#these are the moments where i easily understand why batman has always been so popular

[to-the-batcomputer]

i love the conflicts between batman and superman in jl and jlu. i love batman so much. that guy is always fighting so hard for humanity, taking every precaution necessary, standing up to his friends and asserting his point of view as a regular human. as forcefully as necessary. stubborn but willing to admit when he was wrong. i love batman.

[trainsinanime]

I'm still considering whether I'll do any non-vague posting about this, but let me just say: Writing long and erudite posts about what you think is wrong with a French children's TV show does not absolve you from the accusation that you're doing… let's call it entry-level analysis. A post can be long and well-written and still just regurgitate the most basic, boring points, and some of them plainly wrong.

Actually maybe don't read this, it may be too salty itself.

"Adrien is sometimes too pushy", "Marinette is sometimes a stalker", "Alya is a bad friend because she's unwilling to bully a random new girl just because Marinette said so", yeah, yeah, we've heard it. More than once. Way more than once. Yes, even with receipts and quotes. Trust me, it's been discussed. These are the kind of standard hot takes of someone who is doing their first attempt at critical analysis, and I actually think on some level we should encourage that. I do believe fandom should be beginner-friendly in all regards.

But man, it can be annoying to read sometimes. Especially when someone uses these hot takes to justify the existence of salt fics. Let me be 100% clear here: Salt fics are not a reaction to flaws in the source material. Salt fics are materially different from fix-it fics. This becomes more clear when you track these patterns over fandoms, and in particular look at my favourite example over in Fairy Tail (sic).

That fandom has a number of fandom-specific plots, like some "angel of death sends main character back to relive the origins with the knowledge they had later" (also very popular in Harry Potter back in the day), but also one that is just 100% salt specific: It's about Lisanna, a childhood friend of the male lead Natsu, coming back from the alternate universe she was trapped in, and displacing Lucy, the female lead, who eventually leaves, sad and depressed, while nobody cares about her. The sentiments are all the same: Feeling depressed, feeling annoyed that your friends are suddenly interested in the new girl, feeling like you don't belong anymore, leaving your friend group to punish them and so on.

There are some differences as well. This whole thing was back in the days of Fanfiction.net, when crossovers were in a whole other section of the site and thus not easily findable, so the whole "…I'm going to run away to somewhere where people want me" never had the frankly hilarious addition of "…and when I'm there I'm going to marry Batman!", which spawned a whole sub-fandom in ML (its fans tell me that it's not all salt; I haven't bothered to check).

But the most important difference: The inciting incident never happened in canon. People just thought it might. In canon, Lisanna did return from her alternate dimension… and then immediately became a forgotten background character. Lucy and Natsu remained just as in love as they always had been, which is to say, very much except they don't seem to notice it. Their relationship was never strained even for a moment.

And still people wrote these stories that are functionally salt fics, with the same storylines, same emotions, same beats. Because salt fics are not about fixing what is wrong with the show. If they were, they'd spend all their time discussing the terribly fucked-up metro map. Salt fics are about exploring feelings of loneliness, isolation, "why are you hanging out with here when I told you she sucks" and just pure spite, in a way that you don't really see outside of pop songs. That is the end goal. The characters and plots are just a way to get there, and they will get twisted as necessary.

This is critical for understanding and discussing the phenomenon of salt fics. Alya is not actually getting demonised because she acted a bit stupid in one episode where everybody but Marinette acted a bit stupid. It's incredibly weird to hear this argument, and then all the supporting quotes for it, in the same post, right underneath, are all:

Alya: Okay, but do you have any proof? Marinette (angrily): Arrghlwargl! No!

Like, come on. Alya is getting demonised because people really want to. Because it works for the kind of story. These stories assume that it's Alya's job to always support Marinette unconditionally, and that any deviation from that, no matter how minor, is a highest order betrayal. And then they go full Count of Monte Cristo on her.

(Well, not really, that could almost be fun. Nobody ever has Marinette imprisoned for fourteen years, get out with the help of a hypnotist monk, use a buried pirate treasure to buy an island, then manipulate a telegraph line to… It's all just torn notebooks and such. Boring.)

The idea that people hate Alya for mostly valid reasons is just plain wrong and shows that you've missed a huge part of what's happening in the fandom. You could use all the Alya hate as an entry point into analysing what her role is in the show, how people in the fandom perceive her role, how people in the salt dom perceive her role, how her role and her personality shift depending on the needs of an episode at the expense of a consistent character and so on. There is some great analysis in that direction out there already, but more wouldn't hurt. "Alya is a bad friend sometimes because of Chameleon" remains an uninteresting take no matter how well you word it, though.

And that's just Alya. Adrien hate, for example, is its entirely own field. In short: Yes, some characters in this fandom are over-hated. Try digging deeper next time.

[fabianocolucci]

Can we have one lighthearted and optimistic show or movie for once?

Hello, I am writing this post because I have read that the CW is making a TV show about the PowerPuff Girls, except they’re going to be depicted as “20-somethings who are disillusioned after having spent their childhood fighting crime”.

Reading that angered me, I have to admit it, because this is just the latest of a never ending series of shows and movies that try to take something that is supposed to be lighthearted, funny and optimistic and turn it into something dark and edgy about how much life sucks, trying to highlight that “we live in a society” and so on.

Riverdale is the example many people come up with most of the time, and I can see why: its shared universe (which includes The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) is a textbook example of how Hollywood keeps handling these things. However, what many people fail to realize is that this trend has been going on since long before the CW took Archie Andrews and the others and tried to be as dark and edgy as they can.

When Batman Begins proved to be a huge hit, and it was followed by an even greater hit (The Dark Knight), Hollywood apparently thought that the reason of its success was that it tried to be darker and edgier. However, those things worked only because Christopher Nolan wanted to take a popular superhero and tried to depict him in a more realistic tone (after all, their movies may be even darker than what Batman is supposed to be, unless you take in consideration any Batman comic written by Frank Miller).

Since then, we’ve seen countless movies, games and shows that tried to be so dark they’ve become bleak and, honestly, even a bit bland.

On the superhero side, we’ve seen multiple depictions where, for instance, Superman has become evil and is now a force that needs to be stopped (they even made a movie about this being a possibility, as if it’s inevitable), while we’ve seen at least four live-action depictions of Batman being a killer hero who has lost his vision and hope (to the point where Batwoman casually mentioning how Batman has a no killing code was enough to make that world’s Batman a lighter version than what is the current trend). The Netflix shows about Marvel superheroes even made it look like the Avengers’ arrival caused nothing but problems for New York (admittedly, they kind of have to depict New York this way, otherwise it would feel weird how there’s so many superheroes in that city and yet crime is still a thing).

On the fantasy side, because of Game of Thrones’ success, now every fantasy TV show wants to emulate it, and as such we have bleak, humorless worlds where there’s a lot of darkness, with constant “mature” content like swearing and sex (The Witcher is a great show, but they could have toned it down a bit, in that context). It’s like even a genre whose name is literally “fantasy” can’t escape in trying to depict a more gritty and real world where everything always has to be dark.

On the science fiction side, well, we’ve seen the new Star Wars movie, which took the ending of Episode VI, which was full of optimism and hope, and basically said “nope, everything now is so dark and lonely”. I guess one of the reasons why you could pretend the sequel trilogy never happened is that, well, they end with a more positive note than whatever happened after episode IX.

On the TV side, there isn’t just Riverdale or the upcoming PowerPuff Girls show. The Winx Saga has taken away all the color of the cartoon (no, seriously: everything is so grey and soulless looking in the TV show that someone may have to tell you they’re supposed to be The Winx Club in live action). The Nancy Drew show now is a dark mystery more in line with Riverdale actually. Netflix is making an Avatar show and apparently they want to age up the characters “so that they can have sex” (which somewhat implies that there’s someone who looked at 12 year old Aang or 14 year old Katara and thought “I want to see them have sex”, which is so creepy and disturbing that I even regret pointing it out).

This would not be such a big deal if there wasn’t the fact that we’re talking about the vast majority of big movies and shows! Even something funny like Lost in Space has been turned into a dark remake.

Why is it so hard to find something in Hollywood that doesn’t try to be dark and depressing? Well, I think there are multiple reasons, which I’m going to point out:

·       There is this idea among writers that drama is the only thing that keeps the plot interesting. Characters need to have tragedies thrown at them all the time, they constantly have to fight and (usually) heavens forbid if they even try to lighten up a bit. This is, of course, wrong, as shown by how many fanfiction writers take characters who have a life made of day-by-day drama and depict them in quiet scenes like them making a meal for their beloved or just going to a vacation where they can relax. Just because depicting nothing but quiet and peaceful moments can become boring on the long run, doesn’t mean it can never happen;

·       Because we live in dark times, then everything has to be dark. It’s as if people can’t experience any sort of hopeful escapism when out there it seems like nothing but tragedies and negativity occurs outside of their windows. Illnesses, war, deaths, recessions and so on happen 24/7, so how can you showcase even a bit of positivity? Well, I have one question: what kind of escapism would constantly remind you of the very thing you are trying to temporarily escape from? If I want to forget about the World’s problems for an hour, then why on Earth are you making me think about them? Who decided that the best way of forgetting that life sucks is to have your story say “life sucks” all the time? I don’t understand;

·       Writers are probably influenced by the “loser culture” on the internet. I mean, wherever you go on social media, people seem to have a race to see who has the most miserable life. Many comic artist have their characters experience all sorts of problems and negativity, there’s a lot of memes about negative stuff (how many times have you seen a wholesome post with a reblog or a retweet adding something negative? For example, I don’t know, someone tweets “I asked my mom a puppy, she brought me five of them” and someone says “if I asked it to my mom, she’d bring five slaps to my butt”). Of course, if I, a writer, see that people can’t stop talking about how much their life suck, I would think “well, maybe that’s all they want to hear about” and make characters with miserable lives;

However, I have always noticed how there’s a medium who seems to not be easily affected by all this stuff: animation.

You want a fantasy show where everything is colorful and bright? There’s lots of cartoons for that.

You want to see superheroes doing their best to fight for the good of the World? There’s plenty of them in animation.

You want hope and positivity? Tune in on any station that airs cartoons and you will find it.

However, the problem is that this goes hand to hand with the old stigma that, well, “cartoons are for kids”, so it feels like movies and TV shows are saying “positivity and happiness are for children. Grow the hell up and see how dark and hopeless the World truly is!”.

Why is trying to be positive and optimistic something that can’t happen if you’re a mature person? Why is it so wrong to just want to see a bit of peace in these media?

I don’t know what else to say or to add, so it’s best if I finish my post right here. So, here’s my opinion:

Even though it is okay for you to tell me a story where nothing matters, where “we live in a society” and where you can’t have good things, it should be balanced with something. Have you ever seen the Yin Yang symbol? Why do you think it depicts darkness with a little bit of light? Because nothing can be completely dark. So, just try to add some good energy in your story. It won’t be an issue for anybody to just have one moment where everyone smiles.

[thattimdrakeguy]

Favorite tim writers

Sorry for taking so long to answer this one. I'm still moving boxes, and I had to get a shower cause I got all sweaty and such. Gross I know.

But hmmmm. I been trying to think about it along the way.

1) Marv Wolfman.

He created Tim. No other contenders for me. While he may not have wrote him a lot, he wrote enough to make the base for all depictions of Tim at least should be based on.

2) Adam Beechon.

Why you may ask, because I think he understood the character at Tim, and used the personal trauma that Tim had amassed at the time in a way that stayed true to Tim's character. Showing that Tim can evolve, while not losing who he is for simple melodrama. And plus, he's this high, mainly cause while I like most of Dixon's writing till later on in his run, he's a prick.

The only thing off the top of my head is that Adam Beechon made Tim just a bit too cool. Because while he isn't the biggest geek ever compared to his friends who are obsessively geeky. Tim is still a big geek. That often felt a bit forgotten to make him more of a popular kid. Tim has his cool moments that get recognized, I think mainly his confidence in certain situations. But Tim needs to feel at least like a notable bit of a geek.

He didn’t write for my favorite era. But, I admire he kept Tim consistent while others destroyed him for the drama. Plus he had a longer chance to write him compared to others who either had him for a few small issues, not under his solo, or in Dixon’s case--wasn’t an asshole.

Beechon still can’t write Cass Cain, though.

3) Meghan Fitzmartin.

She's mostly got a very solid understanding of Tim, if not his relationship with some of the others. Typically one that's honestly not paid attention too for so long, it's just made to be generic, pretty, and bland.

There's a few flaws in the way she writes Tim, that, while small, are just not enough to make her go higher. Plus, you know. Revealed Tim's gay. Which is pretty nice.

Like this could just be me needing to reread, but I felt she made Tim take himself way too seriously. Tim never took himself too seriously. He took the job and being Robin seriously, but not himself. So sometimes when the story was focused on purely Timmy, he felt just a bit off.

4) Alan Grant

Though never a writer of Tim's solo, as far as I am aware. He wrote some of his earliest stories, and among them at least a hand full of his most important stories. I also think that he understood Tim's more childish side compared to Dixon, who I saw gave Tim a line about insurance deficits or something--like a 14-year-old boy would even care to do that, let alone reference it.

I think his biggest flaw if I remember right, was just that Tim's dialogue could be worded like he was tryna think of how a 90s kid would talk. Which dates it a bit. But mostly he was just fine and it fit in with how Tim was established to speak in his origin. A little kid doing his best to sound smart, with enough innocence, and naiveté, and with a genuine kid voice in there that makes it all work within what his origin establishes about him.

How well Alan Grant always achieved that--eh, but, still. I remember him being quite good. And I think he deserves more credit than he's given since he helped establish Tim, alongside Marv Wolfman, and Dixon.

5) Chuck Dixon.

While stated before he's not a morally great person. Who's bigoted opinions are shown well through his own contradictions made in his attempts to defend himself. He still wrote a very good Tim, and Tim's best stories. His biggest flaws to me, where sometimes feeling like he forgot what a kid was like within Tim's dialogue. It would sometimes be very good, which, that's part of writing a very good Tim. But every now and again Tim--didn't really feel like himself, and talked more like I imagine Dixon would speak. Going from a joke Tim would make that references TMNT to a joke only a curmudgeonly 30-year-old man would make, is very distracting.

And every now and again would portray Tim as a bit too mature, or--something along those lines if not the exact word to use. Tim was a light hearted kid that used his brightness to make Bruce hopefully remember his own light side. Dixon at times would struggle at this and write Tim more like how Dick would get at, at Bruce, and not Tim himself. Or just overall have Tim say something that, I really don't think the same kid from Lonely Place of Dying would be saying. He also made Tim proper mean in the few things of Young Justice he wrote. Clearly not understanding the Young Justice dynamic. Like Dixon couldn't help but leak out his own cynicism on a character literally created to be idealistic and a bit of an optimist.

He's a writer that could easily be one of Tim's best writers, which he showed with series like Tim's first Robin mini. Where, while Tim was portrayed as a bit more mature than in Lonely Place of Dying. Made more sense as his "mommy" had just died and he was trying to prove he's not just a kid. While also writing him to show just how much of a kid he really was deep down with his obliviousness and naiveté.

That still persisted in the solo, but there's just some moments where it's like. "He does remember what Tim's like right? And what a kid is like?" Which would created inconsistency among the Batman or Detective Comics writer that still had Tim just a bit more closer to his lighthearted naïve, but ready to prove himself roots.

Not to say this makes Tim's solo bad, but the more I've read it the more I noticed odd moments, I think towards the middle, and some even more towards the end where it could get very noticeable. Tim by the end of his run didn't always feel like Tim, and when he did, more often than not a very bland two dimensional version. Though there’s a few moments like that even in the beginning.

--

If I can think of anymore I'll add them, but as it is now, that's the best I can think of, and tried to give my reasons as to why on their positioning.

[popculturebuffet]

Top 13 Venture Bros Episodes!

In honor of it’s recent passing I take a look at the best episodes of easily one of the best adult animated, or animated period, shows ever and one of my faviorites. Join me as I look back on Grand Galactic High  Inquistors, Venturestiens, ninja filled first dates, Noir, super science garage sales and much more under the cut, and GO TEAM VENTURE!

As I said in the teaser.. the Venture Bros is one of my favorite shows of all time. Starting way back in 2003, the show created by Jackson “Christopher Mculloch” Publick and from mid season 1 onwards cowritten, plotted and what have you by his best friend and creative soulmate Doc Hammer, the show enjoyed a healthy 17 year run on adult swim, making it the longest standing show and despite the years of hiatuses between episodes it’s most popular till Rick and Morty came around. The show endured through changing trends in animation, network shifts and scabies until it’s recently announced, though apparently having happened months ago, cancellation.  I watched the show from the start, sneaking it as a boy and by my teen years watching it every week online through Adult Swim’s website and lapping up every episode, becoming a huge fan in the process and continuing my huge love of the series through the rest of it’s life, breifly forgetting to watch season 6 but getting back to it weekly for the 7th, and currently unless adult swim does indeed find a way to bring it back, final season. This show has been a part of my life since it started, and a part of me for slightly less long: it informed my sense of humor, probably informed my comics taste in ragtag groups consiting of lesser known characters, and informed me david bowie existed for which my life will ever be better.  It was a part of me and while I gave it a breif memorial earlier I felt after my long content hiatus due to my moven to another room, and for the 1 of you reading this who reads my amphibia weekly coverage it’ll be back shortly, that honoring a show that gave me so much and made me who I am, in a good way I know i’m kind of a mess so that statment could be seen as a threat in some states, by diving into my faviorite episodes of it and the ones I honeslty consider i’ts finest half hours.. or hours in two cases but we’ll get to that. 

For now it’s time to have your ro-bo pour you a red mocho cooler, slap on your vintage batman mask, and eat some pennies quizboys, this is my top 13 venture bros episodes. Pitter Patter!

13. It Happening One Night (Season 6, Episode 6) 

Season 6 had a huge burst of fresh energy and ideas: Doc and Jackson moved the show to New York for a number of reasons: To shake things up, because they lived there and thus could inject the energy of a city they loved in and because one of the series biggets inspriations is marvel comics, as seen by the sheer number of marvel parodies and homages in comparison to dc or other superhero outlets, so having New York be the big hub for superhero and villian activity in the ventureverse was a no brainer. This also moved the ventures from an isolated corner of the Ventureverse on their old compound, which burned down in the gargantua 2 special, right into the heart of it, bringing in tons of new characters to the already large cast. Not only that but it thrust our heroes and villian protaganists both into new and intresting situations: Doctor Venture was suddenly rich and running his own think tank with white and billy. Dean was going to college, Hank found a love intrest in Serena, more on that obviously in a second, Brock returned to the team proper as bodyguard once more, while the Monarch grappled with both his father being a hero and his wife being promoted and their marraige hitting choppy waters. It had great new characters like warina and serena, brought fan faviorite brown widow in if not as much as i’d like frankly, but there’s always room for nathan fillion, and freshened things up a bit.  Granted one of Venture Bros biggest strengths was it didn’t have the rigid status quo, or entire lack of any continuity a lot of animated shows at the time and even now have, that things changed and evolved and the universe was dense as it was wonderful. But here instead of just moving the pieces around the board and maybe slapping on some new coats of pait, they threw the board up and put the pieces on an enitrley new one. However all this experimentation did nick the show a little: while it was a step up from the rather standard outside of Dean’s plot Season 5 (which not concendtially is the only season not represented here), it also felt like the plots were a bit looser and some characters like Dermott and Dr. Orpheous, one of whom had a huge untouched subplot and the other who was a beloved fan faviorite and fixture of the show since season 1, got left out all together. It was a decent season it just felt lacking at times, and the Monarch and Shielda’s relationship disolving wasn’t at all fun to watch and thankfully got resolved next season. And that was the other problem: Due to wanting to give their big epic finale the room it needed and only having 8 episodes to work with due to the special, they had to move it to next season which meant it just sorta.. ended with most things left unresolved till season 7. Thankfully for me I didn’t get around to watching this season till close to 7, but for everyone else they had to wait YEARS for a proper resolution. It was  a mixed bag of a season, the mass changes leading to growing pains, but it had it’s moments. And naturally our one season 6 representivie here is it’s finest. 

It Happening One Night juggles two diffrent but equally awesome plots. In the first Hank goes on his first date with Serena, their new next door neighbor and daughter of big villain in town, new councilman and combination of kingpin and tobias whale, Wide Whale. Serena was one of the best additions to the series, voiced by a game Cristini Miloti, she’s a no nonsense girl with a sharp tounge, an annoyance with her father and his number 2 rocko’s overprotectivness of her and gills and meshes well with hank: Her no nonsense and more down to earth attitude compliments his up int he clouds weirdness and lack of reality really well and the two were cute together. Were... while they’d do.. things I did not like.. with her character next season, for this one she’s great and a fine addition and it was nice to give one of the boys a proper love interest, while also having her be her own person. Sure all her plots centered around hank.. but she still felt like a fully realized addition to the cast and given this was over a decade in with so many great members it wasn’t an easy task.  The date is paticuarlly hank as he has a carraige (his air car) ready, has dean chauffer them, has Billy and White show up as street toughs to challenge him to a dance off and dinner is at a ninja themed restraunt Dean’s friend Jared, aka brown widow, works at. It’s really adorable and charming stuff, and the two genuinely bond, and Hank gets some good character stuff. He genuinely worries Serena is only intrested to piss off her dad.. but fins she likes him for who he is: his charm, his lack of fear, and the fact he went so far for a romantic gesture he had his friends dress up as street toughs, or the hank venture idea of one anyway, and get into a dance off just to impress. her. it’s really good stuff. The Ninja themed restraunt is also both hilarious and apparently a very real thing the creators actually toned down. I’m unsuprised by all of this. The two also dodge their bodyguards, Brock and Rocco and share a romantic kiss underwater leading to the above. It’s a really good plot and the easy reason why I put it on here and defintely a review cantidate.  The other plot however is just pure comedy and invention. While the Monarch works on his plan to use his dad’s blue morpho guise to take out the other arches on his way to venture, Venture is plauged by the utterly bizzare and utterly delightful Doom Factory: A combination of Andy Warhol and his hangers on and the legion of doom... yes this actually happened. While I know nothing of Warhol and thus a lot of it flew over my head, it’s made up for by the sheer joyous lunacy of having the art school version of the legion of doom arch rusty by invading his house, throwing a party and taking various pictures of him in his underwear. The one mistep of the episode is them getting blown up at the end despite being great, but their one apperance was a treat, and it was such a great and bizzarely speific parody I couldn’t help but love it. It was a good night indeed. 

12. Tag Sale, You’re It! (Season 1, Episode 6 (10 in airing order) Season 1 of The Venture Bros is a bit rocky. It’s not unusual for season 1′s but it’s understandable, espcesially now i’ve read Go Team Venture!: The Art of the Venture Bros, the art book for the series as well as a full on making of for seasons 1-6, and know the team was under immense crunch to get the season done and is likely the reason every season after had a few years between them. But yeah at the start the series was more of a broad comedy, with the characters being the simiplest versions of their characters, the boys in paticular only having “jock and nerd” as things that defined them as seperate people early on and it took a bit for things to come together. However things really started to crystalize into what the show would truly be with two episodes. One we’ll get to later but the other is this one: Tag Sale Your It.  Tag Sale started one of my faviorite recurring themes for the series: Venture Compound Episodes. Basically their episodes where a huge pile of the shows cast get together at the venture compound for whatever reason and chaos, great jokes and great worldbuilding inveitbly insues. It’s good stuff. And it’s usually centerted around a great concept.  In this case all the villians and heroes of the world are gathering at the Venture Compound for of all things, a Garage Sale. Or Tag Sale as it’s called in the title or Yard Sale as Venutre himself calls it. In order to make a quick buck and get rid of some of his dad’s excess scientific wonders, Rusty’s sellling them off to whatever weirdo wants em. it’s an utterly hilarious concept, with Brock complaning about the security risk and the fact Doc is entirely convinced this won’t go horribly wrong despite the fact he has a bargin bin for death rays, one of my faviorite gags of the episode. But there’s still plenty of sense here too: There’s what i’m presuming are OSI agents on standbye, who also screen the various villians to have them check their weapons. 

The episode also opens the cast up considerably introducing Phantom Limb, and fleshing out Billy and Pete, as well as being the episode where two of the casts standouts came into their own as 21 and 24 go off on their own misadventur where 21 uses the monarchs money to buy what turns out ot bea non working lightsaber and tries to fight brock in one of the best scenes of the episode.  Speaking of the Monarch, . The Monarch himself is there to cause miscihief, as usual, as well as have his minons buy him some stuff because he’s not going to miss a bargin, and finds himself struggling to get his hate boner up in a neat subplot, eventually acheiving it even if it gets him stuck to the celing However the other two subplots really shine. Orpheous in a micro plot, and after yelling at Dr. Venture for trying to sell the weed wacker he borrowed from Oprheous, tries to get his own nemisis, a thread that would continue at the end of the season and into the next, having a ghost slap the monarch ot try and get him to become Orpheous arch and telling various villians he’s blasting who they can blame if they want to swear vegnance. It’s short but really funny.  The other however is my faviorite and the plot that really set up hank’s bizzarely and uniquely him personality, which would be expanded on more as the show went on. Annoyed that their dad is selling their old things and getting the money, Hank decides to get him and Dean a piece of the action and sets up his own grinder and lemonade stand, Hank Co, starting the sparkling runner of his bizzare personal buisness, and while the lemonade stand is standard kids stuff, the added oddly specific addition of grinders is what makes it hank as is his oddly agreesive managment style. Dean ends up working for him alongside HELPEr, while Dean awkwardly talks up Orpheous daughter triana. More on that whole thing in a later entry, with Triana joining in. It’s just a fun side bit that ends hilariously as, when the sale cascades into an orgy of violence as it was always destined to, the rest of the team book it while Hank definatly refuses to get knocked down before a shoe hits him. 

IT’s a damn fun time that sets up the backbone of the show’s universe. Nuff Said. 

11. Pinstripes and Poltergeists (Season 4, Episode 8)  Season 4 is easily my faviorite season hands down, and in my opinion the best, in part helped by the fact it’s the longest and thus had the most time to work on it. Like season 6, if on a smaller scale, it threw up the table. While Season 2 and 3 had status quo changes, the Monarch being on his own without the guild or dr girlfriend and then the newly married couple being forced to arch eleswhere this one had probably the biggets shakeups: Brock Sampson left team venture, and was MIA for all but two episodes of the first half, Sgt. Hatred took over as boydguard a move that wasn’t one of there best as while Hatred could be funny at times.. replacing one of the show’s most beloved and most iconic characters with a reformed pedophile who fans already didn’t like all that much in season 3 wasn’t one of Jackson and Doc’s smarter moves let’s be honest. Again he has his moments, but he just wasn’t as compelling or well fleshed out as the rest of hte main cast, helper included.  The other big swing, one admitted in the making of art book that was an intentional risk, was killing off 24, half of the beloved buddy duo of 21  and 24. However this one paid off way better, as 21, while still a husky dork who loves his crappy job, reinvented himself in the wake of hte tragedy, turning a lot of his blubber into muscle (And I say that as a chub myself, so relax), and becoming the badass drill seargent of the cocoon.  But both big changes expertly dovetailed into this episode which explains where brock was after the premiere. The ball gets rolling when the Monarch goes to see Monstroso, a great addition to the series and the sum of all evil lawyer jokes, a lawyer in a pinstripe suit and small devil hood who makes deals with other supervillians, in this case to buy up part of the venture compound to take it from Rusty.   Naturally making a deal with a lawyer super villian who dresses like the devil, every bit of that sentence a red flag, goes poorly. As Shiela points out in one of the series best lines as she berates her husband’s terrible decision making “Monstro’s a lawyer that’s also a super villian. That’s like a shark with a rocket launcher strapped to his head, and the monstroso plans to take the monarch’s stuff as well. It falls to 21 to stop him and 21 is on the venture compound to find our missiing sampson and get answers on who killed his best friend, whose also following him around possibly as a ghost/hallucination.  Speaking of Brock, when exploring a shack on the edge of the property to use it for stuff, Rusty finds instead the base for SPHINX, consiting of Hunter Gathers (Who I hope gets to retransition someday), gay icon Shore Leave, and Brock Himself. Turns out Brocks literally been right there, SPHINX Just needed to stay secret and the pain of not being able to see the boys has seriously hurt brock. And naturally this deal will impact spinix, so they send brock to deal with it.  This leads to the best part of the episode as the above episode gets a callback as 21 challenges brock to a fight.. and to show how far he’s come, instead of becoming a bloody pile on the lawn, fights EVENELY with brock freaking sampson. After it’s confirmed brock has nothing to do with it and 21 and him have wiggle room to operate, the two go after monstroso who next we see needs heart surgery so mission acomplished. This episode is light on jokes, apart from a great one where rusty tells the boys everything before mindwiping them, but good on character stuffs as we find out where Brocks been, meet some good new supporting cast and see just how far 21′s come, and close out the first half of a stellar season iwth a great scene of Brock eating cereal, finally allowed to be part of his family again.

10. Viva Los Muertos! (Season 2, Episode 11)  Season 2 was easily where the show hit it’s stride. While Season 1 is going through growing pains Season 2 has all the setup, half planned ideas and what not mostly out of the way to just focus on building up the world, and characters as well as playing around with things and having the first instance of the show’s refusal to have a set status quo by having the Monarch’s breakup iwth Shiela stick until the end of the season. More on that later. However some experimentation still happened as something that would likely NEVER happen from this point on happened.  See the Venture Bros is very much Jackson and Doc’s baby. While Jackson created it, Doc because just as important and the two share one giant geeky brain. WHile they may argue on some things, the two still agree on most stuff and thus the project has their unified vision of this weirdly specific superhero universe that’s mainly focused on what would be prehriay characters leftover from a one time genre experiment and supervillians. While the staff on the show clearly enjoyed working on it far as I can tell an dare celebrated in the making of when credit’s do, the writing and worldbuilding is on two guy’s shoulders, an absolute rarity in animation let alone of a project with this gorgeous and detailed animation. But for three episodes the two did let someone in.. it’s just someone who not only got exactly what htey were going for but was their friend and mentor who helped nurture their talents on the tick. Ben Edlund. If you haven’t heard of Ben first off shame on you and second, he’s the creator of the Tick, writing the original comics series and having a major hand in all three series, all of which are unsuprisingly stellar, and having brought jackson and doc on board for 2/3 of them, likely only not bringing them to the Amazon one because by this point they’d far outgrown being writters on someone elses show.  He also created supernatural and left long before it became a tire fire so there’s that. I need to watch that sometime. Point is he’s a big deal and helped write two episodes and wrote this one Solo. And this one is easily the best of the three and given it’s on this list one of the series best.  The episode has Doc have another great idea in the Zack Morris with mad scientest abilities veign he always have: Take the parts of one of hte monarch’s dead henchman, as brock tends to leave piles around, into a “Venturestein’ and sell it to the goverment. While the simple man bonds with the boys, he cowers in fear of brock, who is forced to grapple with his violent nature and deeds and goes to Orpheous spirtial gathering fors some perspective. It’s a nice subplot that has some character development before a spirit vision of hunter gathers convinces him he can’t get caught up in killing people when it’s hwat he goods at. Brock meets him halfway, deciding he can’t feel entirely guilty but he can help the guy and gets Venturestein some “prostitoots!” he’s been wanting since apparnelty the henchman he was made out of really liked htem.  The concept of venturestein himself is neat, from the idea of reusing old henchman to him using the boys learning beds to learn about the third world and be indocrinated for third world labor, as was Doc’s orginal plan.  The other plot which dovetalls into venture steins is another great one as The Groovy Gang, the show’s answer to mystery inc arrives. And in a great idea by Edlund.. their all based on various serial killers, with leader ted being baised on ted bundy and being unerviing as he speaks cherfully while threanting the rest of hte gang, the shaggy stand in being a stand in for the son of sam and the only one that can hear groovy talk who rather than be an adorable dog, talks like a nightmarish german man, the daphne standin is clearly kidnapped and the velma one valries acts like valrie solanis. It’s creepy stuff but it’s also funny because theys till include hannah barbara sound effects, including when Venturestein in a ptsd fueld rage kills ted, not-shaggy and groovy> It’s a horrible but great scene and a great concept that just works. They also tie in the boys being clones by having it revealed one of their deaths was caused by Sonny, finalylr emembered his name, and Ted wanting to kill them. The boys end up finding their clones too, but Doc spins them a yarn to get by and is kept from kiling them. Not much to say, outside of brocks bit this isn’t huge on character but the sheer balls of the scooby doo parody and the sheer amount of jokes and creativity here make Edlund’s sole solo outing a true highlight. 

9. The Inamorata Consequence (Season 7, Episode 5) 

The likely final compound episode and a welcome return after season 6 lacked theme entirely, and as I established earlier the compound isn’t required it’s just where most of these take place.  Season 7 was a good note to go out on. While I still want closure, after the forgetable Season 5 and the  fresh but messy Season 6, 7 was almost pure goodness, with most of the episodes being standouts and the premire trilogy wrapping up the dangling threads from season 6 being a highlight, if not enough to make this list but it was a tight list as is. It had it’s flaws: The “Serena Cheats on Hank with Dean thing” was not only horribly underdeveloped but basically wrote off one of their best new characters. Her and hank breaking up and her dating dean is fine, relationships end and stuff, it was just done poorly. Even if Hank found out because a scary man in a bear costume literally carried him to a convience store and then to Dean which was great as was the button on that plot of, after Dean and Serena naturally react to the guy “Oh good you see him too. “ The Unicorn in Captivity is also a series low point despite having mark freaking hamil guest star, for a number of reasons i’ll probably get into one of these days either on a worst of list for this show or it’s own review. But those blemishes don’t overide a great season that makes up for Oprehous and Dermott’s absensces by bringing both back for an episode, has some true classics, some great character stuff and in general is just really good and it was hard to cut a lot of it from this list, but two made it. And it was nice to see the show go out on top if nothing else. 

So onto this episode which has a brilliant complex: Every exty years the Guild and the OSI meet to hash out the details of their mututal treaty with a Venture prociding and with Jonas now well and truly dead, and missing before that, it falls on Rusty. and since it was made before the compound burned down, our heroes returned to the charred remains of their home to hash things out.  The episode then nicely settles into 3 really excellent plots. The first is the obvious, the peace treaty which has the Council of 13, who in a delebrate move by the creators went from a bunch of faceless nobodies who were killed off to characters we all knew, versus our standard stable of OSI recureerers as the two bicker over terms and we find out one of the conflict settlers is a pool fight, done without a pool since that’s gone now. It’s just pure comedy goodness, but it ends with the rare unequivoocable VICTORY for Rusty. Fed up with both sides acting like children, and even calling them such, as well as both threatning war, he gives one hell of a speech to both to shut them up and for once in his life does BETTER than his father. 

It��s easily James Urbanik’s finest hour as the character and one of the series best moments which, 17 years in, is a high achievement.  The other two plots aren’t too shabby themselves. The second is an overlap as Hank gets lured away from the confrence by an old friend: IT’S DERMOTT! The dynamic duo rides again and their old dynamic of two dumbasses, one a normal teen but entirely full of himself the other being a cloudcuckoolander with little self awarness but more empathy and sometimes sense, is one I really missed and it shines here. Dermott’s joined the OSI, with Rusty giving him a recomendation as long as he didn’t tell anyone else he was his son, or at least it’s implied as much, finally buttoning up that bit while leaving it open for hank to find out later, and a bit that also was never resolved and hopefully will be by a follow up, especially since Dean revealed in the series finale he found out from his dad a while back while rusty was hammered. They follow kimberly mcmanus and one of the strangers, the guilds soldiers who are engaging in a clandestine affair.. which also reveals that the stranger is the peril partnerships mole in the guild, a nice twist. The two have fun chemistry and it’s great ot see them again just like it’s great to see hank and dermott pal around again with the highlight being hanks utterly bizzare and utterly hank fantasy sequence.  Rounding out the three is a more emotional tale as Dean sneaks off to see an old friend, Ben the genetisct who worked with his father and grandfather at various points and revealed to dean he was a clone. Ben is gone, either due to Doc and Jackson not wanting to use him, or because JK simmons was unvaliable and unlike dr. impossible and steven colbert, they didn’t want to recast. But we do get a great substitute as we meet H.E.L.P.er 2, a household model voiced by Rhys Darby who Ben left behind on his trip.  As it turns out Jonas tried mass marketing H.E.L.P.er units (With the equally unsurprisingly sexist tag line of “Get a H.E.L.P.er to Help Her!”), but a  baby choked on a stray bolt and a the ensuing backlash lead to mass burnings and most being destroyed and the one we meat being a nervous wreck that Ben took in. Dean naturally sees himself in the scared bot and while he fails to get his new friend to be able to leave, H2 is too nervous about possibly being destroyed and given the uncaring nature of the venture world sometimes yeah probably a good point, he does bond with dean.. and reveal that Rusty himself is a clone by accident. IT’s a nice twist that makes perfect since: While we don’t know if Rusty knows the tech was used on him most of his stuff , with few exceptions is old equipment of his dad’s. It’s not a stretch that his greatest invention was actually Jonas’. It also leads to a nice moment as dean hugs his dad, understanding him a bit better. It’s a funny, well done episode that lets doc and sons really shine. Truly a great way fo ra great theme to go out.

8. The Buddy System (Season 3, Episode 5) Time for a sentimental favorite. See while I watched bits of seasons 1 and 2 when they aired, and more of 2 then I realized, I didn’t get really hooked on the show till season 3.. and this was the episode that did it. The ones before are far from bad, Shadowman 9 was a contender for this list after all, this is just the one that really got me into the show, showing off it’s varied supporting cast, bringing in one or two more, and really getting me into dean.. and Dean and Triana shipping but I can get into that, again, more on that later. Given this and Fallen Arches were early faviorites it’s no suprise compound episodes became my faviorites and this one is easily the second best of em, with one more coming up topping it handily.  But enough showing my hand, let’s talk about Season 3. Season 3 is a slight mixed bag, as some episodes don’t land, but overall is a really good season, it’s just sandwitched between the shows too best. But it did have good ideas, great world building and a hell of a cliffhanger. Some decisions, like Sgt. Hatred, weren’t the best, but overall a solid season, just like 3 it only managed to squeak out one entry, though TONS of possible cantidates.  This episode has a great premise from the get go: Rusty, for once, has a decent idea. Yes it still results in a child dying and being replaced by a clone, but this is rusty. If something didn’t go terribly wrong on some level it wouldn’t be him. But the idea is simple: Since the cartoon based on his nightmarish childhood, which made him a minor celebrity and is why billy likes Rusty so much and looks up to him despite being.. Rusty, is a hit with the kids again, Rusty launches a day camp on the grounds, using his boys as counslers and having his various friends and aquantinces set up booths. From Orpheous and the order of the triad doing an anti drug presentation to the sea captain talking about the benefits of being a scooby doo villian, to Action Johnny, the series version of Johnny Quest renamed to avoid copyrights but very obviously Johnny Quest, whose strung out on drugs and can’t go a few minutes without going into a breakdown about his father or past. All good stuff. It actuallyg oes pretty well till rusty makes the mistake of going into an old thing of his d ad’s without checking and a gorilla monster attacks and gets the one child left behind, thankfully off screen, but it leads to the darkly hilarious bit of him rushing a clone out for his parents to avoid a justified law suit. 

Meanwhile the boys and brock deal with a new figure in their lives: Dermott Fictel. As the creators put it they basically desgined him as that one kid everyone knows who talks shit, thinks he’s way more capable than he is, and way more knowledgble than he is and is kinda dopey. I had one of those, i’m sure you did too, and that’s probably part of why I really liked Dermott as I knew a guy just like him. Hank naturally, not having had any friends other than dean and H.E.L.P.er, bonds with the prick and the two become best friends right away. Dean however hates the little asshole for both constantly shit talking him and just being obnoxious. Brock soon joins the hate train as Dermott invades his karate demonstration to talk about how much of a badass he thinks he is and learned from the internet. Brock soon finds himself asking the age old question. 

But since his code avoids women and children, he tries to find ways around it but Orpheous obviously isn’t having it. His other option is to go to the Monarch’s minons the Pupa Twins, aka the Moppets, Shiela’s old minons who the monarch’s basically stuck with and no one really liked in or out of universe. Their just assholes who treat 21 and 24 and the monarch himself like crap and are thankfully downplayed in Season 4, and only appear in Season 5 to die off and close up a plot thread. But credit where it’s due they did get one good bit, creepy as it may be and it’s this. 

With the Monarch not allowed to arch venture at the time due to plot stuff, the monarch’s mostly spying and sending the pupa twins in as spies which as you can see dosen’t really go well. Everything converges on the finale, as Rusty, again being rusty even when he’s mildly ahead child aside he still screws up, brings in Johnny’s old enemy Dr. Z, who like dermott is important but it’d take till the end of Season 5 for that. Johnny breaks down, Venture’s current nemisis arrives and finds there was a scheduling error and hten we get the crowning moment of the episode that makes it all come together magically: Dean gets to sit with Triana, whose actually being receptive to his crush for once, but also has to put up with Dermott..  who being Dermott, especially early dermott is an obnoxious jackass who makes creepy coments abotu Trianna and eventually sets Dean off

Dermott doesn’t even get two seconds into telling Triana to wait naked for him, because of course he does before dean utterly destroys him. This being Dean, it’s with tears and snot running and coming off like an angry 8 year old, but he still deserves points for utterly decimating the asshole after a full day of taking his self indulgant bullcrap and having the guy be creepy to his crush. And to be fair Triana was dealing with him fine, but still Dean beat up someone twice his size and while lacking any actual fighting skill with at least enough bulk to beat him up and gave the fucker a black eye. Until season 7 with him just paying off the monarch to save his teacher from making a huge mistake, and to show how fed up he was, this was easily Dean’s best moment. Just a great capper to a great episode. Also Dermott turns out to be, possibly brocks son but.. more on that later. 

7. Mid-Life Chrysalis (Season 1, Episode 3 (8 in Airing Order)  As I said earlier Season 1 was a bit rough, though as all of you probably know most 1st seasons are, especially in animation. It takes time to iron out what really works for a show and get it going right. Bojack Horseman, while still excellent, took the first few episodes to really become what it was born to be, Steven Universe season 1a lacks the deep characterization of the main cast that and has loosey goosey animation,  Ducktales had trouble character ballancing and ballancing adventure with deconstruction of adventure.. every show has growing pains.  And while season 1 does have too much of the show basically trying to scream

Like some adult cartoons do, and not even it’s contepraries like sealab and harvey birdman did as much, both excellent excellent shows by the way. But even with my criticsims of it: Flat characters, a try hard tone, clumsy worldbulding in places.. it’s still a good show even this early and even as early as episode 3, with the first two being good.. but this one being an utter classic. It dosen’t QUITE have the emotoinal or character depth of later episodes but damn if it isn’t one of the funniest things the crew ever wrote. 

Mid-Life’s two main plots are simple and start from the cold open: The Ventures get pulled over while on the way to an adventure by the air force, and Doc and Brock both encounter problems: Rusty being Rusty, his is petty and self loathing based as he gets called old or something like that by one of the air force people. Brock’s is a bit more serious: In a funny bit Brock LITERALLY has a legal lisence to kill, but given the burarcaey of the venture world, it’s expired.  So we get our two main plots out of that: Rusty wants to prove he’s not old and still got it by dragging a sad Brock to a strip club. Brock is miserable as the owner mocks him, and he can’t kill him so there’s that and his attempt to have a quickie with a stripper fails because it’s just not the same without his murder boner apparently. Look as I said the show was a wee bit immature early on.. it never stopped being mind you it just became more goofily immature than screaming i’m an adult. Brock leaves in a huff which leaves Rusty open for the oldest trick in the book as the Monarch sends Shiela in in disguise to seduce him, go back to his place, and then stick him with a syringe full of science that turns him into a caterpillar because this is the monarch. Subtly is not even a suite of his let alone his strong suite. Though this also being the Monarch we only get a bit where he watches as the two make out, which is creepy as that sounds until a minon randomly turns out the lights and apolgoizes. He was getting juice. The episode also nicely parodies the trope of a female spy or whatever turning for the hero because of his dick as The Monarch assumes that happen when Shiela has doubts about the scheme, that he “turend her with his oily sex” which is an objectively horrible and paranoid statment but also incredibly hilarious.  Thus the plots split and we get two really hilarious one: On Brocks end he with the boys encouragment, decides to retake his secret agent exam. And both boys really come into their own with this one: Dean’s adorably nerdy and sweet sides come out as he both encourages his second dad and helps him on the written portions, while hanks gung ho hankness emerges in full as he helps train brock, having him drink eggs that he probably spat in and in one of the best bits of the episode going a bit too far with the drill sgt routine till Brock helpfully points out he’ll legally be able to kill after this. The solution is also great as Brock not only avoids using his fire arm during one of the tests, instead uttelry decismating the target cutouts with just his kinfe and whatever he can rig up, and just scribbling icarus from the led zepplin albums on his test.. only for his proctor to pass him anyway as his dad and osi boss general treister, who we meet later, described brock as a living legend, and he did not dissapoint. And we get a great closer, after the main plto finsihes, where Brock shows the strip club asshole his fresh lisence before maiming him.. though even better, he DOSEN’T kill the guy as the asshole does show up again later, just missing an eye now. 

Back on our main plot we get plenty of hilarious and messed up stuff as the boys barely react to their dad’s horrible state, their numb at this point, and doc gives out the classic line and easily the best of the episode “I pissed in god’s eye, and he blinked”. Doc tries to cure himself and fails both due to caterpillar hands and due to helper eating the chemicals, and tries to get helper to help him reinact the end of the fly. All good stuff. It’s just a good, solid comedy episode that both solidifies the character and makes you laugh near constantly. 

6. The Terminus Mandate (Season 7, Episode 8) One of the best parts of the post Garantua shakeup of the show was the new council. After years of the council of 13 just being guys behind silouttes, mantle and dragoon nonwishtanding, Jackson and Doc replaced most of them with familiar charcters and gave a ton of them chances to shine while bringing in new ones like wide whale and easily their best later creation Red Death, more on him in a minute. It gave us a nice workplace dynamic and really made the guild pop more than ever. And this episode showcases this marvelously by giving the new council the spotlight.  In this one the Council find that there’s an old mandate that means they must stop active arching in order to retain their spots, something they all agree to and thus leads to an episode of each of the council having one last ride as each are given an envelope of who their last arch is. And each is hilaroius, some even heartfelt, creative and fleshes out some of them. Going down the list, leaving out Shiela and Red death who has a more involved subplot for hers and has some other buisness entirely we’ll get to: Phantom Limb: Has, in a great gag, a literal dick measuring contest with Hunter Gathers. Just a simple effective gag.  Radical Left: Is merged with his old arch enemy Right Wing so they simply play clue.  Wide Whale: Has the least funny or enteratining but still entresting as he and his old arch are now friends and the guy even plays cards with Rocco, so rather than poision the well he just sends Rocco to rough him up a bit for old times sake, then take him to dinner.  Dr. Z: Reminces with Action Johnny, the two considering each other family at this point and the two have a really nice moment with Johnny in rehab finally getting help that’s actually really touching and really nice to see.. though we also get an utterly fantastic bit where they recreate an actual scene from Johnny Quest but with Z lampshading how stupid everyone’s being. 

And finally we get Mantle and Dragoon, who spend the night binging tv and eating a ton, my mood and general schedule, afraid to open their envelope only to celebrate when they do and find their arches are all dead.  Red Death meanwhile has buisness to take care of. Since I dind’t include Red Means stop on here I’d just like to talk about how much I love the guy. Voiced by clancy brown death is an old school legend in the guild whose great at arching, has a great gimmick.,. but can switch from horribly threatning monster to aflrable nice and loving family man, having a younger wife and a daughter whose utterly adorable and shares his face. He even wanted the guild spot simply so he could basically retire, get the nice pension plan and salary that comes with the guild without the rigors of regular arching having long settled things with his own arch by murdering him> he’s an utterly inspired edition and the crew, and fans, loved him enough he became a recurrer this season. 

And his bit is both awesome and utterly terrifying: earlier the guild tried to parlay with rivals the peril partnership in order to stop the bleeding on their end, but their represntive, Blind Rage, a hilariously broey version of Daredevil, instead mocks and direspects them and is in general a pissant. So rather than do an arch, since he’s done with that anyway, Death evens the score in one of the shows best scenes, which like the rusty one above is an acomplishment years in and is an utterly terrifying and awesome villian scene. 

Clancy Brown is a fucking master at this. and it showss.  As for Shiela her bit ends up tying into the Venture Family’s plot for the evening: Rusty courts a black widow, Teresa Diade because getting laid outweighs the possibility of death and we get a a great bit of dean pretending to be her as the family preps him. Naturally he bungles it because he takes too much anti venom, but Teresa turns out to be a former superhero, probably what actually happened to her husbands, and Shielias arch during her breif solo career. Though instead of an arching, though she try, Shiela instead breaks down over the stress of this, over possibly giving up arching with her husband for her career, and the two share a nice moment. I mean she still takes Diade’s wallet because she’s a villian after all but it’s a nice one and an emotoinal moment. She takes the job as revealed later of course, because even of this probably hurts the Monarch’s feelings a bit he wants what’s best for her. Because they have a damn good marriage again. overally a really inventive, hilarious episode and one fo the show’s finest hurrahs as it approached an untimley end.

5. Everybody Comes to Hanks (Season 4, Episode 12) 

Season 4 as I said was my faviorite and one of it’s highlights was the duo of Bright Lights Dean City, which BARELY didn’t make this list, and Everbody Comes to Hanks. The two episodes followed the same period of time from the perspectives of each brother: Dean has an internship in new york city and Rusty’s bumming along, though being a dick he wants hank to have a job by the time he gets back.  Hank, in a classic hank move, expands Hank Co from an ocasional name for his buisnesses to a full on department store with a restraunt and detective agency because of course he has those. It honestly reminds me of me: Even as a teen I was the kind of goofus who’d do this sort of elaborate stuff. But at the same time it shows hank’s best trait and the one that most people underestimate: his ingniuity and imagination. Sure the guy’s off in his own world, as am I, and it’s his charm, but when push comes to shove he can bust out a wacky scheme, save his family from danger or as seen earlier this list pull out a 3 point romantic gesture. The guy may be kinda dumb, int he best way, but he’s got the natural talent for the superhero/supervillian game and clearly wants to be his own bizzare version of batman, which I hope he gets to be and I prefer over the theroy he’ll be a villian. Sure it makes SOME sense.. but frankly hank’s good heart and love of theatrics and lack of care about the jackasses meancing his dad make him a way better superhero. 

Anyways naturally said detective agency leads to both a noir homage, complete with lack of color and a case: Dermott, who at this point’s a bit more symapthetic, wants to know if brock’s really his dad or not and hires his best bud to do it. Hank also gets a partner in one fo the show’s best recurrers, the Alchemist, ba dah!, Orpheous’ best friend, teammate, sarcasm machine and out and proud magic guy voiced perfectly by Dana Snyder. He’s a good counterpart to Orpheous, sarcastic down to earth and fun loving to the more serious and full of himself Orhpeous and since Triana moving out in our next entry, has been Orpheous’ roomate and bored since he’s now in the middle of nowhere, so he’s eager to jump into Hank’s nonsense.  What follows is a compelling detective story as Hank finds out Brock never slept with Dermott’s mom, and tries to find the real one.. and ends up stumbling upon the solution upon hooking up with Dermott’s older sister Nikki... which quickly goes sideways as he finds out not only is she twice his age, and even without that he’s still a minor and this is still creepy.. but she’s Dermott’s mom.. and RUSTY’S his father, with Dermott’s mom who raised him being his grandma. It’s a hell of a reveal that throws up the table both on Dermott’s relationship with Hank and the chraracter as a whole and has a great flashback where we find out how something this effed up happened and it’s incredibly well acted. It’s good stuff.  Hank uses SPHYNX”s mindwipe machine on himself, since getting laid or not, which being hank he dosen’t see the problems with how it happened as long as he dosen’t know, sends a total recall esque message to himself on his watch so he knwos he got laid, jut not the horirble, horrible details. And I like that , unlike say Phineas and Ferb Across the Second dimension’s bullshit reset ending, this dosen’t erase the impact of things. Not hank loosing his virgnity that’s meaningless I mean Dermott. He’s still there, it jsut left at ticking time bomb of when that reveal’s going to go off, and added an intresting new dynamic that I hope if the show continues somehow gets explored. A masterful, fun and suprisingly disturbing episode, everybody should come to hanks. Also as one last post note i’d be remiss if I forgot the great bit of Hatred saying they only serve eggs at hanks cafe. 

4. The Better Man (Season 4, Episode 7) 

Now we get to Dr. Orpheous, who unsuprisingly is a faviorite of mine. While I wasn’t a big Dr. Strange fan till reading the old lee and ditko stuff, I was always a fan of Orpheous, a hammy divorced dad who will give fighting the hordes of hell the same gravitas as getting junk mail, putting some punks souls in a homies figurine, and venture stealing his weedwacker. He’s a truly loveable character, a silver age pompus style hero in a world he dosen’t quite fit, with more power and competence than most venture bros protaganists, but still having things thta hold him back: while he’s good at his job his own drive and self importance drove away his ex wife and leaves him with not much in his life other than his daughter.  And for the first time in the series he’s forced to face his wife leaving him for another man when said man shows up : The Outrider, a seemingly cooler mystic hero whose better at both being a husband and being a sorecer and stops some creature The Order of the Triad fights after their arch torrid sumons him. Orpheous stews over this a bit and after failing to make hisown doorway to hell t  one up his non-arch nemisis, visits another classic character for the series: the Master. Voiced by Voice Acting Maestro John Benjamin, pre his biggest roles with archer and bob’s burgers but post his breakout with home movies. The Master is a no nonsense mystic entity who loves taking the piss out of orpheous and loves his student even if Orpheous agrviates him. He also has a neat visual habit of showing up in a diffrent shapeshifted form each time to teach his pupil a lesson.. and to do weird sex stuff because he can multi task and we see Trainai’s mom for the first time, though with the master just using the form to taunt Orpheous on his personal failings as usual but has a good point.  Soon however the group returns to the portal from hell and find Torrid and Outrider.. and torid explodes and sends the rider to hell, forcing Orpheous and co to rescue him, with Orpheous finding out via a clue from the master that the outrider embeded an artifact in his head to travel between worlds, the one thing orpheous could never master, as a shortcut.. and said thing gets al and orpheous stuck with the outrider. There we see the contrast: Orpheous is indeed the better sorcerer.. but the outrider’s the better husband and while if his wife cheated on him that’s fucking terrible, it’s clear he didn’t STEAL Tatiana so much as she left Orpheous for someone that geniuinely appricated her. The hatched it buried and it’s godo character work.  Speaking of which we get to Jefferson Twilight, a blade parody who hunts Blackulas (his words and leads to a great moment in his debut where a supervillian tries to find a more pc term for it but Jefferson poitns out since he primarly hutns oversea “African americian” dosen’t really work), and the guy on the team reguarly compalning about having no magic ability.. but who finds he CAN move between worlds and astral project, to his delight and Al’s annoyance. It’s an adorable and well won moment as he finaly finds SOMETHING magic he can do.  The other plot, which dovetails nicely into Orpheous concerns Dean’s longstanding crush on Triana, another pin to pull from earlier this list. I shipped them when I was younger but this episode, and one coming up on this list, pointed out how it jsut didn’t work: Dean’s naivite combined with his lack of making a move just didn’t mesh with her. IT’s something the creators agreed on realizing they just had no use for Triana, but both hating the cliche of a character just vanishing and thus giving her a proper sendoff instead.  Dean tries to move on after another unsucessful attempt to talk her up, with Hank and Dermott playing his wingmen, unsucessfully but Dean actually hits it off with a girl.. a girl we never see again but still and Dermott actually offers sound advice for once.. which given events before and after this prompts Dean to quip “better check the temprature in hell”. He just says to take things slow and just call the girl, maybe ask her out, don’t overblow it again or try too hard. It’s good stuff and like our last entry deepens the character a bit by showing that he’s not always a dumbass. Just  mostly. On Triana’s end she enters her dad’s closet, again having done so before and as shown in previous episodes Orpheous always mindwiped her, and it turns out it’s not the first time as the Master sees great talent, but sees she needs to be taught by her mother and step dad, where she can find other witches and learn at her own pace.. maybe befriend an older witch and a demon, find her own personl lesbian. We’ll see how it goes. He TRIES scaring her out fo a future with dean, but fails because.. she had no intrest in dean whatsoever and there was nothing to scare her away from. The Master is confident this will lead to nothing.. but as we see in the stinger.. this isn’t the case.  Byron for once grew, and rather than wipe his daughter’s brain to keep the last family he has outside of his buddies close, as he likely did before out of fear of loosing her... lets her go. He grows letting his daughter grow up and take the long path he did and hopefully better than either of her parents, while Dean “let’s her down gently’. Triana was a godo character, a downt o earht presence in theboys life and wiry, but it was time for her to fly and it’s a good note to send her off on and overall pure magic. 

3. All This and Gargantua 2! (Special between Seasons 5 and 6) 

ONto another charcter’s sendoff we have JJ, Doc’s brother he absorbed in the womb who came back somehow and then became way more sucessful and spent all of seasons 4 and 5 building a space Station. And this episode pays that and MANY other threads off in a giant sized epic that’s one of the series finest moments.  it’s the Gargantua 2′s grand opening, with Doc and the boys going up. Hank goes to gamble and adventure, with Hank bucks obvoiusly, while Doc and Dean are called to Visit JJ.. whose dying, his body shutting down shortly after he finalyg ot life and wanting this satilite to be his final work. but soon the three, along with col treister who we’ll get to in another entry, have ot save the world with JJ touchingly sacirficing himself just as both brothers finally reconciled and Doc finally accepted him. It’s  a powerful subplot.  Said calamity comes in the form or another loose end, the revenge socieyt, Phantom Limb’s splinter group who are attacking and are unknowing pawns in the soverign, who turns out not tbe bowie which is good becaue he dies here and that would’ve been eerie, and his mad plans to try and outwit the investors, msyterous beings. Yeah i’m going to have to try and summarize a lot here as htis is a big, continuity drive spectacle and it works well if wonkily. TO mak ea long story short our heroes fight on a satlite, and dr. henry killinger, marry poppins meets kissinger with a magical murder bag, fights his brethern and reforges the guild with the various villians tryign to stop the soverign or leftover from the society. The special is one big bit of fanserice that ties up loose ends and launches a bold new era. I don’t have as much to say as other entires but it’s this high up because few episodes match it in sheer importance, scale, humor and timing, it’s just harder to dig into because again, it’s an hour long special with lots of stuff from the series up to that point. it’s what makes it work but it’s harder to dig into in this short a space. Maybe someday soon. either way i’ts a garganguan achivment that feels like a huge pot of payoff after 5 seasons of effort and is utterly worth the ride. 

2. Showdown at Cremation Creek, Parts 1 and 2 (Season 2) Yes this is a two parter. Yes i’m giving it one spot but it’s my list and this is basically a special like the two entires it’s sandwitched between just sliced in half. So pitter patter, let’s talk about this one. 

Showdown was the finale to the stellar season 2, a step up from season 1 that refined the good raw matieral there into something truly stupdencous and it all comes to a head here in a wonderful epic in the might venture maner in that it manages to feel epic while still being hiilarious, characer driven and self parodying.  After a season apart the Monarch and Shielia have reonciled and are having an affair behind Phantom Limb’s back.. though given LImb is a sexist piece of shit who dosen’t value Shielia as a parter or part of his orignization while the Monarch has come around to doing so and did even with his crazy jealousy, it’s forgivable. Shelia wants more form him and the Monarch takes hte painful step of agreeing to stop arching venture. This dosen’t last obviously, but still. HOwever it does lead to pure hilarity when his henchman for the bachelor party, after the monarch went home, kidnapping the ventures, having gottne brock while he was drunk and distracted. Still with fatalities but still.. it’d be the best day of their lives anyo ther day. But to avoid pissing off his fiance who likely woudln’t belivie the truth, he makes up a story of inviting them to a wedding as an olive branch and does so> The whole situation also leads to my faviorite venture line: 24: Holy shit I thought we dreamnt that part! Anyways our gang are soon split up, Brock attends awkardly, Dr. Venture tries to hit on the bride over mid life chriaslys earlier, and we get the dawn of one of the show’s best buddy duos: 21 and Hank. The two being huge nerds quickly bond, and 21 helps hank sneak into the wedding as “Igor Badguyovich via an old henchman uniform, cleverly one of the ones from the pilot. Dean ends up getting stuck in the engine room and ends up spending the two parter hallucinating and going on a patichse version of never ending story while also letting loose his hatred of his boy advenutering lifestyle. It’s prue fun and good stuff.  David Bowie, or someone impersnating him, aka the soverign arrives along with Klaus Nomo and Iggy Pop for the wedding as an old frirend of shelias giving her away. But soon things go as bad as a superhero wedding does, becuase supervillians apparently aren’t immune to that as Phantom Limb attacks, deciding to throw a cou because he can’t kill the guy his ex actually likes or get promtoed and with bowie’s enorage as his moles attacks and tries to take shiela by force. The result is great as brock moblizies the minons, and unbenwonst to him, hank to fight, dean has his epic adventure and rusty and monarch try to do.. something. It’s all great stuff while Bowie fights limb in an epic battle we sadly barely see but what we do is glorious. It’s all good stuff. An donly one episode tops it in scope, humor and spectacle and in my heart. 

1. Operation P.R.O.M. (Season 4, Episode 16)  The show’s best season goes out with it’s best episode. I could close it out there but given i’ve rambled about every other episode why stop now? It’s Homeschool Prom Night! Doc’s gathered their various allies, the order of the triad, pete and billy , shoreleave and brock, along with Hatred who has replaced his hatred tats with a big v.. excpet the d over his junk which is unfortunate. 21 joins in genuinley and because he’s having a crisis while monarch and sheila crash with hatred’s ex as a baragning chip to see wha’ts up and end up joining in. 

The boys are as sucessful getting their own dates as you’d expect: no one will return Hank’s calls but since he runs into best buddy Dermott on the way brings him along as long as their band can play, which is easily the highlight of the episode as their glorious and terrible garage band Shallow Gravy makes it’s debut. Figures I can’t put video in right as the article’s almost done.. but back on point.. Dean brings Triana who has a boyfriend now who resembles Edward Cullen, because tha’ts aged really well, which bugs the crap out of him even though he moved on and casues him to act like a pissant and get a corsage thrown in his face as he should. Dean ends up following Dermott and Hank’s advice to go try and “win her back” with a big romantic gesture... which listneing to dermott on a romantic gesture should be grounds for being delcared legally braindead.. it goes terribly with the big plan instead burning a t on her lawn, and the ghost robes making Dean look like the kkk. The outrider tells him to be happy after beating him up over the mixup, a mixup that REALLLLY hasn’t aged well, and Dean tells him to fuck off. End of their time but it’s good stuff and caps a great season of hank. And while I don’t LIKE dean’s behavior here, it’s nice to see him not act like a good person for a second, and to be as human and faliable as the rest of htem, even if it means beeing deeply unlikable and his next relationship which sadly just.. never got picked up again, would go better. And the one after that.. not getting into that mess. What the hell guys. It’s really good stuff. 

Naturally given all these cast members ther’es a lot else going on: Rusty hires prostitues for the evening because of course he does and fails with his because of course he does.. and because it turns out his name is a sex act which leads toi a long and inspried bit of bleeping as everyone has their own version and we see tons of recurrers way in to Rusty’s horror. Rusty being inscensed tires using an aprohdeiasc , specially spanish fly taken from an actual fly, one of my faviorite bits mostly for this bit after billy gapes in horro at the giant monster fly.  Doc: Don’t scream you’ll just piss it off and it screams acid when it’s pissed off. And I alredy dids that when I ripped it’s wings off.  His scheme is of course utterly terrible but it’s Rusty, and i’m unsuprised and he dosen’t benifit from it as we’ll get into. Al and Shore Leave bond while 21, in a pogniant subplot, realizes he’s had enough and quits his job and through Orpheous realizes his firend isn’t a ghost, but a guilt induced hallucinaiton and lets him go, joining the team implicitly. It’s really good character stuff.  Finally we have the espionge portion. WHile Shore leave is at the party Gathers leaves Brock, once he’s finished chauffering the boys, to watch Monstroso, who they recently captured and gathers wants to use as a barganing chip. But gathers soon finds previously introduced Agents Doe and Cardholder wanting to topple agency head Hunter Gathers, one of my faviorite recurring characters mostly due to being performed by the increidble Toby Huss, a batshit general whose basically nick fury with a kentucky accent and no real filter or fucks to give and he’s utterly hilarious any time he shows up.  He’s been claming his cancer treatments have turned him into a Hulk, and why yes that is their exact terminology. Turns out agents doe and cardholder have been playing along with this seeming delusion to try and outst treister.. and take the OSI over for the guild, being the traitors Gathers suspected were there. However in a brilliant turn, this sub plots resolves as all should: on the bridge of hteir hellicarrier, with Treister draped only in the american flag with a post it note saying fix it on his chest. He reveals that while the cancer is real, the “hulkking” out was just playing them: he knew they were the double agents, and was using Gather’s to ferit them out. However that’s not the only reason: Treister knows his odds of beating cancer are slim so he’s come up with a resonable solution: Shoot himself up into space, as seen in the image for this entry, and see if aliens can cure it. They don’t but space radiation does as he returns later and not only that while he’s lost in the special, after brilliantly ACTUALLY having become a hulk, Doc and Jackson revealed in the making of book they had plans to possibly have him come back as their version of GALACTUS at one point, only holding back on it because their not sure if they want to go full cosmic or not. We’ll see if the show comes back in longform but god I hope so. If not i’m sure as hell doing it. But Treister hands the wheel over to gathers literally and metaphorically, passsing the reigns of the ship and the OSI over to him so Gathers can run it right, and then well.. shoots himself up into space, ending up as the last image of the hour long masterwork. But befroe that theres one last plot that leads into what I consider to be the show’s best scene. Brock finds out the hard way that the other Sphinx agent on duty is actually his ex molotov cocktease, who skirts monstroso away because she’s fallen for him, to brock’s rage. While Brock catches up to them, Mol reveales she has a trump card: The prostitues venture hired are actually her mercinary crew the blackhearts, and if she dosen’t give the signal everyone dies.. and being an utter dick Mol lets the car brock’s holding up off a cliff drop with her and monstroso inside.. though they come back eventually because universe that’s basically a comic book. So we get THIS SEQUENCE THAT’S IN CAPS BECAUSE THEY STOPPED LETTING ME PUT VIDEOS IN THIS ONE FOR SOME REASON AND IT’S ALMOST DONE. It’s easily the show’s best as Pulp’s amazing “Like a Friend” plays as brock rushes to save everyone, finds everyone having a good time thanks to rusty’s spanish fly, and Shore Leave and Al doing the v-day sailor kiss which is amazing, and then all the blackhearts turn into fly monsters because Rusty. It’s a great, tense gorgeously animated sequence that ends showing just how far brock’s come: From an angry asshole who hates everyone to these guys genuine friend.. and still a badass. overall just a great, spectacular finale and the best of one fo the best animated shows period. And with that the list concludes. This took me 2 days worth of adruous work so I hope you enjoyed it. Follow me for more including regular coverage of Amphibia, Ducktales starting back up later this month.. and as of tommorow possibly the loud house! Expect more venture bros including reviewcaps coming soon and if you want to comission your own reviewcap for 5 bucks, just hit up my personal messages or ask box, or just hit it up iwth a casual suggestion i’m bound to listen. Either way until next time, Go Team Venture. And I can think of only one way to properly close this. Play us off sea captain.

[chris-evans-indian-fanfic]

Conversation

One-Shot

Description - Captain America and Batman have a conversation on a bench.

I tried something new with this fic. It is mostly based on conversation without any action scenes. Do give your feedback if you like this new format or if not, then how can I make it better? 

The only reason I am trying this new format is because the writing challenge set by @donutloverxo @captain-a-rogerss and @optimistic-dinosaur-nacho make me push my limits and step outside my comfort zone! This week, the challenge was to write a Marvel x DC crossover fic, something I have never done before. Check out the challenge here and participate now!

Warning - None

A/N - This fic is based on Steve before the first Avengers movie

My Main Masterlist

I don’t consent to have any of my work published or featured on any third party app, website or translated. If you are seeing this fanfiction anywhere but Tumblr and AO3, it has been reposted without my permission. In that case, please do share the link and let me know.

…

Bruce Wayne set aside his newspaper with a huff. After a lifetime of fighting with terrorists, aliens and freaking exploding penguins, he thought he had seen everything, until today.

Headlines such as; "America's Golden Boy Returns" , "Captain America Found Alive Under Ice" , "Brrr! Is that a Popsicle? Frozen Dessert? No! It's Steve Rogers!" graced the newspapers that morning, seemingly destroying whatever little amount of peace Batman had left.

Great, another man with superpowers who might be a potential threat that I have to take care of, Bruce frowned as he pulled up information on Captain America. "Alfred," he called out, "What do you remember about Captain America?"

"Are you asking me to recite today's headlines Master Wayne?" came the prompt reply from the other room. 

Bruce chucked, "Not what I meant."

"I will have you know Master Wayne that I wasn't even born when the Red, White and Blue hero went under the ice. The grey hair on my head may make me look old, but I am not a 100 years old," came the indignant reply.

"You don't say! Here I was thinking you didn't look a day over 120," teased Bruce.

"That's what happens when you worry about a future where you would be living without grandchildren to take care of," Alfred snapped, shutting up Bruce.

Bruce knew Nick Fury would be initiating Steve into S.H.I.E.L.D., his personal crime-fighting-superhero-club. Oh he knew Nick Fury very well. The  man with the eye-patch had proven to harbour more mysteries than the pandora's box, a quality that didn't sit well with Bruce. That's why, when Fury had invited Batman to join the Avengers, he had bluntly refused. Looking at the blue-eyed soldier, Bruce decided to pay him a visit.

Steve Rogers was scared. He didn't recognise this world. Everything was louder. The people, the machines, the cars. Colours were more vibrant and simple things were just too complicated to understand. It was as if everything in this new world was made to attack his senses. 

His Converse squeaked as he walked in the aisles of the departmental store. Converse was one of the few things still around from his time before the ice. One of the few things he still recognised.

He entered the milk aisle. He exhaled loudly as he read the options; Low Fat Milk, Full Fat Milk, Cow's Milk, Buffalo Milk, Camel, Donkey… Wait… People milked camels and donkeys? His face contorted with disgust at the thought. Moving forward, he saw more confusing options- Almond Milk, Coconut Milk, Cashew Milk… He looked on with horror. Had modern science found a way to put breasts on nuts now?! Where was normal milk? Did normal milk exist anymore?! 

He clutched the handles of the basket tighter, bending the metal. He needed to get away from here. He didn't belong in this time, this century. Steve slowly took a step back, and bumped into someone.

"Heeeyy watch wherrrre you are gooooing paaal," the large man behind Steve slurred as he dropped his box of cereal and tried to retain his balance. "I am sorry," muttered Steve, even though he could have sworn there hadn't been anyone behind him until a few moments ago.

Steve looked at the man. He was as tall and well-built as Steve, heck maybe even more muscular. His black hair was disheveled, his eyes swollen red and his breath reeked of cheep alcohol and cigar.

"You pussssshed me," the stranger slurred again, "hooow darrrre yooou?" he staggered, raising his fists.

Steve picked up the box of cereal and handed the stranger a new box, "I don't want to fight you sir. Instead, can I buy you this cereal?"

The man tried to punch Steve, which he easily dodged, "Fiighttt meeee," he insisted. Steve could only smile in response, "Believe it or not sir, but I am a senior citizen, and I am not looking to pick any fight. Please, can I buy you this box of cereal?" 

"Coff-feeee," the drunken man said. "Okay I will buy you coffee too," Steve agreed.

The way towards the billing counter was slow as the stranger kept stumbling into shelves and displays. Steve kept a strong grip on him and guided him in his way. 

Steve even helped the stranger as he puked his guts out on the street, helping him clean his mouth with a kerchief. They both sat on the bench outside the cafe.

"Why… you… help me?" the stranger managed to ask between his panted breaths. "Why wouldn't I?" Steve seemed puzzled, "You can’t take care of yourself now, you need help. So I am helping you."

"I don't need help from you punk!" the stranger spat as he shoved Steve forcefully on the bench. It hardly shook Steve. He smiled a small smile, "Everybody needs help at some point or the other, Mr Wayne. How long do you think you can operate as the sole hero?"

Wiping his hand on the back of his mouth, Bruce smiled, "As long as I hold the key to every answer."

"Fury is not that bad," Steve scoffed.

"You don't know what's going on at S.H.I.E.L.D., do you?" challenge Bruce 

Steve retorted, "I don't need to know. I am just a soldier who follows orders."

"Whose orders? And on what authority? We don't need soldiers as we are not at war. But that doesn't stop us from initiating them," Bruce stated matter-of-factly.

"I believe in people Mr Wayne. I have faith in the general good that resides deep within every citizen," remarked Steve.

"Huh," it was Bruce's turn to scoff, "Here I was thinking you are a threat, but you are just a delusional patriot. People have agendas Captain. And agendas change. People are still bad, corrupt and easily influenced. The world hasn't changed Captain. Don't let anyone tell you any different."

Steve considered Bruce's words in silence, "The world has changed Mr Wayne, in more ways than you can possibly imagine. And it's... hard to keep track of things and stay updated. But it's much more easier to follow orders, you know?" 

"People are still the same Captain. And they make up the world. As for keeping track," Bruce leaned back on the bench, "You can keep a list of things you need to learn."

Steve nodded, getting up, "That's a good idea. Let me get you that coffee and maybe you can tell me what can I add to the list?"

Steve turned around and entered the cafe.

"Hi how can I help you?" the barista greeted him cheerfully. "Can I get a coffee?" requested Steve.

"Sure! Which one would you like to have? A cappuccino? Americano? Espresso? Latte? Moch-" 

"Son, please just give me a normal coffee," pleaded Steve.

"Sure sir. Which size do you want? We have Tall, Tumbl-"

"Just. A. Normal. Coffee. Please," Steve gritted his teeth. 

He stepped out with the hot coffee, only to find the bench empty, except for the cereal box. He read the note stuck on the box, "I will keep an eye on you", the note promised.

Bruce settled back in his chair in his underground workshop. He laughed when he noticed the cereal box and the to-go cup of coffee, which was still warm. He laughed as he read the note stuck on the cup, "Tell Alfred I said hi. And please ask him if he will be willing to start a Barbershop Quartet with me?"

Steve returned home sweaty from the workout. He chuckled when he saw the carton of milk in his kitchen, with the words NORMAL MILK written in big, bold letters. He read the note that came with it, "Alfred expresses his apologies as he will be unable to join your Barbershop Quartet. However, he does have a recommendation for your list. He suggests you watch 'I Love Lucy', an American sitcom from the 1950s. It had been quite popular then."

"Sir, do you think Batman will join our forces if need be?" Maria Hill asked Nick Fury as he read Natasha's report on Bruce and Steve.

"I don't know," Fury said, "But it is always beneficial to have friends on the other side, should the situation arise."

__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__

Permanent tag: @donutloverxo

Chris/Chris' characters taglist: @onetwo3000

Taglist open! Just comment, send an ask or message!

[violetsmoak]

Pieces of April [7/?]

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21099044/chapters/50202530

Summary: On the anniversary of his death, Jason’s second life takes an abrupt new turn and he’s faced with a challenge that neither Batman nor the All-Caste prepared him for.

Rating: PG-13 (rating may change later)

Warning(s): Past Jason/Isabel, kidfic, minor canon character death (pretty sure you can guess who, not either of our boys!), I’ll add more warnings/tags as I think of them.

Canon-Compliance: Takes place in between the two RHATO series, so after Roy and Kori and before Artemis and Bizarro.

Author’s Note: In which Jason is this close to being DONE. And Tim’s a little shit.

First Chapter

________________________________________________________________

Jason is silent a while, obviously conflicted.

Tim and Safiya watch him get up and stand by the window of the room; his fingers twitch, then curl into fists of what Tim imagines to be frustration.

Safiya doesn’t miss the motion, and her expression grows concerned. She takes a longer look at Jason, studying him in greater depth, from the visible callouses on his knuckles to the scars at the corner of his mouth and beneath his hairline.

“You’re not…” she begins, and Jason turns to acknowledge her. “You’re not actually a mobster, are you?”

To Tim’s surprise, Jason’s mouth twitches.

“Not this year,” he says with a hint of humor.

Safiya is clearly confused, and Tim fights down a mental groan at Jason’s usually flippant attitude choosing to manifest in the most inopportune moments.

Good thing we’re all such good liars.

“Jason’s a former stuntman,” he tells her, once again grasping for the first plausible thing that comes to mind. He makes a mental note to add that to whatever false background they’ll inevitably have to create. “But he’s been working with our family for years.”

Jason smiles now, but it’s an unpleasant and edged thing. “That’s one way to put it.”

Tim ignores him, instead slips into his charming-CEO persona.

“As you can imagine, we deal with a lot of threats given the Wayne Foundation’s public funding of Batman Inc. Sometimes we require body-doubles when traveling, and Jason happens to be of similar height and weight to Bruce.”

“Right,” Jason says robotically. “Bodyguard to Bruce Wayne. It’s an experience. Guy has as many enemies as Batman does. It’s uncanny.”

Tim shoots him a dirty look, which luckily Safiya misses as she sizes Jason up again. When she turns back to Tim, she furrows her brow. “Is that not weird for you?”

“Weird?”

“With you two being together,” she clarifies. “And with him looking so much like your father.”

Jason makes a huffing noise; Tim sort of hopes he’s choking.

At some point, I’m going to have to look into why people so easily buy the story of us being ‘together’.

“Bruce isn’t my father,” Tim says with a bit of a grimace. “Neither biologically, nor legally as of last year.”

“I see,” Safiya says slowly, not looking like she entirely buys it. “Didn’t I read an article about you being engaged? To a woman?”

Tim sighs. “Vicki Vale has a lot to answer for. As I’ve said numerous times, Tam Fox is my assistant and my friend. We were never engaged—is there a reason we’re analyzing my personal life right now?”

“Why not? We’ve been analyzin' mine all night,” Jason says. “I think I like it better when it’s you, babybird.” The nickname is said with an inflection that could be teasing or mocking depending on the context. “Besides, you’ve got all that practice.”

Well, if you want to play that game.

“A good thing, too, or I’d be the one with a surprise baby,” Tim replies and is partially gratified to see Jason’s brows draw together at the dig. His smile widens and he addresses Safiya, “Clearly we’ve all found ourselves in a situation we couldn’t have possibly foreseen, so the best thing we can do is put our heads together and come up with a solution. But I think we’ve had enough to process this evening and rushing such an important decision would be unwise.”

“That might be the first sensible thing I’ve heard since I got here,” she agrees. “First of all, I want to make sure Luísa has somewhere to stay until that is sorted out. Will you be taking her home tonight?”

“No,” Jason says.

“The hospital still has to get the results of the paternity test before any custody or guardianship decisions can be discussed,” Tim elaborates. “That should be a day or two. I think the most pressing concern right now is what to do about Isabel.”

Safiya becomes somber once again. “Yes. She should not be left here longer than needed. I have a key to her apartment. I can look around and see if she had any kind of arrangements or wishes. If she did, she never mentioned them, but it’s possible.”

“That would be helpful,” Tim agrees. “Let me know if you find anything.” He digs into his pocket for a business card and a pen, scribbling his personal phone number on it. “You can reach me here. Whether you find anything helpful or not, call me. We’ll have to arrange transportation for her remains. The hospital will only hold her a week. And we’ll need to notify her doctor if she had one, and call the country coroner.”

“You’re a little bit too informed about how to do this for someone so young…”

“I lost both my parents before I was sixteen. It’s become an unfortunate routine.”

“I’m sorry,” she offers quietly.

“Thank you,” Tim acknowledges. “I understand that you might want to notify her other friends, ask them to contact others to get the word out, but would it be possible to keep this to yourself until we have a better idea of what to do for Luisa?”

“Of course. I’ll also call her work and let them know the news.”

“Also, if you could see to all the relevant paperwork for Isabel, that would be extremely helpful,” Tim continues. “As I said before, you probably have more of an idea of these things than we do.” Or at least more than we should. “As for outstanding balances, I’ll cover them—”

“No, I’ll do that,” Jason interrupts. “It should come from me.”

“It should,” Safiya agrees with a sharp nod. Probably she means it for different reasons; Tim suspects Jason just wants the least amount of Wayne money as possible involved in this. “I would also…if possible, I would like to say goodbye to her.”

“By all means,” Tim says. “If you want to do that now, I’ll let the doctor know—”

“I doubt I’ll have any trouble this time around,” she says, waving him away. “Besides, I think you have your hands full with these two.” She stands, then goes to lean over the baby once more, gently caressing her head. She says something Tim doesn’t understand, and then straightens up. She nods at Jason and Tim. “I will be in touch.”

And then she’s gone.

As soon as they’re alone, Tim rounds on Jason.

“Is there a reason you’re treating all of this as a joke?”

“Are we sure it’s not?” Jason asks with a grin that doesn’t dispel the coolness of his eyes. “I’m still waitin' for someone to jump out and yell ‘April Fools’.”

“You’re about a month late for that. And considering the fact you’re legally dead, you could be a little less cavalier with the attention-grabbing non-sequiturs.”

“What, like you? Treatin' this whole thing like it’s a business meeting? This is a person we’re talkin' about—two people.” His gaze flicks nervously to the infant. “And you’re actin' like they’re pieces on a board.”

“Because right now, they are,” Tim snaps. “And because someone has to be getting ahead of this thing. Surprise is no excuse to not have contingency plans.”

“Jesus Christ, but he did a number on you,” Jason groans. “You sound exactly like him.”

“Contrary to popular belief, that’s not always a bad thing. Or would you rather I be channeling Dick right now?”

Jason's entire body goes even tauter than it's been since Safiya burst in. "I swear to god if you hug me right now, I will punch you.”

Tim finds himself wondering if that might not be a good idea; a fight might be better for Jason than a shot of adrenaline.

Or it will land me in a different wing of this hospital. So maybe not.

He’s saved from replying when there’s a knock on the door, and the nurse comes in.

“Visiting hours will be over at nine o’clock,” she says. “If one of you wants to stay the night, I can arrange—”

“We’re not stayin',” Jason says immediately. Noticing her taken-aback expression, he adds, “There’s a bunch of stuff that needs doin'. For the, uh, baby.”

“Of course. Would you like to feed her one last time yourselves? Or we can take care of her in the nursery.”

Tim can see it on Jason’s face that he’s not keen on the exercise. Still, that same business-like set to his shoulders from earlier returns and he allows the nurse to go fetch a bottle of formula.

“Might as well know how to do this myself,” he mutters, almost defensive when he meets Tim’s gaze, and hesitantly picks up the infant on his own.

“I didn’t say anything.”

The entire tableau is so incongruous with what Tim knows of the other man that he’s half-tempted to bring his phone up and snap a few secret shots, if only as evidence. Somehow, he suspects Jason wouldn’t take kindly to it, and whatever goodwill he’s gained tonight will vanish faster than Batman after a meeting with Commissioner Gordon.

“We should go back to my place,” Tim suggests after a while. When Jason tilts his head in question, he adds, “To get the room ready. For when she’s cleared to go.”

“Right.”

“Do you want to pick up anything from where you’re staying? Or I can just order something for you online and have it shipped—”

“I can buy my own damn clothes if I need to,” Jason grouses. “I don’t need help packin’ a bag.”

“Fair. But I’m still driving you.” Jason makes a face. “Don’t give me that look. Are you seriously thinking you’re clear-headed enough to drive right now?”

“I’ve had worse. Besides, I can get a cab or take the subways.”

“You have no cash on you,” Tim reminds him. “And you’re still processing. I bet you’ll get stuck in your head and miss your stop.” He gestures out the window toward the parking lot. “Just tell me where you want to go and I’ll take you there.”

“The problem with that is you’ll know where I live.”

“It’s funny you think I don’t already.”

Jason scowls. “At some point, we’re having a conversation about you knowin' stuff about me that you shouldn’t. It’s creepy.”

“Sure. I’ll put it on the agenda under ‘stealing other people’s costumed identities’ and ‘using deadly force’. Should be fun.”

"You're kind of an asshole, aren't you?"

"I'm the asshole who's helping you out, so I'd watch your mouth." Tim pauses, considers, and then adds, "Actually, you should do that anyway. You're holding a baby."

"I hate you."

Next Chapter

________________________________________________________________

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[minaminokyoko]

Venom: A Spoilertastic Review (that is mostly just a rant)

When the end credits to the Venom movie started, just as Eminem began his embarrassingly uninspired rapping, I turned my head to one of my two friends and asked her, "What the hell did I just put into my eyeballs?"

To be frank, Venom is one of the most peculiar, bizarre, baffling films I've seen in years.

I want to preface this review by saying I was against this idea when it was announced. I thought it was beyond idiotic to make a film about a supervillain whose entire creation hinges on a certain Webhead, and since Sony lent him out to Marvel Studios (the only smart fucking decision they've made in probably over a decade, imo), they went off half-cocked with the hair-brained idea that they could create an anti-hero solo flick for Venom instead. To some degree, sure, they were warranted because the general audience these days has low fucking standards and if you put the words "comic book movie" in front of them, they're usually going to lap it up no matter how terrible it is. After all, fandom doesn't care about things being accurate anymore, by this point, if you dangle fresh meat like Tom Hardy riding a motorcycle in front of them. As long as there's an attractive person at the helm, fandom will just adopt it as canon and ignore any red flags, as they have already done. That being said, I still think this is one of the most blatantly stupid things done for money and for notoriety from any studio toting around a popular comic book character.

Is Venom as bad as legendary awful comic book movies like Catwoman, The Spirit, Batman & Robin, Daredevil, Green Lantern, or Spawn?

Well, no.

And that's almost the only positive thing I can report about it, personally. 

In short, Venom is inept. That's the word I'd choose, aside from bizarre. It has no fucking clue what it's doing at any given time, from start to finish. It's too wacky to be serious, too serious to be a parody or satire, too mature for kids, too childish for adults, too mainstream for nerds, and too nerdy for mainstream. It's just a piping hot fucking mess.

So let's dive into why. Spoiler alert.

Overall Rating: D

Pros:

-Note: I am being very fucking generous by giving this movie points for anything at all, just so y'all know.

-It's not boring. Other comic book movies that have failed, whether it's the really bad kind or just the mediocre kind, have failed worse than this movie simply because at least there aren't any dead periods. Venom doesn't have awful pacing, even with its sloppy, uneven story. It moves along at a steady rate and you can never accuse it of being a borefest like Superman Returns or something. Even though most of it is incomprehensible from a story standpoint, it keeps your attention throughout.

-The doctor boyfriend surprisingly averted the usual stereotype/archetype for this kind of story. For example, in the first Ant Man, the cop boyfriend who is with Scott's baby mama is a smug, overprotective dickhead who later gets better. Most of the time when a main couple breaks up, the girl picks some douchebag who is either so much better than her former lover that it just feels insulting or it's just a one-dimensional asshole for us to hate so we want the two of them to get back together. Hell, doctor boyfriend was actually TOO nice and understanding and helpful. There is no way in hell I'd have stuck it out after seeing Eddie bite the head off a goddamn lobster. I'd have sent his ass to a mental hospital immediately, fuck the regular hospital. That being said, I like the movie averting the trope. It was a welcome change and was awfully refreshing too.

-Even though this is one of his strangest fucking performances to date, Tom Hardy is doing what he always does and gives 110% to a film that really doesn't even deserve him. I've already been hearing rumors that he's not pleased with the final product and that doesn't surprise me, but he does what he can with that awful script and I appreciate the effort. In fact, the only reason I sat through this turd is for Tom Hardy. He is a dedicated, talented actor and even when he's in tripe, he's still busting his beautiful ass to make the best of it anyway. I like him a lot and I'd go to bat for him any day, which is the only reason I coughed up the money for Venom when I knew damn well it'd be a trainwreck.

-The effects are at least decent. Not always. But Venom and the symbiotes actually feel as if they're really there and it's not just the actors staring at a ball on a stick. I appreciate it, since Sony goes in and out of quality regarding CGI.

-Despite the fucking travesty of a fake clown wig on his head, Woody Harrelson is an excellent choice for Cletus Kasady. Everyone knows that. I just hope they get him a better hairpiece next time, sheesh.

Cons:

-Jesus fucking Christ, where do I fucking start?

-Plotholes. This movie doesn't have plotholes--it has plot canyons. It's plothole Inception, for God's sake, with holes inside of fucking holes. It's so clear that the movie doesn't give a rat's ass about anything because there are some of the most ridiculous moments you're expected to swallow with the power of Willing Suspension of Disbelief. It's why it took me a whole two days to try and write a review/analysis of the film. There is so much wrong with it that I frankly wasn't sure where to start and how to process it all. The best I can try to do considering the overwhelming number of holes in the story is go chronologically. First off, Eddie stealing Blondie's confidential documents (Note: Michelle Williams' character was so bland and unimportant I can't remember her name and I don't care to look it up because we all know she doesn't matter, so she is now Blondie) but then not doing his actual job as a journalist when making wild accusations is the first monumentally dumb thing in the film. Why the hell did he go through the trouble of breaching her personal security and trust if all he was going to do was rant about it to the Bad Guy without proof? What did he think it would accomplish? Why would you just confront the guy instead of looking for more proof? Plus, you stole that information, which means it's inadmissable in court since it was obtained illegally, so you still wouldn't have a case anyhow. Any writer with half a brain cell would simply have it so that Eddie read the document, became curious, and started snooping around Life Foundation himself looking for hard evidence that would stand up in court to get justice for the victims. The way they did it in the film makes no sense, but it's because they wanted to bust up the couple and make Eddie a "loser" to kickstart the rest of the film. Then, the girl who tattled on the Life Foundation 100% did not need Eddie Brock to do that. She had full access to the lab and the trust of her superior. All she had to do was document everything herself, send it to Eddie to pass along to his boss, and then skip town with her fucking kids to avoid being murdered. Hell, she could have given it to the authorities anonymously. Third, why after everything went tits up in the lab did she fucking return to the lab as if they wouldn't immediately know it was her? She was seen outside the lab seconds before Eddie set off the alarms and her palm print is recorded having opened the door to the lab. Why the fuck did she go back after she let Eddie in there with no way to cover her tracks? And then she actually told on herself and Eddie, which led to her death. I can't comprehend that level of stupidity at all. It's staggering. Because I'm trying not to turn this into a seven-page single spaced review, I'm just going to stop here and not try to point out all the other plotholes in detail, like the fact that the cops only get involved one time and are never seen again despite the fact that they'd be all over the explosions and missing people associated with the Life Foundation or Eddie's phone working perfectly after he swam under the fucking bridge or Eddie leaving his phone for his boss instead of just sending him the goddamn pictures or the symbiote magically knowing where Eddie was after they took him from the hospital. We'll be here all day if I keep going. I'll just reblog CinemaSins' eventual video of this movie and feel satisfied that way.

-The movie makes zero attempts at explaining anything about the symbiotes except for "they're vulnerable to fire and sound frequencies, need a host to survive, and eat brains." What is even stranger about the lack of explanation is that this isn't a long film. They could have easily added about ten minutes into the story to give us an overview of where they came from, what their world was like, how they found human contact, and why they were on that comet. All we can do is infer things, which pisses me off because this is YOUR story and YOUR new continuity that you just fucking made up on the fly, so I don't know the rules here and it's shitty of you to just gloss over it all. Why is it called Venom? Is that a translation from whatever the hell the symbiote was called on its own planet? Did it hear that somewhere and decide it liked the word? Why? Why does it get touchy if you call it a parasite when that is literally what it is? Is it like Ratigan from The Great Mouse Detective and it's just in denial? We have to guess that it knows whatever Eddie knows, but why does it have any conceptual knowledge of romance and relationships when it attempts to get Eddie to apologize to Blondie or when it says it "likes" her? Or that Eddie "changed its mind" at the end? And how can a symbiote even be a loser? That concept is almost universally human and it's a giant sentient piece of fucking tar? How can it possibly be a loser on its own planet? There is just no damn context for majority of the shit surrounding the symbiotes in the movie and it's all the more frustrating since we spend a great deal of time in the lab with them during the movie and yet we learn almost nothing.

-Eddie and the symbiote don't actually form a proper bond or partnership. This is one of the things that's irritating me about people who seem to have taken to the movie. I was told multiple times by people that the movie is stupid, but the repartee between Eddie and Venom is enjoyable. Not really, no. Are there quips? Yes, there are quips. But quips do not inherently create a bond. Anyone can bounce dialogue off each other. If said dialogue does not change the characters, then it's just lip service. Sadly, though, a lot of people don't notice that absolutely nothing between Eddie and Venom lines up. Venom helps Eddie survive the attacks, but is killing him in the process. It's self-interest alone. The truly confounding part is when they get Venom off of Eddie and find out Venom has basically been consuming Eddie's organs to stay alive inside him, Eddie acts betrayed and storms off, but then when Venom returns wearing Blondie as his guise, he just accepts it and they go off to the badly filmed climax. What the hell changed in between those scenes? Nothing. Eddie still runs the risk of dying being piloted by the symbiote, and while Eddie has motivation to stop Bad Guy (again, another character that is so thin I can't be bothered to learn his name) from bringing the symbiotes to earth, Venom is given zero reason to want that at all. As mentioned above, there's no backstory. Is Venom concerned his race will consume the earth? If so, who cares? There's seven billion people and Venom has already found Eddie, who is a suitable match for him to survive, so why does he care at all? Eddie would survive an invasion anyhow. It makes no damn sense. Films that have dealt with symbiotic relationships always establish a common ground at some point but Venom doesn't for some inexplicable reason. I'm incredibly frustrated that everyone's just going "tee hee, look, they're best friends now, it's cute" when in fact Eddie is just running around committing murder randomly without ever really contemplating how serious it is, even though he claims to only be eating bad people.

-Nitpick: Fridging two different female characters, the homeless lady and the Life Foundation tattletale, rubbed me entirely the wrong way. Both of them were in Eddie's vicinity, both die, and both are never brought up again or shown to have impacted Eddie's motivation or life. They are simply used and discarded, which is another thing that makes this movie feel so hollow.

-The tone is all over the fucking place. It can be argued that Venom never went full serious and is always sort of tongue-in-cheek, but there's just this ridiculous whiplash feeling when you watch it spike from an action scene to "wacky" Brock antics to Venom quips. Eddie's personality even before the symbiote is just confusing as hell. It's like stuffing a bunch of random character traits into one man and all of them are fighting to get out at once like the characters from Split. The most consistent thing is he's sarcastic, but even then his moods range far too widely to get a bead on him. He can be dry one minute and then frantic and excitable the next, and that's before the symbiote. After the symbiote, it's like they gave Tom Hardy cocaine and steroids. The man's acting is simply all over the damn place. He accepts near-impossible things sometimes with a shrug and other times he freaks out. The movie just doesn't know what the hell it's attempting to accomplish, and that's why mood and tone are important to set from the get-go with a film. It just slingshots between a faux-horror film and a snippy action flick over and over again until your head feels pulverized.

-The final action sequences is one of the dumbest, messiest things since Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. It's an ugly, dark, jumbled up mess. It's so indistinguishable that Godzilla (2014) can take potshots at it. Why in perfect blue hell did they choose two symbiotes with such similar appearances to showdown with each other on top of a rocket at night? It's so hard to see what the two of them are doing, who is winning or losing, or what kind of movement is happening at all. We also are never given the full range of their abilities, so the only real stake is when they pull off their hosts and their bodies are vulnerable, but even then it appears that Venom can raise Eddie from the dead seconds later anyhow. I'm stunned the movie couldn't even do a fake out death properly, which is so fucking easy that even Disney can do it. Eddie dies and is revived in less than fifteen goddamn seconds. The camera doesn't even linger on his body to sell the emotion (not that we'd ever have one, he is just barely a character anyway) before it just takes it right the hell back. That's filmmaking 101, for God's sake, and the movie blows it too.

-The last scene in the movie. In its entirety. I haven't been that exasperated since I stupidly forced myself to watch Pacific Rim: Uprising. There are so many things wrong with it that it's hard to know how to tackle it. I don't care that Eddie stopped that guy from extorting the shop owner--he openly turned into a 10 foot tall alien and ate a guy in front of her, and the movie just laughs and shrugs like it's just totally fine, like that woman isn't about to lose her shit, call the cops, or fuck, the NSA/FBI/CIA/Avengers on Eddie for making her a witness to murder, and endangering pretty much anyone around them. To say nothing of the fact that there is no reason a 10 foot tall alien with a million sharp teeth needs to say a single word to threaten someone. You are the threat, buddy. Your existence is the threat. Why did you need to insist on threatening to bite things off? You're terrifying and nothing you say is going to somehow make you scarier, especially when you just ate the guy anyway. It's like they just made that scene for the final trailer, much like that "I thought she was with you" comment all the way back in Batman v. Superman despite in-canon it made no sense. It's so unnecessary. And don't get me started on the fact that the crook actually asked the giant alien who it is. Fuck you. That was a lazy, transparent attempt to spoonfeed the wretched cliche that Michael Keaton's Batman made famous. (Consequently, all movies ever, please stop doing this cliche. Stop it. Just find another way to announce yourself. It's really tired, y'all, let it go already.) No human would ever look at that thing and ask it who the fuck it is. He'd piss himself and die of fright. Period. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Piss. Die. Period.

-Nitpick: Why was there that weird Godzilla (2014) trailer noise every time Venom attacked someone? Did they just steal it from public domain? They used it almost like the Inception horn cliche that Hollywood was obsessed with for a while and it took me right out of the scene every damn time.

-Nitpick: They really thought we're so stupid that we needed Kasady to actually say his character's name out loud. Look, you fuckers, you know goddamn well that end credits scenes are extras and that people can go home and Google things instead of you literally spelling it out for us. Hell, you know that not that many Average Joes and mainstream people went to this movie anyway since Venom is a second-stringer villain and your main demographic is die-hard Eddie Brock fans anyway. So having Kasady say the damn name “Carnage” in the post credits scene really was the final fart in my general direction. Give us some fucking credit, man. Venom has barely five plotlines to his whole character anyway. Of course we knew you were going to drop Carnage for the Sequel Hook, you condescending twat of a film.

Look, I get it. I'm hypercritical because I write fiction for a living. There are plenty of movies where turning your brain off is required in order to enjoy it, but I think this movie is asking me to get an entire lobotomy to be able to swallow the big-ass pill it's offering. It's just so sloppy and uncaring and yet it's holding its grubby little hands out for your money and your love and I think it's undeserving of it on every last level. It has zero comprehension of what it's trying to accomplish since it's a money grab, and its artistic choices are nothing short of bonkers. It's so strange that it even veers outside of the So Bad It's Good category for me. I can't in good confidence recommend it to anyone even though it's almost like a study in what not to do in both comic book movies and movies in general. It's weird in a distasteful way rather than in a charming way for me, honestly. I know people have rallied around it for being different and out there, but I don't think different and good are the same thing in Venom's case.

[comingupforblair]

Since it still comes up even four years later and people are keen to cite it as proof that Zack Snyder doesn’t ‘’understand’’ Superman or some equally meaningless load of nonsense, I’d like to talk about Superman killing Zod at the end of Man Of Steel and, given how often it’s brought up to write him off, use it as a way to broach the wider subject of the reception of DCEU Superman in general.

First and foremost, let’s get one thing out of the way: Superman does kill. You can say that he shouldn’t or that he shouldn’t without some truly extraordinary circumstances but the simple truth is that Clark has taken lives before. He did it in the comics, he did it in the Reeve films and he did it in Smallville. It was not something Zack Snyder pulled out of thin air or added because he wanted to make him more ‘’edgy’’ or whatever bullshit term people want to use.

Let’s all agree to be reasonable and ignore the so often repeated claims of Superman being a ‘’murderer’’ (He isn’t) and take the context of the scene, which detractors so frequently and willfully ignore, into account, which is that Clark was faced with the agonizing choice of killing Zod or being forced to watch as Zod killed innocent people. 

Let’s also address the fact that almost no other alternative that is so often suggested would have worked in the heat of the moment and there was literally no way for Clark to preserve his moral code and save the family at the same time. He had to make a choice and I don’t think anyone could have expected him to choose his code over the lives of innocents as that is not something Superman would ever do nor should fans expect writers to write him in such a way.

I see a lot of people criticize the mere existence of the scene itself with the repeated statement that Superman should never be placed in such a situation, that putting him in a situation like that flies in the face of his character. I find such a mentality fascinating as people are essentially demanding that Their favorite character not be put in a situation where They may have to do something They don’t like. 

I don’t know why exactly people would ever want such a thing. Why would anyone want a character not to have to face tough choices? I think a lot of it goes back to the insistence of so many people that Superman can and should only be seen a certain way which is in the mode of an icon. He are supposed to see him as aspirational figure high above us with a crystal clear moral code that he never has to violate. Superman isn’t supposed to be human. Not really, anyway. 

I see this as also extending to the other dominant criticism of the handling of Clark in these films, which is supposedly not making him ‘’hopeful’’ or ‘’optimistic’’ enough even when he’s facing situations through which no person should reasonably expected to not display some form of melancholy or sadness. The same people have also said that putting him in a world where he is hated and feared by so many is antithetical to his character.

For all the shit Zack Snyder got for supposedly ‘’forgetting it’s the man that matters, not the super’’ and ‘’making him out to be a god’’, the detractors and purists don’t want him to be a person like Them. They want him to be an escapist character who never has to compromise his morals, never has to make tough choices, never feels negative emotions of any kind, always knows exactly what the right thing to do in any given situation is and has no trouble whatsoever doing it, doesn’t doubt himself for even a second, and never feels any kind of sense of sadness or isolation or any of the completely understandable emotions people go through every single day.

They want Superman to exist in a bubble where he is universally adored and beloved by almost everyone and They go absolutely ape shit when you try to put him in a world like our own.

This goes back to the fact that so many are so keen to talk about the Reeve films, which are posited as the ‘’REAL’’ Superman films. The films in which he is literally able to turn back time to save Lois Lane and in which he give up his powers in a moment of short sightedness and get Them back easily enough. 

Such a mentality is frankly unhealthy. Characters are supposed to suffer. They’re supposed to have Their ideals tested and Their spirits put against real challenges. It isn’t something unique to Reeve fans. I recall the same kind of stuff in the Doctor Who fandom when fans would often use scenes of the Doctor sparing an enemy as ammo against Steven Moffat’s Doctor, conveniently ignoring the way in which the enemies were usually dispatched by a Deus Ex Machina mere minutes later. The mentality is the same there and here: Fans want characters with strict moral codes but They don’t want to ever examine the consequences of such a code.

This is especially applicable to Superman, a character who, for years, has lost popularity in mainstream pop culture due to an inaccurate perception of him that the Reeve films and fans of Them have created over the years of a character who is more perfect than perfection itself, always finds a way out of tough situations, is universally beloved and whose own moral code and standards of behavior we could never hope to emulate. 

How exactly is a person existing in the 21st century supposed to relate to someone like that? How is anyone supposed to relate to someone like that?

It’s no coincidence that these films have won over a number of people who, for years, had been lukewarm to the idea of Superman or always preferred Batman, a character defined by his inherent humanity. The films have finally shown people the human element that makes up the core of Superman, that he is simply a man trying to do the right thing in a world where that isn’t always clear. Sometimes it means making a hard choice you don’t want to. 

The purists are famously keen to cry ‘’Not MY Superman’’. And They’re absolutely right. It isn’t Their Superman and I don’t want him to Their Superman.

He’s our Superman. A Superman who knows what it’s like to feel alone, to despair, to feel guilt and anger and hatred, to be hated and every other thing that makes us human. He’s a Superman who has truly shown so many what hope is. Hope is, as someone else on here put it, not always a shining light. Sometimes it’s a tired frown that keeps moving forward.

He’s our Superman and I wouldn’t want any other.

[kyaranflowers]

Superhero

Need to purchase X-Men t-shirts online? Whether or not you will have a love for The Avengers, Unbelievable 4, Thor, or X-Males there are loads or t-shirts and different merchandise to own. My childhood included a love for 60s and 70s Marvel and DC comics, and my skill to attract originates partially from finding out the tales I read in those days. We labored for a year collectively on the piece to plan and draw it. Toy companies like Hasbro and Kenner used to produce thousands of Batman action determine than is launched yearly with some variation in it. Transformers 2, the science-fiction film is the most recent sensation, and is probably the most awaited movie of the year. Let's take the movie Avatar as an illustration. Every now and then I went again to the game to take a few extra screenshots to extend a plot. Inside a couple of minutes, I started making comic strips. Not like his other comedian strips, in Battling Boy, the hero is a kid, who is on a mission to avoid wasting the city.

In fact, the opposite collection of battling boy became popular. To conclude on this topic, I feel it's an excellent thought to offer our youngsters the humorous comics created way-back-when, comics out of your and my childhood. To read a story in adventurous manner is kind of exciting for all the youngsters. You might have to beat the restrictions of speech bubbles and the problem Avengers 4 of telling a narrative body by frame. Admit it you have got! I’m sure you might have heard this widespread on-line retailer. Since Youngsters's Graphic Novels are actually simply an old idea with a fancy new identify, why should not you explore taking outdated profitable comicbook ideas and reinventing them for a new generation? The concept was to convey the same which means with words that I suggested by means of colors, textures and pictures. Fashionable On-line Comics solidify a which means of a phrase as a result of photos support which means to words. The nomination was a significant achievement for an artist who had - fairly literally -began out small, drawing Post-it be aware sized comics and hiding them in other people’s work in bookshops. The primary comic strips appeared in Germany in 1865. It was about two boys who are getting punished for at all times entering into mischief.

Moreover, if we are trustworthy with ourselves, we all know that quite a lot of mischief is downright funny. Why are old coins price more than right this moment's coins? Full collections will fetch a lot greater than random individual comics. Our purpose is to offer our readers a very good piece of entertaining and instructional comics on which is able to develop up not one among the longer term generations. These blockbuster movies performs a very important role within the comeback of comics. People who wish to cherish their childhood memories with the comics; they'll easily find low-cost comics to start their comic collection. In at the present time of "I would like the latest and latest," we really discover that a few of the true treasures are things of old. Comedian books are detailed stories. Other than conventions, yard sales and used ebook stores can be extremely cost efficient sources for collectible comedian books. A comedian e-book adaption as well as a novel publication is being completed for the movie's promotion. That assumption is improper and is an insult to the complete comic ebook group.

These comic guides give you the type of data you want like where to get the rare and useful comics and the place you will get first difficulty comics as well because the again subject ones as properly. By selling and trading comics you can be there have been the art work is most loved and valued. Besides, that is where you get the meet fellow enthusiasts and catch up on the newest within the comic books world; data that can prove invaluable. Some comic books editions are collector's items and if preserved in mint quality situation. Books are restricted as a result of the reader can't bodily see what the writer envisions. Are those behaviors to be condoned? Eyes turn into circles or dots, mouths are reduced to curved traces, and noses or ft are triangles. Get the latest information. Those that already evaluate large abilities of our webpage, confess that it is really essentially the most convenient and easy option to be in contact with the latest innovations of the world of comics.

Well conscious of the benefits that come from reading comics. Which Marvel comics must you read earlier than (or after) Captain Marvel? Repetition. Go back to your each day newspaper and glance on the comics’ web page. The cartoonist is utilizing repetition to determine the character. Subsequently, we may say that it has nothing to do with a altering tendencies, no matter is new and trendy, picture to pop art print stays within the midst of its identified usability in area of artwork. I regarded, and there earlier than me was a pale horse! There actually is one thing for everybody. Cosplay additionally means costume play and the fans usually come to the comedian conventions dressed in costumes. Eight delectable Expansions that adopted added to the joy of the game play. Then by all means, use it. By the use of these exaggerations, it doesn’t matter what different particulars I embrace. The possessed doll first hit the screens within the 1988 horror basic 'Child's Play'. Corey Haim, the lead of the original horror movie, and Corey Feldman, the two Coreys, reprise their original roles. Nonetheless, in 2003 Hasbro would relinquish management to Batman's rights to Mattel. You also get preferential remedy in some circumstances and entry to particular events and performances. A Brief History Of The Evolution Of Vintage Comics Like jazz, comic books and much more specifically the superhero is often a wholly American art form. Also, like jazz, it becomes an art which has been underappreciated. As a result of very good of superhero films just like the Dark Knight, Iron Man along with the X-Men, superheroes have begun to enter the understanding the general public. The following can be a list of the most effective superheroes that comic books have to offer. The list is designed to give you a place to start to the new reader. I have devoted to the essential components of the characters that I believe get them to significant or interesting. I tried to differentiate between good characters as well as a good story or even a good run of issues when I could however in some instances characters happen to be so significantly defined by a set or an issue that they can made the list. Enough using the preamble, here we go:

I also like the idea of Smarter Comics, because I think it can be a method of getting ideas to many people who probably won't otherwise browse the longer books. It is also a great way to look at the key points in the original books as a refresher. It has been a while since I read Winget's book, and I admit that I liked this quick review. Obviously, it doesn't contain nearly as almost as much ast the full length book, however some from the key ideas as well as the brunt of the message Winget preaches is located in this short adaptation.

Loki, he in the golden horns who had earlier made life a hardship on Thor in the movie Thor, runs a pact with an unknown race, an alien race, might help him extract his revenge, if he opens a portal so they can attack Earth. Loki does what he could be told, and steals the Tessaracat (a McGruber if there ever was one), and opens a portal for the other world to address Earth. Loki steals the Tessaract, requires a gang of scientists and Hawkeye under his command, and uncovers a portal which brings the aliens onto Earth.

Without apology, I admit that I am the consummate collector of Batman paraphernalia. Recently, the astounding work, The Batman Files, found its way into my life. Anyone who appreciates the mystique of The Dark Knight will love this book. And while I admit that readers often say of good books, "I cannot input it down," which was truly my experience. I poured over the design and relished the high quality illustrations for a few hours after opening it. As far as the acting that's involved, I'll say another thing. I always appreciate when actors supply a good effort during any film that I watch. What they do is essential to every of the films, so I don't expect anything less. We've all seen enough movies where the acting was either bad or flat and yes it seemed like among those guys were mailing it in. Assuming the script is terrible and they were only in it for the notoriety or check, you sort of come to expect this every so often of these situations.

[blackbatpurplecat]

My Thoughts on Batman #14

By popular demand (which surprised me and now I feel honored <3 ), here’s a little review on the latest issue of the current Batman run, #14: Rooftops Part 1.

What’s the story?

After the arc I Am Suicide, we are finally back in Gotham and follow BatCat through the city. Both are the main characters and apart from three speech bubbles of Clock King, even the only characters that speak and act in a fairly simple narrative.

The mood’s pretty melancholic; Batman reveals that Catwoman’s death penalty has been revoked by the President, thanks to Amanda Waller. Even though we’ve never seen or heard of any evidence against Selina. All we have is her claiming to have killed almost 300 men and that’s apparently enough for a death sentence... Yeah. Sure. Ugh. Now Catwoman needs to go to Blackgate, I assume for theft, and Batman has to take her in that same night. You can feel the tearful goodbye hanging above them and their mutual feelings for each other don’t make it any easier. It’s simply what we’ve seen over and over: Batman is struggling with two sides. He knows what’s right (arrest the criminal) and he knows what he wants to do (let the woman he loves go free), and those two things cancel each other out. We know he will always pick the side of the law but that doesn’t mean it won’t hurt less.

Catwoman, also saddened by the turn of events, pretty much accepts her faith though. She knows what’s coming for her and tries to lighten the mood a little bit by making suggestive comments and initiating a lovely make out session beneath the stars. She states that she wants one more night, living and enjoying her freedom. 

They again bring up the mass murder committed by her. Bruce doesn’t believe that Selina killed almost 300 people and wants to prove her innocence, yet he doesn’t know how. Selina repeats that she did kill those guys and promises to give him the truth if he takes her to Blackgate in the morning instead of right then and there. While Bruce states he knows she’ll try to flee, Selina replies she knows he will come after her.

So since they’ve come to some kind of an understanding, Selina very obviously suggests making the monster with two backs to say goodbye. Well OF COURSE! A farewell fuck! Since we still have no idea why or for how long Selina has known Bruce’s identity, we don’t know if it’d be their first (and last) time or if they’ve done it before. If they’ve been having an on-off-relationship like over the last decades or only fucked like in The New52. We can take into account that we’ve seen Bruce talk fondly and intimately to her so it’s not only fucking. But since I don’t care for anything outside of this issue, I’ll go with my own assumption and say “first time.” Bitter-sweet would be an understatement.

But, alas, the Bat signal pops up in the sky and dutiful Batman reacts just like we’d ALL expect him to react - work now, have fun later! But this time, he invites Catwoman to come along.

We jump to a clocktower where Batman faces Clock King who rambles on like a Bond villain and gets knocked out by Catwoman who swings in from behind. Is their work done, can they finally bang? The Bat signal in the sky says NOPE! So they go from villain to villain, Batman kicks the shit out of a various number of Rogues, Catwoman stays in the background and asks if that’s how he spends all of his nights.

Eventually, Catwoman grows tired and frustrated with him constantly postponing their boning and finally wants to do what she wants to do - breaking & entering! And Batsy comes along. Reluctantly.

They break into an apartment where Bruce sees a stolen cat figurine floating in the middle of the room. “It’s hanging by a thread, too thin to see” - God knows why. Selina simply grabs the cat and tells Bruce to run. They jump out of the window before the apartment explodes. Oh, and the apartment also belongs to Selina who had rented it under the name Holly Robinson. Ehm... okay...? Dunno what to do with that info. But another, more important thing: was that her alarm system in case another thief broke in and stole the cat? She would just... blow them up???!!! The thread is too thin, not even she can work around it so in order to take the cat, you HAVE to pull it down and trigger the explosion. This trap was set up with the intension to kill! What the fuck, Selina?!

BatCat watch the burning building from a rooftop far away and we learn that Selina owns the floors above and below the apartment and the sprinklers are awesome and everyone there is safe - again WHAT THE FUCK??? NO! This is fucking dumb! And Selina’s apparently so damn rich that she can rent 3 whole floors high in a skyscraper in the middle of the city?! WHAT?! And after revealing that load of info, she shows us that there are diamonds inside the cat figurine, kind of like a piggy bank for bad times.

She wants Bruce to have the diamonds and tells him to build dozens of orphanages after she’s gone. Sure. Because BRUCE FUCKING WAYNE needs financial support... Okay, let’s say the diamonds are a donation. Okay, I can buy that.

And to conclude this issue, Selina throws the tiny diamonds on the ground, takes her mask off, they start making out and FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY HAVE  S E X!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, what did I think of all this?

I really liked the art. Sure, it’s not the best art I’ve ever seen but it looks good and it’s definitely better than what Guillem March did in the Catwoman run. BatCat look like real people, no extreme poses or overdone, dramatic movements. There are some not so pretty angles here and there and on the first page, Batman’s face looks like covered in dirt but in general, the art is quite decent! Especially in the last panels where it matters the most!

The first two and the last two pages are wonderful. Buy the issue for those four pages, they are SO worth it! Everything inbetween is filler. The BatCat teamwork is way too short and while Batsy roughing up some C-List Rogues looked funny, it wasn’t engaging or anything. If it was meant to prove a point, I didn’t need it. I know that his duty will always come first. But I can try and interpret something into it if you want me to: Bruce kept pushing the expected sex back more and more, the Bat signal was the ultimate cockblock in this issue. But at the very end, the Bat signal shines above them while they’re going at it cowgirl style and Bruce does not shove her away to grab cowl and cape. Maybe it’s supposed to show us that for once, something or someone was more important than the Mission. And it would be incredibly rude to leave in mid-coitus.

The BatCat sex scene is like a kiss to my soul. I’ve been wanting some decent love scenes of my ship for so SO SOOO LOOONG!!! Lois and Clark got so many good ones, there are some of Bruce and the Demon Spawn, hell, there’s even a (granted, awful) sex scene between Batman and Black Canary! Why has it taken decades for DC to release a decent BatCat sex scene??? It’s what we freaking deserve!!! And I want every single BatCat shipper to see it!!! We’ve been denied something magical for too long, not only Batsy and Kitten were frustrated with this lack of sexy times.

And it’s even not creepy or rapey or anything, no! It’s very tastefully drawn, it’s sensual and lovely and just beautiful! They even drew Bruce’s scars all over his body, nice attention to detail. BUT fucking on hundreds of tiny diamonds CAN’T BE COMFORTABLE!!! Imagine rolling around naked on Legos! Not so sexy, heh??? What if you get one up the crack? They are sharp and can cut your ass skin open!

Now, apart from the nonsense I’ve already mentioned, like the booby trap, Selina’s financial situations, the weird laws Gotham operates in, and the mass murder bullcrap, there is one thing that I absolutely detest in this issue: the dialogues! Holy fucking shit! Has King ever in his life talked to another human being? Or heard people have conversations?! The dialogues are awful! This is Nocenti level of awfulness in my opinion. Imagine if Frank “I’m an insane sexist racist asshole” Miller and Nocenti had a hate child and that hate child was writing dialogues. THAT is what King produces in this issue! He even recycles big chunks of those terrible lines! And don’t get me started on the fact that BatCat STILL call each other “Bat” and “Cat”. Ugh, that’s so fucking dumb. My God, honestly, try to skip the dialogues, guys. It’s what I had mentioned before; King tries to sound so deep and clever while he delivers a pile of bullshit.

Will I go back to this issue in the future? HELL YEAH!!! I would print the sex panels out and frame them and put them on my walls!!! The art thankfully saved the issue from becoming another generic DC fart. They could have easily screwed up the emotional scenes between BatCat but artist Mitch Gerads did a great job with the facial expressions, the close-ups, and the angles. You (thankfully) don’t need the bad lines to understand what’s happening between our leads. Just look at their faces and you’ll feel what they feel.

And I am SO thankful that we FUCKING FINALLY got a beautiful BatCat love scene! I hope there are many more to come in the future!

Part 2 got the teaser “The final farewell?” - I hope we will finally find out what the deal is with that stupid as fuck mass murder plot. It annoys the hell out of me that King keeps going back and forth “yes, she did it”, “no, she didn’t”, “but she clearly states she did it”, “but he doesn’t believe it”, “but she says it” etc etc. It doesn’t make the plot more exciting or interesting but frustrating and boring. Just like the “will-they-won’t-they” DC have been doing with BatCat for decades now.

The way they’re handling it at the moment, the next issue will probably reveal the biggest twist *gasp* that she did not kill almost 300 people! She only claimed it and willingly went to Arkham and wanted to be sentenced and put to death because................. ?????????????? And then she will flee and lay low. And we will be without our beloved Kitten again. And that was important to the plot HOW?!?!?! Who needed it??? Ugh, King really isn’t the best writer.

Tl;dr Batman #14 is THE issue for BatCat shippers!!! Just marvel at the panels and don’t read the dialogues.