similar items.

And with references to Heroes, I think something similar is at work; because he is not a great big superhero geek, Kring is more concerned about providing good television and, therefore, lots of the very obvious superhero tropes and motifs and arcs he uses, he does so with the blissful ignorance of the utterly unitiated. Whereas any superhero fanatic worth their tights would probably be unable to use them as effectively because they'd be preoccupied with what enormous cliches they actually are...

[alexdxnverss]

#SanversWeek Day 2: Nerd Girlfriends

Maggie claims that she's only watching Orphan Black for the gay.

"I mean, how many TV shows will shoot the lesbian and let her live?" Maggie says loudly, as though Alex has been aware of the wide spectrum of gay television for long enough to actually be able to provide an answer beyond a small shrug. "True, they could have handled it better, but at least she's not dead."

Alex buys that for all of about a week or two, until the science starts getting heavy and Alex turns to Maggie to talk about it and notices the way that Maggie's eyes have lit up in a way that exactly mirrors Cosima onscreen. Alex has to bite back a laugh as she pulls Maggie slightly closer to her, bites back her earlier remark to watch her girlfriend geek out over science.

"It's weird that Charlotte's already showing signs of the disease even though in other cases it doesn't show up until they're in their twenties," Alex remarks casually one evening, half because she's already got a notion about what's going on and half because she's curious to see what Maggie's response will be. Alex knows that Maggie's good with science, but they've never really had the chance to talk before about exactly what Maggie's familiar with outside what she does with the NCPD.

And, sure enough, Maggie practically jumps in Alex's arms to go, "She's cloned from Rachel, Danvers, her telomeres are cloned from Rachel's, probably when she was already in her early twenties, they're going to have the same aging signatures."

"So Charlotte's DNA is basically older than she is," Alex finishes, unable to hide her shit-eating grin that Maggie thankfully doesn't notice because she's already turning back to the television and mumbling about symptoms and worms and arteries near the brain.

Neither of them notice Adrian on the floor, with a kernel of popcorn in one hand as he stares before rolling his eyes and quietly going, "Can't even watch a TV show in peace, what a bunch of gay nerds" (not that this will ever stop him from showing up to their weekly OB nights).

Eventually, it kind of expands to more than just Adrian sprawling out somewhere in Alex's living room where he can watch the show and pretend to make faces at Maggie and Alex cuddling on the couch, because Winn catches wind of it and drags James along, and Kara ends up wondering why no one's free to go out until someone explains that it's TV night at Alex's, and that's how Kara and Lena end up crammed in with the rest of the superfriends in Alex's living room, and everyone's soon there to bear witness to the full science nerd discourse.

"Why does everyone always pull out the damn knife?" Maggie shouts out of nowhere one evening, causing half the room's occupants to jump, while James just sinks back into the couch looking slightly guilty because everyone knows that he'd just done exactly that a few weeks ago when someone had managed to wedge a pocket knife in through his Guardian suit. "I mean, if I had a dime for every time we showed up to some call about a bar fight or something where someone was bleeding all over because they'd pulled out whatever they'd been stabbed with, I'd be rich."

"Yeah, but it looks like she was stabbed on the outer thigh? The femoral artery is right there, but it's more on the inner side, she'll be fine. Dumb, but fine."

"Touche, Danvers."

"Are they always like this?" Lena whispers to Kara, and Kara just laughs and nods and shoots a fond gaze over at her nerd sister and said nerd's nerdy girlfriend.

And if Alex buys a biology textbook and happens to notice that it's gone from the kitchen counter and she spots it on Maggie's desk at the precinct when she's swings by to help bring Maggie lunch when she's buried under a mountain of paperwork? Well, she's not in any place to poke fun at Maggie.

… like that's going to stop her, though.

And Alex claims that it's Kara who's the musical theatre nerd, and that she's only ever been along for the ride.

That excuse falls flat on it's face quicker than Maggie's about hot French scientists.

Because Maggie's name is shunted last minute onto a security detail for some politician that's barely in town for longer than ten minutes, but it entails an hour before hand securing an airport terminal, and waiting around for the guy to get from the plane to his car, and following him across National City to do whatever he'd been there to do, and then back to the airport and waiting around for his plane to be ready to go again. Alex is more than understanding, more than ready to postpone their dinner date and tell Maggie that she can find her at her apartment and that maybe they can watch a movie instead. Still, the second that she's dismissed, Maggie finds herself rushing back to Alex's apartment, fumbling with the lock in her rush to get to Alex, to try and makeup for missing dinner, even though she knows Alex is the last person who's going to hold that against her.

Still, when Maggie finally gets through the front door, the start of an apology is halfway out of her mouth before Maggie notices Alex sprawled out across the couch, hugging a pillow to her chest, hair falling over her closed eyes. And then Maggie notices what's playing on the television: Alex's laptop is plugged into the screen, and Maggie raises an eyebrow at the singing going on, and then laughs because not only is Alex apparently a bigger musical nerd than she'd initially let on, but she's apparently managed to get started on digging out the very gay shows.  

Maggie drops her bag on the floor by the couch, removes her jacket and drapes it carefully over Alex, and crosses the room to the laptop, clicking out of the video and finding the link to it in an email from Kara. Maggie takes note of the show, then closes the laptop, turns around, and debates the odds of her being able to carry Alex to bed without waking her up (or dropping her... which might have already happened on more than one occasion).

Maggie might ask Kara for a list of shows that Alex might like that she hasn't seen yet, and Kara more than eagerly floods Maggie's inbox with links to dubiously legal videos of musicals, and plays, and Maggie might just bring them up for Alex to watch, and Maggie quickly learns that there's very few things that she loves more than the way Alex's eyes light up at a particularly good number (Alex still will never be as enthusiastic about it as Kara, but a good musical will still make her really happy), and Maggie loves the way Alex beams at the shows where the girl gets the girl at the end.

And Maggie might just surprise Alex by telling her to dress up nice one evening and surprising her with tickets to see the Fun Home tour when it swings by National City, because Maggie remembers the show she'd first walked in on Alex watching and knew that that had to be the first show she brought her girlfriend to. Alex stares at the tickets for a moment before wordlessly pulling Maggie into a kiss that's way too heated for the sidewalk outside the theatre, before she pulls away and whispers "thank you thank you thank you" against Maggie's lips.  

So Maggie follows Alex into the theatre, and Maggie lets Alex take her hand twenty minutes into the show, and Maggie grins when Alex leans into Maggie after 'Changing My Major' to whisper, "I'm changing my major to you, Sawyer" against Maggie's ear, and Maggie leans into Alex when she sees the slight glisten of a tear make it's way down her cheek in the dim light, and for a moment, Maggie just lets herself rest her head on Alex's shoulder and look up at Alex's face, watching the expressions that flit across her face while she watches the show, and Maggie knows that she's only falling even more for the woman next to her.

This was not the original plan for today’s prompt but I’m still absolutely livid about last week’s OB episode - I’ve never really questioned anything they’ve done before not even that whole end of S3 Delphine nonsense because I understand Evelyne needing to film other stuff but the OB writers are now officially close to the level the SG writers are in people I trust and respect so. Idk I just needed to do something kind of positive with it so now Maggie is an OB science nerd. 

Also, on the musical note: I’m theatre trash so I’m gonna recommend two shows - the first one, Fun Home, the one that Maggie takes Alex to, is based off the graphic novel by Alison Bechdel and it’s a beautiful show with beautiful music AND REALLY HELLA GAY and I’m finally going to see it live after two and a half years of being a fan of it the same week I meet Chyler? So that’s going to be an emotional gay mess of a week, but if you’re on the fence about it listen to a) Changing my Major (this was Alex when she met Maggie I swear to GOD) and b) Ring of Keys. And if you want to watch it but can’t see it live then hit me up because I may or may not be able to find a video for you (i’m pretty sure it’s a one act show because it’s like less than two hours so srsly watch it...)

And also Firebringer, which is done by Starkid who did the Very Potter Musicals, and it’s not about being gay and etc? But zero of the characters in it are straight and two girls end up together in the end and it’s hella cute and hilarious and the music is addicting and the whole thing is available and professionally filmed on YouTube for free so I 10/10 recommend.

Anyways this has been your infrequent musical fangirl moment by actress-in-training who improved her way through her performance in high school because she was writing Sanvers fics instead of learning lines enjoy the musical recs enjoy the fics ENJOY SANVERS WEEK if you read this far congratulations okay I’m out

[sassycassie-s-series]

Newsflash 3

Chapter 3 - Black Holes

By: SassyShoulderAngel319 ( @sassyshoulderangel319 )

Fandom/Character(s): The Flash - Barry Allen/The Flash and OC (Heather Astra)

Rating: PG

Notes: (Masterlist) I am such a space nerd!

Chapter 1

Previous Chapter

^^^^^

A week passed. I tried to make two videos a week—one on Tuesday and one on Friday—so I'd made one a few days after the one with Barry in it. My viewers were still mildly freaking out and begging to see more of him. Every time I walked into the crime lab in the morning, I'd greet him with a smile that apparently said, “I know something you don’t know,” because he always asked me what was up.

On the week mark, I strolled into the lab and flopped into my desk chair.

“You’ve got that look on your face again,” he remarked.

“What look?” I asked.

“The look of ‘I know something that makes me smile every time I see you.’ What’s up?”

I shook my head and pulled a file folder towards me. “Nothing. Just, everyone on my channel really loved seeing you.”

“That was a really funny video by the way—and not just the parts with me in it. You're really good at telling stories and keeping me captivated,” he offered. I felt my ears grow warm and my whole face probably turn pink.

“Thanks,” I mumbled. “I'm making another one after work today if you’d like to join.”

Barry gave me a surprised look. I instantly backpedaled.

“I mean, you don’t have to if you don’t want to but—”

“Heather. Relax. I'd love to. What are you making?”

“Well, my subscribers know that I'm a science nerd and a total space geek, so some of them have been asking me to explain a little bit about some space stuff. I thought I'd start easy and talk about black holes.”

Barry snorted. “I love that you call black holes the easy part.”

I blushed again. “Well, once I explain what the Event Horizon and singularity are and how they distort the fabric of space, I figure it’ll be easier to explain that most galaxies orbit a supermassive black hole and all the rest. Get the big complicated topic out of the way so I don’t get too many questions. Though if I get questions I can't answer, I’ll direct them to Crash Course Astronomy…”

“Heather. I'm just teasing you,” he put in.

We went about our business for the day. We had a bunch of cases to get through. Barry was faster at getting through them than I was, and I had no idea how. I kept my back to him most of the day since our computers faced away from each other and couldn’t fathom how he finished so many so fast.

^^^^^

“Good evening Sailors, it’s Friday! And since I don’t have a boyfriend or a date tonight, I'm here with another perpetually single friend—one that you guys have been begging me to bring back on this channel since his first appearance last week. Internet, please welcome Barry back!” I exclaimed, moving slightly closer to the edge of the frame so Barry could come in with a big smile. He threw his arm around my shoulder and I put my arm around his waist so his momentum wouldn’t knock me over.

“Hey guys! I'm back!” he greeted with an energetic wave.

“And today we’re going to do some science. Everyone here knows that I am a massive nerd and I love science, so a bunch of you have been asking me to explain some topics about space. Barry and I decided we’d work together to give you guys some science, since as I said last time Barry was on here, he’s pretty much the smartest man I've ever met,” I explained.

Barry squeezed my shoulders. “As always, Heather, you're the nicest girl I know.” He smirked and looked down at me, finally taking his eyes off the camera lens. “Shall we then?”

“Let’s do it.”

“So what are we talking about today, Heather?”

“Well, Barry, we’re going to talk about black holes! Welcome to Astra Astronomy!”

Barry chuckled. “Your last name is so perfect for this,” he commented.

“I was just meant to be a science nerd,” I joked.

There was a moment that I'd edit out where I bent down out of the frame and popped back up with the white lab coat costumes I'd borrowed from my older sister—she and her husband had been mad scientists for Halloween last autumn—and handed one to Barry.

We pulled them on and he grabbed the notes on a clipboard I'd written down when we’d been having lunch earlier at the lab.

“Where should we start, Dr. Astra?” he asked, faking being formal.

“Oi!” I teased. “I'm not a doctor—and neither are you!”

“Sorry I was just trying to be funny,” he mumbled.

“Yeah but sometimes people on the internet can't take jokes and think that everything is serious. Not saying that happens all the time but when it does… oi.”

“Okay. Where should we start, Heather?”

“I was planning on starting with the Event Horizon because no one seems to know what it means but they’ve all heard the term in sci-fi movies,” I answered. “The Event Horizon is the point in a black hole where the escape velocity—that is, how fast something has to be going to escape the force of gravity—exceeds the speed of light.” I glanced over and up and Barry. “I'm going to add visual aids later over this like right here or so.” I pointed to the empty space between our heads vaguely.

^^^^^

Barry sat next to me on my sofa as I edited the video. He had his legs crossed under him and a mug in his hand that I'd given him full of hot chocolate. Rain was pounding outside—Central City spring—and he was helping me out. My laptop was balanced on my thighs and I was scrolling through Google Images looking for good pictures of black holes and diagrams to help make our points.

“This is so cool,” Barry commented. “Honestly. I've seen all your videos since you started making them and wow you’ve already improved so much.”

I smiled and felt my ears grow warm. “Thanks,” I mumbled.

“Also we did science on the internet. How cool is that? It’s like… you're Bill Nye…” he trailed off.

I snorted. “Me? No. You’re YouTube’s Bill Nye,” I teased. “I'm just that guy with the deep voice behind the camera that makes sarcastic comments. ‘Now the sun’s up there!’—‘Hopefully.’” Barry laughed as we kept editing.

“Is this really how you spend your Friday nights?” he asked curiously as I finally found the right picture and put it on over the main screen of the video.

“Yup. That’s what happens when your family all lives in Keystone and you live here with no friends and you're too independent and smart to make most guys interested in you. I scare guys off pretty easily so not too many dates for me!” I joked, being ultra-sarcastic to hide the fact that I was actually a little hurt inside that I never got asked out. “Truth is, it’s mostly my fault, I don’t ‘put myself out there’ or try to get guys to be interested.” I put my headphone in one ear and gave Barry the other bud. “Here. It’s easier to hear where the audio begins and finishes this way,” I offered. He took it and plugged it into his ear.

“Oh you use the weird kind! The squishy ones.”

“Yeah, the hard ones really hurt the inside part of my ear and the big over-ear kinds hurt because my ears stick out too much and they press my ears against my head. Which aches after a while.”

“Hmm. I'm sorry.”

I shrugged and went back to editing, moving it frame-by-frame to cut out some awkward pauses. I was so focused on what I was doing, I almost didn’t notice that Barry was still there. I put in some boring, generic vlogger music where I felt it needed to go, my little channel “logo” between the main body of the video and the outro bit where I wished everyone well and promised to see them soon.

Once it was done, Barry and I watched it to make sure I hadn't missed anything and added one of our bloopers to the end after my farewell of “See you in the stars, Sailors!” It was us laughing, bent double, clinging to each other’s arms to stay upright, after Barry made a bad pun.

“Oh no, I sound like Cisco,” Barry complained sitting next to me.

I snickered.

There were several moments of non-silence as we were waiting for the video to render. The quiet was filled by the rain on the windows and the occasional low rumble of thunder. I was letting the editing software render the frames with additional images over the main video or different transitions while I stood next to my big living room window with my own hot chocolate mug in my hand.

Barry got off the sofa and moved to stand next to me. “I love lightning,” he remarked.

I smiled. “Me too.”

Next Chapter

[savetopnow]

2018-03-10 00 TECH now

TECH

Ars Techica

Scary superbug can sneakily dodge last-resort drug—and we don’t know how

Switzerland first to test integrating drones into its air traffic control

After industry meeting, Trump highlights alleged game violence effects

In an audit of supply chain partners, Apple found increased labor violations in 2017

Nintendo announces a bunch of 2018 games, but none as big as Switch Smash Bros.

Buzzfeed Tech

Lawyers Are Duking It Out In Court Over Whether It’s Unconstitutional For Trump To Block People On Twitter

Jared Kushner Tried To Sell His Newspaper To Trump’s Political Enemies

Trump Just Read Elon Musk’s Tweets About Trade With China On Live TV

A Samsung Galaxy S9 Review That’s Mostly Pictures Of Dogs

Facebook Played A Pivotal Role In The West Virginia Teacher Strike

CNet

Cosplay at sea: All aboard Jonathan Coulton's geek cruise - CNET

In Sony, EyeSight finds a new fan of its gesture control tech - CNET

'Westworld' comes to gritty, fantastical life at SXSW - CNET

Bose, yes, that Bose, will develop augmented reality glasses - CNET

These popular robots are defenseless against cyberattacks - CNET

Clean Technica

EZ-GO Is An Electric Self-Driving Mobility … Thing (From Renault)

Vivint Solar Reports Lackluster Shipments But Its Revenue Increased By 60%

Press Release: Renault Kangoo Van Z.E.33 Retains Its “Best Green Van” Title At Business Van Of The Year Awards 2018

Press Release: Renault Zoe Wins “Best SME Green Company Car” At The 2018 Business Car Manager Awards

Politics & Climate Change: More Scientists Running For Congress In Affront To Trump

Hacker News

Why Hanami will never unseat Rails

Sandvine Deploy Government Spyware in Turkey and Redirect Egyptian Users

WaystoCap (YC W17) Is Hiring a Mobile Developer in Marbella

Fake Native Americans Are Using Russian Characters to Avoid Plagiarism Detectors

Renamed TPP signed by 11 nations with U.S. out

Mashable

'Jessica Jones' pulp covers reveals Season 2 episode titles

'The War Outside': An exclusive peek at Monica Hesse's heartbreaking new novel

How come nobody's talking about the poop scene that got cut from 'Call Me By Your Name'?!

Managing stress is a learned skill and this online class can help you get started

Amazon may soon offer customers a hybrid checking account

Motherboard

Watch a Herd of Boston Dynamics’ Dog Robots Take Over the World

The Inventor

There Are No Guardrails on Our Privacy Dystopia

Documents Prove Local Cops Have Bought Cheap iPhone Cracking Tech

Amelia Earhart Likely Died on Nikumaroro, Study Finds

New York Times Technology

Broadcom’s Other Regulatory Hurdle: How It Treats Customers

Ex-Leader of Baltimore County Schools, a Tech Booster, Pleads Guilty to Perjury

Tech Tip: Closed Captions You Can Actually See

Bits: Kevin’s Week in Tech: Is Silicon Valley Really Over?

Tech Fix: A Review of the Samsung Galaxy S9, in Emoji

Recode

How to watch Maria Shriver and Christina Schwarzenegger live from SXSW

How to watch Kara Swisher interview chef José Andrés live at SXSW

Twitter wants everyone to get a blue verification badge

Uber has hired a top Amazon voice exec as head of product as Daniel Graf departs

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson is coming to Code Conference

Reddit Technology

One of Trump's Video Game Experts Thinks Cops Are at War and Murder Makes You Horny - Trump's meeting about violent video games today includes some questionable experts.

Facebook censors nudity in art

Vision-improving nanoparticle eyedrops could end the need for glasses

Advanced nuclear technology just got a big green light from Congress

Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act: Tech Firms Push To Modify Senate Bill

Reuters Technology

Waymo's self-driving trucks to haul cargo for Google in Atlanta

Broadcom promises on security, Qualcomm revamps board

Bitcoin falls to lowest level in three-and-a-half weeks

PBOC governor says Bitcoin not a legitimate method of payment

Wall Street has never been so far behind on Netflix

Slashdot

Half of Ransomware Victims Didn't Recover Their Data After Paying the Ransom

Twitter Exploring Letting Everyone Get a Blue Tick For Verification, CEO Jack Dorsey Says

Researchers Provide Likely Explanation For the 'Sonic Weapon' Used At the US Embassy In Cuba

The Hitchhikers Guide To the Galaxy Returns With the Original Cast

Fake News Spreads Faster Than True News On Twitter -- Thanks To People, Not Bots

TechCrunch

YC-backed Playbook wants students to make plans online, hang out offline

Volkswagen’s head of electric mobility says China will drive autonomy roll-out

Magic Leap gets $461M more, Travis goes VC, and HQ Trivia scales up

Waymo and Google launch a self-driving truck pilot in Atlanta

Dropbox announces deeper integration with Salesforce ahead of IPO

The Next Web

Train as a full stack web developer, and learn at your own price

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Xiaomi’s $215 Redmi Note 5 Pro offers tremendous value in a bezel-less package

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The Verge

Inside the AMNH’s new ocean exhibit, with 30 very excited fourth graders

Microsoft to unveil new Surface Hub 2 displays in coming months

Watch Why’d You Push That Button live from SXSW today at 5PM ET

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WSJ Tech

At-Home Cancer-Risk Test Opens New---and Fraught---Field

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Wired

‘Dr. Strangelove’ Is Basically a Documentary

Total Clips

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Netflix’s ‘Altered Carbon’ Is Over-the-Top in Every Way

[android-for-life]

"Neha Palmer keeps Google's data centers green"

When Neha Palmer was a kid, she idolized Marie Curie. Reading a book about the pioneering scientist inspired her to pursue the field herself. “I think of it as the geek’s princess story,” she says. And now, both in and out of her role at Google, she’s working to inspire others who want to find a way to translate their passion for science and the environment into a career. 

Neha leads the team responsible for purchasing clean energy to fuel Google’s data centers. She's helping to reach our goal of remaining carbon neutral, which we have been since 2007, and matching all of Google’s energy consumption with 100 percent renewable energy, which we have achieved for two years in a row. Thanks to the work of Neha’s team, Google recently announced our largest ever purchase of renewable energy and was recognized by the Environmental Protection Agency with its Green Power Leadership Partner of the Year award.

For this installment of The She Word, Neha explains why renewable energy is so important, how Google has inspired companies to take action themselves and the one trick that keeps her productive, even on the busiest days. 

How do you describe your job at a dinner party?

When you use Search, YouTube and Gmail, all of that sits on a computer somewhere, and that somewhere is our network of data centers around the world. My job is to buy as much clean energy in the locations we have data centers as we can. Data centers are the largest portion of our carbon footprint as a company, driven by the amount of electricity they consume.

How does Google define clean energy? 

We define 100 percent renewable as: For every year, across the globe, we match every single kilowatt hour of electricity we use with a kilowatt hour of renewable energy. So far, that has meant wind and solar. But now we’re thinking: How do we get beyond that? If you have a solar farm, for example, it’s going to produce energy during the day, but when it’s dark, we still have to use the power that’s on the grid, which often includes carbon-emitting resources. Our next big goal is to buy 100 percent clean, carbon-free energy 24 hours a day, seven days a week and 365 days a year. That would mean resources that don’t emit carbon. 

I feel lucky that I have a job where I feel like I can make a difference.

Why is it so important to focus on clean energy? 

The production of electricity results in around 30 percent of all the emissions in the world. From my perspective, it’s the most important thing that we can do as a company to make sure we’re operating in an environmentally sustainable way. What we’ve seen is that a lot of companies from all sectors have followed. We see the automotive industry, consumer products, even candy bar companies moving toward clean energy. Corporations have realized that this is something that is not only beneficial for their environment, but also for their business. 

Climate is top of mind for many people right now, but a lot of people are confused about what they can do as individuals. I feel lucky that I have a job where I feel like I can make a difference. Seeing the impact of the work is really satisfying. 

What do you do in a typical day? 

I try to get big projects out of the way in the morning. If there’s something I need to sit down and think about critically, I try to block out at least an hour to focus on that. If I do have a bunch of things that are top of mind, but I know I’ll only have that one hour, I usually start the day by writing exactly one thing, and only one thing, on a sticky note. I stick it on my computer, and I won’t leave for the day until it is done. I spend a lot of time in meetings, since I’m on a very large team. And I try to sit down and have an actual lunch and be technology-free, to let my mind clear and re-energize. In the afternoons it’s a scramble—I’ve got two small children, so I get home and spend time with them before they go to bed and end the day. 

What’s one habit that makes you successful?

There’s so much discussion right now about work-life balance. One thing I’ve learned is that it's going to be seasonal. There are plenty of times where you feel stressed and you’re not going to have that balance, but there are  plenty of times where you feel like you are in control. Knowing that you can get back to that place gives me enough mental stability to get through the hectic times. 

You spent most of your career in the utilities industry, which is historically male-dominated. How have you navigated that?

I’ve always sought out strong female leaders, whether it’s within my company or outside the company, I’ve also tried to think about how I can help pull people up. It might be talking to a group of high schoolers about STEM and engineering careers, or it might be talking to an MBA class about how you convert your passion for the environment into a job. There are plenty of people who are interested in the energy industry, it’s just making sure that we find them, engage them and then hire them. 

Source : The Official Google Blog via Source information

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7 Giant Crazy Real Things That Look Straight Sci Fi, Son

A whole bunch of hardcore science stuff went into designing pretty much anything within your line of vision right now. Why, your smartphone alone took up to three Science to induce. Three! Some of those Sciences were Scienced up in bearing old Science Buildings, sure — but some of them were birthed from bizarre, fantastical landscapes like …

7

The “Russian Woodpecker” Looks Like A Kaiju Wall

In 1976, radio signals around the world were interrupted by a strange, regular, tapping noise over the airwaves that people nicknamed “The Russian Woodpecker.” Nobody knew what it was exactly, but radio geeks eventually managed to triangulate its origin to a place just outside Chernobyl, in Ukraine. Specifically this thing TAGEND Ingmar Runge/ Wiki Commons It was, at the time, the scariest thing anywhere near Chernobyl .

This was before that other incident that made Chernobyl famous, so of course back then it appeared a little … fresher … than it does these days.

Ryan Menezes But it’s holding up pretty well for 40 -year-old untended steel .

Given the supervillain-bent of most massive Soviet projects, and, well … just the looking of that crazy damn thing, supposition was rampant: It was a mind-control device, a climate machine, hell, maybe only a giant antenna to pirate Martian pornography. We weren’t genuinely on speaking words with the Soviets, so it’s not like we could just ask them.

Alexander Blecher, blecher.info It would be decades till Russians occupied and controlled the White House .

After the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the Woodpecker maintained tapping for a couple more years and then fell silent. It was merely after the Cold War aimed that we were able to find out what it truly was: The virtually 500 -foot-tall metal wall known as Duga-3 was one of three radar installings capable of seeing incoming American weapons. That’s not as interesting as our wild guess: Giant Gamera fence. But reality so rarely is.

Wow, what a truly amazing structure, rendered virtually instantly obsolete by satellites .

6

The World’s Most Silent Laboratory Look Like Weird Video Game Levels

Want a little peace and quiet? Go to the park. Want all the peace and quiet? Your alternatives are TAGEND

1. The grave, or …

2. An anechoic chamber, like the one at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

Because if there’s one thing we all associate with jet engines, it’s absolute silence .

It looks like aliens holding Air force One for ransom, but that blue spiky padding is just sound- and radar-absorbing polyurethane, which totally shields the inside of the building from outside sound and electromagnetic waves, permitting the Air force to test sensitive radar equipment.

Inside, you hear nothing, other than your own hollering hallucinations .

And this isn’t some bizarre technology limited to the military — scientists all over the world make use of these chambers for testing sensitive voice and radio technology. Eckel Industries has one that looks even more alien TAGEND Are we sure this isn’t a 2001 screen cap ? And, of course, techno-supervillains Apple have furnished 17 of these rooms at a total cost of $ 100 million to test transmitters and general iPhone performance TAGEND

To eradicate audio, they started by removing all headphone jacks .

But if you’re looking for the quietest place on the entire planet, that’s Microsoft’s audio lab in Redmond, Washington TAGEND We don’t hear much activity in Bing headquarters .

It’s so quiet in that room that people can hear their own blood . It’s the only place in the world where instruments was in fact pick up the audio of goddamn molecules brushing against one another. And Microsoft utilizes it pretty much exclusively to prove that they’re better than Apple.

5

California’s Water-Saving Devices Look Like Alien Egg-Spheres

California’s historic drought has necessitated some fairly novel water-conserving technologies. Take, for example, this clutch of gleaming black extraterrestrial eggs infesting Los Angeles’s municipal watering holes.

It looks less gross than most LA water, but still .

It looks like the West Coast is about to be swarming with hundreds of millions of face-huggers, but these are actually only harmless plastic “shade balls” that the LA Department Of Water And Power deliberately dumped into the city’s reservoir in 2015.

Stimulating it the most epic suit of throwing shade in city history .

There’s about 96 million balls in the reservoir, which means, even though each individual whatchamacallit only expenses 36 cents, the whole project cost around $34.5 million.

It’s the most expensive teabagging imaginable .

And while dumping the entire GDP of a small country straight into a water supply would ordinarily be labeled a bizarre cataclysm, there’s a good reason for this: the balls reduce evaporation and slacken algae growth. The department calculates it saves around 300 million gallons per year, and merely seems a little like alien caviar.

Alien caviar is $120 a plate at Spago .

4

The World’s Biggest Solar Power Plant Looks Like A UFO Launch Pad

Deep in California’s Mojave Desert, there’s something that looks like a Prius charging station for electric UFOs.

Note: This is one photo , not several put together .

That’s the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility, the world’s largest solar plant, and a major step toward California’s goal of providing 33 percent of the state’s electricity from renewable sources by 2020.

To milk that much juice out of the shine daystar, you need a hell of a lot of mirrors. Around 173,500, to be precise. Their undertaking is to take most of the sunlight that falls on the 3,500 -acre facility and concentrate it all onto one of the three Ikea-brand Eyes Of Sauron that stand at the center.

Water inside the nearly 460 -foot-tall towers is turned to steam and funneled into a turbine. The facility has a capacity of 377 megawatts, and at full production, the plant could light up 140,000 California homes.

The environmentally-minded developers constructed sure to relocate an endangered species of tortoise so that they could develop on its natural habitat. So it’s various kinds of ironic that the facility unwittingly triggered a bird holocaust. See, those invisible beams of sunlight that the mirrors are shooting out are hot enough to instantaneously incinerate anything that passes through them. Regrettably — well, you know how a bug-zapper works? Imagine one big enough to work on rare falcons. Merely the rarest . Reports suggest that Ivanpah incinerates an unsuspecting bird around every two minutes .

3

The World’s Most Powerful Lasers Look Like … Well, The World’s Most Powerful Lasers

According to the University Of Rochester, the purpose of its Laboratory For Laser Energetics( LLE) department is “to investigate the interaction of intense radioactivity with matter.” This is a research grant-friendly route of saying “blow shit up with lasers.” Lasers like this one TAGEND

Fact: This is how God constructed the universe .

That’s the 30 -foot-tall, virtually 330 -foot-long OMEGA laser system. Among the world’s most powerful lasers, its rays deliver 40,000 joules of ass-shattering energy in a single billionth-of-a-second detonation onto a fuel pellet the size of a pencil tip-off. Here’s what it looks like from inside the chamber, moments before a bumbling lab intern turns you into The Hulk.

It’s “ve called the” OMEGA laser because it’s the last thing you’ll insure . The OMEGA laser is in friendly competitor with the National Ignition Facility( NIF) in Livermore, California. Unlike the OMEGA’s direct-drive method — zapping a gasoline pellet with lasers — the NIF focuses an insane 192 lasers on a tiny golden enclosure, producing X-rays which then strike the pellet. It also appears exactly like a Borg sphere TAGEND

Or their sex toy .

From the inside, it looks like something Jeff Goldblum is about to blow up with a Macbook virus TAGEND It is also able to locate all mutants worldwide .

2

The Soviet Union Actually Had Crazy Giant Tesla Coils

In Command And Conquer: Red Alert , the Soviet team could construct giant Tesla coils that incinerated hapless Allied soldiers. Turns out that wasn’t made up: They truly existed.

Weird. We didn’t realize “Thor” was a Russian name .

These 130 -foot lightning towers, tucked away in secluded woodland 25 miles from Moscow, weren’t designed to obliterate encroaching adversaries, but simply for scientific curiosity and testing electrical insulation. At least, that’s what they tell us.

They tested the electrical insulation of Gulag prisoners .

The High Voltage Marx And Tesla Generators Research Facility is a mess of tubes and wires that could have been inspired by mid-century science fiction B-movies. And when it’s set to full power, it can match the entire country’s electrical potential with lightning ten-strikes that rise 500 feet into the sky.

Targeting the USSR’s number-one enemy: hope .

It is now the property of the Russian Electrical Engineering Institute and supposedly not at all evil, though it’s still operational, and can sometimes be seen sparking its bolts high into the air for what we are sure are utterly benign scientific purposes.

Today, all it does is pump out high-energy Putin memes .

1

Fusion Power Research Looks Like Something From An Alien Sequel

Fusion power is a clean, sustainable energy source that, if mastered, would eliminate our need for non-renewable fuels and offer dirt cheap electricity for everyone on countries around the world. All we have to do is find a way to imitation the conditions at the core of the sun. Easy!

Toward this end, MIT has created the “Alcator C-Mod, ” basically a large metal donut that confines a stream of crazy-millions-of-degrees-hot plasma within a magnetic field. Don’t worry, they tell us the reaction occurs on a small scale and is pretty well contained, so it probably won’t kill you. Unless you bang its giant superconducting girlfriend.

Then, it’ll smack you so hard you’ll get permanent fisheye vision .

Unfortunately, the Alcator C-Mod was necessary to shut down after losing sponsorship from the Department Of Energy, though not before setting a new fusion world record on its last night of operation. In spite of attaining temperatures of 35 million degrees at an unprecedented 2.05 atmospheres of pressure, federal fusion funding was diverted to France’s International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor( ITER ), soon to be the world’s biggest, baddest magnetic imprisonment experiment.

Though its model here is more of an adorable Star Wars droid .

Scheduled for finish in 2015, numerous delays have pushed that to 2021 at least, with its cost soaring from an initial$ 5 billion to about $40 billion and counting. But hey, it’s shaping up to look dope as hell.

It’ll be an amazing venue for the 2022 World Cup .

Meanwhile, in Japan, they have the Large Helical Device( LHD ), a project of the National Institute For Fusion Science in Toki, Gifu Prefecture. The LHD attempts to mimic the action at the core of stars by trapping hellishly hot plasma within a magnetic field restricted inside a twisted 44 -foot metal tube. More importantly, though, it looks like they ripped the design straight out of H. R. Giger’s nightmares.

From the outside, the LHD looks pretty innocuous TAGEND Just a run-of-the-mill planet mill .

But on the inside, its eight intertwining superconducting coils look like the kind of porn that Japanese robots won’t admit to watching …

They had to invent four new dimensions to construct this .

To achieve fusion without the gravitational advantage of a body 330, 000 times the mass of the Earth, terrestrial fusion devices must heat ga to about 100 million degrees Celsius. This roiling hell-stew would speedily melt the very machine that created it, so magnetic fields exerting 1,000 tons of pressure per meter are required to separate the plasma from the inner walls. For some reason, this requires giant metal tentacles.

We’re not about to question it; they seem to know what they’re doing.

Also check out 23 Real-Life Mad Scientists Deleted From Your History Books and The 6 Most Baffling Science Experiments Ever Funded . Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out 10 Ways Science Says You Can Seem More Attractive, and other videos you won’t insure on the site !

Follow us on Facebook, and let’s be best friends eternally .

Read more: www.cracked.com

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What DC’s Infinite Frontier Means for Batman and Joker

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James Tynion IV has been writing Batman in some form or another for his entire career. He began his time at DC Comics by writing backup stories for Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s Batman during the New 52 era, fleshing out the history of the villainous Court of Owls before landing his first owl-centric series titled Talon. Tynion was one of the lead writers on Batman Eternal and Batman & Robin Eternal, two weekly series that mainlined years of Batman continuity back into the New 52. And following the Rebirth reset, he got a long run with the Bat family on Detective Comics. 

With all that time on the Bat-books, it’s a little surprising to see the deluge of ideas still pouring out of the writer now that he’s got the flagship title all to himself. Tynion took over after Tom King’s 85-issue mega run, and proceeded to pit Batman against an entire city of clowns in “Joker War” after stripping the Dark Knight of his greatest superpower: his money. Tynion returns to the Dark Knight for the Infinite Frontier era, the post-Dark Nights: Death Metal status quo that has an energy to match Tynion’s voluminous idea output.

We had a chance to talk with him about a new year of Batman stories, his next big arc, and the surprising Joker solo book spinning out of “Joker War.”

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Den of Geek: When we last talked to you, you were just getting Punchline into the wind and just getting cracking on Joker War. Now we’ve got Joker getting his own series, you’ve got Batman past the big 100th issue milestone. You’re the boss now, right? 

James Tynion IV: :laughs: Right. And to be honest, when I came onto the title, the company had certain things that they were looking to accomplish with the Batman title. So I had a list of things that I needed to accomplish in the book, which is honestly part of why I leaned into creating so many new characters, especially once I got [artist] Jorge Jimenez as a creative partner. It was because those were the elements that I had the most control over. And in doing it because the company had where they wanted Batman to end at, where they wanted Joker then. 

But then as things started to change and it started to look like I was going to be staying on the title for the long haul, they started asking me “totally blue sky, what would you do next year if you had total carte blanche to do whatever you want?” And I said “I want to do a Scarecrow story.” 

There’s a Scarecrow story that has been in my head since I was working on the [Batman] Eternals, since I was working on Detective Comics. It’s changed a lot since then, but there there are some core pieces that I’ve wanted to explore in a big Batman story for years. And now taking everything I’ve learned from my first year on Batman, taking everything I’ve learned from working with Jorge Jimenez, and also just looking at the state of the industry and the state of DC Comics in particular, I wanted to try some new stuff. I wanted to see what was possible and sort of test the limits of how far we can push the Batman mythology and still have it feel like a Batman book. And that is what we’re up to next year, and I’m really really excited about it.

Scarecrow as a character has always been a great, classic Batman villain. But he’s also got some mission overlap. He’s creepy and scary like the Joker is. He’s a brilliant scientist like Hugo Strange. What makes Jonathan Crane stand out as different and important and worth examining to you?

Well, I think there’s a really interesting parallel between Dr. Crane and Batman, which is the fact that Batman, by putting on the costume, is trying to instill fear in people. That is part of the core mission of him trying to put on that costume. It’s the belief that criminals are a superstitious and cowardly lot and if he makes himself into something that seems inhuman and frightening, criminals are going to be scared out of their mind. In a weird way, it’s a psychological experiment on criminals that Batman is waging war with. 

With Jonathan Crane, with Scarecrow, he is someone whose entire modus operandi is trying to unlock all of the secrets of fear and doing it with the amorality of a classic mad scientist. He doesn’t care how many people get hurt around him, but he’s genuinely fascinated in scientific terms. He thinks he is unlocking some of the truths of human nature and he’s willing to use the entire city as the testing grounds for that. But in a weird way, so is Batman. And that’s why the name of the big arc is “Cowardly Lot.” 

Post-Joker War, you’re taking [the Joker] outside of Gotham, right? Where are you most excited to send him and why?

Honestly, there are a bunch of exciting places. I like showing him in places where it’s tonally incongruous for him to be. Like, I like Joker in the sun. It’s just the most bizarre thing possible with his pasty white skin, just him out on a beach laying with some sunglasses is really, really wild. 

But tonally, what I was really excited to explore is the idea of what is the whole secret criminal underworld that spans across the globe? How do people like the Joker stay off of Batman’s radar for years at a time sometimes before they reemerge to cause their latest havoc? And what are the support systems that hide these people away and all of that. 

One thing that I tapped into was a little bit of real life history, with the ratlines out of Europe at the end of the second World War, where a bunch of Nazis basically snuck into South America and changed their names and identities. And a lot of those similar systems are how organized crime evade the authorities and set down roots in places where you can’t be extradited. 

Read more

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How The Next Batman Was Born and What’s Next for Tim Fox in the DC Universe

By Rosie Knight

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Batman and Catwoman’s Daughter Helena Wayne Has a Long History in DC Comics

By John Saavedra

Joker, in particular, he is someone who appears to be a part of that world, because he is part of organized crime. He is the Clown Prince of Crime. But at the same time, he is such a chaotic element that he cannot…he walks into those systems, and those systems think they can control and contain him, but they can’t. And so a lot of those players who have been burned by him before are just as eager to take the Joker down as the heroes of the world. So that’s some of the core pieces that we’re trying to unpack here. 

The element of the Joker that I’m most excited about is the fact that Joker does not necessarily make a great protagonist, because he’s someone you can’t really get into the internal life of. So emotionally the real protagonist of the Joker series is going to be Jim Gordon, who is one of my all time favorite characters, and the character I’ve been missing writing the most while getting to make my mark on the Batman mythology. So getting to put him up front and center with all of his very personal enmity towards the Joker, that is really exciting. And it also gives the book its tone. I keep referring to Joker as a horror noir book. This is this is me trying to do something that feels a bit more like a work of crime fiction, with the horror knob dialed up to 11. I honestly think the first issue is one of the best things I’ve written for DC.

Joker is going to function more like a kind of Jason Voorhees, right? He’s a horror movie villain rather than the focus of the story?

He is. Everything in the book happens because of the Joker, and the Joker is in every single issue of the book. But it is about the people who are pursuing the Joker, and the Joker playing with the people who are pursuing. He is both the Hannibal Lecter and the Buffalo Bill of the book. There is still a Will Graham, Jim Gordon is the Will Graham/Clarice that he’s playing with along the way.

You are obviously a very well established horror guy, but the artists on your horror books generally have a certain art style to them. Something Is Killing The Children [Tynion and Werther Dell’Edera’s horror comic about exactly what it says on the label] and Department of Truth [Tynion’s book with Martin Simmonds about conspiracy theories that become real], they don’t look like your typical superhero books. Guillem March has a vastly different art style to what Martin Simmonds and Werther Dell’Edera are doing on the other books. Has Guillem’s art style changed your approach to the horror in Joker at all? Or has your horror brought something different out of Guillem’s art?

One of my first books for DC comic was a title called Talon back in 2014, and Guillem March was the artist. I had been a fan of Guillem’s work, but I started realizing how good he was at the horror moments. Because he has this style that, I think you can see a lot of Joe Kubert. In his line work, it has a kind of Gothic edge to it. I’ve always loved writing some really scary moments for him. And I tried to tap into that, again with Batman…I think that his work on [Joker] so far is my favorite stuff he’s done in all the time that we’ve worked together, which has been pretty much my entire career. 

Who’s your definitive Joker? When you’re dragging in a script, what Joker stories do you go back to to try and catch his voice again?

Oh, boy, that’s a really good question. One of the north stars just because of how closely I’ve worked with him, and for how long, is the Scott Snyder Joker. I think Scott got into the Joker’s head more than almost any other writer in the modern era. There’s a certain element of the Joker as the devil who just knows how to hit every single emotional pressure point on your body to make you afraid and to pick you apart. And the idea of him being almost ever present and in this solitary, terrifying way. So there’s an element of that, that I always bring in. 

But I’m never going to be able to shake the Mark Hamill voice from my head. There is an element of Joker when he’s at his most performative and he’s always performing to an audience, [but] it depends who the audience is. Sometimes the audience is Batman, but his voice changes a little when he’s talking to other villains and those are the stories that I’ve always loved. When I was doing my Legion of Doom one shots during Scott Snyder’s Justice League run, writing him as a foil for Lex Luthor was incredibly fun. Even going all the way back when I was doing the backup stories in the New 52, writing a Joker up against Two Face or up against Penguin or up against Riddler. He has a very different dynamic with all of them that is a little more playful because he’s not trying to kill them. He’s just trying to mess with them. So that Joker gets a little more Mark Hamill where he is a bit more of the clown. 

But honestly, my favorite Joker story ever is Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker. I think it captures all of the sides of him. It’s him at his most performative, but you also see the deep hatred and also the incredible intelligence of the character, which is the thing that makes him so dangerous. The Joker would not be effective if he wasn’t as smart as Batman. The scary thing is he’s always playing a larger game. And it’s a larger game that does not necessarily follow a logic, but he can follow every step of it.

So we’ve got Jim [Gordon] in the Joker book. I’ve also read Barbara [Gordon], Bluebird, Punchline, [canonical best Batgirl] Cass [Cain], and Stephanie Brown are all showing up there.

Yeah, in the Joker book, there are also going to be backup stories continuing from the Punchline one-shot that I co-wrote back in November of last year, and continuing the story of Leslie Tompkins and Bluebird investigating Punchline’s past while she’s on trial for her crimes committed during the Joker War event. That story is going to continue there. 

Barbara Gordon is going to play a key role in that book, especially her relationship with Jim Gordon. Joker looms large in both of their pasts but also in both of their recent pasts. In the Joker War tie-in issues, we saw the death of James Gordon Jr. and that’s going to be one of the key things that sets the story in motion here. So, there is both a loss in their family instigated by the Joker that sets the Gordon family on this journey. 

The Gordon family is a very central force in the book, and tied very closely into that is the new arrangement in which we have Barbara Gordon working a bit more [behind the scenes, but] has not fully given up the Batgirl costume. But she is working more and more as Oracle again. And because she’s behind the computer, she is using Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown as her agents in the field, as her Batgirls. And so we are playing and building out that whole dynamic. 

A lot of people are very happy with that.

I’m very happy about it. :laughs: And we have big plans for all of the Batgirl characters in the line that will become more and more clear as the year goes on.

Is everything pointing back towards each other? You’ve got the big Scarecrow story in Batman, you’ve got all of the toys that you’ve brought into the Bat-family hanging around with Clownhunter and with Ghostmaker. But it sounds like they’re kind of eventually going to converge again.

Oh, absolutely. You can’t have two parallel threads going if you don’t plan to have them intersect. And honestly, one of the big things that I am most excited about this next era is how closely together all of the writers are working. There are certain things you can only pull off in a connected superhero universe. And especially like in the era right now, there is an incredible opportunity at DC which is, we have Black Label and books in the YA space and all of that. There are more straight up the middle, back to basics Batman stories being told that are more in the classic mold. And then there is stuff written for all ages audiences with the Bat family characters. So it frees the main line books to go a little further, where we don’t need to reset everything to the status quo, we can kind of push the status quo a little bit and change it 

The guiding idea that I’ve been going back to over and over is we’re further down the timeline than we’ve ever been before. If you look at Batman The Animated Series as a kind of core archetypal peak Batman moment where you have Batman, you have Bat Signal in the sky, you have Jim Gordon on the roof of the GCPD, you have a Tobin at his side, he’s in Wayne Manor, and Alfred’s in the Batcave. That is the era of peak Batman. And then you see at the end of the spectrum, you have stories like The Dark Knight Returns and Batman Beyond. We’re now at the midpoint of those two points. And that’s really exciting to me. Because you get to play with a Batman who’s a little worried that he used to be more effective than he is. Because when he first came on the scene, he cleaned up crime, he was all that, he made it for a better city, but then everything started pushing back even harder. And the city started becoming a more dangerous thing. 

And now Bruce Wayne is no longer a billionaire. He’s still wealthy, still a millionaire, but now he can’t just buy up all of Gotham City and try to fix it. He’s having to re-approach what he’s doing, build his methods back from the ground up. He’s doing it with the Bat family. But this is not an all powerful Bat God who can solve any problem that’s put in front of him in 30 seconds. This is someone who has to do the grunt work, the detective work, and touch up on his training and push himself to new limits, despite the fact that he’s not as young as he used to be. And I think that that makes for exciting storytelling. 

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I’m really excited. And seeing how the other writers in the line are tapping into the new elements of the status quo. The hope is creating an era of Batman comics that people come back to long into the future. I want people to look at this era and be like, “that’s my favorite era of Batman.”

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