#the comic was originally supposed to be just the first two panels at the beginning but i thought of a really nice back and forth

[fraternum-momentum]

did I make a sheriff oc just to draw this dialogue?

yes, yes i did. so meet Nigel.

[thequiver]

So Let's Talk about Pietro and Crystal...

In this meta I am going through Pietro Maximoff's relationship with Crystalia Amaquelin. This meta is not just going to focus on their interactions with one another but also on the ways that they talk about one another and on the culture/societal structure of the Inhumans and Crystal's privilege which are both major factors in this relationship. This reading list is going to have to be in parts just due to how much there is to talk about in these issues and I want to be able to share images freely! The only edits to any panels have been to arrange them in such a way that they easily fit in a tumblr post and to condense panels from the same comic into one image. The content of any panels has been unchanged, and all panels within the same image are displayed in they order they are found within the original printed comic.

Meta below the cut! This one's a doozy.

Pietro and Crystal's first meeting and then subsequent early courtship happens entirely off page between the events of The Avengers (1963) #104 and The Fantastic Four (1961) #131-132. Within The Fantastic Four (1961) #131 we get like little flashbacks in a handful of pages telling us that this has happened and giving us vignettes into how, but it doesn't really provide us with any particular details- which means that going into Fantastic Four (1961) #131, we know about as much as Johnny Storm (The Human Torch), Crystal's boyfriend.

The Fantastic Four (1961) #131

Which is to say that we know that he's come back from a mission only to discover that his girlfriend has been getting cozy with another guy. To Johnny's credit here, he's first mad at Crystal and not at Pietro who as far as we the reader can tell, had no idea that Crystal was dating the Human Torch. Pietro however.....despite clearly realizing that he's the side-piece is still defending Crystal and it's only after his defense of Crystal's decision to be a messy cheater that Johnny decides the two men have beef.

Within #131 we learn that Crystal found Pietro following some intense injuries sustained in a battle with a Sentinel (during a period of comics in which the Maximoff twins keep miraculously losing access to their mutant abilities at the drop of a hat for plot reasons?) and had nursed him back to health and during the days she spends at his bedside helping him recover, in which Crystal apparently decides he's the one while he's unconscious as the other Inhumans (particularly Medusa) around her begin to call her out on her reasons for wanting to stay by Pietro's bedside.

Crystal and Johnny have a conversation where she begs him for more time, and he reminds her (not unfairly) that she's had years of their relationship to think it over and that "if you don't love me- and only me- by now, it's time for me to read the handwriting on the wall." I'm not saying Pietro didn't see the red flags, I'm just saying he might be colorblind.

Within this issue we also get a taste of the Inhuman practice of slavery, wherein they place "Alpha Primitives" beneath them and we get to see the beginnings of an uprising (yay!), the uprising is presented as a bad thing and we're supposed to sympathize with the slavers (boo!). Johnny is portrayed here as being pro-slavery while Pietro is significantly more sensitive to the whole reality of their being enslaved. This being said, Pietro is still upset that the Alpha Primitives have taken Crystal captive and plans to save her, calling her "the girl I love." Johnny pretty rightfully points out that it's been only a few weeks of Crystal and Pietro knowing one another and Pietro....well...by this point we know he rushes into things. Pietro and Johnny run accidentally headfirst into each other during the revolt and Crystal is only concerned about Pietro's wellbeing and almost makes a threat against Johnny, even though it was Pietro who ran into the Human Torch.

The Fantastic Four (1961) #132 ends with Crystal basically going "this massive enemy that we've been fighting is powered by our own inherent guilt over being greedy enslaving racists (a guilt which has not been shown on page at ALL)." Somehow calling this out and actually triggering guilt does not at all further power their enemy but instead leaves him as an immobile statue and a reminder of how fucking racist they are- and then the Alpha Primitives are sent back down into the caves they live in without any form of reparations: "While the Alphas, free men now, return to their nighted catacombs...their own world...dark, but theirs no less for that. One day, they'll come again into the light and take a proffered brother's hand. One day...but not today." It should be noted, that the Inhumans do absolutely NOTHING to "proffer a brother's hand" in this issue, they just walk away from the Alphas and the Alphas go into their dark caves. In fact, the only Inhuman who seems to have had any kind of fondness for the Alphas is known shit-stirrer, Maximus who is kept in a perpetual open-air prison because none of them trust him. And Maximus was the one who built the machine that's supposedly powering Omega (the big enemy) but it's implied up until Crystal's speech that it is actual physical acts of violence against the Alphas that powers Omega.

Pietro ends this first big Crystal saga, brooding and moping because Johnny Storm has friends and he doesn't (he does...sorta, they're just not with him right now) , and Crystal breaks up with Johnny. And Johnny...does a complete 180 from #131 and is like "oh yeah actually I'm not at all upset that you cheated on me and I was hoping you'd break up with me and actually I have a date with my ex girlfriend tonight." Johnny does cry when he sees Crystal with Pietro, but that's really all we get for the end of their relationship. And for whatever reason the narrative seems to wrap itself around Crystal to make her look good.

Literally one issue later in The Avengers (1963) #110- this happens:

The Avengers (1963) #110

Within this issue Steve Englehart makes the BOLD move to position Pietro as some domineering patriarch when for literally every other appearance he's had with Wanda he has never ONCE positioned himself as "the head of our family." Pietro has up until this point been firm that he and Wanda are equals and just a few issues prior had issued the statement that he would never again even jokingly refer to her as "little sister."

Then in The Avengers (1963) #127, Pietro fails to invite the Avengers to his wedding with Crystal because he's fighting with Wanda and is deemed an "arrogant, posturing fool" by the Inhumans, we're told that Gorgon has "endured a great deal from Quicksilver...for many months." There's only one problem with that, in the blink and you'll miss it Pietro appearances that happen between The Avengers (1963) #110 and the current issue- (Marvel Team-Up (1972) #11 and The Incredible Hulk (1968) #175) We have seen Pietro be nothing but helpful to the Inhumans. And we have seen his help and expertise ignored when it comes to enemies he has fought previously. We have no indications whatsoever that Pietro has been anything but loving and focused on Crystal. It should also be noted that when Gorgon finds out that Pietro didn't invite the Avengers he starts nearly destroying Avengers Tower.

At the wedding, we learn that CRYSTAL HAS INVITED HER EX-BOYFRIEND, JOHNNY STORM, TO HER AND PIETRO'S WEDDING. Johnny is very much a mature adult about things and tells Crystal that if she's happy, he's happy for her. Which is great and lovely and another tick on the box for why I'm a Johnny Storm fan BUT-

The Fantastic Four (1961) #150A-B

Crystal is about to get married and is now suddenly confused about if she's happy or not? That little vague anxiety is never resolved in this wedding arc and in Fantastic Four (1961) #150B, Pietro and Crystal are married. But even the comic is aware that readers might not be thinking this is a happy ending and have an entire panel dedicated to trying to convince you this is happy.

The Fantastic Four (1961) #150A-B

Regardless, these early Pietro/Crystal appearances offer us even more insight into the bigotry on New Attilan. At the beginning of The Avengers (1963) #127, we're told that Black Bolt (who cannot speak) has issued a number of reforms meant to create equality between ALL Inhumans. But upon our first looks at the Alphas, the former slaves of the Inhumans, we see that they're talking of genocide. The genocide mention isn't really resolved here either.

We find out in Fantastic Four (1961) #158 that Pietro marrying Crystal was not enough for him to gain acceptance among his wife's people but that he had to be made an Inhuman by special decree. And yet- Pietro is chained and is willing to die for the Inhumans. "I am an Inhuman since the day of my marriage. From that day until forever, I will live or die- an Inhuman!" This is a sharp contrast to Pietro's issues with the concept of mutant identity that have previously been expressed in: Avengers (1963) #16, Uncanny X-Men (1963) #27, Avengers (1963) #45-49, and Uncanny X-Men (1963) #43A-45A. It's safe to assume that part of Pietro's undying and unearned loyalty to the Inhumans is based around his rushed relationship with Crystal.

I've mentioned above that I don't think Pietro didn't see the red flags, but that he might be colorblind and I'm going to go a little further into that here. Pietro falls in love with Crystal because she is kind to him and nurses him back to health and he's obviously very attracted to her. Crystal falls in love with Pietro while he is unconscious and dependent on her. Even though Pietro is aware that he's essentially Crystal's side-piece in this whole relationship kerfuffle from Fantastic Four (1961) #131-132, he's emboldened by the fact that Crystal chose him. Pietro struggles with self-worth issues (we can see these manifested as well in those mutant identity issues listed above) despite his bluster and pride, and we can see some of that desire and craving to be picked, to be worthy, to be loved, come through in The Amazing Spider-Man (1963) #71. But we've also seen so far, how Pietro's loyalty and love for these people who "picked him" by virtue of their princess "falling in love" with him, is largely one-sided as the Inhumans do NOT share his sentiments.

Case in point for Pietro's feelings and attachment to Cyrstal.

The Fantastic Four (1961) #159

Pietro interacts with the Avengers again in Avengers (1963) #137 where he's informed of Wanda's marriage to Vision and is asked to return to the Avengers and leave Crystal because of that marriage. It doesn't go as planned for the Avengers and Pietro refuses. He's putting Crystal above his old friends and family, and we're seeing that he's been interacting more with Crystal's friends and family than his own since they've gotten together.

With the advent of Inhumans (1975) Pietro starts to vocally realize that maybe... just maybe...the Inhumans don't like him very much. And Crystal tries to convince him otherwise.

Inhumans (1975) #3

A few issues pass, Pietro and Crystal are held for ransom, Pietro barely talks at all, Black Bolt screams and destroys the Great Refuge- and then randomly and all of a sudden, Crystal and Pietro are placed as regents of New Attilan? But even with this regency, it's clear that the Inhumans don't like Pietro. Crystal thinks that Pietro is "beyond reason" for questioning Black Bolt and the way that the Inhumans interpret his silence as royal edict. When Pietro makes solid points about how Black Bolt doesn't talk so he can't say anything.

Inhumans (1975) #7

And then in Inhumans (1975) #12, Crystal asks Pietro why he doesn't trust their new leader, and he speaks of the man's lust for power and Crystal goes "well even if his motives suck, he's making progress." She doesn't really take the time to even think through Pietro's point of view, instead meeting him with a "hope you're wrong." Spoiler alert- Pietro was not wrong as we discover in The Fantastic Four (1961) # Annual 12. And even in that issue, where Crystal is telling the FF about how Pietro was right and how valiantly he fought to ensure the safety of the Inhumans against one who only wanted power- she refers to him as "not a true Inhuman," and in the same breath refers to herself as "I, his loyal wife." And in this same issue Pietro even says, echoing Crystal's earlier wording (which he wasn't even around to hear), "I may not be a true Inhuman, but these people are now my family and no one gets away with killing them." He's continuing to position the Inhumans and particularly the Inhuman royal family as his family, while they continue to keep a distance between them, with his wife referring to him as not a true Inhuman, and others making it clear that he is merely tolerated due to his marriage to Crystal.

Crystal isn't completely without merit here though, her words definitely shine light on one part of her thoughts on her husband, but she also shows extreme care for him and prioritizes finding him over the rest of her family when he's captured in The Fantastic Four (1961) # Annual 12. This does however fall into her growing pattern of caring for Pietro more when he's dependent on her than when he's able to make his own choices.

And then, at the end of The Fantastic Four (1961) # Annual 12, we see Crystal grab Johnny Storm's face, look like she's about to kiss him (while giving him "fuck me" eyes), and tell him that she's never going to stop loving him. Pietro sees them, and Johnny is clearly uncomfortable with Crystal's actions (as he has been this entire issue), and he and Pietro make "peace" despite neither of them being the issue here when Pietro basically tells him that he's okay because he's a friend of Crystal's and hopefully a friend of his too.

The Fantastic Four (1961) # Annual 12

With the dawn of Korvac Saga, we get further confirmation that Pietro is deeply, deeply committed to Crystal. We start The Avengers (1963) #170 with Pietro gazing over New Attilan in a way that's recognized as sad, and then the following exchange happens:

The Avengers (1963) #170

Crystal makes a really great observation about how Pietro's marriage to her has tied him down and changed his life dramatically since his days as an Avenger, but Pietro refutes her concerns saying that what matters to him is that he has her, that he can support her in her place among her people, and is about to say that he'd never leave her when he's teleported elsewhere by agents unknown (at this point in the story at least ;)). This is literally the healthiest their relationship has been to date.

At some point after the Korvac Saga, Pietro rejoins the Avengers, sort of- he's an Avenger again for like a single issue, the whole rejoining thing happens off page, and then come Avengers (1963) #181, he's been kicked off the team and then passes out. In reality we find out that Pietro's soul has been stolen by Django Maximoff who has imprisoned his and Wanda's souls in wooden puppets of themselves. Pietro and Wanda go on a soul-searching journey with Django to discover the truth about their childhoods, learn more about their parentage and then return to Attilan.

It's on Attilan in The Avengers (1963) #188, that Pietro finds out he is going to be a father.

The Avengers (1963) #188

Following the pregnancy announcement, in Marvel Two-in-One (1974) #71, is the first time we see an Inhuman who isn't Crystal be spontaneously kind/nice to Pietro when Gorgon and Karnak invite Pietro to play a game with them. Crystal is also heavily pregnant in this comic so it's safe to assume that some time has passed and that as the pregnancy has continued the Inhumans have warmed some to Pietro's presence among them. With the importance we've seen them place on blood ties and Inhuman genetics in particular, this makes a lot of sense as Pietro is now not just married-in to the family, but is the father of the new member of the royal family.

The next time we see Pietro and Crystal is during Fantastic Four (1961) #239-240, where Pietro has become the sole defender of Attilan in a time of war when all of the Inhumans have come down with a mystery illness. During this time, Pietro continues to be extremely devoted to Crystal and deeply concerned about her health and the safety of their unborn child.

The Fantastic Four (1961) #239

During this great conflict when it seems to be resolved in Fantastic Four (1961) #240, we get another glimpse into the racism in Attilan. The Inhumans freeing those they formerly enslaved is described here as a "mistake," a "failure," and a "noble experiment." The Alphas are still inherently described as being "mindless drones" and as "less-than-human."

The Fantastic Four (1961) #240

It is into this continued dehumanization of the non-Inhuman on Attilan that Luna Maximoff is born. And Luna, is fundamentally not Inhuman nor Mutant at the time of her birth. But for now, Pietro is just concerned with his wife and daughter's health. He looks like the Grinch, but he's happy and that's what matters.

The Fantastic Four (1961) #240

Pietro's bond with Wanda has been repaired and his anger against Vision for existing has dissipated by the events of Vision and the Scarlet Witch (1982) #4, where Pietro encourages Vision to hold his daughter. We get a really great moment of seeing that Crystal and Wanda have started to form a friendship and that Pietro's two families (the one with his sister, and the one with his wife) are becoming closer.

Vision and the Scarlet Witch (1982) #4

But this is where things start to get a little dicey. Magneto, having recently discovered that he is the father of Pietro and Wanda, has now sought them out on Attilan (now moved to the moon) and is determined to try to once again get his children to join his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (he's not picking up on the message they keep putting down smh). And throughout this fight, Wanda, Pietro, and Erik all make it clear that Erik has severely mistreated his children and that still, knowing he is their father, he is willing to harm and even kill them. Crystal is there- she is witness to this.

Vision and the Scarlet Witch (1982) #4

And what does Crystal do? But let Magneto hold the baby, before Magneto has even revealed himself to be Pietro's father.

Vision and the Scarlet Witch (1982) #4

Within the pages of Vision and the Scarlet Witch we don't really get to see Pietro's whole reaction to this incredibly traumatizing series of events, but never fear, Wanda recounts more of the story in Avengers (1963) #234 (TW- G slur).

Avengers (1963) #234

Again, all of this is happening in front of Crystal. There is absolutely no way she gets out of this conversation without the knowledge that Pietro and Wanda have been horribly abused by their father and that Pietro is on some level afraid of turning into Magneto and is aware of the temper he shares with the older man and has been actively combating it. It would be reasonable to think that Pietro might need time to process this information.

When we next see Pietro and Crystal it is during a battle on Attilan against the Avengers in Avengers (1963) # Annual 12, inspired by Maximus. Maximus is spared, as always, because Black Bolt loves him too much to actually do anything about the consistent and ever present threat the man poses to the safety and security of their people. (This is a surprise tool that will come back to bite them in the ass). And once again, this issue presents the Alphas as Maximus' allies, continuing to have the formerly enslaved be shown as enemies of the "good" Inhumans.

Pietro and Crystal's relationship goes from bad to worse in The Thing (1983) #3. In this comic, Pietro wishes to partake of his right as an Inhuman father and in the fashion of the Inhumans, his adopted people, expose Luna to the Terrigan mists to spark forth her Inhuman abilities- Crystal does not agree. Crystal brings in Ben Grimm (The Thing) to stop Pietro from following her people's customs in regard to their child, and sends her dog, Lockjaw (who is technically an Inhuman himself but that's never really explored?) to teleport the baby away from Pietro. Crystal's reasoning for not wanting to expose Luna to the mists? She's afraid her daughter will become ugly.

No seriously, that's the reason. Pietro is worried about his daughter's life as one who is both mutant and Inhuman, what her humanity will bring her among her two super-powered peoples. Crystal is worried about her looks. Pietro acquiesces to his wife's wishes following the testimony of their dog/friend(?) and Ben Grimm and is thoroughly painted in the wrong for wanting to raise his daughter as an Inhuman among Inhumans. At least the rest of the royal family was on his side this time?

Anyway, let's remember that Lockjaw is a person and has been a person this whole time and then think back on how Crystal has treated him. Based on Ben and Pietro's reactions to Lockjaw speaking it's also pretty clear that nobody who isn't an Inhuman was aware that Lockjaw was a person and not a dog......anyway....

The Thing (1983) #3

We get a completely different idea of Pietro's feelings towards the Inhumans in Marvel Fanfare (1982) #14B than what we've seen previously. In this issue, Pietro is openly critical of the bread and circus approach the Inhumans take with their ruling, and in a shocking turn of events from the last 20+ issues, explicitly says "I'm no Inhuman, and I give no obeisance to Black Bolt...or to your foolish traditions." Pietro is accused of stealing a royal scepter because he made a comment about not being a monarchist (based) and is lured into a trap by someone he thought was his friend who he has had to twice this issue turn down a proposition for sex from.

Marvel Fanfare (1982) #14B* *editorial says this issue takes place before Attilan is moved to the moon, however, Luna's birth occurred after the fateful move and she was named for the move which puts the actual chronology of this issue in question, but I'm keeping it here for an easy publication order chronology

We get a clear image, even clearer than it's been in the past that the Inhumans hate Pietro for...not being an Inhuman.

Do we all remember when Crystal literally brought in people who aren't even related to her child to stop Pietro from exposing Luna to the Terrigan mists because she might turn ugly? We all remember this? Okay great- because she's now adopted Pietro's anxieties in Avengers (1963) #243.

The Avengers (1963) #243

And though Crystal apparently doesn't trust Pietro's parenting choices she's come around to his same anxieties about Luna's human-ness. Pietro tries to support her and then she goes "well none of us have experience with a human baby, what if we just.... didn't deal with that and hired a nanny." And Pietro goes along with it, trying to track down Bova, his minotaur-esque nursemaid from his own childhood who he's only just learned about and has met but once.

We see Crystal and Pietro together again during the wedding of Black Bolt and Medusa, in Fantastic Four (1961) # Annual 18. Where we see Pietro brooding over the wedding festivities. Here we learn that Pietro was given no role in his sister-in-law's wedding and that he is still continuously feeling like an outsider, despite all of the efforts we've seen him take in past appearances to be as much of an Inhuman as possible he is still kept at arms length even by these he considers family. Even Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic) wonders at the differences between Pietro and Crystal's wedding and the wedding of Black Bolt and Medusa- and Reed wonders if the difference can't be attributed to the fact that Crystal chose to marry someone who was not an Inhuman. And it's a fair question. Pietro even asks Crystal if it's okay that he and their daughter stand beside her during the wedding.

The Fantastic Four (1961) # Annual 18

In Vision and the Scarlet Witch (1985) #5, we see that Pietro has decided to introduce human traditions to the Inhumans with trick or treat, and that he plans to take Luna on her rounds, Crystal along with them of course.

Vision and the Scarlet Witch (1985) #5

Then in Vision and the Scarlet Witch (1985) #6 (that fateful Thanksgiving with the surprise Magneto appearance), we begin to see some strife between husband and wife. According to Crystal, she is "used to being alone." (She is literally a princess in a close-knit family who didn't even stop dating Johnny Storm to start dating her now-husband). And she adds that.

Vision and the Scarlet Witch (1985) #6

The militia, being something Pietro had discussed with Wanda briefly in #5, is a new responsibility of his entrusted to him by the Inhumans. He is now responsible for training a militia intended for the protection of Attilan. It's the first real job he's had since getting with Crystal and the moment he has responsibilities and focuses outside of her, she's not happy. Also yes, Luna does look like a Renaissance baby in this panel.

A month later, in Vision and the Scarlet Witch (1985) #7, we discover that Crystal, who started her relationship with Pietro by cheating on her then-boyfriend, is now cheating on her current husband.

Vision and the Scarlet Witch (1985) #7

Now, I've shown you all the lead-up there is to her cheating. I've covered all of the Pietro and Crystal interactions, and touched base with every major Crystal appearance leading up to this. There isn't any rhyme or reason to this aside from, Pietro has a job and he's doing it. And beyond this, as we move into #8, we learn that Crystal is planning on spending more time on Earth, and from Pietro's perspective it's to spend time with Wanda, but really it's to cheat on him. Once again, the militia (Pietro's job) is very much cited as the reason for this.

Vision and the Scarlet Witch (1985) #8

While Pietro runs off with Wanda, Vision, and Luke Cage to make sure that Wanda is safe for the duration of her pregnancy (it's a demon thing, Scarlet Witch stuff y'know?), we discover that Crystal is taking this opportunity to cheat on her husband again.

Vision and the Scarlet Witch (1985) #8

Crystal's affair goes on for MONTHS, and even her boyfriend is more worried about what all this is doing to Pietro than she is. She overdoses on anti-pollution potion in order to continue to see her boyfriend, and Pietro spends the vast majority of his time at her bedside frantically trying to get someone to wake her up in deep concern for her wellbeing.

In #10, Crystal calls out her boyfriend's name in her sleep, confessing to the affair, and Pietro tries to kill him. He's stopped by Vision and the Inhumans, and then tries to rally his militia against Norm the real estate agent, the man who has stolen his wife's affections. Wanda confronts Norm and he gives her a sad speech about how Pietro is "neglectful" of his wife's needs and ends it with "I'm not making excuses for deceiving you, but you like your brother better than a lot of people do." Essentially saying "It's okay that she cheated on Pietro, because he's Pietro." Wanda then talks to Crystal's spirit and Crystal says "I cheated on Pietro! I'd do it again!"

Pietro and Vision talk and Pietro comments on how Crystal doesn't allow him to pursue any of his own interests, which tracks with what we've seen that now that Pietro is spending time with the militia she's determined him neglectful and is using it as justification to cheat on him. Throughout all of this too, the Inhumans confirm to Pietro that they think lesser of him because he isn't one of them.

Pietro decides that he can't take Crystal back after this betrayal of his trust (fair and reasonable) to which Crystal calls him a "self-righteous pig" and even Wanda insists that he must take her back because he loves her. And in issue #11, Vision claims that Pietro has "run out on his wife" and Wanda thinks poorly of him for establishing a boundary of not wanting to be around a woman who cheated on him. Meanwhile, Pietro is having a mental breakdown about the fact that nobody actually loves him and that the loyalty he shows to others is not reciprocated.

Vision and the Scarlet Witch (1985) #11

And rounding us out in #12, Crystal tells Norm that she wants to keep seeing him and celebrates the fact that if Pietro stays away for a bit longer she'll be granted a divorce.

Here ends part 1 of the meta (stopping close to image limit at a good rest point) and I'll reblog this post with even more commentary at a later date!

Reading List so far:

The Fantastic Four (1961) #131-132 The Avengers (1963) #110 The Incredible Hulk (1968) #175 The Avengers (1963) #127 The Fantastic Four (1961) #150A-B <- Wedding Issue The Fantastic Four (1961) #158-159 The Avengers (1963) #137 Inhumans (1975) #3, 7, 12 The Fantastic Four (1961) # Annual 12 Avengers (1963) #170, 188 The Fantastic Four (1961) #239-240 Vision and the Scarlet Witch (1982) #2, 4 The Avengers (1963) #234, Annual 12 The Thing (1983) #3 Marvel Fanfare (1982) #14B Avengers (1963) #243 The Fantastic Four (1961) # Annual 18 Vision and the Scarlet Witch (1985) #5-12

[blazehedgehog]

Apart from animated shorts, IDW comics and Sonic Frontiers, I don't know Ian Flynn. However, I always hear great things about him. What makes Ian Flynn so special to the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise? If you had to rate his work on Sonic out of /100, how would you rate him?

I mean, in my mind, he's one of the few Sonic writers who just... understands how to write. He's great at natural sounding dialog, he understands how to imbue characterization, he knows how to setup and pay off story arcs...

To some degree these are very basic things but when it comes to people who write Sonic the Hedgehog media it can be a surprisingly scarce thing to come by at times.

Like the thing I always come back to is when he started having to do reboots for Archie Sonic. Starting in issue #225, Dr. Eggman, after being away for a long time, suddenly turns up again. (spoilers for what would lead into Archie Sonic's "finale" follow)

But he doesn't just suddenly reappear, he launches a new Death Egg, too. Now, in 2023, you're like, "so what?" because Sonic's proclivity for nostalgiabait has seen some version of the Death Egg relaunch like, six times now. But this story predates Sonic Generations. Bringing the Death Egg back here, now, is a big deal.

The story arc that follows is basically a rewriting of the comicbook's canon. The Death Egg mk.2's big new trick this time is effectively shifting the timeline. Sort of a combination of time travel and multi-dimensional travel. The freedom fighters assault the Death Egg, but Eggman isn't playing around this time. He holds all the cards and there's no time to formulate a plan; all they can really do is storm in there and hope for the best. Sonic and Princess Sally make it to the core of the Death Egg, but before they can do anything, Sonic gets distracted just long enough for a security turret to put several shots into Sally.

Before Sonic can assess whether or not she's even still alive, Eggman activates the Death Egg.

He's won.

The next four or five issues show Sonic meeting the cast of the comics for the first time, but now everyone has been mysteriously transplanted into the universe of the Genesis games. Nobody really knows how they got there, and there's this unshakable feeling they can't really articulate. Sonic is right at home in Green Hill Zone, but everyone else... They're supposed to be here, but they aren't supposed to be here at the same time.

Bits and pieces of their original dimension slowly start to leak back into their memories. Things that used to have happened, but now apparently no longer do. There's a strange melancholy to see characters remember a particularly dramatic moment from this book's long history, even if it's only for one or two panels.

Sonic's dimension has been stretched and twisted, and like rubber, it's trying snap back into place -- but Eggman is trying to take advantage of the confusion to activate the Death Egg mk.2's other new ability: to roboticize the entire planet in a single shot. It's his hope that in doing so, he can solidify this as the new reality and prevent it from going back to normal. The only thing stopping him is, of course, Sonic, who suddenly gets a flash of his own memories and begins putting together what's going on.

Sonic makes it up on to the Death Egg alone and faces off with Eggman in a recreation of the final fight in Sonic 2. In the case of this Archie Sonic story arc, it features a moment that would go on to be referenced in the Sonic movie. (Spoilers)

Something about Super Sonic's presence is causing the old reality to reassert itself faster than ever before, not helped by the fact Sonic himself uses his rapidly returning memories to activate Chaos Control. As reality corrects itself, we're unsure of what world our characters may be returning to or who will survive. Her memories returning to her, Sally shares some comfort in that, no matter what happens, Sonic will make things right.

Everybody re-emerges in the original timeline, and it's clear that things have changed ever so slightly. Sonic and Sally are still storming the interior of the Death Egg, but little things are different. And time appears to have been rewound a few seconds; Sally hasn't been shot yet. Sonic manages to rush in and save her before the turret can get to her. Sally is confused how Sonic could have known about the turret, but he just warns her to be more careful.

The thing is, Sally seems to have some distant, far off memory of being shot. But she shakes it as they work their way deeper in to the core.

There, they meet Eggman. He may not have been able to roboticize his shifted reality, but his planet roboticizer is still primed and ready to fire on the current reality. Sonic and Sally do their best to explain that roboticizing the entire planet all at once may give Eggman a victory by technicality, but it will be an impossible nightmare for him to deal with all the side effects and repercussions. Eggman doesn't care. This is how he wins. All he has to do is give the order.

Sonic obviously won't let that happen, but Eggman has both Metal Sonic and Silver Sonic at his side. One by itself is enough to give Sonic trouble, but both at once might actually kill him. Sonic is too busy fighting for survival to even get close to Eggman.

Eggman turns to gloat at Princess Sally, but she's gone. Crawled into a nearby duct, where she's trying to use her personal computer, Nicole, to find something -- anything -- to shut down the Planet Roboticizer.

Anything Nicole can do here would take days to process. They have seconds. There is but one option: invert the roboticizer. Part of Sonic and Sally's attempt to reason with Eggman was realizing that if the roboticizer tries to convert something that's already mechanical, that thing explodes. Ergo, inverting the roboticizer into the Death Egg will cause it to explode, along with whoever inside of it.

Out of time, out of options, Sally forces Nicole to back up her files somewhere safe and inverts the beam.

The Planet Roboticizer overloads, destroying itself before it can destroy the Death Egg. But the room that Sonic, Eggman, and Sally are in gets caught in the blast.

And though Sonic himself appears to be fine...

Sally is not.

Princess Sally was always "the tactician" of the Freedom Fighters. Her ability to weigh risk and strategize a plan of attack was deeply important to their success rate. Now that mind works for Eggman -- and he quickly sets about upgrading her tech to make her faster and more deadly, turning her into one of the most dangerous threats the book had ever seen. She is cold, calculating, and ruthless beyond anything else. Not only that, but the book has also established that customizing a roboticized person makes it impossible to turn them back -- by modifying Metal Sally, Eggman is ensuring she remains his forever.

The Freedom Fighters, now without their leader, are scattered and confused. Every part of this is a worst case scenario.

It's a wonderful disaster and a hell of a story. Metal Sally stuck around for over a year, but before Ian could finish what he wanted to do with her, the legal battle with Ken Penders got more aggressive, necessitating yet another reboot that ultimately returned the Princess to normal.

If it wasn't for the fact that they did this second reboot inside of the Mega Man crossover comic, it'd probably hurt a lot worse, but that first Mega Man crossover is legit one of the best things Archie Sonic ever did. Using that as a springboard to say "Sally's fine! Orbot and Cubot are here now! Don't worry about it!" is actually totally okay.

All throughout this, the thing to keep in mind is pacing. These stories are action packed, they move quickly, they playing on long standing feelings the reader has developed for these characters over hundreds of issues, and they never feel like they're pulling their punches. Rarely are they confusing or tedious or feel like they're dragging. There's always stakes. Things are always happening for a good reason.

Ian Flynn knows how to write and spin a good yarn, and he's good at understanding the dynamics of these characters and how they all fit together. The fact that his work on Sonic got him jobs all over the comics industry should tell you that much.

He's not perfect, though, and I do wonder if this recent stint on IDW is showing that something in the writing process is getting stretched a little thin. I know IDW has been broadening their writing pool as Ian becomes more busy with things like Sonic Frontiers and other projects, but it's clear something unexpected is causing a dip in quality as of late. I wish only the best for everyone involved and whatever is happening over there.

[cantsayidont]

July-August 1948. Long before Supergirl donned her controversial headband, stories set on Krypton had regularly shown Kryptonian men wearing headbands. The above panel from SUPERMAN #53 is possibly the earliest example, at least in the comic books. Not all Kryptonian men wore headbands, but many did, including Superman's father, Jor-El. In 1973, an installment of the "Fabulous World of Krypton" backup strip finally offered an explanation of this unusual custom. This story, by Elliot S! Maggin and Dave Cockrum, is also one of the most distinctly Jewish-coded stories in the Superman canon. Let's take a look under the cut …

There had been flashbacks and time travel stories set on Krypton going back to the earliest Superman adventures, but "The Fabulous World of Krypton" strip first appeared in SUPERMAN #233 back in 1971. These backup strips, generally running between five and seven pages, ran fairly regularly through the early 1980s; the last was in 1982. While many were narrated by Superman, who often appeared at the beginning and end to provide a framing sequence, this one, from SUPERMAN #264, is noteworthy in that neither Superman nor Supergirl is even mentioned, save in the logo:

This story is set on Argo City, home of Supergirl. Although Argo City survived Krypton's destruction (in fact, in pre-Crisis history, Supergirl wasn't born until more than 15 years after Krypton exploded), the red sky in the first panel indicates that this story takes place beforehand. Nim-Ed and his unnamed mother were created for this story and never mentioned again; they're just ordinary Argonians with no particular relationship to any of the major Superman characters.

A noteworthy point here is that while Nim-Ed is shown to be on his way to school, the following account is a story related to him by his mother at home — it's a folk tradition, not an academic history, although since Nim-Ed obviously knows at least part of the story (and his mother implies that he should already know the rest), we can probably assume it's part of Kryptonian school curricula.

Exactly when this story is supposed to have taken place is vague. The pre-Crisis history of Kryptonian civilization spanned almost 10,000 Kryptonian years (over 14,000 Earth years); we only get snippets of it, establishing any kind of sequence of events is difficult, and it's not always clear how literally some of these stories should be taken. (For instance, an earlier installment indicates that all Kryptonians can trace their lineage back to two stranded space travelers named "Kryp" and "Tonn"!) However, if you've ever been to a Passover seder or watched THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, it's hard to miss the parallels here. ("When Krypton was [space] Egypt land …")

An intriguing detail is that we're shown that headbands were already worn prior to these events for a different cultural purpose: as part of marriage ceremonies. The origin of that custom is left to the imagination, but it obviously suggests a longer history of which this is only part. (One segment of THE KRYPTON CHRONICLES #3, published eight years after this story, indicates that the Kryptonian marriage ceremonies of an even earlier era involved bracelets representing Krypton's two original moons, which implies that the marital headbands may have been an evolution of that older custom.)

Note also the presence of the priest, which is relatively unusual: Pre-Crisis Superman stories were generally very cagey about discussing Kryptonian religious practice, although other stories indicate that earlier polytheistic traditions were eventually subsumed by a monotheistic system of belief based around Rao, previously a sun god whose name remained Kryptonians' name for their red sun. Where this priest and his ankh symbols fit into that progression is anyone's guess.

Note also that neither Rik-Ar nor Jani is any kind of warrior; Rik-Ar is a healer and Jani is a teacher.

This bit of business with the fake plague doesn't make a great deal of sense, except to illustrate that Pharaoh, er, Taka-Ne, is a cruel tyrant who doesn't believe in sick days. However, many of these stories revolve around the characters contriving some kind of clever invention, and it's conceivable that editor Julius Schwartz insisted on it here. Also, Exodus involves 10 plagues, so perhaps Maggin figured a story that evoked the Exodus ought to have at least one.

The guards' reaction to the headbands is nonsensical: The guards saw the rashes themselves and were frightened of them, so why would they assume the plague was psychosomatic? Of course the point is that Taka-Ne doesn't really care so long as it doesn't trouble his slave labor force, but it's an odd digression.

Another point of note: ALL of the slaves are wearing the headbands, not only the men.

Here we segue from Exodus to Spartacus, as the slave laborers take their liberation into their own hands. For a Superman story of this time, this is unexpectedly violent, and it's a little surprising that all the strangulation passed editorial muster — comic book editorial standards of the time, not to mention the Comics Code, tended to frown on types of violence that readers might readily imitate, and this would seem to qualify.

Faced with the threat of imminent bloody retribution, Taka-Ne doesn't harden his heart, but seeks instead to cut a deal. The narrative captions would seem to emphasize that there's a lot of lethal violence taking place — not surprising in context, but unusual for a Superman story in 1973. Note that we see women as well as men attacking and presumably killing Taka-Ne's guards.

Note again that in the celebratory scenes, women as well as men are wearing headbands, just as we previously saw women using their headbands as weapons. However, Nim-Ed's mother then describes the headband as "the symbol of a free man on Krypton." The story she's just described took place thousands of years earlier, so the chauvinism of this tradition's modern practice presumably evolved in the interim. Combined with the fact that the headbands previously had a quite different ceremonial significance, it emphasizes that Kryptonian culture is not static, with such signifiers taking on distinct meanings at different times. In that light, Supergirl's later decision to adopt the headband herself makes perfect sense, representing both the liberalization of a current cultural practice (which is how she describes it in SUPERGIRL #17) and a hearkening back to the folkloric tradition from which it emerged.

This story doesn't delineate any specific cultural or tribal divide between Rik-Ar's people and Taka-Ne's, although it's clearly implied that the overthrow of Taka-Ne occupies a similar cultural space for modern Kryptonians as the story of the Exodus does for Jews and Christians. In that regard, it's also noteworthy that this is presented as the story of a secular liberation; it may also hold religious significance that's not mentioned here, but this is a cultural tradition rather than a specifically spiritual one. (The Adam Strange story in MYSTERY IN SPACE #76, also edited by Julius Schwartz, though written by Gardner Fox, presents a comparable historical liberation as part of the story of the foundation of Ranagar City, the home of Adam's girlfriend and later wife Alanna.)

Finally, the actual use of headbands among modern Kryptonians seems at least broadly analogous to the practice of wearing kippot (yarmulkes). Nim-Ed's mother's remark about wearing headbands to dress up might suggest that the headband is more comparable to a necktie, but that isn't really borne out by the stories in which the headbands appear, which show some Kryptonian men wearing headbands even in casual surroundings and others going un-headbanded in quite formal situations. Consider for example Jor-El's fateful meeting with Krypton's ruling council in SUPERMAN #53:

These are Krypton's highest officials in an official proceeding, and their garb otherwise seems quite dressy, but only Jor-El has a headband, so the choice to go headbanded seems dictated by something other than just the formality of the occasion. There's no specific indication that it's a matter of religious expression, but that would explain most of the variations in practice.

(It should be said, however, that headbands appear much more commonly in Bronze Age depictions of Kryptonian culture — particularly in stories published after "The Headband Warriors of Krypton!" — than in stories published in the 1950s or 1960s, and later depictions of the same events will sometimes show characters wearing headbands who were not in previous versions. However, there are still characters who rarely if ever wear one, including Superman himself.)

[faline-cat444]

Momdark

From what I have recently discovered this is another piece of Dexter's Laboratory that must have initially started out as the comic but then managed to get animated but not without some changes to the plot direction.Our first major difference is how the two start out.In the animated version we have the matriarch driving home from the store to be greeted by her kids...

...While Mandark is spying on them from his own lab and wondering how he can get close enough to Dexter in order to destroy him.Which of course leads him to get the idea of disguising as Mama.

The comic however initially leaves us in the dark of how he managed to capture her.The tank she's also being kept in also has a few fishy details.

The disguise montage also had a bit of extra bits as well as a correction of sorts.The comic excludes the bra-wearing and sock stuffing.

But both do show off applying the pillow butt which kind of goes out of order in the comic since in the preview panel Mandark put the gloves on.

Line delivery stays the same between both interpretations of this shot

The comic gives us no clear idea of what exactly was happening that Mandark was able to get the upper hand on the mother but the cartoon shows he timed it to sneak up on her when she went to get a grocery bag left behind in the car.So in the cartoon he's just acting like she just returned in the house with that final bag.Dexter and Dee Dee are already in the kitchen doing homework so Mandark uses this chance to try sneaking into Dexter's room...But before he can open the door the father enters the picture and brings up the issue of food.

The comic differs by having him pick the lock,thinking things are going easy and he could have pulled this scheme off ages ago,and walking upstairs to the door that leads to Dexter's bedroom only to be greeted by the siblings who are now heading downstairs because they want some dinner.

At this point Mandark is freaking out over the fact he needs to make something to eat in order to keep up the act.In both versions he ends up making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches but the cartoon adds the details he was originally supposed to make a chicken pot pie.

We soon enough reach the montage where husband/father,son,and daughter are asking for the help of a mother's touch for different tasks.Some of which are nearly identical copies but happening in a completely different order.

The cartoon adds that this is basically how the rest of Mandark's day went until night finally falls.Dexter demands a goodnight kiss from his "mother" which internally Mandark refuses to do but has to go through to not cause suspicion on identity.This segment is also where some of the more drastic changes begin to unroll.

Already disgusted from the fact he kissed Dexter he then comes quick to realize if that's a bedtime ritual then perhaps he can use this as an opportunity to land a smooch on Dee Dee.But she has other plans in mind involving bunnies.

But the most drastic change that had to go between the two mediums would in my opinion be THIS

After sleeping it off we get what's more-or-less a few more near shot-for-shot redraws but the comic brings a dog named Dreyfus into the mix who is a different design compared to the dog who we see the family owns when the plot finds its existence convenient.The cartoon also implies Mandark might know how to bake cookies while the comic has him just making sandwiches for everyone again.Every step Mandark gets closer to infiltrating the lab someone's calling on him to do something but in both he eventually has enough minutes to make it behind the bookshelf.Not sure how he was planning to destroy it in the cartoon but the comic shows he brought a mallet in order to smash things up...If it wasn't for the fact he was exhausted so he goes back downstairs and slinks onto the couch where the rest of the family is.

Somehow the statement of "You missed a spot" referring to the wet spot on the coffee table resonates with the real deal so she regains consciousness,breaks free from the tank,and crashes through the house window with mop in hand.Minor identity confusion on who is the "real" mother,Mandark caving in because he's realized he can't hold the act any longer(With the cartoon we also learn Mandark apparently knows how to give a good back massage).

As one final detail differentiating the scripts Mandark mentions he doesn't want to destroy the lab anymore before storming off back to his house.Taking back her official role Dexter's mother asks what the heck that statement about the laboratory was supposed to mean.All he says about it is "I don't know".

Our final scene in both takes is the trio demanding the actual woman to do some more tasks while she stares towards the reader/viewer.A minor error is in play for the cartoon since her ear has been miscolored as a part of her hair.

[apartments4rent]

Apartments For Rent: TEN-YEAR RETROSPECTIVE

Ooooohhhh man, this… This is fucking me way up, big time… I don’t even know where to begin with this… I should definitely be using this free time I have today doing my homework, you know, the thing with a hard deadline? That was technically due yesterday?? Well, how about instead of that, I take a walk down memory lane…

Do you remember the 21st night of September? 

Picture this: It’s 2013. It is your sophomore year of high school. You have more friends than you ever have in your life and they are all so wonderful to you (this wouldn’t always be the case and they all wouldn’t stick around but you didn't know that yet). One of you proposes the question: If you were a monster, what would you be? A witch. A vampire. A werewolf. A mermaid. A ghost. A selkie. A dullahan. (You had to look those last two up.) You are so inspired by this that you want to make a story for these ideas to live in. You create a fantasy. Where all your best friends get to live together under one roof. A slice of a life you know you’ll never have. It’s actually the 20th night of September that you created the tumblr blog where most of what comes out of this will live (your first post says “why do i do this to myself”) but it is the 21st night that your creations get their names. Their genders don’t all stay the same but their cores haven’t really changed. “a very dramatic/theatrical witch who loves animals and sass master. a bubbly and happy mermaid who gets really scary when u cross her. a passive, nerdy vampire who isnt so out spoken. a moody selkie who loves to learn and lost her seal skin. a strong beautiful fairy girl who doesnt take shit from no one but is v nice to her friends. a ghost girl from the 1920s who is forgetful and not really confident but really likes her new friends.” You put a disclaimer at the bottom of the post, clarifying that these descriptions shouldn’t be taken as a description of your friends but separate characters entirely. This is also the birth of Marvin, the human man created to navigate this world of chaos, not based on anyone you know in real life. The straight man in this goofball circus. Your Original Character. (Who, you now realize, was designed as the boring main male character in the harem anime.) This was the genesis. And you would never know peace in your life ever since. 

And then what happened?

Bro, so much. A lot can happen in 10 years. You develop the characters further. You make a small town for them to live in (even though you’ve never even been to a small town in your life). You make (bad) art. You make sims because you hate the way you draw but you need a physical version of them to exist outside your head, as you see them. You apparently make a rule where no one outside of your little group is supposed to know about these characters (because you “had an experience” and “don’t wanna repeat it”). You make Alternate Universes for these Alternate Universe selves to populate, again and again. (As of right now, your “AU of an AU” list stands at 26 but there are probably more dumb ones not yet counted on the doc you made.) You try to make a one-shot comic collaboration with all your friends but no one seems to agree on how it should go so nothing but a script and panel formatting ends up getting made. (You know that your script was worse with many unnecessary details but you were bad at killing your darlings and stubborn about your ideas being the best. You’ll learn eventually.) You love and appreciate all the things your friends make for this story you start to feel full ownership of. (You haven’t noticed yet how much of a control freak you are.) Their writing and art give you life, especially considering they are doing The Most while you mostly just come up with ideas. The setting goes from apartment building to boarding house and back again before a year has passed. The first anniversary is a blast! You actually wrote something! And drew something you were proud of! Others wrote and drew and it was great. (How would you know it would never be like this again?) 

And the years go by and by… 

After the first year, you decided you wanted to make a dating sim with these silly characters because you just loved them so much. You shipped the characters (not realizing that your friends did it as a way to express they had crushes on each other, conveniently shipping your self-insert with the only man/only character not based on a friend.) There were still a lot of headcanons being made and posts being shared. But noticeably less and less. Then the second anniversary hit. Not much fanfare. After the second year, more characters started popping up based on more friends you make. Some of the friends that were there in the beginning weren’t anymore and you try not to think about it. After all, these characters aren’t your friends, they are separate and distinct from them. So it’s still OK to play with them, right? (The answer must be yes; ten years later you still do.) Then the third anniversary happens, with 4 posts between them. It was understandable. That was your senior year of high school. Everyone was getting ready to go their separate ways. You were moving clear across the country. Your friend group was getting smaller still and this big shake-up would prove who would stick around to still be a part of this thing and who would remain a memory for you to look back on in ten years. 2017, though, was a big year for the blog. You were unemployed and not yet going to college so you had A LOT of free time on your hands. It was probably the most number of posts you made since the first year of the blog. It was magic. Then you got a job. There have been 16 posts in the last 6 years. 2019 had none. 2020 and 2021 had one each. They were all made by you. There has certainly been less activity on the blog but that doesn’t mean these kids have been lying dormant all this time. You haven’t stopped thinking about them since they first popped up into your head. In 2019, you rewrote the story you had written for one of those anniversaries; the first chronological beat. (You haven’t read it since then; You have no idea if it’s good or not.)  In 2020, you attempted to write the actual story (like fr fr) for NaNoWriMo -- you didn’t get very far but it’s the thought that counts? 2021 was a quiet year as far as actual writing goes - as was 2022 - but trust that your brain definitely didn’t forget about them. 

The Retro part of the Spective 

Alright, enough second-person POV. 

Ten years.

Ten years. 

Talk about hard pills to swallow (thanks FOB). 

I’ve had this “story”, these characters, banging around in my head for ten years and what do I have to show for it? A couple thousand words and a blog full of half-thought ideas? Around this time last year, I was excited about this anniversary. I made a new Twitter for it (before that died) and was planning on actually publishing something to do this story justice… and I chickened out. I convinced myself, once again, that I wasn’t ready. That other things were more important, they took precedence. Do I have even that much to prove I was right? No, I don’t because I really haven’t changed all that much in ten years, if you can believe it. I know, a real shocker. (I still like all the same things I liked back in high school for crying out fucking loud!) I wanted to reach out to the people I used to do this with, to see if they still wanted to be part of it. (I’m sure that wouldn’tve been at all hard, I wonder why I didn’t follow through?) I wanted to have something so I would be able to say, “I did it.” So that maybe, I could finally move on. But that���s the thing, isn’t it… I don’t want to move on. I’m stuck in this arrested development because I refuse to change, to give up any past part of myself. Because if I don’t have that, I don’t know who I am. 

So now what? What’s all this for? One big, sad diary entry reflecting on the parts of myself that I already know very well? 

Honestly, I don’t know. I was hoping I could come to some sort of conclusion by writing this but as it turns out, it only made me want to cry. 

I wanted this to end on a good note.

I spent all day writing this, I can’t end it like this.

So let’s instead talk about all the things that have changed about these goofballs over the years:

Mystic Cove is a city in a Northern California town. It started out in Florida, it almost ended up as a mountain town. I also briefly considered straight up placing it in San Diego because there are some nice, beautiful, old-ass buildings downtown that juxtapose the cold, sleek skyrises in such a way that I thought about writing something about being lonely in a city and finding your own family. 

Vast Acres has been an apartment building, a boarding house, Mediterranean Revival, Victorian, Queen Anne, even briefly considered a Bed and Breakfast. All I know is it has to be the place where this family gets together. At one point under the ownership and operation of Marvin’s dad Alejandro, it is now bequeathed to Marvin by a mysterious, freshly dead uncle/great uncle. 

Marvin is a wholeass person to me, in that he’s not completely knowable to even me anymore. Marvin is probably the person in Mystic Cove I know the BEST and that like doesn’t mean anything to me. Like yeah, I’ve written pages and pages and answered so many pointless questions about him but… I don’t know how else to describe him other than, “He’s an enigma.” The most significant thing about him that’s changed is I’m considering undeading his mom? Just because I feel like we’ve had enough dead mom media and it’s not something I can speak to truthfully. Briefly considered making her a runaway mom? But we’re still thinking about it. I think her name is Lily? 

Mel’s name went from Melinda to Melody because I decided Melinda was a weird name? And Mel likes music so I thought I would be clever. She went from “Marv’s sister” and side character to basically co-lead. Mel was even almost briefly considered as the real main character for a time when I thought to lean into its roots as a product of a high schooler’s imagination and go full YA coming-of-age adventure. It was actually the subject of my 2020 NaNo attempt. I decided against it because I loved Marv too much to push him to “supporting character” and if there’s something about me that’s developed, it’s that I don’t much care for YA books anymore. 

Amber is unsurprisingly my favorite because I’m a Leo. I think I finally decided on a backstory for her that I like and she’s not white anymore? Like, not fully anyway lmao. Before she was like, from someplace in England with like Spanish parents so like tan? But now we’ve decided that she’s from colonized Mexico and her father is a white devil. :) I’ll let you figure that one out. Over these ten years, I’ve grappled with the fact that an immortal is almost impossible to understand. I’ve gone back and forth on whether her immortality is on purpose or by accident or a curse or what. Honestly, I’m still thinking about it, I don’t know for sure what I’ll end up picking. Right now though, it is an involuntary immortality with her life being tied to her sister’s (yes, the cat). Details are fuzzy. I’d have to finish the main story first but if I were to make a spin-off, I would make a prequel story about Amber’s life because it is QUITE eventful. 

Lucas is a man now lmao. And so is Will. And they r gay. For each other. But that’s been that way from the beginning lol. I think Luc’s story had to do with self-worth and Will… Will didn’t have much going on in my mind. My instinct was to make him a himbo but Will has always been very smart in my head so I don’t think that will work? Dude’s beefy asf and mad respectful so perfect man tbh? No notes. 

Jenny’s been my way to try to break down the trope “Born Sexy Yesterday” because that’s just the kinda guy I am. No, but fr I think I was making a very infantilized version of Jenny initially and that’s why I shipped her with Mel in so many AUs?? I’m not against skewing Jenny younger to make that ship viable in canon but I don’t know if that’s the story I want to tell. I don’t think Jenny ever had a goal beyond “Get to the surface” which she gets when she makes her appearance in the story so?? Where do we go from here? Things to think about…

Rohen was fat (like a proper seal should be) before they lost their skin on the beach to some snot-nosed kid and became depressed. When they start healing on their depression journey, they start to gain weight again and it's a good thing. :) 

Everyone else I haven’t mentioned yet hasn’t changed much (ie. I haven’t thought about them much). It’s not that I have favorites (even though I just said that I did), it’s just that I basically go down a list whenever I think about these guys, and, due to my short attention span, I never make it all the way down the list. AND honestly, it’s probably for the best because looking back… there were WAAAY too many characters to keep track of ngl… Like it’s a slice-of-life thing, I know. Not every character has to be involved in every storyline but like… At some point, you have to draw a line at, “How many named characters with their own plotlines can I insert into this story?” YKWIM? Especially because at one point there was a whole roster of other people who lived in the apartment building when there were like 20 units. That was (rightly) reduced back down to just the core cast. 

You can pry Jonesy from my cold, dead hands, tho. He’s perfect. He can stay.

This post took me literally all day. 

I’m tired.

I don’t really expect anyone to read all this but if you are not me and you made it to the bottom, congratulations! You now know me on a much deeper level! :) I hope I can convince myself to buckle down and write, straight up. Maybe NaNo this year? No promises. I’m trying to apply for university this year and living situation issues might take precedence but such is life, right? 

Thank you.

I love you all.

For giving me this gift.

Even if you never intended to give it fully to me.

It’s mine now, bitches. >:) 

Here’s to 10 years! And many (but hopefully not too many) more…

Cheers. 🥂🍾

❤️

[just-an-enby-lemon]

oh i'm glad you liked that first part and that it wasn't too much after all, i tried to keep the main parts of the story (the ones that aren't weird and edgy) as much as possible so i wasn't sure if that made this version too edgy too

for the second half though, i think the present part is the way weaker half of the original comic. the past part isn't how i would do Edward's backstory either but up to the weird "this kid was born evil after all" murder it's fine so there wasn't too much i had to change. the present part is a different beast though, i still tried to keep most of the plot structure intact but while making it more connected to the past and without the really edgy moments, the abuse apologism and the awful Batman characterisation about how he should kill actually because trying to 'be nice' to the rogues doesn't work or whatever. this one got longer than i thought it would too so i will have to send it in two parts too, if you want to see the second half of it?

so to begin with i would have the story start a bit different so it still starts with him getting himself arrested to talk to Batman but instead of shooting a random man he commits a different random crime, like what he did in that Valentines special where he breaks into a flower shop to leave a message. he gets arrested but Batman doesn't show up so Gordon interrogates him instead. when Ed asks why Batman didn't show up to interrogate him Gordon tells him that it's because he is predictable and Batman has more important things to do than talk to a villain past his prime. but he does not bring up that he was responsible for The Killing Joke somehow in response to that (which is a stupid retcon because it both doesn't make sense that he would have done that and it partly takes away Joker's agency in that story too if he was just committing someone else's plan) and instead just replies with a dejected 'ah, I see.' or so. then you have that scene where the Arkham warden that brings the inmates their food talks to him and asks him if he knows any fun wordplays for his daughter that enjoys those, but instead of cutting the warden's fingers off with a food tray (which was super edgy and also impossible unless this Edward is really strong?) Edward just does not respond at all which makes the warden decide to unlock the cell door and check in on him because it's weird that the guy who never could shut up suddenly does not respond at all anymore. there's a wide shot panel from the hallway of the warden walking into the completely dark cell, then one of the just the open cell door in the same position as the first panel, then a panel that is just completely black. and then it cuts to a scene of Batman doing something unrelated in the city when he gets a call from Gordon that the Riddler has escaped Arkham. i don't think the reader needs to know how exactly he did that, since it doesn't matter for the story and also this way it cuts out those super edgy scenes of the warden getting his fingers cut off and of Ed mind controlling the other cops into shooting eachother while laughing in the blood spray or whatever that scene was supposed to be. this way it is hopefully also more ominous. so Bruce gets that call but tells Gordon that he doesn't have time to find Edward, he says Gordon can find him himself he should just look at one of Ed's usual spots. we see a timelapse of Bruce continuing that random investigation he was on when Gordon calls him again. "Gordon. What is it?" "It's about the Riddler..." "Did you find him?" "No. But there is something you might want to see." Bruce gets to the precinct and Gordon shows him footage from a security camera, taken not long ago. it's that scene of Edward killing the random civilian (the art for that scene was good). this gets Batman's attention because unceremoniously killing some random person does not fit with Ed's MO.

this is when we start seeing the past flashbacks, starting with one of kid Ed being the 'perfect' student, quiet, obedient, etc. he doesn't get called by his name yet, only by the new surname from the original, so that the reader is a bit confused about what that has to do with the main plot. after that it cuts back to the present where Batman is following one of Ed's ex henchmen since he strangely has found no clues to go off of this time, except instead of brutally torturing and waterboarding him like in the original (seriously wtf was that) he uses his "scary persistence predator shadow creature" method of indimidation where the person he is following is running away while he doesn't need to run, only has to slowly follow them and somehow still lurks in every shadow. he chases the henchman into a tight dead end alleyway and blocks the way back out which gives the opportunity for a cool "Batman as a big intimidating shape made of shadows" panel. and unlike the original Batman doesn't even have to hurt the terrified henchman at all to interrogate him because the poor guy is just that intimidated by him. his story is pretty much the same as the original though: some days before his intentional arrest Riddler suddenly fired all his henchmen without warning even though some of them have been working for him for more than a decade and didn't even tell them why. the only reason the henchman Bruce is interrogating can think of is that shortly before firing everyone Ed had been contacted by a woman claiming to be his mother and that he has been acting off and like he is lost in thought ever since he visited her. immediately after the panel of the henchman saying this it cuts to another past flashback, kid Ed with his father, the way he is being forced into academic excellence and how he gets punished for negligible or even just perceived mistakes, maybe in this case his father starts getting angry because Ed asks about his mother that he never really knew or so. it still doesn't mention his first name but the readers can guess who that child is now.

ok i don't want to send you an ask that is way too long but if you do want to know the rest of my idea i can send a second part ? that second half is the darker part though to keep some of the atmosphere of the original (mostly of the art)

Okay. I'm invested.

And I will keep being impressed how you can make Tom King's Riddler make sense as a single person and not a different characther every saga more than Tom King himself.

This is really good and I already care more about this Batman. Also yay for finding ways to use the art style I really hate the future part and couldn't think of a way to do it but you did (also the scene of the guy asking the riddle super confident Eddie is just there reminds me of the scene in the King Tut Tomb storyline where the guy goes "Eddie is just sleeping there is no way he scaped" but he did and the comic just like you knowingly let's the how to the audience to guess in this case even better when we know the alternative was that whole edgyfest). If it won't botter you I would love to see the second part.

[silverwhittlingknife]

Top 10 Moments with Dick, Tim, and Food

(in chronological order - it’s sort of a canon timeline but also I was hungry)

Shared food is one of the ways that Dick and Tim are often shown bonding.  And by “shared food,” what I mean is, Dick finds food for Tim.  Please enjoy my ten favorite examples.

1. Dick makes dinner in Prodigal 1

(My favorite part of this panel is Tim’s weird smushed-face of amazement in the second panel.  “Wow!  A WHOLE PLATE OF FOOD!  Just for me!”  My second favorite part is that I have no idea what food that’s supposed to be.)

This panel comes from the Prodigal arc - Dick and Tim’s time as Batman and Robin - which is when Dick begins a long career of keeping Tim fed and when the two of them first really get to know each other.

Up until this point, their major previous interactions have been three variations on “Tim tracks Dick down in NYC and an initially-skeptical Dick reluctantly agrees to help him with whatever” (Lonely Place of Dying, New Titans 64, Showcase ‘93 11) and “Dick and Tim and Bruce fight Azrael” (in Knightfall).

But they’re about to get a whole lot closer in Prodigal.

Bruce and Alfred have both left the country (Bruce’s back is broken, and Alfred’s quit), so Dick and Tim are alone in the Manor.  Or, well, Tim technically has his own home and family, but apparently he doesn’t eat there, as we discover in Prodigal 1 when Tim hangs around the Manor long enough that Dick makes dinner for him.

2. Orange juice in Prodigal 5

Dick’s still living by himself in the Manor, and Tim’s living next door and sneaking over to be Robin.  Tim is apparently still not eating at home, though, because Dick has started stocking the fridge for him:

3. Pineapple and andouille pizza in Detective Comics 698

After the end of Prodigal, Dick moves from NYC to Gotham for a while.  When the deadly Clench sweeps through Gotham and Tim gets infected, Dick saves him from an angry mob.  Shortly after finding a cure, they investigate a case together.  

Over Alfred’s grumpy objections, Dick orders pizza for the two of them:

(Alfred does not consider this real dinner.)

4. Soup in Nightwing 6

After that, Dick moves to Blüdhaven to investigate a series of murders, and Tim’s his first visitor.  Dick’s self-conscious and defensive (he feels like he hasn’t been accomplishing much), which makes him initially kinda hostile, but he softens quickly.  Dick takes Tim along on his stakeout and starts confiding his anxieties about his stalled investigation in Blüdhaven, and since it’s cold, he shares his thermos of soup:

(The soup is no longer Dick’s.  It is now Tim’s.)

5. Pizza again, in Secret Origins 80-Page Giant

It’s when Dick’s living in Blüdhaven that these two start to get really close.  In this comic, shortly after the Gotham earthquake, Tim’s hanging out in Blüdhaven again, and by this point, the comics are implying Tim comes down to visit regularly - both his “Day in the Life”-type comics in Young Justice involve spending time in Blüdhaven while his teammates are spending time with family.  This is also around the time when they’re going trainsurfing.

It looks like Dick has bought pizza again - those boxes on the floor say “Blud Pie.”

This is the first comic in which Tim is teasingly nicknamed “little brother.” <3

6. Christmas cookies and eggnog in DCU Holiday Bash 3:

After this, Tim’s alone for the holidays and gloomy about it, and Dick and Babs get him to come over to the Clocktower, supposedly for a Robin-mission...only to surprise him with a Christmas get-together:

Technically, Babs made the cookies, but since it’s implied this invitation was Dick’s idea, I’m giving Dick credit for the egg nog. XD

7. Cheesesteak fajitas in Young Justice 22

The aftermath of the earthquake brings Dick and Tim even closer together, since both Bruce and Alfred disappear into No Man’s Land, leaving Dick and Tim on their own on the outside for a while.  (Among other things, while Bruce is AWOL, Dick goes to Tim’s Young Justice parent-teacher conference.)

After No Man’s Land is over and Gotham City is open for business again, Tim’s father (furious at his son’s disappearances) puts him in a strict all-boys boarding school.  But that doesn’t stop Tim from continuing to regularly sneak out to Blüdhaven.  

Here, Tim’s tagging along on yet another one of Dick’s patrols, where he snags some cheesesteak fajitas: 

You can tell Tim has transitioned to little-brother status because Tim’s now just straight-up stealing the food.  “Save one for me, okay?” =p

8. Popcorn in Gotham Knights 9

In Blüdhaven, Dick’s investigation of Blockbuster is getting pretty dangerous, and he calls Tim for help and transportation when his car gets blown up.  Returning the favor after things have calmed down, Dick provides much cooler transportation for Tim when he picks him up from boarding school on his motorcycle.

Dick takes Tim into the city to hang out, screw around, and visit Bruce at work, and buys him popcorn:

(Like a good older brother, Dick went to buy the popcorn himself while leaving Tim keeping an eye on the festivities.)

9. Hors d'oeuvres and champagne in Robin 175

Unfortunately, after the popcorn comic, things turn DARK for a long while and nobody shares food because they are all too busy being miserable.  (The only positive thing that does happen is that Dick gets adopted, finally.)

Shortly after Dick is adopted, though, Bruce is accused of murder, and though he’s eventually proved innocent, after that everything in Gotham and Blüdhaven explodes (often literally).  Donna Troy is murdered, and Tim’s dad and girlfriend and schoolmate and stepmom and fake uncle are all murdered, and Dick’s neighbors are murdered, and Haly’s Circus is set on fire, and Gotham erupts in a gang war, and Jason comes back from the dead and murders a bunch of people, and Blüdhaven is blown up, and Superboy is murdered.  This is a very grimdark era of comics.

Anyway, after all that, Dick and Tim and Bruce go on a year-long round-the-world trip.  

And by “Dick and Tim and Bruce,” I actually mean “Dick and Tim,” because Bruce spends a major chunk of the trip meditating in a cave, while Dick and Tim go wandering off along the Mediterranean coast on their own.

Here, Dick and Tim investigate a case in Cannes, France with fancy food and champagne:

“I bring him along to scoop up the leftovers” is actually an excellent description of how most of these scenes go!

10. Italian food (as in, from Italy) in Nightwing 143

It’s been a bumpy road since they got back from their round-the-world trip.  Dick moved back to NYC, and Tim finally got adopted.  But Tim was still pretty unhappy, and he tried to resurrect his dad and Steph and Conner, and Dick had to stop him.  It was all very tense and then very sad.

On the bright side, though, they are now Officially Brothers, and you can tell.

In this Peak Siblings moment, Dick is hungry, Tim is taunting him by daydreaming aloud about food, and Dick is threatening to eject him from the plane:

Later in the same issue, Dick gets his own back when Tim is hungry and Dick is taunting him with thoughts of sushi:

But never fear, Dick will feed him eventually:

In conclusion, brothers!! <333

[handsmotif]

The Queercoding of Pinky and the Brain

This originally was just me infodumping to my friends on discord, but I decided it might be interesting to some people on here, so I polished it up and made it an actual essay lmao

To start, we’re going to break this into 2 sections -- the relationship between the mice, and Pinky’s relationship with gender, because queercoding doesn’t just mean gay!

For a 90′s show, Pinky and the Brain (and its mother show, Animaniacs) was very progressive for its time! But there were still lots of things that they couldn’t slip by censors, and thus, that’s where we have to read between the lines. And that is something I wanted to clarify here before we dive in, the actual meaning of queercoding. It’s NOT the same as queerbaiting. Queerbaiting is when the people producing certain media purposefully dangle the possibility of queer representation to lure in audiences (most prominent examples are BBC Sherlock, Riverdale, and Supernatural I GUESS? who knows abt that last one anymore), but never follow through, purely for profit. Queercoding is when media producers WANT to write in queer representation, but can’t, usually because the censors won’t let them. So, they must resort to subtext. (example: the policemen from Gravity Falls) It could also be unintentional, simply assigning certain characteristics associated with the LGBT community to characters. (example: Bugs Bunny, many Disney villains) Either way, it heavily relies on the audience picking up subtext, but whether it’s malicious or not varies, depending on the media. Bugs Bunny is an example of positive accidental queercoding, while a lot of Disney villains are negative examples.

Now, to actually discuss the gay little mice! Pinky and the Brain, whether it be intentional or not (based off comments from Maurice LaMarche, Rob Paulsen, and Tom Ruegger, signs strongly point to intentional, but it’s never been explicitly confirmed), is an example of positive queercoding.

There are many moments that I could pick out to discuss here, but we’ll start with some VERY on the nose gay metaphors. 

Remember Romy? If you don’t, that’s their actual biological son! Romy came about due to a cloning accident, where their DNA got combined and spat him out. 

There’s SO many things I could say about Romy. Every appearance he makes has an overarching gay metaphor as the plot. His first appearance in the episode Brinky (yeah it’s literally titled their ship name), it deals with his dads (WHICH I ALSO WANT TO POINT OUT, he DOES call them both dad, and they do both call him their son) disapproving of the fact that he wants to leave home and not follow in their footsteps of taking over the world. Brain even goes as far as disowning him whenever he tells him, which is certainly something a lot of queer people can unfortunately relate to. Also seen a lot in this episode is Pinky and Brain arguing even more than a married couple than usual, which pushes Romy away even further. Later, when Romy eventually does leave, and Brain starts to regret chasing him away, he tries desperately to reach out to him, but Romy doesn’t want anything to do with him. They end up tracking him down to an apartment building, where Romy is now living with his human girlfriend. When questioned about their relationship, the girlfriend, named Bunny, goes off on a tangent about how people shouldn’t judge others based on labels or relationships (hello?), and that Brain needs to be more tolerant. Brain apologizes and Romy forgives him. Happy ending.

Romy’s only other appearance is in the comics. Essentially, the plot of this one is that Brain wants to become the president of the local high school’s PTA, but he needs Romy’s help to make it look like he has a normal home life. He also enlists the help of Billie, the obligatory Woman introduced to make sure Brain doesn’t look as gay as he actually is, that he has a crush on. She pretends to be his girlfriend, and Pinky pretends to be Romy’s uncle, while they make up the story that Romy’s actual mother was lost at sea. Because if the organization found out that Brain has a son with a MAN??? THINK of the controversy! Anyway, the plan works, and Brain actually manages to get elected as president. Throughout this though, Pinky gets WEIRDLY jealous that Brain keeps brushing him aside for Billie. To the point where during Brain’s inauguration, Pinky actually dresses up as the wife/mother lost at sea and storms into the room.

[ID: Comic panels of Pinky, Brain, and Romy on stage at the inauguration ceremony. Pinky busts into room wearing drag, saying, “Yoo hoo! I’m back from years lost at sea to be with my son and ungrateful husband! Narf!” He then hugs Romy, while glaring at Brain. He goes on to say, “I’ll stand by your side, even though you left me behind!” The people in the audience begin to question this, saying, “Oh great fuzzy bangs!”, “What’d she say?!”, “He deserted her to be with that other woman!”, “What kind of monster is he?!”. Brain then rips off Pinky’s wig and says, “This isn’t my wife! This isn’t even a woman! It’s my roommate, Pinky.” Pinky replies, “Well, yes... But Romy really is my son! Poit!” And Brain responds, “N-Nonsense! He’s my son!” More people in the audience angrily speak up, saying, “What’s that?”, “He lives with a guy who likes to dress up in women’s clothing and the both claim to be that kid’s father!”, “Grumble! Mutter!” /END ID]

Needless to say, this doesn’t end well for them. What we can conclude from this is that homophobia exists in the Pinky and the Brain universe, and our characters are directly affected by it.

Moving on, And-There-Was-Only-One-Bed is a pretty common occurrence with these two. Their cage is big, they have plenty of room for two beds, but? They choose to sleep together? Even in some times where this has been inconsistent and they DO have separate beds, they’re always RIGHT next to each other. (what if we put our minecraft beds together ❤😳)

I would like to mention the episode, You’ll Never Eat Food Pellets In This Town Again! This episode is interesting to say the least. Deals with a lot of the meta of the show. Anyway. In this episode, Brain has a nightmare that he’s in a loveless marriage with Billie. You know, the woman he’s supposed to have a crush on. In the end, he wakes up from the nightmare in the same bed as Pinky.

Speaking of female love interests, Pinky is seen having multiple relationships with characters of different species. Any time this is brought up by Brain, Pinky counters with Brain being too intolerant. An honorable mention with this is in Wakko’s Wish, when Pinky is with Pharfignewton, and Brain’s constant pestering about their relationship could be read as jealousy. Pinky needs a mousy date, after all!

Something else I would like to mention is in one episode (I forget what it’s called, I’ll try to look it up later and edit this), Brain is applying for a job. The employer asks Brain if he’s married, and Brain hesitates before saying he “has a roommate,” but that he’s occupied with his own things, which then cuts to a shot of Pinky applying lipstick.

Leading into part two of this essay, Pinky’s relationship with gender! Pinky has always been very gender nonconforming, and loves to wear dresses, do his makeup, and make himself look pretty. For the most part, this is played pretty straight, and not as a gag, like a lot of shows tend to do! It’s just a casual fact about him that he likes to present femininely sometimes.

This does play into their taking over the world plans pretty often, where Pinky wears drag, usually either to sneak into somewhere. Like in one of their earliest appearances on Animaniacs, Noah’s Lark, where they pose as a couple to board Noah’s, and I quote, “love boat.” After boarding, Noah says to himself, “Who am I to judge?” Okay. Yeah. Alright. Anyway.

I actually had less to say on this than I thought I did, but I wanted to make sure to emphasize that Pinky at the very least is coded as being Not Quite Cis, and that he’s played a key part in helping a lot of people watching the show figure out that they’re also Not Quite Cis. 

Wrapping this up because I’m hungry, but I want to throw in some more honorable mentions that I really do not see any type of cishet explanations for:

They literally go on a romantic date at a very fancy restaurant in Brain’s Night Off. This is played extremely casually, and the only remark from anyone that they receive is that they are “much smaller than the usual clients.”

Pinky, on at least one occasion, daydreams about him and Brain being a married couple, and wanting to be a housewife (the original malewife ❤)

There’s an issue in the comics where Pinky has a crush on another male mouse, and when Brain gets annoyed, Pinky reassures him that he thinks Brain is cute and quite the catch too

Brain attempting to kiss Pinky in the reboot??????

Brain actually did conquer the world once in the Halloween special, because Pinky made a deal with the devil for it, and thus Pinky got sent to hell! Brain actually went to hell and gave up the world to bring him back

Brain was extremely close to conquering the world once more in the Christmas special, but after reading what Pinky’s feelings for him were (nothing romantic, just Pinky basically just praising Brain for being so hardworking and an amazing mouse, and lamenting that he never gets anything for it), he gets so emotional that he sabotages himself and wishes everyone a Merry Christmas instead

TLDR; these mice are very queer and need therapy, and are probably the most heavily queercoded characters that I can think of in children’s media.

[ikroah]

Whiskey river, take my mind, don't let her memory torture me. Whiskey river, don't run dry, you're all I got, take care of me. —“Whiskey River,” Shotgun Willie (1973)

It Keeps Right On a-Hurtin’ #15 - Vegas Outskirts

Collaborative Issue! Guest Colorist: @malpaislegate​ / @socksual-innuendos​

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Notes / Original Pencils / Transcript:

Notes:

MAN that’s gotta hurt!! Volume 2 kicks off with a bang, literally if you count the gunshot and honorifically if you count Socks’ knockout color job on this issue. Look at those lovingly rendered bullet wounds!! Muah!!!

It’s been a relief having a month off from the comic as I handled a bunch of other things but there’s a lot to look forward to in Volume 2, as you can probably tell from that very forboding fist clench at the end there. Will Agnes and Cass get the revenge they’re looking for? Can they make it big in Vegas? Will it keep right on a-hurtin’? Find out next ish as Cass leads Agnes to meet the first of their new “friends.”

Original Pencils:

The pencils for this issue are like an autopsy report of all the things that can go wrong with your art if you don’t plan ahead and pay attention. Listen, friend, to my tale of woe, and learn from my mistakes so they don’t become yours!

First, you can see a lot of places where there’s floating objects, empty backgrounds, and incomplete heads. Part of this is because I always intended to just copy and paste repeated elements across each panel instead of drawing them multiple times, but other times I was forced to just because of my lack of planning. The top three panels on page two, for example, required me to draw the background I’d use for them on a separate page.

Second, you can probably tell that I actually had to flip the two raiders around in the final lineart because I forgot to keep the hands their were holding their guns in consistent—and since I couldn’t flip the middle panel on the second page without ruining the composition, I decided to flip all of their other appearances so that they’d be lefties. I doubt you even can seamlessly wield those particular guns left-handed.

Third, the size of the cart that Agnes and Cass are kneeling behind changes CONSTANTLY and is dramatically oversized from the third page onward. After inking these pages, it took a lot of work to correct the inks and shrink that cart in each panel, but fortunately it came out looking good.

And finally, I completely redrew the second panel on the fifth page because it wasn’t until I had already handed he pages off to my colorist that I realized having a second profile shot of Cass so soon after a first one was just...redundant and lazy-looking. So I went back to my sketchbook and whipped up a much more unique, striking angle (I also just wasn’t satisfied with the quality of my art on that panel, so I’m very glad I redrew it). But again, my failure to plan ahead bit me in the ass and my redraw attempt wound up taking up a lot more space than I thought it would, so after inking it I had to basically surgically remove it from the other inks.

I’ll be honest with you folks: part of the reason that I work in such simple, thick, high-contrast lineart is because it’s very easy to make corrections and adjustments with stuff you could technically color in Microsoft Paint.

Transcript:

EXT. SOMEWHERE IN THE MOJAVE, morning. AGNES SANDS and ROSE OF SHARON CASSIDY stand over the wreckage of a caravan, scattered over a dirt road.

CASS: Hell.

EXT. SOMEWHERE ELSE IN THE MOJAVE, midday. Looking over a second wrecked caravan, at the bottom of a ditch.

CASS: Fuck.

EXT. PRE-WAR HIGHWAY OUTSIDE OF VEGAS, mid-afternoon. AGNES and CASS survey a third wrecked caravan.

CASS: Shit. The proof is in the pudding. Or the pile of ash, rather. These attacks were done with Van Graff guns for Crimson Caravan caps. I'm sure of it.

As CASS explains her theory to AGNES, a short distance from the caravan two RAIDERS peer at the two of them from inside a barn at a ruined farmstead. They have snake-bite tattoos on the sides of their shaved heads and are holding rifles.

CASS: The scorchmarks and residue in the wreckages? That's energy weapon shit. Plasma and laser. Silver Rush special. Not like it'd be the Brotherhood. And Crimson Caravan must have bankrolled this fucked-up little hunting trip themselves.

The RAIDERS move out from the barn, sneaking up on two passers-by who’ve stopped at the caravan wreckage.

CASS: That explains why they bought me out...they needed the last loose end to saddle up back west with a tidy sum.

(NOTE: *Agnes delivered it and Cass signed it in IKROAH #7—Lou.)

CASS: It's a racket, Agnes: torch the local competition and it's win-win for both the f—

SFX: KRAK

A gunshot rips out from one of the RAIDERS’ rifles and sears across CASS’ shoulder.

CASS (gasping): —uckers.

CASS slumps down beneath the overturned caravan wagon on the road, clutching her shot shoulder.

CASS: —Aaggghghhhhhhh.

AGNES: Cass! Are you—

CASS: Fuck! Agnes, get down you moron!

AGNES ducks behind the cover of the wooden caravan wagon just as another gunshot splinters the top lip of it.

SFX: DTHWAK!

The RAIDERS advance on CASS and AGNES’ position, firing at them from off the road.

SFX: KRAK

AGNES leans over the top of the wagon with her pistol, returning fire.

SFX: BTAK BTAK BTAK

AGNES lands a shot right in one of the RAIDERS’ guts, and she drops her weapon and falls down.

SFX: SPLUT

CASS, leaning out the side of the wagon, takes as careful of aim as she can with her shotgun by holding it with her good arm. Trembling, she fires, connecting with the other RAIDER.

SFX: KBLAM

The would-have-been RAIDERS are dead.

AGNES: ...were those the Van Graffs?

CASS: No. Just some vultures.

CASS leans back behind cover to sit against the bottom of the overturned wagon again, wincing from her shoulder injury.

CASS: Ugghhn.

AGNES (slipping off duffel bag): Cass, your shoulder—

CASS: Yeah, it's been shot. I'm pretty fucking aware.

AGNES (unzipping bag): Quick, can you take your shirt off—

CASS: What!?

AGNES: —so I can dress the wound, Cass!

CASS: Oh! Good! So you weren't coming onto me on what remains of Griffin Wares Caravan.

CASS starts removing her shirt while AGNES produces a bottle of something from her duffel bag, and dampens a rag with its contents.

CASS: And since when are you a fucking field medic, anyway?

AGNES: 2269. NCR Certified.

CASS: What?

AGES: Yeah. I've been one kind of doctor or another since I was six.

CASS: What?

AGNES: Now hold still, this is antiseptic.

CASS: Since you were six!? I...shit, wait, hang on, Agnes—

AGNES pressess the rag onto CASS’ shoulder wound, and CASS winces instinctively. But, confusingly, there isn’t any pain.

CASS: ...isn't this supposed to sting like hell?

AGNES: No, not really. It's an acetic acid solution. Vinegar, basically.

AGNES begins cleaning the wound with the rag.

CASS: I thought you put alcohol on wounds to clean them.

AGNES: That's...a common misconception. It's good for tools, maybe, but too strong for skin. And it can complicate healing if you apply it directly.

CASS: So you're telling me, all my years, I've been wasting good whiskey only making my boo-boos worse?

AGNES: I mean...it's better than nothing in a pinch, but...

CASS: Well, then. Thanks for the lecture, doc. Can you just pass the whiskey anyway? Shoulder still hurts like hell regar—

AGNES hands her the whiskey bottle. She’d already gotten it out.

CASS: —dless. Oh. Thanks.

AGNES unspools a roll of bandages in her hands, then begins wrapping it over CASS’ shoulder and across her chest..

AGNES: So. It's a relatively minor wound, more of a deep graze than a real gunshot.

CASS: You'd know all about real gunshots, huh?

AGNES (unfazed): Uh-huh. I can suture it if necessary, but for now, these bandages will be fine. Just hold still. How do you feel?

CASS: I feel fucking pissed, Agnes!

AGNES recoils, taken aback slightly.

CASS: As I was saying before I got shot in the shoulder—which, however "minor" the wound, is real fucking close to my head, Agnes—this wasn't some random attack. These caravans, my caravan, got hit by the Van Graffs and Crimson Caravan. It ain't just some tragedy anymore. Now I've got names. Places. Faces.

AGNES resumes bandaging CASS.

CASS: I told you—ow! Don't pinch my tit, dammit—

AGNES: I said hold still.

CASS: —I told you, when you told me about this guy who shot you...when I let you drag me out of that fucking outpost...and when we went to Boulder City...that I would do the exact same thing in your shoes. Now, it is the exact same thing. This fucker shoots your eye out, these fuckers ash my caravan...these same fuckers I sold my own goddamn name to on a piece of paper. I mean...what else are we doing out here, Agnes? Getting shot at by Khans and Raiders just for kicks? Are we just fucking around?

AGNES finishes bandaging CASS, then leans back, pensive.

AGNES: No...no, I really guess we’re not.

CASS: That's what I thought. Your friend in Vegas can wait. Help me get mine, and we can get that shitheel together, and that's a prom—

CASS raises her arm  to shake her fist as she speaks, straining her shoulder injury.

CASS: —mmmmmmghhhh. Ooww, oww, oww, oww...

CASS grabs her shoulder in pain while AGNES looks off in the distance and stands up. She looks out towards the horizon—towards VEGAS, and the pre-war casinos and hotels that still gleam and glitter in blinding sunlight.

Her fist clenches. Her brow furrows. Her body tenses, all over, staring at that city, that place.

The caravan wreckage remains alone on the highway, brahmin bones long picked clean by scavengers.

AGNES SANDS IN: IT KEEPS RIGHT ON A HURTIN’

VOLUME 2: MAKE IT BIG IN VEGAS

[stxleslyds]

ROBIN #5 BUT IT’S JUST ME TALKING ABOUT JASON.

Hey, how are you guys doing? I wasn’t going to review this issue and I won’t because this isn’t really a review, this is just me talking about Jason’s involvement in this story.

I mentioned in a previous reblog (as well as in a old post) that I am not a fan of Joshua Williamson’s way of writing Jason. I think that he, like Lobdell, thinks of Jason in a way that doesn’t really match Jason’s origin (UtRH, Lost Days) or his current stories (RHatO, RHO, and other brief appearances), I think that Williamson is writing this sort of mesh between fanon Jason and a self-indulgent Jason that results in a very... bland and kinda repetitive version of Jason.

I have also talked about my dislike of his writing from a “romance” perspective. I absolutely didn’t like how he wrote the supposed “relationship” that Jason had with Rose in Future State: Red Hood. It honestly left a very nasty taste in my mouth after I read those issues and I just didn’t see their chemistry, to be honest, while I was reading those issues I felt like Williamson was writing an “unrequited love” thing between both of them (Jason being in love and Rose not at all).

That is of course my opinion. I know that many people like this relationship and I respect that but just as a heads up, I am not a fan of Jason being involved in any sort of romantic relationship with anyone. It’s just something that I would rather not see in a Red Hood story and that’s just the way I see it (once again, you are welcome to think otherwise).

Now, after I have said all that (which I believe is necessary because I like to tell you guys my general stances on Jason related stuff), I can begin my “review” of Jason’s appearances in this issue. 

Let’s begin!

Rose calling Jason to tell him about Damian.

Yeah, I find this weird. Since when are Jason and Rose talking? Here is where I am lost because I think that I am missing some information. 

This Jason right here is supposed to be the Jason that was at the end of Urban Legends #6, right? The last time that I remember Jason interaction with Rose was back in RHatO vol.1 #40, I know that Rose had a “relationship” with Jason in DCeased and in Future State (Red Hood and Gotham) but here is the thing, DCeased is a story that doesn’t belong to this or any continuities so it doesn’t count and Future State is set in the future, and a future that might never happen at that. So, where is this “Jason and Rose being in contact” thing coming from? If anyone knows, please let me know. 

Anyway, I just think that Rose contacting Dick would have made more sense but I guess I am missing some context here but hey, I am here to also learn.

The other thing I would like to talk about these panels is Jason not wanting Damian to be involved in a dangerous “death tournament”. Oh, well colour me not surprised at all by that fact, than you so much. 

Who would have thought that Jason would have a problem with a child being involved in a dangerous situation (me, that’s who), I guess that this is confirmation of DC not reading their own material because in one book Jason’s helping a kid “kill” the Joker and here Jason is like “WHY DID YOU JOIN A DEATH TOURNAMENT DAMIAN!?” (did ya put your name in the goblet of fire?!?! said Dumbledore calmly). I guess this Omniverse thing that DC has going on is helpful when you want to blame inconsistencies on something other than poor management on DC’s part. 

I just think that it’s funny. And also right on the line of OOC and in character for Jason, because I can actually see Jason being worried if a kid is joining that sort of thing, but I also don’t see Jason caring much about what Damian does or doesn’t. 

“If I can come home, so can you”

Good lord, I am not having a good time. I hate this. If this is your first time coming across one of my post, Hi! My name is Tati and I absolutely hate the fact that the fanon concept of “Batfamily” is being integrated in actual comics canon. 

This is so bad, what the hell is Jason saying? This man knows nothing about Damian’s situation, why would Jason not think that Damian has his own reasons not to go back “home”??? 

And what the HELL is Jason calling “home”, is he calling Batman or the Batfamily “home”??? Child, are you on crack? Honest question, because Bruce has done nothing for you, he has done awful things to you and he really doesn’t like you. 

Let’s be honest for a second, Bruce hates what Jason has become ever since he came back from the dead, Bruce hates the fact that Jason has a different way of seeing things. He only tolerates Jason when he can molde him the way that he wants. 

I mean, what the hell is this, why would Jason, after the events of Batman and Robin (2011) #20, RHatO (2016) #25 and even Urban Legends #6, want to go back to Bruce or any of his bullshit? Why? How many times does DC have to prove itself that Jason and Bruce don’t work well together anymore? How long until they realise that Jason doesn’t fit in their Bat-narrative? 

I am so tired of this, I swear, when will this end?

Jason and Damian have a chat.

I don’t mean to be repetitive but, what the hell is this? 

First of all, here we are again with writers wanting to encapsulate every Robin’s whole being in one word, don’t they get tired of being this basic? Dick is experienced, Tim is smart... how dull do you have to be? I this was your attempt at having Damian waste time then you could have had him say something more creative. 

“You are the most emotional”, what does that mean? I mean, i guess it’s true but how is that relevant here, or why would that catch Jason off guard? Is it because fanon Jason is the epitome of “bad boy with a heart of gold” or...?

Also, Jason returning the hug after such a wild conversation has me wondering what the hell is going on, weren’t these two fighting the last time they saw each other? Why didn’t Jason realise that Damian hugging him is off?

Jason is a dumbass.  

Well, he isn’t, Jason Nation knows that but he has been written as if he were a dumbass. How did Jason not see that Damian had ulterior motives when he “hugged” him? Jason, my love, you guys fought the last time you saw each other and because the Omniverse is a thing, you also tried to kill Damian...

Why wouldn’t you think that Damian going for a hug was actually a trap? Are you being written as an unintelligent human being again to make another character look good when you are easily defeated? Is that it? 

Yeah, that’s it. 

I don’t know what else I can say about this panel, like come on, give Jason a little credit, we swear he is smart DC! 

Don’t try to play games with Dick, Jason. 

Dick was having none of it! What was he thinking? Jason got his ass tasered and now he is like “Dick why would you let Damian play games with you?”. Why do people write Jason this way? Why is he the dumbass/comic relief nowadays? Is this why he was dragged back to the Bat? So he can be the dumb one with snarky remarks? 

How boring.

-

Listen, I think that this issue was good when it came to Dick and Damian’s moments, they are the ones that have more history together, they respect and love each other enormously. Their interaction were really good, very enjoyable. My problem with this issue was obviously Jason’s presence and the part that they let him play. After reading this, I know that I was right when I thought that Jason shouldn’t have been put here. It doesn’t make sense and it does nothing for Jason’s characterization. 

So yeah, those are my thoughts on this, as always, you are welcome to think differently! 

[brawltogethernow]

So, I don't think I've ever asked you this... what IS the whole point of the Spider-Sense? It really seems like something that only exists for writers to ignore or work around when they want to inject Legit Tension into a story.

I’ve thought about this power so much, but never with an eye to defend its right to exist, so I needed to think about this. The results could be more concise.

Ironically, given the question, I have to say its main purpose is to ramp up tension. But it’s also a highly variable multitool that a skilled creative team can use for...pretty much anything. It does everything the writer wants it to, while for its wielder always falls just short of doing enough.

I went looking through my photos for a really generic, classic-looking example to use as an image to head this topic, but then I ran into the time Peter absolutely did not reimburse this man for his stolen McDonald’s, so have that instead.

A Scare Chord, But You Can Draw It

That one post that says the spider-sense is just super-anxiety isn’t, like, wrong. It’s a very anxious, dramatic storytelling tool originally designed for a very anxious, dramatic protagonist. I find it speaks to the overall tone of the franchise that some characters are functionally psychics, but with a psychic ability that only points out problems.

Spidey sense pinging? There’s danger, be stressed! Broken? Now the lead won’t even KNOW when there’s a problem, scary! Single character is immune to it? That’s an invisible knife in the dark oh my god what the fuck what the fU--

Like its counterpart in garden variety anxiety, the only time the spider-sense reduces tension is in the middle of a crisis. But in the wish fulfillmenty way that you want in an adventure story to justify exaggerated action sequences, the same way enhanced strength or durability does. Also like those, it would theoretically make someone much safer to have it, but it exists in the story to let your character navigate into and weather more dangerous situations.

For its basic role in a story, a danger sense is a snappy way to rile up both the reader and the protagonist that doesn’t offer much information beyond that it’s time to sit smart because shit is about to go down.

Spidey comic canon is all over the board in quality and genre, and it started needing to subvert its formulas before the creators got a handle on what those formulas even were, and basically no one has read anything approaching most of it at this point, so for consistent examples of a really bare bones use of this power in storytelling, I’d point to the property that’s done the best job yet of boiling down the mechanics of Spider-Man to their absolute most basic essentials for adaptation to a compelling monster of the week TV series.

Or as you probably know it, Danny Phantom. DON’T BOO, I’M RIGHT.

DP is Spider-Man with about 2/3 of the serial numbers filed off and no death (ironically), and Danny’s ghost sense is the most proof in the formula example of what the spidey sense is for: It’s a big sign held up for the viewer that says, “Something is wrong! Pay attention!” Effectively a visual scare chord. It’s about That Drama. And it works, which won it a consistent place in the show’s formula. We’re talking several times an episode here.

So why does it work?

It’s a little counterintuitive, but it’s strong storytelling to tell your audience that something bad is going to happen before it does. A vague, punchy spoiler transforms the ignorant calm before a conflict into a tense moment of anticipation. ...And it makes sure people don’t fail to absorb the beginning of said conflict because they weren’t prepared to shift gears when the scene did. Shock is a valuable tool, too, but treating it like a staple is how you burn out your audience instead of keeping them engaged. Not to go after an easy target, but you need to know how to manage your audience’s alarm if you don’t want to end up like Game of Thrones.

The limits of the spider-sense also keep you on your toes when handled by a smart writer. It tells Peter (everyone’s is a little different, so I’m going to cite the og) about threats to his person, but it doesn’t elaborate with any details when it’s not already obvious why, what kind, and from what. And it doesn’t warn him about anything else-- Which is a pretty critical gap when you zoom out and look at his hero career’s successes and failures and conclude that it’s definitely why he’s lived as long as he has acting the way he does, but was useless as he failed to save a string of people he’d have much rather had live on than him.

(Any long-running superhero mythos has these incidents, but with Peter they’re important to the core themes.)

And since this power is by plot for plot (or because it’s roughly agreed it only really blares about threats that check at least two boxes of being major, immediate, or physical), it always kicks in enough to register when the danger is bearing down...when it’s too late to actually do anything about it if “anything” is a more complex action than “dodge”.

Really? Not until the elevator doors started to open?

That Distinctive, Crunchy Spider Flavor

The spider-sense and its little pen squiggles go hand in hand with wallcrawling (and its unique and instantly identifiable associated body language) to make the Spider-Person powerset enduringly iconic and elevate characters with it from being generic mid-level super-bricks. Visually, but also in how it shapes the story.

I said it can share a narrative role with super strength. But when you end a fight and go home, super strength continues to make your character feel powerful, probably safer than they’d be otherwise, maybe dangerous.

The spider-sense just keeps blaring, “Something’s wrong! Something’s wrong! God, why aren’t you doing something about this!?”

Pretty morose thing to live with, for a safety net! Kind of a double edged sword you have there! Could be constantly being hyperattuned to problems would prime you for a negative outlook on life. Kind of seems like a power that would make it impossible for a moral person to take a day off, leading them into a beleaguered and resentful yet dutiful attitude about the whole superhero gig! Might build up to some of the core traits of this mythos, maybe! Might lead to a lot of fifteen minute retirement stories, or something. Might even be a built in ‘great responsibility’ alarm that gets you a main character who as a rule is not going to stop fighting until he physically cannot fight anymore.

Certainly not apropos of anything, just throwing this short lived barely-a-joke tagline up for fun.

One of my personal favorite things about stories with superpowers is keeping in mind how they cause the people who have them to act in unusual ways outside of fights, so when you tell me that these people have an entire extra sense that tells them when the gas in their house is leaking through a barely useful hot/cold warning system that never turns off, I’m like, eyes emojis, popcorn out, notebook open, listening intently, spectacles on, the whole deal.

It also contributes to Peter Parker’s personality in a way I really enjoy: It allows him to act like an irrational maniac. When you know exactly when a situation becomes dangerous and how much, normal levels of caution go out the window and absolutely nothing you do makes sense from an exterior standpoint anymore. That’s the good shit. I would like to see more exploration of how the non-Parker characters experiencing the world in this incredibly altered way bounce in response.

It’s also one of many tools in this franchise hauling the reader into relating more closely with the main character. The backbone of classic Spidey is probably being in on secrets only Peter and the reader know which completely reframe how one views the situation on the page. It’s just a big irony mine for the whole first decade. A convenient way to inform the reader and the lead that something is bad news that’s not perceivable to any other characters is youth-with-a-big-exciting-secret catnip.

Another point for tension, there, in that being aware of danger is not synonymous with being able to act on it. If there’s no visible reason for you to be acting strange, well...you’re just going to have to sit tight and sweat, aren’t you? Some gratuitous head wiggles never hurt when setting up that type of conflict.

Have I mentioned that they look cool? Simultaneously punchy and distinctive, with a respectable amount of leeway for artists to get creative with and still coming up with something easily recognizable? And pretty easy to intuit the meaning of even without the long-winded explanations common in the days when people wrote comics with the intent that someone could come in cold on any random issue and follow along okay, I think, although the mechanic has been deeply ingrained in popular culture for so long that I can’t really say for sure.

It was also useful back in the day when no artists drew the eyes on the Spider-Man mask as emoting and were conveying the lead’s expressions entirely through body language and panel composition. If you wiggle enough squiggles, you don’t need eyebrows.

Take This Handwave and Never Ask Me a Logistical Question Again

This ability patches plot holes faster than people can pick them open AND it can act as an excuse to get any plot rolling you can think of if paired with one meddling protagonist who doesn’t know how to mind their own business. Buy it now for only $19.99 (in four installments; that’s four installments of $19.99).

Why can a teenager win a six on one fight against other superhumans? Well, the spider-sense is the ultimate edge in combat, duh.

Why can Peter websling? Why doesn’t everyone websling? Well, the spider-sense is keeping him from eating flagpole when he violently flings himself across New York in a way neither man nor spider was ever meant to move.

How are we supposed to get him involved with the plot this week???? Well, that crate FELT dangerous, so he’s going to investigate it. Oh, dip, it was full of guns and radioactive snakes! Probably shouldn’t have opened that!

Yeah, okay, but why isn’t it fixing everything, then? Isn’t it supposed to be why Peter has never accidentally unmasked in front of somebody? ('Nother entry for this section, take a shot.) That’s crazy sensitive! How does he still have any problems!? Is everything bad that’s ever happened to characters with this powerset bad writing!? --Listen, I think as people with uncanny senses that can tell us whether we are in danger with accuracy that varies from incredible to approximate (I am talking about the five senses that most people have), we should all know better than to underestimate our ability to tune them out or interpret them wrong and fuck ourselves up anyway. I honestly find this part completely realistic.

*SLAPS ROOF OF SPIDER-SENSE* YOU CAN FIT SO MANY STORIES IN THIS THING

The spider-sense is a clean branch into...whatever. There is the exact right balance of structure and wishy-washiness to build off of. A sample selection of whatevers that have been built:

It’s sci-fi and spy gadgets when Peter builds technology that can interface with it.

It’s quasi-mystical when Kaine and Annie-May get stronger versions of it that give them literal psychic visions, or when you want to get mythological and start talking about all the spider-characters being part of a grand web of fate.

Kaine loses his and it becomes symbolic of a future newly unbound by constraints, entangled thematically with the improved physical health he picked up at the same time -- a loss presented as a gain.

Peter loses his and almost dies 782 times in one afternoon because that didn’t make the people he provoked when he had it stop trying to kill him, and also because he isn’t about to start “””taking the subway’’””’ “‘’“”to work”””’’” like some kind of loser who doesn’t get a heads up when he’s about to hit a pigeon at 50mph.

Peter’s starts tuning into his wife’s anxiety and it’s a tool in a relationship study.

It starts pinging whenever Peter’s near his boss who’s secretly been replaced by a shapeshifter and he IGNORES IT because his boss is enough of an asshole that that doesn’t strike him as weird; now it’s a comedy/irony tool.

Into the Spider-Verse made it this beautiful poetic thing connecting all the spider-heroes in the multiverse and stacked up a story on it about instant connection, loss, and incredibly unlikely strangers becoming a found family. It was also aesthetic as FUCK. Remember the scene where Miles just hears barely intelligible whispering that’s all lines people say later in the film and then his own voice very clearly says “look out” and then the room explodes?? Fuck!!!!

Venom becomes immune to it after hitchhiking to Earth in Peter’s bone juice and it makes him a unique threat while telling a more-homoerotic-than-I-assume-was-originally-intended story about violation and how close relationships can be dangerous when they go sour.

It doesn’t work on people you trust for maximum soap opera energy. Love the innate tragedy of this feature coming up.

IN CONCLUSION I don’t have much patience for writers who don’t take advantage of it, never mind feel they need to write around it.

[thenightling]

The one disappointing thing about drifting from the Lucifer fandom to The Sandman...

I am a Lucifer show fan who accidentally got obsessed with Sandman when reading The Sandman to research the Lucifer show character’s origin back in 2017.

And since that drift over, I have to say only one thing truly disappoints me about the Lucifer show’s fan base.  ...How few Lucifer show fans want to give The Sandman comics a fair chance.  

It’s like they’re either discouraged because they’re told The Sandman is very different from the show and so they dismiss it by taking that as code to mean “It’s bad.” or they act like there’s some sort of invisible rivalry between the upcoming Netflix adaptation of The Sandman and the Lucifer TV series. 

 There’s even the very stupid rumor that The Sandman is why the show Lucifer is ending.  That rumor existed back when Lucifer was canceled the first time, by Fox, at the end of season three, by the way.  Somehow (this was before the Netflix Sandman show was even announced) a rumor had started that an upcoming adaptation of The Sandman was why Lucifer was being canceled and so the majority of the “Save Lucifer” Facebook groups got flooded with “BOYCOTT THE SANDMAN!!!” sort of messages. 

There are Lucifer show fans who genuinely don’t know that the story where Lucifer quits ruling Hell, and he and Mazikeen both go to Earth, where he opens Lux, and takes up piano, is in The Sandman comics.  Some of them know there are Lucifer comics by Mike Carey but don’t know that Lucifer is a spin-off of The Sandman by Neil Gaiman and that the story where Lucifer quits Hell is in The Sandman.  

I have nothing against these fans.  They just haven’t done the research but there are others that actively and aggressively avoid The Sandman like it’s some sacred duty or like The Sandman is their enemy.

Some even act disgusted by The Sandman because they have this misconception of comic books being lowbrow.  When I was in one of those Save Lucifer Facebook groups I remember being very annoyed by someone who kept calling The Sandman comics a “comic strip.”   A comic “strip” is specifically a row of comic panels in a newspaper.  A very different thing entirely.   And even one person saying “Lucifer show fans would NEVER like the comics.  It’s far too different of an audience.”  But... that’s how I fell in love with The Sandman, because I had liked The Lucifer TV show and then read The Sandman comics...

In 2017 I had been asked to play Lucifer for a DC comics Role Playing game on IMVU and was only familiar with the show.  But I did know that he originated in Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman and that was where I’d find the story where he quits ruling Hell.  I learned he quits ruling Hell in the fourth volume of The Sandman but I figured if I started there I might be confused so I started at the beginning. The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes.   To my surprise it felt like a Gothic fantasy story or old Gothic Horror novel, at least in the first two issues (chapters  if you’re listening to the audible audio drama version).  It did not feel like a comic.

And by the time I got to issue 4 of The Sandman, “A hope in Hell” where we first meet Lucifer of this continuity, I realized I was hooked and reading something truly special.  I realized I cared more about the story’s protagonist at this point than I did about finding out comic Lucifer’s backstory.    

I’ll confess when I first read The Sandman I fully anticipated skimming the drawn outfight scenes or explosions because I find those boring, only to be very surprised that those... don’t exist in The Sandman at all.  Morpheus never even throws a punch.

The Sandman is not taking away Lucifer, nor is it in direct competition with Lucifer.  Resenting it and avoiding it does no good.  The Sandman is what gave you the version of Lucifer that you love so much. It is not your enemy.   

Remember those conversations with Linda and later Amenadiel where Lucifer talks about how he doesn’t buy souls, and how there are masochists in Hell who only go there because deep down inside they feel they deserve it and they’re just giving them the punishment they want?  That’s all dialogue originally from The Sandman, from a conversation between Lucifer and Morpheus when Lucifer was explaining why he was shutting down Hell.

Another example of how some Lucifer show fans have reacted negatively to The Sandman is in one of those Save Lucifer groups, back when season three had just ended on Fox, I recall one person even saying “I like the angel of Death on Lucifer better than the one from The Sandman because Goths are mean, jaded, cynical, and cold.  I like our friendly, nerdy, Azriel, the Angel of Death, a lot more than some bitch Goth.”  And I was like “...You didn’t even try to read The Sandman, did you?  You just saw a picture of the character somewhere and jumped to conclusions by appearances.”  

Death in The Sandman is a perky Goth girl who loves and quotes Mary Poppins.  She tries to be friendly with everyone.  She’s just as (if not more) friendly as Azriel from the Lucifer TV show.  The biggest difference (besides her Goth fashion) is she says “Be seeing you.” instead of that “Smell ya later” they gave her in the Lucifer show.  She even helped save the domestic relationship of a lesbian rock singer she liked.  She likes Disney films and happy endings.  She has pet goldfish.  And she hits her younger brother with a loaf of bread when he’s being annoying.  She’s generally supposed to be seen as sweet.  Being a Goth doesn’t make you a bad person or “mean’ by default.  I was a bit taken aback someone had said something like that.

The Lucifer show fans who have gone out of their way to avoid The Sandman or make up excuses to not read it are doing themselves a disservice. They’re also missing out on a glorious opportunity to ship Lucifer and Dream (AKA Morpheus)...

TL:DR:  Lucifer show fans need to stop making excuses to avoid The Sandman or resenting it (even on a subconscious level) and need to give The Sandman a fair chance.   

[mechanicsburglibrary]

[image id

Two sets of panels from the Girl Genius web comic.

The first set shows Gil and Tarvek as children. In one panel, Gil and Tarvek look at a book together, and in the next, they hide in the rafters and snatch hats from people passing below with fishing rods. Tarvek narrates, “It turned out that he [Gil] was brilliant - and always coming up with really fun ideas. Hmf. I actually really liked him. I thought we were good friends.”

The second set shows Gil and Tarvek as adults, Tarvek ranting at Gil.

Tarvek: (eyes closed, looking serious) Okay, you know what? I never knew what I had done to make you hate me so much, but I think I’ve finally figured it out. That time we were caught sneaking into the records vault? I’ll bet that’s when the Baron told you that you were his son. He probably warned you against me, too - told you all about my family, and what treacherous backstabbers we all are...

Gil: (frowning) Oh? And that’s not true?

Tarvek: (now gazing upwards, looking earnest) Of course it’s true! But we were - Well, we both wanted to find something exciting about your past! It was just for fun! How was I supposed to know how it would look to the Baron? No wonder I got thrown off the castle!

Gil: (frowning more deeply, ill at ease) Well -

end image id]

These are the most direct descriptions of Tarvek and Gil’s friendship as children. Both times, it’s Tarvek speaking. In the first instance, where he’s recounting the experience to Violetta, he uses much more explicit terms: “I really liked him” and “friends,” in addition to outright praise of Gil’s intelligence and sense of fun. In the latter instance, when he’s talking to Gil, he cuts himself off before labeling their relationship: “We were - “ He opts to talk about his feelings about his and Gil’s activities together, instead of his feelings about Gil himself. Gil looks at Tarvek directly when he challenges Tarvek to deny that his family is treacherous, but looks away when Tarvek avers that his friendship with Gil was nevertheless genuine.

Gil and Tarvek both struggle to admit to positive feelings for each other, especially to each other’s face. They both find it easier to say positive things about the other to Agatha and other third parties, and their sniping at each other eventually begins to take on a fond tone.

However, the difference between how they talk about their falling out is marked. We only ever get Tarvek’s point of view of events, and he wasn’t present for a piece of the story that he believes was pivotal: the Baron’s private conversation with Gil after they’re caught in the records vault. Tarvek makes several assumptions about what caused Gil to change his mind about their friendship, but even when he discusses these with Gil, Gil never quite confirms that Tarvek’s deductions are correct.

Tarvek is likely missing a key piece of information about what happened between getting caught digging into Gil’s history and getting thrown off Castle Wulfenbach. Gil doesn’t hesitate in calling him conniving, teacherous, or devious from the moment they meet again in Castle Heterodyne, but he never references Tarvek’s spying in Castle Wulfenbach. Most of the evidence he supplies of Tarvek’s duplicity he only learned about after their reunion in the castle - the fake Heterodyne plot, studying under Lucrezia, failure to disclose the existence of slaver wasps that work on sparks. Why won’t he talk about what originally made him agree with his father’s assessment of Tarvek?

Link - Tarvek’s flashback to Castle Wulfenbach

Link - I know why you hate me

[bokunoheroanalysisforthefuture]

And the second half of chapter 13, covering the actual USJ introduction and the beginning of the villain attack that will go on to shape the rest of the series. 

[No. 13 - Rescue Training]

Image Description: Universal Studios Japan, c. 2250 AD or something IDK.

...no wait, it’s not? Damn, my bad. At least I’m not the only one to make that mistake. Still, the place if fucking HUGE, lookit how tiny the kids are there at the top of the stairs.

But seriously, I feel like this layout is different from what’s shown in the anime? 

Yeah, I was right, the layout is adjusted in the anime. Not, like, completely changed up or anything, but it’s a noticeable difference. I suppose it’s related to the differences between a static medium and a dynamic one…

The kids are all wondering if this is Universal Studios Japan. Thirteen speaks up, pointing out several of the zones - flood, landslide, conflagration - before mentioning that the place has every disaster and accident imaginable. She then states he built the facility himself, and that she calls it the ‘Unforeseen Simulation Joint’... or USJ for short. 

(While the translation here uses male pronouns for Thirteen, the original Japanese uses neutral language here, erog the translators having to guess. But the most recent databook confirms Thirteen as female, as does the fact that the English dub was told to use a female cast for her by the Japanese anime studio, so. I’m rolling with the official databook on this one, in case you’re confused at the mismatch in pronoun use between me and the manga.)

Izuku and Ochako continue to prove to be perfectly in tune with one another:

Can’t believe she’s out-excited Midoriya ‘hero nerd first, human being third’ Izuku when it comes to a hero. Truly shows how much she admired Thirteen. 

Anyways, Aizawa asks where All Might is, since he was meant to meet them there. Thirteen mentions that he seems to have reached his limit during his morning commute, while holding up three fingers - ergo, right now the hero is resting in the break room. We get a brief flashback to the call Toshinori made, apologizing and saying he’ll try to show up near the end of the exercise. Aizawa grumbles about it being the height of irrationality, then says they should get started while thinking they should be on guard just in case.

Before they begin, however, Thirteen wants to discuss a few points. She brings up how her quirk, Black Hole, can suck in and tear apart anything. Izuku brings up how it’s been used to save people in all sorts of disasters, while Ochako is just vibing at high speed.

Truly, she and Izuku are soulmates. Thirteen agrees, but then goes on to explain how her power could kill easily - and that she has no doubt that there are some among the class with similar abilities. Interesting that in this frame, Katsuki is centered, even while standing behind Izuku and Ochako.

Both Izuku and Katsuki are more directly destructive, but I think Ochako and Kirishima, the other two really in panel here, also have quirks that can harm as well, if in less direct and obvious ways. Perhaps a nod to how any quirk can be dangerous?

Thirteen goes on to explain how the used of quirks is heavily restricted and monitored, and that while the system might seem stable, they must never forget that it only takes one wrong move with an uncontrollable quirk for people to die. All of this is explained over a cinematic shot of some idyllic city, and I can’t help but wonder whether this is the city that eventually will be known as Jakku. Or perhaps this is Kamino?

Anyways, the speech continues. Aizawa’s physical fitness test helped the students learn their own hidden potential, and All Might’s battle training let them experience the danger their quirks can pose to others. This class, however, is meant to show them a new perspective - how to use their quirks to save lives. Their powers are not meant to inflict harm. 

Thirteen concludes their speech with their hope that the students leave the USJ with the understanding that they are meant to help people. They bow and thank the students for listening, and, well.

Get yourself a squad like this.

Aizawa takes over, starting to speak about what they’ll be doing first, only to cut off as a swirl of darkness appears in the plaza behind and below him. He notices immediately, turning to look as the darkness opens up into a portal, a hand peeking out from the center.

(Kind of makes me think about Dr. Strange’s portals from the MCU? Or, well, maybe the comics, since I don’t think the movie was out yet.)

And so our main villain shows up.

Terrifying! :D

Izuku’s narration notes that ironically, the villains appeared before them during their rescue training. Meanwhile, Aizawa shouts at the class to huddle up and not move, with the class staring in confusion. He then tells Thirteen to protect the students, all while more villains stream in through the now massive dark portal, its glowing eyes menacing.

Kirishima asks what’s happening, and whether those down below are battle robots like in the exam. Aizawa tells them not to move again as he pulls his goggles over his eyes, declaring the enemies as villains. 

You expect me to believe those aren’t freaking nomu as well???? I. What.

The shadow starts to condense again and speak, identifying Thirteen and then, after a brief pause, Eraserhead as well. It then mentions that according to the staff schedule it received, All Might was supposed to be there. Aizawa identifies the shadow(?) as the cause of ‘that whole incident’, which I only just grocked to refer to the break-in the day before.

The guy with the hands all over (heretofore referred to as ‘that bitch’ or, more commonly, ‘Shigaraki’) asks where All Might is, and that they’ve come all this way and brought so many playmates, before again asking if All Might is here. This is probably meant to mockingly refer to All Might’s ‘I Am Here’ at the end, if that wasn’t blindingly obvious to everyone else.

Izuku’s narration comes up again, noting that the class learned (that day) what the pros are up against, what they face in the field - evil unleashed. Alongside this, we see that bitch Shigaraki wondering whether some dead kids will bring All Might to them, while Aizawa leaps into the fray with his scarf floating, and the class watches on in fear.

And that concludes chapter 13! What a marvelous introduction to our primary antagonist of the series, like, the anime does not do that creep level justice in the least. Next time, we begin the fun process of traumatizing school children! :D

[sailorspazz]

10 Dance Vol. 6 Special Edition overview

Volume 6 of the 10 Dance manga was released in Japan on March 18th, 2021. As with volumes 4 and 5, there are both regular and special editions available. In this post, I will provide an overview of the release, including observations on changes that were made to the chapters compared to how they were printed in the magazine, plus summaries and select scans of content from the special edition booklet.

It is often the case that when chapters come out in the manga magazines, they aren't always fully polished, and since I became highly familiar with this run of chapters from the summaries I made, several things immediately jumped out at me as I went through the book. First of all, though chapter 29 was split into two parts and released in subsequent months in the magazine, these two halves were combined into one chapter, with no indication they had ever been separate. I assume that they were always intended to be one chapter, but since the full chapter was not completed before the deadline (and it was a month when 10 Dance was being given the cover image, so not possible to delay its release), it was simply split over two months instead.

For visual changes, the most common alteration was scenes that originally had little or no screentone having it added in:

There were also some instances of either slight panel redraws, or complete replacements with new panels. None of these were from particularly important scenes, so it could just be Inouesatoh or someone on her team didn't like the look of the original panels and wanted to change them. The following example has a bit of both, with Suzuki in the upper left corner being replaced, and his eyes being redrawn in the lower panel:

Personally, the most amusing addition I noticed was when Max was thinking about throwing a party. Originally, we didn't see what he was envisioning, but in the volume, an addition has been made in the background: the New Year's piece Inouesatoh drew with sexy men dressed as cows, except now they're bunnies!

As for dialogue, it appeared to be almost the same in both versions throughout. Some minor exceptions include a spot I found where the dialogue was put in a different order, swapping Sugiki’s lines between this panel and his first line on the following page (in addition to another altered panel example):

As well as in this shot of Suzuki describing how they tug at the thread that connects them through their dance. Whereas before it put the word “dance” next to the part about tugging on the thread to specify what was meant by that, it was deleted in the volume. And while it was originally described as “affirming that we’re connected”, this was also tweaked a bit to be, “affirming our connection”.

There were a couple instances of character names being different from when they appeared earlier in the story. In this volume, two characters who were last mentioned back in volume 2 (Lucas Calvo, one of the champions at the table in Blackpool, and Deeks, who Ernie said hated Sugiki because he "stole" his girlfriend), either from typos or intentional changes, weren't the same as before. Lucas' last name was written with a 'g' sound (ガルボ) instead of a 'c' (カルボ), and this change carried over to the volume. On the other hand, Deeks' (ディクス) name got transposed as Disc (ディスク) in the magazine, but was fixed in the volume.

There was a typo that unfortunately made it through to the volume (but could perhaps be fixed in future printings). In chapter 34, when Norman is testing Suzuki's skills, he flashes back to Sugiki taking the national title from him several years earlier. The text in this scene, written in English, incorrectly states that Suzuki won the championship, rather than Sugiki.

The volume also includes the usual additions that are not present in the magazine, such as the under the cover flap comic, and Inouesatoh’s notes about each chapter.

The cover flap comic (which looks very much like a sketch, compared to previous ones that have had more complete art), features the Shinyas during a practice session earlier on in the series in December, where Suzuki complains that Sugiki’s Latin just isn’t sexy. Sugiki suggests that he can practice being sexy by wiggling his butt around to write a message in the air. Suzuki worries that if he starts writing out “love” or something, he’ll have to run away and escape. Sugiki gets started, and Suzuki calls out each letter that he can make out from his elegant butt bouncing. After figuring out he’s written “M-E-R-R-Y”, Suzuki guesses that he’s writing “Merry Christmas”. Sugiki gets mad that he said it aloud before he finished writing his message, and says he’s going to leave. Suzuki says, “Wait, I love you,” as narrative text says that this somehow turned into a love story in one panel.

And here are some tidbits I found interesting/amusing from the chapter notes:

She thinks readers who are fans of pecs will like Saichi.

She’s not sure if readers will love Max or hate him, but she personally likes him (sorry Sensei, I kinda hate him lol)

As of chapter 32, a portion of the art is now done digitally.

The epic “last dance” scene from 33 was something that she had planned since the beginning of the series, and it ended up being 8 times the cost for a typical chapter.

Special edition booklet:

The special edition comes with a 48 page hardcover booklet that includes a variety of different extras, divided into 8 sections called “heats”.

Heat 1 is a newly drawn, 12 page parody manga. Back in September 2020, Inouesatoh put out a request on Twitter for fans to send in their suggestions for an erotic side story. Putting the characters in a high school setting was the most requested scenario, so she chose this idea as the basis for the story. The title is “And All That Jazz” (the premise makes this somewhat confusing to summarize, so keep in mind that I’ll mostly be describing their actions based on the soul rather than the body, but will use quotation marks if it’s about other characters and who they think they’re addressing. It’ll all make sense, I promise...I think :P)

(The title page actually depicts the ending of the story, so I’ll come back to it later). It starts with Suzuki narrating his introduction, saying that he’s a transfer student to the Standard Academy. He really doesn’t get along with a guy named Sugiki, but for some reason, the two have now switched bodies with each other. Sugiki opens his shirt and inspects his new physique in front of other students, as Suzuki yells out asking what the hell he’s doing to his body. They look at themselves wearing each other’s expressions, Sugiki seeming surprised his mouth can gape open like that, and Suzuki wondering what happened to his body’s facial expression muscles. The bell rings and Sugiki heads off to class, as Suzuki is baffled that he can act so calm about this.

Sugiki perfectly reads a passage aloud in English class, something everyone (including the teacher, who looks like Norman) find unusual coming from “Suzuki”, as they wonder where his usual hearts are. Suzuki makes the decision to enjoy living as Sugiki for a bit, and is shown getting flirty with several girls. He notes that the more serious personality in his regular body is also strangely popular, though with a very different crowd.

A student named Alberko (Alberto in a girl’s uniform) shows up and says that “Sugiki” was supposed to have lunch with her(?) today. Suzuki says that he thought Alberko was going out with Dorou (a masculine alteration to Dolores’ name). Ernie and Suzuki watch as his harem falls apart with Alberko running amok. Ernie comments that both “Sugiki” and that transfer student have been acting weird all week, and he asks if something happened. Suzuki internally reflects back to one week earlier, when he was relaxing in bed in the infirmary. Sugiki comes in and accuses him of skipping class, and Suzuki tells him to mind his own business. He thought this would turn into one of their usual fights, but he can’t believe that actually happened instead...

After school, Sugiki asks Suzuki if they can go home together today. As they’re walking, Suzuki asks if Sugiki realizes what it was that made them switch places, and Sugiki says he does. Suzuki says that in that case, they know how they need to fix it, and they should go over to his house. Sugiki asks for clarification of whose house exactly he means by that.

As they start to get undressed, Suzuki says that he always thought his mom and sisters were annoying, but after a week apart he really misses them. Sugiki promises that he’ll make sure he can see them soon. Suzuki claims that he’ll be the one making Sugiki come, and Sugiki asks how he can talk like that when he was the one who looked like he was about to cry when Sugiki first touched him in the infirmary.

Sugiki peeks into Suzuki’s pants and wonders if he won’t get hard unless he touches him. Suzuki thinks it’d be weirder if he could get hard while looking at his own face, and wonders if Sugiki has AI in his crotch or something (Sugiki contends that it’s not his body). They fool around with each other until they finish, and Suzuki wonders why they didn’t change back yet. Sugiki suggests that maybe it needs to be just like the last time to count as a complete set, when they went at it until they fell off the bed, so both agree that they need to go for one more round. This then ties back to the title page, where they’ve finally managed to get back into their old bodies, but have now sprouted cat ears and tails.

Heat 2 of the booklet is 8 pages long, and contains short comics and illustrations that were not previously included in the volume releases. The comics include “How to 10 Dance”, a one-page comic with the Shinyas demonstrating the tango. Their privates end up touching, and Sugiki seems highly amused, gleefully asking Suzuki how it feels. Suzuki says that he was the one who got all bent out of shape over that back in volume 1, and tells him to lay off the sadist mode since they’re not dancing Latin right now. The second comic is “2nd Step”, and shows a glimpse of how the Shinyas were with each other after Suzuki gave the go-ahead for kissing. In fact, Sugiki ends up kissing him so much that Suzuki’s lips get sore and swollen. Sugiki then tries to kiss his neck as an alternative, but Suzuki’s not having it. The third comic depicts Suzuki’s first time in a public bath, where he realizes that Japanese people aren’t fully shaved everywhere like he is. Some of the old guys talk to him and slap their balls with their towels, and Suzuki, seeming a bit confused, gives his own balls a slap, too. After the comics are a selection of illustrations that were never used in the volumes, including this one from a Real 10 Dance event in 2018:

Heat 3 is 18 pages, and contains a variety of colored versions of both chapter covers and scenes from the manga, a couple of which I’ll share below:

Heat 4 includes 3 pages of insight from the professional dancers who consult for the manga, in which they explain the moves shown in specific panels.

Heat 5 is a single page look at Inouesatoh’s work space.

Heat 6 is 3 pages worth of advertisements that have been used to promote the series, including things like ads that were posted in subway stations:

Heat 7 is a single page look at the storyboard for chapter 1 of the manga.

Heat 8 is a single page showing the covers for foreign editions of the manga (Taiwanese, Korean, North American, and French).

Finally, there’s one last page with a thank you message from Inouesatoh, including an absolutely precious illustration of the Shinyas in happier times.

And that’s that! This really is an incredible release, and I’d definitely recommend picking up the special edition if you can. CD Japan offers direct international shipping, and I’ve also seen that Kinokuniya lists it as “available to order” currently (though they don’t appear to have stock on hand, so might take longer).