#underwater animal crossing and it's only aquatic animals since we have so few in the villager lineup

[redgemwink]

and while i'm here let me say a take that i think would probably piss most animal crossing fans off. i think they need to cut at least 50% of the villager roster. i'm not saying kick the ugly villagers out, i'm saying kick the boring villagers out. there are WAY too many villagers that are literally just giving nothing. get them out. not having to code in 200+ villagers would open the opportunity to make NEW villagers. we had barely any new ones in new horizons and we didn't have ANY new personality types or species and to me that was such an astronomical fumble bc the few new villagers we did get all had really amazing designs and made me want more. like when we got deers in new leaf it felt historic and nearly all the deers look amazing. this is not smash bros, we do not need all 400+ villagers in the series history present in one game, PLEASE just make new ones the new ones always have such better aesthetics q.q

[ethanalter]

How to make a sexy sea monster and other 'Shape of Water' secrets revealed! (exclusive)

Guillermo del Toro’s romantic fairy tale The Shape of Water represents a breakthrough in human-fish relations. That’s not just because this lovingly crafted homage to classic ‘50s creature features is up for 13 Oscars at this year’s Academy Awards, including Best Director and Best Picture. It also pushes the envelope well past love stories like Splash and The Little Mermaid, where men and mermaids enjoyed relatively chaste romances. In contrast, The Shape of Water’s lovers — mute janitor, Elisa (Sally Hawkins, a Best Actress nominee) and South American river god (Doug Jones) — get hot and heavy during the course of the film, instantly making them one of the most memorable interspecies couples in movie history.

Del Toro recognized early on in the production process that his love story hinged on audiences finding the Fish-Man as attractive as Elisa does. So, he devoted more than a year — and hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own funds — towards sculpting a version of the creature that was, to put it bluntly, a total stud. “It needed to be very attractive, a creature you could fall in love with,” the director remarks in this exclusive behind-the-scenes clip that Yahoo Entertainment is premiering today. (Watch the video above.) Del Toro handed that challenge off to top creature designer, Mike Hill of Legacy Effects, who built a suit for Jones that was further enhanced in post-production by Dennis Berardi, head of the visual effects company Mr. X, which oversaw the effects work for The Shape of Water.

Sally Hawkins and Doug Jones as the lovers in ‘The Shape of Water’ (Photo: Fox Searchlight/Courtesy Everett Collection)

The technique was pure hybrid,” Berardi explains to Yahoo Entertainment in a separate interview. “Generally speaking, when you see the body and head movements of the Fish Man—or the asset as we called him — that’s Doug Jones in a suit. But whenever you see him underwater, then he’s animated. I would also say that every single shot where you have the creature onscreen, the eyes and brow area are digital, because the way the mask worked, the eyes were a thick resin plug that didn’t articulate. Our methodology was to work from the eyes out, preserving as much of Doug’s performance as possible. But every single shot has varying degrees of visual effects in it, from micro-expressions like eye blinks to full-body animation.”

Unfortunately for Berardi, visual effects was one of the few Oscar categories in which The Shape of Water missed out on a nomination, with nods instead going to Blade Runner 2049, Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2, Kong: Skull Island, Star Wars: The Last Jedi and War for the Planet of the Apes. But he and his team absolutely share a role in the movie’s success, infusing the creature’s costume design (which is up for an Oscar) with additional life. Having collaborated with Del Toro on both Pacific Rim and Crimson Peak, Berardi has regularly enjoyed a front-row seat to the director’s creative process. Read on for additional trade secrets behind The Shape of Water and its strapping Fish-Man.

It started with a sketch. Berardi’s first glimpse of The Shape of Water‘s aquatic heartthrob was as a two-dimensional sketch in one of the notebooks that Del Toro always has on hand to jot down ideas and images as they pop into his brain. (Some of those notebooks have been published in anthology collections.) “He showed me a sketch of their embrace,” the effects supervisor remembers, referring to an early version of the clinch between Elisa and the “asset” that appears on the movie’s poster. “It was such a romantic image, and he told me, ‘This is a movie that’s in love with love.’ You had a creature that had to be a leading man that Elisa had to fall in love with and that the audience had to fall in love with. He told us right at the beginning that this wasn’t a monster — it’s an intelligent being with a soul, and eyes that had to be soulful and deep.”

The creature also had to be a top-notch swimmer whose movements read as pure poetry in the water. To aid with that, Berardi had his team study Olympians like Michael Phelps as a starting point. “Those guys are powerful and swim somewhat gracefully, but nothing as graceful as what Guillermo really wanted. So then we looked at dolphins, sea lions, otters and seals, and settled on this hybrid of a humanoid swimming, with a bit of a dolphin kick. Seals actually became a lot of inspiration as well, because they move slipstream through the water very gracefully.”

Junk in the trunk In one of The Shape of Water‘s standout sequences, Elisa and her lover act consummate their powerful attraction in a bathroom that she transforms into a makeshift water tank. It’s an erotically-charged moment and del Toro takes full advantage of his R-rating, allowing the two to see, and touch, each other’s naked bodies like any homosapien couple would. Boundary-pushing as this scene may be, it stops just short of the final frontier: merman genitalia. And that’s just fine for Berardi, who would have been responsible for helping imagine what the creature’s junk might look like. “Guillermo’s got too much taste for that,” Berardi remarks with a laugh, pointing out that Elisa and her friend Zelda (Octavia Spencer) instead discuss her lover’s size after their intimate encounter. “His inspiration for the movie was when he was six years old watching Creature from the Black Lagoon and hoping that the creature gets the girl.”

That’s a note that del Toro passed along to Hill as well. “This thing has to be attractive to a woman,” the creature designer remarks in the above clip. “My directive was that I wanted to make him handsome.” For his part, Jones clearly appreciated the matinee idol physique that Hill crafted for his aquatic alter ego. “My lips are a little fuller, there’s a strong jawline and the body they sculpted on me is very athletic. He’s handsome in a fish-like way.”

Hawkins and Jones in an embrace in The Shape of Water (Photo: Fox Searchlight/Everett Collection)

The shape of (digital) water If the Fish-Man was a hybrid of practical and digital effects, the water he calls home is almost entirely digital with one notable exception — the aforementioned love scene in Elisa’s bathroom. “That’s the only scene where we had the actors in water, ever,” Berardi reveals. “We had a water tank that we built and submerged the bathroom set, with the actors, in the tank. It was done in such a safe way that they could just be hovering around the surface with footholds and handholds. They’d film for 20 or 30 seconds, and then come back up easily because the water level was just above their heads. Sally and Doug were both game.” Everywhere else, though, the H20 was all CGI, and even with all the advancements that have been made since The Perfect Storm — the movie that Berardi cites as a breakthrough for digital water effects — simulating water is still one of the most difficult jobs for an effects house.

Interestingly, the most challenging shot involved another tank of sorts, the iron lung capsule that serves as the creature’s prison as he’s transported from South America to the Baltimore research facility where the film’s events unfold. “There was no water in that capsule,” Berardi says. “It would have been way too unsafe to have Doug in there. But we had to see water sloshing around through the glass while the asset is in there. The creature also had to slam his hand on the glass, so his digital hand would have to come through the digital water and hit the glass. All of that is 3D and volumetrically rendered. That was the shot that kept me up at night.”

Richard Jenkins and Jones in The Shape of Water (Photo: Fox Searchlight/Everett Collection)

Here kitty, kitty Cat fanciers will be happy to hear that no real felines were harmed in the making of The Shape of Water. The same can’t be said for the computer-generated cat that the creature chows down on while hiding out with Elisa and her friend, Giles (Richard Jenkins). And the Fish-Man is a messy eater, too, getting blood all over the floor and himself. That may sound like a big turnoff, but del Toro felt it was crucial to showcase his hero in his less glamorous moments. “Guillermo didn’t want to make a traditional Beauty and the Beast-type story where the beast can’t really be himself. He’s eloquent, strong and heroic, yes, but he also needs protein!”

For the first part of the scene, Jones worked with an on-set cat wrangler to provoke a flesh-and-blood feline into a hissing fit. When the time came for the creature to open the cat’s head like a Pez dispenser, Berardi’s team took over. “We put a green sock puppet in Doug’s hands, replaced that with a digital cat and then severed the head. We went through about 25 iterations about what the cross section of the neck needed to look like, and showed Guillermo the grossest ones we could devise — anatomically correct with the spinal cord, nerve endings and all that stuff. We totally went there with it. That was also a moment where we took over Doug’s head and did it digitally: we fluttered the gills and had water spray off of them. That was probably one of the most fun things for us to animate.”

The Shape of Water is currently playing in theaters and available on digital services. The film arrives on 4K, Blu-ray, and DVD on March 13.

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:

How ‘Wonder’ completely transformed kid star Jacob Tremblay… and earned an Oscar nod

‘Wonder Woman’ wasn’t alone: 15 great movies dissed by 2018 Oscars

Charlize Theron addresses calls to play first female 007

[kristablogs]

Animal Crossing’s most elusive fish has a bizarre real-life backstory

This fish is worth the wait. (Nintendo/)

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACT: Animal Crossing’s rarest fish is one of the weirdest animals ever IRL

By Jessica Boddy

The newest version of the video game Animal Crossing is wildly popular right now, and as a lifelong fan, I couldn’t be more thrilled. Since the original came out on GameCube back in 2002, the basic gist has always been the same: You (a human) live in a village and make friends with your neighbors (all animals) while paying off loans to a raccoon who will build you sequentially bigger houses. One way of making money is by fishing. And since that very first game, there’s been one fish that is the most captivating and elusive of all: the coelacanth.

How do you catch an in-game coelacanth? One word: Perseverance. Well, it also helps to fish in the ocean when it’s raining, but the critter is so gosh-darn rare you’ll really have to work at it. I understand why Nintendo made virtual coelacanths so hard to find, because the animals are extremely special in real life.

Long thought to have gone extinct alongside the dinosaurs, the coelacanth’s rediscovery in 1938 is considered one of that century’s greatest zoological findings. In addition to its mysterious reappearance, the species is actually more related to human beings than it is to ray-finned fishes like trout or salmon. Hundreds of millions of years ago, they swam with our aquatic ancestors.

Tune in to this week’s episode to hear my ode to the coelacanth—from their underwater lava cave dwellings to tales of their co-existence with T. rex. I’ll even throw in some tips for distinguishing the coelacanth’s shape from the sea bass’ in Animal Crossing waters.

FACT: Plague doctor costumes were surprisingly practical—sort of

By Rachel Feltman

Given my recent professional fixation with disease transmission, I’ve found myself increasingly curious about something I’ve always wondered—why did plague doctors dress up like freaky birds?

A 1721 etching, allegedly showing a plague doctor in Marseilles. (Public Domain/)

While it’s not clear how widespread the use of these iconic costumes truly was (and there were certainly entire countries that found them ghoulish and silly), they definitely got some airtime in Europe starting around the 1500s. While the 1347 outbreak of Yersinia pestis infections known as “The Black Death” is the most infamous instance of European plague, the pathogen actually kept cropping back up for a good 300 years. Sometime during that long period of trying to keep epidemics at bay, some physician or another starting suiting up in distinctly birdlike attire.

But as silly as the costume looks to our modern eyes, it did have its uses: The oiled leather material covered every inch of skin, limiting risk of exposure to infection. The goggled mask further insured this, while iconic walking sticks—which made the physicians look even more like ghastly harbingers of doom—could be used to gesture at or help undress an ill patient (or, in some cases, keep swarming hoards from getting too close). In many ways, it functioned as a sort of rudimentary hazmat suit—and it provided far more protection from pathogens than anything else doctors were wearing at the time.

The most fascinating—albeit misguided—component is the ominous beak itself. Physicians stuffed these leather schnozes with the stinkiest herbs and tinctures they could get their hands on. Their only source of air came from the mask’s two nostrils, so each breath was filtered through a bundle of medicinal plants, a vinegar-soaked sponge, or, in some cases, ground-up viper flesh.

This may have minimized contact with aerosolized droplets from coughs and sneezes (though, as is the case with modern medical masks, the patient being examined probably would have gotten more protection than the doctor donning the device). But 16th-century physicians didn’t know about that kind of germ transmission—and the bubonic plague is almost always transmitted via an infected flea bite, not from person to person. So what were these fowl physicians afraid of? Foul air. Instead of avoiding bacteria, they were working to avoid the “bad miasma” they believed caused illness. Listen to this week’s episode to learn more about this antiquated (and stinky) theory of disease.

FACT: Too much migraine medication can turn your blood green

By Claire Maldarelli

The past few weeks have been anxiety and stress-inducing, to say the least. As I’ve done my part in social distancing, I’ve also found myself stuck in front of a computer screen for far too long. This much screen time, together with such little time spent outdoors and the overall heaviness of current events, recently landed me with a massive migraine.

As the day progressed and my trusted OTC pain relief products failed me, I spent the rest of the afternoon in search of relief—and landed on a most peculiar medical case report that I couldn’t pass up the chance to share.

It turns out that, in rare cases—as in, this was the only report I could find—taking too much sumatriptan (also known by its brand name as Imitrex) can turn your blood green. Chemicals within the drug build up in your bloodstream to change the hue of your (usually) red blood cells to a dark forest shade.

Don’t fret if you take sumatriptan for migraines: It’s highly unlikely that a prescribed dose could come anywhere close to turning you into Shrek. Listen to this week’s episode for more on the bizarre medical phenomenon.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in Weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop.

[scootoaster]

Animal Crossing’s most elusive fish has a bizarre real-life backstory

This fish is worth the wait. (Nintendo/)

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACT: Animal Crossing’s rarest fish is one of the weirdest animals ever IRL

By Jessica Boddy

The newest version of the video game Animal Crossing is wildly popular right now, and as a lifelong fan, I couldn’t be more thrilled. Since the original came out on GameCube back in 2002, the basic gist has always been the same: You (a human) live in a village and make friends with your neighbors (all animals) while paying off loans to a raccoon who will build you sequentially bigger houses. One way of making money is by fishing. And since that very first game, there’s been one fish that is the most captivating and elusive of all: the coelacanth.

How do you catch an in-game coelacanth? One word: Perseverance. Well, it also helps to fish in the ocean when it’s raining, but the critter is so gosh-darn rare you’ll really have to work at it. I understand why Nintendo made virtual coelacanths so hard to find, because the animals are extremely special in real life.

Long thought to have gone extinct alongside the dinosaurs, the coelacanth’s rediscovery in 1938 is considered one of that century’s greatest zoological findings. In addition to its mysterious reappearance, the species is actually more related to human beings than it is to ray-finned fishes like trout or salmon. Hundreds of millions of years ago, they swam with our aquatic ancestors.

Tune in to this week’s episode to hear my ode to the coelacanth—from their underwater lava cave dwellings to tales of their co-existence with T. rex. I’ll even throw in some tips for distinguishing the coelacanth’s shape from the sea bass’ in Animal Crossing waters.

FACT: Plague doctor costumes were surprisingly practical—sort of

By Rachel Feltman

Given my recent professional fixation with disease transmission, I’ve found myself increasingly curious about something I’ve always wondered—why did plague doctors dress up like freaky birds?

A 1721 etching, allegedly showing a plague doctor in Marseilles. (Public Domain/)

While it’s not clear how widespread the use of these iconic costumes truly was (and there were certainly entire countries that found them ghoulish and silly), they definitely got some airtime in Europe starting around the 1500s. While the 1347 outbreak of Yersinia pestis infections known as “The Black Death” is the most infamous instance of European plague, the pathogen actually kept cropping back up for a good 300 years. Sometime during that long period of trying to keep epidemics at bay, some physician or another starting suiting up in distinctly birdlike attire.

But as silly as the costume looks to our modern eyes, it did have its uses: The oiled leather material covered every inch of skin, limiting risk of exposure to infection. The goggled mask further insured this, while iconic walking sticks—which made the physicians look even more like ghastly harbingers of doom—could be used to gesture at or help undress an ill patient (or, in some cases, keep swarming hoards from getting too close). In many ways, it functioned as a sort of rudimentary hazmat suit—and it provided far more protection from pathogens than anything else doctors were wearing at the time.

The most fascinating—albeit misguided—component is the ominous beak itself. Physicians stuffed these leather schnozes with the stinkiest herbs and tinctures they could get their hands on. Their only source of air came from the mask’s two nostrils, so each breath was filtered through a bundle of medicinal plants, a vinegar-soaked sponge, or, in some cases, ground-up viper flesh.

This may have minimized contact with aerosolized droplets from coughs and sneezes (though, as is the case with modern medical masks, the patient being examined probably would have gotten more protection than the doctor donning the device). But 16th-century physicians didn’t know about that kind of germ transmission—and the bubonic plague is almost always transmitted via an infected flea bite, not from person to person. So what were these fowl physicians afraid of? Foul air. Instead of avoiding bacteria, they were working to avoid the “bad miasma” they believed caused illness. Listen to this week’s episode to learn more about this antiquated (and stinky) theory of disease.

FACT: Too much migraine medication can turn your blood green

By Claire Maldarelli

The past few weeks have been anxiety and stress-inducing, to say the least. As I’ve done my part in social distancing, I’ve also found myself stuck in front of a computer screen for far too long. This much screen time, together with such little time spent outdoors and the overall heaviness of current events, recently landed me with a massive migraine.

As the day progressed and my trusted OTC pain relief products failed me, I spent the rest of the afternoon in search of relief—and landed on a most peculiar medical case report that I couldn’t pass up the chance to share.

It turns out that, in rare cases—as in, this was the only report I could find—taking too much sumatriptan (also known by its brand name as Imitrex) can turn your blood green. Chemicals within the drug build up in your bloodstream to change the hue of your (usually) red blood cells to a dark forest shade.

Don’t fret if you take sumatriptan for migraines: It’s highly unlikely that a prescribed dose could come anywhere close to turning you into Shrek. Listen to this week’s episode for more on the bizarre medical phenomenon.

If you like The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts. You can also join in the weirdness in our Facebook group and bedeck yourself in Weirdo merchandise from our Threadless shop.

[thebibliomancer]

50 More Days of Comics! 21/50: Justice League Europe #2 (1989)

“Somebody Up There HATES Us!”

Because every good team book just goes nuts with spinoffs. Except Justice League thinks big. ‘Why have a West Coast branch or one in Detroit when we can have a European branch?’ Even though the Avengers were under a UN charter for a while, the idea of Avengers Europe still just sounds wrong compared to Justice League Europe. I dunno why. It just feels better with the Justice League.

So Justice League Europe. At the time the Justice League of America had become Justice League International and had a somewhat comedic tone. Justice League Europe still had tongue-in-cheek moments but it was more action-oriented than International.

So which Leaguers agreed to move to Paris or maybe which ones managed to insist loudly enough that, yes, they wanted to have the Justice League pay them to live in Paris?

We have Captain Atom leading, the man of a million exploding atomic bombs contained in tinfoil. And also the sort of inspiration for Dr Manhattan.

There’s Elongated Man, unnecessary Plastic Man ripoff (DC forgot they owned him) and world’s greatest detective (because Batman is technically the world’s greatest criminologist). And weirdly a stretchy man with a wife named Sue who was introduced before Fantastic Four.

His wife Sue Dibny taking monitor duty.

The Wally West Flash.

Animal Man, with all the powers of animals and post-modernism. Actually, his life hasn’t been systematically dismantled by Grant Morrison yet.

Power Girl, in that confusing post-Crisis tangle of continuity confusion and going sans boob window to just have a deep collar.

Red Rocket, like a Russian Iron Man except there’s a bunch of them and none of them made their own suits and also the suit looks a lot clunkier. Weird continuity thing: the Rocket Reds were created by Green Lantern Kilowog, a giant pug man from space!

And Metamorpho, a shapeshifting guy made of chemicals (but aren’t we all?) with asymmetrical color design. You remember him, he was one of the Outsiders.

The issue starts with Captain Atom moodily watching a funeral for a Nazi war criminal that showed up on the doorstep of the Justice League Europe, muttered something and then died. And then a big angry mob stormed the JLE HQ for associating with Nazis. But they were maybe hypnotized so Captain Atom suggests conspiracy is afoot.

He’s also just in a mood where he thinks everything is going to go wrong. Leading to a conversation between him JLE bureau chief Catherine Cobert where he names bad thing he’s expecting only for her to go ‘everything is going very well.’

Captain Atom: “I’d drop to my knees and thank god – only I’m sure I’d break my kneecaps.”

He learns that Sue Dibny is going to be on perpetual monitor duty and grudgingly allows it on a trial basis. He has her pull up information on all known Nazi organizations and fringe groups. There are quite a few of them.

Captain Atom: “Unfortunately.”

But he has her cross-reference with meta-human activity and narrows it down to three locations: Dover, England; Frankfurt, West Germany; and Santa Cruz, California USA.

Captain Atom bleeps the team on their bleepers interrupting what they were doing to split up, gang, to investigate the three locations. The best interruption is Metamorpho who was in the middle of watching Three Stooges.

Metamorpho: “They seem so much more profound in French!”

Team Captain Atom and Animal Man take California, since Animal Man already lives there they could just teleport to his house.

Its quite an odd couple pairing these two heroes because Captain Atom is a serious military minded man (with a mullet? Curse you, the nearly 90s!) and Animal Man won’t stop complaining how much he hates teleporting. In fairness, he lost his luggage during a teleportation accident.

When the two arrive at the Aryan Nation compound, they find it has been destroyed, although weirdly there are no bodies or anything.

And then a Viking on horseback named the Wild Huntsman shows up, assumes that they’re Nazis, and tries to beat them up. When they insist that they are not, the Wild Hunstman can’t believe that they’re not just Nazis but lying Nazis! So he sicks a doggo on Captain Atom.

Guy finally just gets fed up and blasts Wild Huntsman. He only meant to stun him but both Wild Huntsman and his horse and his doggo are in a coma

-DRAMATIC SOAP OPERA STING-

Meanwhile, Power Girl and Rocket Red. They also discover that the Nazi meeting place in Frankfurt they were sent to has been destroyed. And is still burning.

Power Girl and Rocket Red have a minor disagreement on whether you should feel bad about Nazis burning alive (with Power Girl on the ‘fuck ‘em’ camp and Rocket Red bemoaning any senseless waste of human life). And then they have a disagreement about whether they should question the authorities about this group’s members.

Power Girl: “Yeah. Right. The German authorities love being questioned about Nazis.”

Rocket Red points out that Russia got its teeth kicked in by the Nazis and Power Girl apologizes for being quite so confrontational. Nazism just gives her the creeps.

AND THEN THEY GET ATTACKED MIDFLIGHT BY A FANCY MAN CALLED RISING SUN

Its just one of those days.

Rocket Red tries to be diplomatic but Rising Sun just keeps calling him a Nazi fascist so Power Girl punches him in the head. AND KNOCKS HIM INTO A COMA!

-DRAMATIC SOAP OPERA STING!-

But she was only using enough force to knock the wind out of him! They decide to taking Rising Sun back to the base.

Finally, Metamorpho, Elongated Man, and the Flash are riding the ferry across the English Channel on their way to investigate the Nazi group out of Dover. Because the teleport tubes are down at the English embassy. Womp womp.

Elongated Man teases Wally about what a sweet kid he used to be but Metamorpho tells youse bums to shut your mugs. They can pass as normal but he can’t and he doesn’t want people gawking at him.

Which is confusing. In the Outsiders, he was able to disguise himself as a normal looking ice cream man.

Ralph and Wally go off to hit the snack bar, leaving Metamorpho to brood and shortly get attacked by a guy calling himself Tuatara who accuses him of being a Nazi. So the JLE don’t even have to be adjacent to a known meeting place to be mistaken for one. The mystery thickens like a bad soup or a good pudding.

Through incompetence (Ralph: “This never would’ve happened to Barry.”) all three heroes end up tackled off the ferry by the seemingly aquatic three-eyed Tuatara.

Metamorpho can’t remember whether he can swim or not but he can turn into a whale and tail whip Tuatara.

The tri-eye fish? guy tries to pull Elongated Man underwater but Elongated Man wraps the case up. Which is a pun. He tied up the dude in his body.

Flash: “Y’know, Ralph – there’s nothing like a good sense of humor – and you’ve got nothing like a good sense of humor.”

Tuatara calls the trio Nazis again and then falls into a coma. Like the other two! Ralph smells a mystery!

And when Ralph smells a mystery he makes his nose twitch like its on a spring. It’s a running gag that everybody thinks its gross. And a running gag also that Ralph insists that his wife think its cute. Even after she told him to his face earlier in the issue that no, not so much.

Ralph, earlier: “Sue thinks it’s adorable!”

Sue, earlier: “That was while we were dating, hon. The adorableness wore off about five years ago…”

Being Ralph is suffering.

Meanwhile, sinister happenings afoot! A villain named Jack O’Lantern is laughing that the Justice League has no idea that he and his partner Owl Woman fed false info into their computer system. Owl Woman looks a lot like Sue Dibny but that’s possibly due to the historic problem comics have with drawing more than one type of woman.

Also Jack O’Lantern isn’t even wearing a pumpkin on his head. Boo, hiss. Go back to costume school!

Also theres a bit from the letters column I want to point out. One of the letters was talking about what the writer thought about each member. “Wonder Woman: I don’t think she’s right for the League. She’s too timid a person! She doesn’t know how to tell jokes! But I guess if we have to have her, then so be it.”

Either this person isn’t actually very familiar with Wonder Woman or DC was a bleak time for her in the pre-90s. The letter writer also calls Power Girl a hussy so grain of salt, yeah?