#trying to comic with proper panels!

[slouph]

The beginning of a misunderstanding 🌱🏛 part 1/part 2

[nocek]

My headcanon is that since Miguel's lab is like the darkest and quietest part of the HQ it kinda doubles as best communal napping spot.

It makes it really hard to be all brooding when spider-werewolf-man is snoring in the background XD cue the silly platform.

[smoosie]

The 'We need to talk' scene

but I've made it into a wet cat short comic

(and it only gets worse for him...)

Bonus secret 5th panel :

(intrusive thoughts so strong they make his brain crash)

[canisalbus]

I may be stupid and you might already have one but if not have you considered making a WEBTOON about the 2 best doggos as a story about their weird and wonderful lives would be great

Not stupid at all! I've definitely thought about it a lot, but comic making is hard work, it's extremely time consuming (either that or my method of drawing is just absurdly inefficient. Probably both). I don't think it's something I could just pick up and realistically fit into my daily life, at least not at the moment. I'm just one person with very limited time and resources. Sorry!

[moe-broey]

I. Did not achieve a lot today (understandable considering the circumstances), but. You need to See.

The SADDEST. SOGGIEST. Sharena I have EVER drawn.

Also maybe a little snippet as a treat...

You'll have to fight my messy roughs and handwriting for it though 😤😤😤

[sleepyblr-heart]

old yuri comic GO

[airs-headspace]

CUTE AAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!

[todayisafridaynight]

just wanted to make a cute short comic but then i told myself i have to redraw the first half of the sceneim basing the comic off of so now it's THREE pages instead of two

[daydreamerdrew]

The Incredible Hulk (1968) #253

[ambrosiagourmet]

I've seen pieces from this extra comic before, but never read the full thing until today. And holy shit does it hammer home just how much the story is about class.

Multiple times, when food comes up in this comic, it’s also in context of money:

I've seen this last panel on the right brought up before in context of like, dungeon meshi's relationship with fat and eating, but in the full context of the comic it really hits how much adventuring directly consumes bodies for money.

As much as this has been part of the story the whole time, showcased as early chapters 19 and 20...

It never fully hit me before how often adventuring comes down to having no other way to make money but to throw yourself into death repeatedly. To be used, whether it’s by individual selfish people (like the resurrection group that is happy to try and get Kabru's group to kill each other to get extra gold from them in chapter 32), or by the greater cog of the Dungeon Economy in general.

Which, to be clear, is all too often how things work in the real world, too. So many jobs burn through the health and lives of workers. Dungeon Meshi just makes it literal in a new way: by making the healing and resurrection, a core part to the adventuring loop, directly use fat, muscle, and energy from the body being healed.

Imagine Amazon, but if you got injured at work, they could literally burn up some of your body to get you back to working sooner. And that was seen as an advantage of the job.

And then you have Laios, thinking about eating monsters:

Not just because he likes monsters a lot. But because it would help. He says something similar in the actual manga too, during the chapter discussing his dream with the Winged Lion

Laios wants to be able to make a home for Falin. He wants to give her a place where she never has to eat alone. And when he gets a party, he wants to give them a way to eat well. And when he runs a country, well…

He wants to ensure that everyone has enough to eat.

Food is political. Food ties into class, and money. What is deemed "proper" to eat, what is a luxury, what is crass… so much of it comes down to money.

Being judged for eating what's available, when what is “proper” isn't affordable, is already a thing that happens. People forced into work that consumes their energy is already a thing that happens.

Dungeon Meshi has a lot of fantastical elements, but boy is its examination of food and class very real.

[nights-at-crystarium]

Fragments - episodes 47-52 author notes

You can find similar breakdown posts on older episodes in my pinned!

Time to recap the first proper wolgraha miniarc. See what you might’ve missed, or simply enjoy the extra content in form of my rambling.

47 stands out as a bit disconnected, floaty, introspective episode fully focusing on Exarch’s pov. I’ve scattered some breadcrumbs for him throughout the entire comic, time to pick those up. He may be an oblivious fool in certain moments, but I believe he wouldn’t keep insisting on staying deaf and blind when evidence’s shoved in his face. So, this moment of recollection and rethinking marks the start of the canon divergence, all of his future actions are colored by this.

Vivi has a dire effect on some people even without trying to manipulate them.

The composition forms a star here :3c

This panel should make their likeness even more obvious, they’re mirror reflections, albeit deliciously twisted ones. Also, the V sign is literally something that Vivi. Just. Does.

Exarch's heard from Vivi himself that they might be the same, Urianger literally tells him to go to a mirror and ponder, but when he does, and tries to look a bit more like he imagines Vivi, he can't stand what he sees in the mirror. They still aren't the same in his heart of hearts, even if reality itself tries to prove otherwise.

Hidden Angst Time! I can only hope that most readers are familiar with the flashback bubbles by now, and that this panel reads as it should: Feo Ul embraces Exarch while pointing out that they’re also being ostracized by their kind. Though the ultimate fae wisdom lies in accepting something the way it is, and just not caring too much.

More under the cut~ 

*rewinds all the way back to episode 1* hehe

“Does a hero have to be happy about his job” is one of my personal fav lines so far, I think it hits hard, pointing not only at Vivi, but at Exarch as well, and the visual supports it. I think this encapsulates Exarch’s ideology.

Exarch’s GASP could be interpreted as saying GASP out loud, which only makes it funnier.

Vivi carefully plans his entrance in order to make the atmosphere less formal. Approaching normally just wouldn’t do it. Also he just feels relaxed and safe to be silly. Remember how lowkey he was since his arrival to the First? His behavior all but contradicted what I said and showed about him in the ARR arc and outside of the comic.

Well, that’s in the past now. He’s finished assessing the situation and concluded that it’s okay to be more himself.

Feo Ul's upset that Exarch used his “radar” to detect Vivi’s ambush while they’d just used a similar ability to make sure that no emet-selchs are around.

If you catch a flirty vibe from Vivi in this episode, you're correct.

Vivi when he's remotely interested in a man:

My flavor of lampshading the obvious exposition dump. Oh Exarch, you asked for this, no take-backsies.

Another few hard-hitting questions from Exarch. It's easy to gloss over these, but if you slow down and think, it's decent angst material. Has anyone ever been concerned about Vivi's feelings, or was it more convenient to look away, even if intently, even if both sides knew they're better off not talking about that, for there's indeed no wol replacement. What good does acknowledging the situation if you can’t change it.

This's Vivi's memory, thus he appears small against the looming forms of the world leaders. Rigid, formal, impersonal. Raha's memories of the Ironworks seem to have a different vibe, despite all the parallels of the duty imposed by the world on one special guy. Also yeah I do wanna make my own version of the 8UC timeline and characters someday, for now these are just random characters that I consider as placeholders. And the dunmeshi cameo x’D

Yes, he mocks the people that he's saved. He's VERY frustrated with his job.

I offer you a fun game: spot all the mannerisms that make Vivi and Emet so alike. I genuinely never thought about this until this year, while this scene's pretty damn old, i.e. Vivi's always been like this, it precedes my Emet brainrot.

I swear that this line also was there before my Emet brainrot, but now it makes for a hilarious kind of foreshadowing.

You could already tell how "fit" he is for solving trolley problems.

This’s his “oops I talked too much shit” face.

The way Exarch just quietly TURNS and LOOKS at Vivi cracks me up. Don't undermine the tone with random jokes, dammit. But is this random? I’ve already analyzed this moment somewhere but for the sake of keeping important things in one place: they wrestle for control here. Exarch winds up for something serious, while Vivi wants to steer the convo towards more casual. It does somewhat lower the tension, though Exarch doesn’t relinquish his lead in the convo.

This doesn’t save him from becoming Frank forever from here on.

This miniarc’s rich with raw, hard-hitting words, so I’ll bring this up again.

We’re finally getting the explanation and context for a lot of previous episodes:

And the following episodes only help driving this point home. Vivi already sees the First as a viable escape from the Source with all of its shitty people and endless problems.

"This's why I... enjoy my time away from the Source": even at this seemingly high level of trust between them Vivi won't openly tell Exarch about his plans to stay here, a variable he doesn't want to become a risk.

Yes, he does an entirely calculated and strategic flop. A literal thirst trap.

Meme provided by my discord server:

Vivi casts provoke, it's..... not effective

^ This’s one of my personal fav exarchs I’ve ever drawn DADDY PLS

A panel that everyone loved to bits :>

I pair angst with other flavors to make it fun and non-repetitive. It's not "boohoo I can never kiss my hero, the world will end if I do, I'm so aggravated with myself", it's the hooded Exarch (duty) being mad at the unhooded Exarch (human), and delivering the same notion in a fun exchange. You can't help but laugh at the comical chibi violence, at the same time you acknowledge that it's a pretty fucked up act of suppressing one's innate human desires.

It's not a date, they just sit and talk <- the water in which Exarch is being slowly boiled.

I rarely talk about the visuals, but here I intended to make it look like a magical moment frozen in time. It's immersive, whimsical, full of color and movement. Despite the perceived warmth, the composition splits them apart, they're alone together. It’s still Raha’s pov, Vivi doesn’t seem to have any fond memories of the Source at all, we only hear about the past from his current jaded self.

An in-universe acknowledgment of the ARR arc lasting only 11 episodes x’D Though it’s all by design, it was meaningful only to Raha, while being a forgettable blip in time for Vivi.

Episode 52 opens with.... *drumroll*

NIP SLIP

I lovingly rendered that nip and I’ll make you look at it.

Ibuprofen meme would be the first thing that comes to mind, but consider the better/worse caption: "come to daddy". In all seriousness though, it’s a cool panel that I wanted to appreciate again. This IS Vivi’s pov.

The grimy beaten up Vivi creates questions that are answered in episode 53, which is yet to be released publicly at the moment of writing this. Some episodes, like 52-53 and 42-43, come in pairs that only make sense together due to the non-linear storytelling.

Yes this’s Aymeric, no I won’t say anything else :’> One thing that’s worth noting is the face Vivi makes here. And the distant, emotionless tone with which he recalls the moment of his own near-death.

Lemme spell it out even more plainly: Vivi romanticizes the moment he almost died. Exarch just happened to be present in that moment, and Vivi latched on to him as someone who would grant him escape, freedom, peace.

“A kindly wizard from fairytales”. I regret to inform you that we have two delusional fucks on our hands. Both see each other as some kinda dreamt up, idealized, mythical figures.

This miniarc isn’t over yet, but I’m wrapping up the recap here. Thanks for reading till the end~

[sufferingsokkatash]

THAT famous zukka hug in the atla north and south comic : an essay you did not need, by me.

i was thinking about how, in writing, there should be no accidents or coincidences in how and why something is described, or the detail the writer chooses to use. for example, zuko tapping his hand on his desk would be used to show that he is impatient or anxious about something.

so THEN i decided to apply this to the zukka hug, because why not be delulu about these things idk.

first of all, here are the zukka hug pages for context:

disclaimer: i don’t really know how the fandom feels about the comics. personally i like them, so i will proceed with that bias in mind. also please take this with the humour that is intended, it’s more fun that way.

i go down a sabre tooth moose lion hole below the cut.

this whole scene to me is largely what we all love about atla - humour and good characterisation combined with serious subject matter. king kuei and bosco are the comic relief and oblivious party in the face of quite a complicated issue, as zuko himself acknowledges. this humour then extends to kuei offering zuko the chance to join in on his hug with bosco, which zuko politely refuses. obviously, there is the clear issue of zuko being afraid of being eaten by a bear, but we’ll pretend that ernest hemingway is grading our papers here, okay.

it is a very deliberate writing choice and contrast to have zuko refuse hugs from one person/animal and then immediately and happily accept one from sokka. (see also: sokka running excitedly with a big grin on his face at the bottom of page 17 to greet them, naming zuko first, but remembering that he is a good ambassador to the swt and using their proper titles despite his excitement. more silliness mixed with seriousness. see also, also: HE RAAAAAN!) zuko may be touch averse and not a huggy person, but screw that when it’s sokka who’s offering the hug.

remember there are no accidents in good writing. kuei happily says: hello friends! to which, in both that panel and the next, he is clearly ignored. sokka and zuko are so absorbed in hugging each other that sokka neglects his duties in welcoming them both properly. zuko : 2 swt ambassador role: 0. also ignored is the fact that kuei brought his bear, which would normally be subject to some kind of smartass comment from our boomerang boi, even if he knows he’s obsessed with his pet from the ba sing se episodes.

this could be an actual mistake, but sokka ran towards zuko, who was standing in front of kuei. but in the hug panel, sokka is between them. that means kuei walked all the way around them trying to get their attention, and it still didn’t work. sokka, nor zuko, say a further word to kuei. like exactly how much tunnel vision is there in this, my goddddd.

bosco is protecting kuei and sokka is protecting zuko. could be why they mirrored them and their positions in the hug panel, so not a mistake. a swt person says: protecting foreigners, sokka?! but that is exactly what he does by ignoring the protesters and telling zuko not to worry about them. despite wanting to do his duty to everyone sokka puts zuko first, basically, and doesn’t care about what they all think of him. that’s kind of huge for sokka.

yes, hakoda is injured at this time and yes he’s proud of sokka, but surely as chief he would have gone to meet the earth king and firelord? why did the writers go to so much effort making sure that sokka was there to meet zuko and have them hugging take up a third of an entire page when printing and space in the comics is such a consideration? it is clearly important, y’all.

their faces when they see each other. sokka can’t stop grinning and zuko closes his eyes in relief he’s so happy. enough said.

sokka says: thanks so much for coming! like he doesn’t already know zuko would travel the world just to make him happy or help in what’s important to him. have you forgotten boiling rock, sokka? because that dude you’re wrapped around, acting like he’s been starved of you, sure hasn’t.

this comic is all about nations coming together and traditions being upheld and shared. in other words, marry him sokka. it is in your diplomatic interests to do so.

in utterly insane conclusion:

i am always surprised at how much they made the effort in the writing for this one scene. i don’t see the comics as something that tease ships, they aren’t natla. what i do see is two guys who clearly care about each other, almost to the detriment of their roles and responsibilities, and their relationship was worth the effort taken in the writing and artwork to show that. it is super heckin sweet. does this mean i think zukka is canon or could be? no. maybe did i have fun pretending and overanalyzing every detail? yes.

ps in all seriousness, the answer is that this is about my fav boy and how far he has come in his character growth journey - exhibit a from ‘the avatar returns’ episode:

the end, i am getting blocked and going to jail but it’s okay because zukka is my bosco hug.

[phoenix-art-official]

Ah— ("natural way of spacing", anon, here) i meant that it *looks* very natural! Very pleasing to the eye etc etc ... I'd be even more astonished if you managed to do it effortlessly ... I've been trying to get better at it, personally. And you're right. It does take a lot of work !!

OHHHH OK well then in that case TYSM AAAAA IM GLAD MY ENDLESS NITPICKING PAID OFF!

i actually found the best way for me to conceptualize combined poses was to take some inspiration from comic making! in comics, every page starts as a thumbnail, and the goal of a thumbnail is to be small, non detailed, but easy to read. it helps you "zoom out" and get a better read on the full composition of a page/panel. its how i start all of my sketches at this point. no guiding lines, no focus on anatomy or perspective or accuracy- just form, volume, and readability! theyre also meant to be done quickly- within a minute or two.

heres an example from my latest sketch. this was what i started with. its vague, but it helps me visualize clearly how the lines flow together and lead the eye. you naturally focus first on fords face, then follow his arm to stan.

after that is my proper sketch, paying mind to anatomy, volume, and perspective

notice how i keep it messy! this leaves me room to change things as much as i want, moving or posing things differently depending on what works in the space. thankfully this one didnt need much tweaking!

i generally draw a lot faster than most artists, from what i can tell- i spend maybe 2 or 3 hours on a sketch like this, and then im like, "okay, im done, looks good."

this is just my own process after, like, a decade of teaching myself, so it may not work for everyone, but i find its better to have an ill-fitting guide than none at all. adapt to your own needs!

[thornswoggled]

yori is fumiki and heres why: my manifesto

or: wait, we werent all on the same page about this?

i should have written this when i first read chapter 98, but im only getting around to it now. this is less me trying to convince you, the reader, and more hoarding all my collected thoughts on why yori is absolutely fumiki, if its a red herring its a silly one, and if he isnt or if its left ambiguous forever i will eat crow. here we go:

before i start let me say most of my evidence is the way yamazaki frames him visually rather than solid "proof." comics are an artform, theres a reason things get framed the way they do, and her artistic choices in ch 98 (i feel) are meant to serve as a big blinking neon light that says "you should be feeling this way about xyz right now"

iic, there were rumblings of "the young auditor" being fumiki as far back as his introduction in ch 51 due to to his unique ability:

which is essentially a refined version of fumikis innate ability to keep fae away. we know yori is part of a "family business," and it seems appropriate that with the proper training, he would be able to freeze fae in their tracks rather than simply ward them off

unfortunately this is where "evidence" ends and "vibes" begin

chapter 51 didnt get adapted into what was otherwise a pretty faithful adaptation in season 2, and i understand why - theres a lot going on, and this chapter is fairly out of left field. but theres one other quip that got left out of season 2:

this is a one-off thought that wouldnt have been difficult to include in the anime. imo, i believe this line from ch 62 didnt get animated because we hadnt met fumiki yet like we did in the manga. now, onto more recent chapters... (under a read more because this is going to get pretty long)

chise and yoris first meeting is framed in a very purposeful way. in chapter 98, elias is preoccupied with ousting all the outsiders so that he and chise can be alone, stuck on the idea that "christmas is for family only:"

and three pages later, who do we meet?

im really struck by the way chise and yori are drawn together here. personally, i dont read this as "chise is meeting a new unimportant side character," this is "the strings of fate have pulled us miraculously back together again"

waiter! waiter! can i get an order of drifting sakura petals and sparkles with this panel? am i waxing poetic here or do you see it? the way theres no background drawn here, no other characters, even in later pages when we know elias is standing right behind chise, he doesnt get included in frame so that its just the two of them:

while im at it, can we appreciate how theyre wearing the same outfit? black pants and a hip-length dark coat/sweater with oversized pockets, a collar, and six left-sided buttons. yoris dark gloves also evoke chises cursed arm here but i dont want to risk looking like a maniac any more than i already do. i mean... dude, look at them, theyre matching

speaking of matching, lets pop back to 51 for a sec

both yori and chise have canine familiars! actually, it looks like yori might have multiple - look at all those pokeballs i mean bamboo tubes in his coat. if my memory serves, we didnt know yori was japanese at this point, but everyone assumed so because of the appearance of this familiar... which was another log on the "this might be fumiki" fire

fun fact: this little dude is almost certainly a kuda-kitsune, which were said to be kept in tubes and summoned by a soothsayer, who could use it to perform curses, or tell the past and future

and the drama with which we find out his "name":

"i bet you were expecting me to say fumiki, huh. good luck im not giving you that this early you have to work for it." as far as aliases go, "ri" could be derived from "hatori," but neither of the kanji in "fumiki" can be read as "yo," so its probably just random

after yori leaves, we get another repetition of "christmas is for family," which at this point feels like yamazaki is leading us to water and dunking our head in it:

i think its awfully convenient that ruth was absent for chises exchange with yori. do you think he would have been able to smell that theyre related? or whiffed the kuda-kitsune in his coat?

right after this, too, we get this line from elias which i have been thinking about a lot:

theres a few different ways this could be read, so im not married to any one interpretation, but it could be foreshadowing "if chise decides to pursue a relationship with her estranged family, what will i do then?" as gabriella would say, "i hate to be a third wheel"

given what we have seen of yoris aloof personality, i have to imagine there will be drama if/when the reveal is made. sadly i can picture him actually pushing chise away if she tries to reestablish a relationship with him

now! that is pretty much where my thoughts end, but i do want to share questions/doubts i have:

if yori read all of simons reports to determine he was an unfit observer, there is no way he doesnt know chises full name. i wonder whether he had any reaction to it? he may assume that its just a coincidence. i briefly wondered if the hatori name was an invention by yuuki, until i remembered that the family chise stays with in the OVA also has the same name. unless yuuki was adopted by another family like seth...? dont mind me, im going pepe silvia mode over here

have i mentioned i talked about yuuki before in another theory post? take it with a grain of salt, i already got proven wrong on one front now that jasper has been introduced

will yuuki be reintroduced if fumiki is? i desperately want chise to get that closure, but this scene from ch 42 has a sense of finality to it, a sort of "you will never get to resolve things with your father or see his side of things" stank:

... actually, now that ive mentioned the kuda-kitsune, can we look at this thing again?

another word for the kuda-kitsune is "izuna," which is read in modern japanese as "weasel." could the critter whos watching yuuki here come from the same place as yoris familiars? yuuki leaves his family immediately after this - getting summoned maybe?

okay, okay, let me stop myself here before i start looking like im ranting and raving. can we talk about the mail, please, mac? ive been dying to talk about the mail with you all day, ok? "pepe silvia," this name keeps coming up over and over again. every day pepe's mail is getting sent back to me. pepe silvia! pepe silvia! i look in the mail, and this whole box is pepe silvia!

if youre a fence-sitter, what are your thoughts? do you think we just dont have enough evidence yet? inquiring minds want to know

[thankskenpenders]

And now for something new

So, here's something I was never planning on doing, but I just couldn't shake the idea... Thanks Ken Penders is gaining a sister blog featuring an entirely different comic franchise!

Introducing... Thanks Steve Ditko, a blog where I read the Earth-616 Spider-Man comics, starting all the way back in the '60s! It's gonna be much more casual and less thorough than how I run things here on TKP, though, which I'll explain in a sec.

If seeing me post weird bits from old Spider-Man comics sounds fun and you need no further info, then just head right on over to Thanks Steve Ditko. But for longtime TKP readers, I know you probably have questions...

Number one: Why?

Spider-Man's always been my favorite superhero, and with the Spider-Verse movies kicking ass and my excitement building for the new Insomniac game, I've been in a Spidey mood. Inevitably, a thought occurred to me: Maybe I should actually read the comics that everything else is built off of and see the wildly varying contributions of all the original creators, rather than filtering them through big budget adaptations. If I can power through One Piece and all these other manga with hundreds of chapters, it can't be that hard... right?

And, well, after a few issues I quickly realized that my options were to either clog up my other accounts with random Spider-Man panels for years, or to just make a side blog. And so the side blog was born.

Two: Will this blog replace Thanks Ken Penders?

NO!!!!!!!!!

Okay but prove it

To allow the two to exist side-by-side, Thanks Steve Ditko will have a different format than what Thanks Ken Penders developed. Rather than an in-depth guided tour that critically analyzes every story beat of every issue, TSD will just be a place for amusing panels and brief thoughts as I casually read the comics at my own pace.

If you've seen me make a few tweets about reading Spider-Man recently, I'm basically just moving that to a dedicated Tumblr. It's a place for me to dump these things so that it doesn't fill up my media tab on Twitter for the next decade. (You know, assuming Twitter is still around in a decade.) There will be many issues where I only post two panels that I thought were funny. There will be issues where I don't have anything to say at all. Maybe I'll reach a run that I just cannot get into, and I start skipping around more. Who knows!

This may sound similar to what I thought this blog would be before it blew up. Aside from the simple fact that there's already mountains of Spider-Man commentary out there and therefore less of a void for me to fill, one of the main steps I'll be taking to avoid repeating the past is not enabling an ask box on TSD. I do not need people to ask me to go into ten times more detail on everything. I do not need to write seven essay-length responses to questions about Spider-Man minutiae every day. I do not need a place for people to chide me for not covering certain scenes, issues, or ancillary series.

It also won't have any kind of update schedule. I'm trying to keep it very casual. I'm reading these comics at my own pace, and if I feel like sharing a moment or commenting on something while doing so? It goes there. That's it.

(On the subject of format changes, I'm also listing the issue, writer, and penciller in the body of every post. This is a thing I wish I'd done on TKP so that people didn't misattribute every weird Archie Sonic panel I post to Penders.)

Three: So when will TKP come back from hiatus? You said it'd come back after you finished SLARPG!

I don't know! Sorry. I have a couple things on the backburner right now for TKP, but I'm not sure when I'll get back to proper updates where I read more comics.

I wanted to bring TKP back this year, and that's still possible. The main hurdle is that I want to reread my own archive (again) as a refresher, which is, uh. A lot of posts. I've developed a high standard for myself on here, and I feel like I wouldn't be doing my job right if I forgot half the ongoing subplots and character arcs and didn't bring them up in my analysis. Especially when I'm discussing the work of an author as obsessed with continuity as Ian Flynn. Unfortunately, the nature of this blog means that every time I go on another long hiatus for Life Reasons I have even more comic continuity to catch up on than last time.

(This is a big part of why I'm making Thanks Steve Ditko an extremely casual blog instead of promising to become a Lore Expert on 60+ years of Marvel.)

Mostly I've just been very burnt out this year after having finally finished a video game that took almost eight years to make. I haven't really had the energy for any creative projects, including TKP. But I feel a little bit of a spark here with Spider-Man, so I'm chasing that feeling to try to get back into the swing of blogging about comics - no pun intended.

So, basically, bear with me on this as I start this low-energy side project. But hopefully folks will enjoy Thanks Steve Ditko as its own thing, too.

Look forward to goofy shit like this

[genericpuff]

to add to that last ask about highlights, can you explain how you think the colors don't work now? bc as far as I can tell the colors for the background and characters are still the same as they were in s1, but they for some reaosn don't work now. is because of the lack of values? the lack of shading and highlights? no use of textures? you can explain it better than me

A lot of it comes down to color theory and lack of proper rendering.

Concerning the colors, they definitely aren't the exact same as they were back in S1. Someone on reddit actually did a far better visual breakdown of it than I have time to put together, so full credit goes to /u/LowPHvinegar for the following images!

There's this problem with the undertones and shading used now that makes the characters look very 'plastic'. Before they looked ethereal, now they look rubbery and artificial. And there are a few reasons for this, one of which includes how Rachel shades the comic now compared to S1.

There's also the backgrounds themselves. LO's always been minimal in its backgrounds, but they used to have loads of texture, lighting effects, and glow.

(seriously, when was the last time we got an iconic panel like this? So many of the panels in S3, even the ones that TRY to feel 'iconic', don't come anywhere near the level of the S1 art that was truly memorable).

Rachel's also clearly uh... checked out of the comic in a way that shows through her lineart specifically. Rachel's old art is known for having very thick, varying, distinct lines, and there's been a lot less of that lately.

Rachel's lineart:

Who the fuck:

And what happens when the backgrounds stop pulling their weight? The colors look even worse.

The void backgrounds, unlike in S1, have been VERY muddy and dry. So it makes those hyper-saturated colors look even MORE saturated and ugly.

Now, to Rachel's credit, there have been more backgrounds as of late:

But see how the characters still look whack? It feels like Rachel's making attempts to address the criticism while still avoiding the massive elephant in the room - she's not putting in the same efforts anymore and any efforts she does make feel performative and hollow, and it shows. And this happens a lot with Rachel attempting to address criticism, she's trying to address a specific point that isn't taking into account the larger picture where the grander point is coming from. It feels very "SEE! SEE!" while turning a blind eye to everything else.

And yeah, it means even using some of the same colors from S1 can't and won't save the comic from looking like cheap reproduced garbage. Because just using those colors on their own is missing the forest for the trees, the old colors were only part of a much larger thing. Lore Olympus used to be the sum of its parts - now all those parts have been smashed up with a hammer and left in a mess on the floor, and Rachel is simply trying to pick up those individual parts and call it "fixed".

Frankly, until she understands this and is willing to play a more active part in creating the comic genuinely and with real effort that isn't purely performative or meant to "get back" at her critics, then what LO used to have will forever remain a mess on the floor.