#wednesday comic pulls

[djrenard]

My Pull List (08/30/23):

Superboy: The Man of Tomorrow #5

Action Comics Presents: Doomsday Special #1

[age-of-moonknight]

“Three Moments,” Vengeance of the Moon Knight (Vol. 2/2024), #8.

Writer: Jed Mackay; Penciler and Inker: Devmalya Pramanik; Colorist: Rachelle Rosenberg; Letterer: Cory Petit

[starrycomics]

So I’m not really enjoying Batman and Robin (finding the art style very jarring and the storyline a bit dull), but I do love Damian’s trying to psyche himself up for his first day at high school

[thesandsofelsweyr]

Robin Lives isn't all bad. We did get Joker yanking his pet Jaybin up by his hair after all 😁

[orangedodge]

Seeing Sobunar and Loolo turn up in NYX, complete with all the Ewing/Hickman allusions and the return of the Krakoan language, was the most excited I've gotten for anything in the x-men relaunch. For so many weeks it's come across like the new office was determined to sweep everything from the previous era into the dustbin. Instead I think this is a very natural continuation from where X-Men Red left Sobunar, after his forced complicity in Genesis' war.

And I think Kelly & Lanzing made an inspired choice in selecting Anole as the issue's viewpoint character, allowing him to be our introduction to the new Arakii backed Morlock community. When you look at all of our other focus characters, throughout both this book and all of the others, they're all individuals who were in some fashion or another estranged from the general community of Krakoa. He's the only one of them who can really speak to full depth of loss that characters who weren't X-Men must have endured since the Hellfire Gala.

Along with Uncanny, X-Force, and Exceptional, the outlines of a direction to the new era is finally starting to emerge. It's still not the Dawn of X by any means, but we're at least seeing these new creative teams increasingly engaging with the core themes of grief and diaspora, when at times it had looked fearfully like our stories and the characters populating them had been chosen by dart board.

[adamwarlock]

Move over Adam this is a Eve Warlock blog now

[antique-ro-man]

happy tiny wednesday smile wednesday

[xmen-blue]

so scott left the x-men. for the good of his marriage. historically this has gone well 🙄

[sethnakht]

everyone wants darth vader dead in greg pak and raffaele ienco's darth vader, it seems, seemingly including darth vader. no sooner has luke slipped his grasp does it strike into public awareness like a firework set off in a crowd -- vader's power, too, is slipping. the weight of that collective scrutiny -- from officers, bounty hunters, and assassins to the paper-pushers of the Imperial court and the former handmaidens of Queen Amidala -- manifests in a hunger to dismantle him physically, to wrench and tear off the armor, to see him gorged upon by giant monsters, to freeze him and puppet him, to seize control over the "softbody" and flay him of his life support. nor is vader left unaffected by this hostile focus on his physical limits -- as he slouches, limps, stumbles, crawls -- and pauses, exhaustedly, though there is no way to catch his breath -- his way through the comic, the gleaming armor is hacked, punctured, electrocuted, torn open, shattered, and burned, while his thoughts dwell on weakness, grief, and fear. such abjection, however short lived, sets this comic run far apart from marvel's previous two darth vader runs, both of which traced an upward trajectory: vader's rise to the height of his power in esb (gillen/larroca), and his journey to becoming a committed sith after rots (soule/camuncoli). the trajectory here is to the grave.

Darth Vader (2020-) #5, Pak/Ienco/et al - observing that vader is walking right into a major barrage of fire - not for the first time - the forensic droid accompanying him hints that he might have a death wish.

vader himself refuses to admit weakness, of course - at least consciously - but his arguments bear all the weakness of bad political discourse. "there is no conflict", he says, making one think of conflict; "my son is weak", he says, making one think of the father. when you tell someone not to think of an elephant, even in negation, you invoke the elephant. darth vader is very good at conjuring the elephant, and making one peer very closely into the bold and marked outlines of its supposed non-existence.

Darth Vader (2020-) #1, Pak, Ienco, et al - unable to handle that he has been rejected by his son, Vader transfers the failure to Luke, calling him "weak" for choosing to flee him, for choosing potential death over Vader's offer of power, even as he stands empty-handed before a gravesite, his own desire to punish the dead thwarted by his having made them so. The comic doesn't leave it at ironic framing - Vader too is aware of what he is invoking, and the associations brought up as he stands at the site of his mother's grave show that Vader cannot entirely suppress his own sense of failure - his own memories of his own perceived weakness.

vader's private thoughts -- rendered in the comic in startling little red boxes that, like mummy coffins, nest in larger black boxes, nearly always isolated from physical imagery, from contact with the visual world -- are as tiring and repetitive as an unwelcome pigeon on the window sill. the stunner is not what he thinks or even what he invokes, but that his thoughts are not actually private at all. there is no room to admit weakness because, as it turns out, vader's master can pick up on his thoughts from the other side of the galaxy. vader's master can croon into his black boxes, scoop out the words and spit them back out like trite poetry learned from heart in grade school. watching him from afar, vader's master reads into his actions and mocks what is unexpressed. if there's a space free from his influence -- an influence that is similar to the reader's influence, an influence that explains why we can see his thoughts at all, because we too are complicit and voyeurs -- it might only be the gutters, those gaps between panels where the mind completes the temporal and spatial relationships between the images. in the page from the first issue shown above, for example, note how the speech balloon for the remembered "I won't fail again" nearly connects with vader's head in the panel below it, linking anakin's grief-filled promise to become stronger with vader's helmeted head, all while lingering on padmé's face - his next inevitable failure. even if he cannot think it.

the humiliation is public, we're part of the frenzied mob, swiping at the armor for scraps of cursed fabric -- transgressing boundaries both mental and physical, eating up that transgression like the intimate, play-by-play accounts of a famous suicide. vader's armor is repeatedly hacked, a gag that bluntly serves to hammer and hammer and hammer home for you that shame of being mocked before the class that specially belongs to darth vader, dark lord of the sith.

Darth Vader (2020-) #13, Pak, Ienco, et al - Vader is made a puppet more than once over the course of the comic, frozen and trapped both in his mind and body.

to be honest, I was originally a little annoyed by the number of hacking attempts -- everyone gets to take their shot at controlling vader, from hutts and droids to the handmaidens to a psychic squid who puppets him with its tentacles -- because of the frequency and similarity of the attempts, because while vader does address some vulnerabilities, he still gets scanned and sliced, meaning he's overlooking weaknesses or choosing not to address them; because he doesn't seem greatly affected by the threat to his bodily autonomy, and because of the friction with gillen's run (where being hacked sends vader into a high-stakes psychosis and is a major and unusual event that he takes measures to prevent from happening again in the aphra comics). then I remembered this scene:

Darth Vader (2020), #12 (Pak, Vilanova, et al) - After losing all but one limb, being set on fire, tracking through lava on mismatched ancient droid parts, being chased and attacked by assassins, droid scrappers, an Imperial Star Destroyer, and a wall of Sith acolytes, then nearly ripped apart mentally and physically by a psychotic giant squid and a screaming kyber crystal, Vader is "repaired" on Coruscant - i.e. sawed open - before a hostile, chattering audience, the Emperor laughingly dismissing him as a threat.

which. is. absolutely. fucked. up!! and to top it off, there's this sly little sequence --

Darth Vader (2020-) #14 (Pak, Ienco, et al) - Vader's armor specifications appear to be tracked with each repair and are openly accessible to the Imperial court

-- which shows that even if vader updates his armor, that knowledge will be recorded the next time he comes in for a repair (if it's not always being transmitted automatically). anyone with sufficient credentials in the imperial machine, including the demoted sub-administrator sly moore, can access his repair logs, analyze them for untested weaknesses, and saunter off with an suit override stick. (to be sure, sly moore isn't supposed to be looking at his records and is chastised when she's found; she also tries to use the same kill stick twice, failing to account for the updates vader does make after the first slicing attempt, perhaps because she hasn't checked or been able to access the records for updates. the point here though is that vader's suit is a matter of government record, treated like imperial property; you can imagine all sorts of fun scenarios here, such as that his private upgrades are wiped each time he comes into the repair center, or that new vulnerabilities are built in each time, etc.)

even the dead contribute to this panopticon effect. in the latest issue of the comic, the skakoan jul tambor reveals that he's been collecting dismembered droids -- each of them individually sliced apart by darth vader over the years (notably, however, most of them are separatist droids, hinting at tambor's blind spot: he hasn't collected the droid corpses anakin left littered on battlefields). drawing on their recorded logs of their own demise, tambor observes vader precisely when he might feel the least concern about it -- in the act of killing, of eradicating the viewer. the now-repaired droids possess a kind of moving simulacrum of vader's battle tactics. perhaps because he too relies on a pressure suit and breathing device to survive in the same atmosphere as most humans, tambor doesn't need static blueprints of the suit -- he has no intention of shutting down vader's life support. the difference in method is only a subtle one, however: he too is targeting vader's dependency on his armor. in lieu of a direct attack, he means to target the suit's limitations indirectly, to swarm vader with the very droids he once demolished and have them target his limited mobility, his repetitious set of moves within the suit's confines. with his reliance on surveillance technology, tambor is only the latest in a long line to act on the premise that vader's demise is a given because he has no secrets left.

Darth Vader (2020-) #30, Pak, Ross, et al

if it seems a blind spot that tambor hasn't collected archival footage of anakin on a droid rampage, he's nonetheless managed to address it thanks to a chance encounter. when padmé's former body double -- sabé, vader's double in the comic, a shadow of the shadow -- arrives on vader's orders to kill tambor, then tries to convince him to abandon a plan that she fears will only get hundreds killed, he captures her. tambor rightly recognizes that sabé is more to vader than an agent skilled in deception and lies: she represents his weakness, he believes, a reading that vader himself may even share.

sabé is the bright note in this story of decline, the one character who cares enough and dares enough to consider vader's "weakness" a possible strength. like the reconstituted droids, she is in her own way a dead woman brought back to life, a ghost -- padmé back from the grave to haunt him, as she tells vader upon their first meeting. like any good ghost, she wants revenge for padmé's death and to enact her final, unfulfilled wish; as it happens, killing vader to save anakin would neatly accomplish both. (as it happens, she and vader have both seen recorded footage of padmé's last moments; tambor's recordings of vader from the perspective of dying droids is both a parallel and a contrast to padmé, shown dying from wounds inflicted by an absent vader, whispering of the good still in him.) when sabé freely enters his service, claiming she wants to help, vader is troubled -- does this make him weak? -- and yet also quite smug. here is finally someone who has chosen him of their own free will; here is someone who has accepted his offer of power; here is someone who looks and talks just like the dead wife he's convinced himself would have stood with him and espoused his cause ("order"). (indeed, she wields real power -- jealous and fearful, the assassin ochi effectively portrays her as a tiger handler who unleashes her pet when she wants someone dead.) it's a fantasy come to life.

yet sabé is not dead, present as she may as ghost or shadow or fantasy -- sabé is herself haunted: haunted by padmé, whom she could not save, and by anakin, whose mother she could not free. sabé is herself a killer whose guilt and loyalty and poisoned grief have moved her to try and execute vader "for padmé and anakin", and who gets a real chance -- closer than anyone but palpatine -- to put vader to death. sabé's attempts to kill vader have evolved with time -- a first attempt, imaginative but unrefined, made when she unequivocally thought him anakin and padmé's murderer, involved luring vader into an underwater lair, provoking him into claiming he killed anakin and padmé, and feeding him to a massive sea monster. a second, disastrous attempt led to the pointless slaughter of her ground and aerial troops, though vader left her and padmé's remaining former handmaidens alive. (unbeknownst to her, the emperor nearly killed vader for that choice, leaving him deprived of all but his arm and core suit functionality on the burning banks of mustafar, to relive obi-wan's abandonment and crawl his way through the corpses of murdered separatists, into and out of death.) she comes closest to actually killing him, however, only after she's had such an effect on him that she's moved him to confront his great nemesis (sand) to save her life and bring himself to the brink of death on behalf of a refugee camp composed of freed tatooine slaves. having fried his suit -- through the bounceback of his own hubris, ultimately -- vader lies incapacitated on the ground when sabé finds him and reveals her own fantasy involves killing him. her ghosts hold her back; padmé stays her hand.

of the humiliations heaped upon him since luke's escape, including the routine of hanging head-down and mostly naked in a bacta tank flanked by observing guards, only this -- this grave insistence from padmé there is good in him -- manages to shake vader.

Darth Vader (2020-) #28, Pak/Ienco/et al -- Vader conjures the elephant of his diminishing power as he dangles hulkingly in his bacta tank in full sight of two guards. Subsequently, he shatters the bacta tank in rage.

unlike the attacks riffed from public records, the private knowledge padmé possessed as she died is one that no one else can see. even sabé admits she can't understand why she chooses to trust it. as for vader's master, we never see him overhearing the padmé recording, he never cites it directly (though he does mock vader for "listening ... to your heart", perhaps a way of dismissing its importance). as in the panopticon the prisoners never know when they are observed, so too does the emperor presumably turn his eye away from time to time, all too certain the name "anakin" has lost all "power" over vader. as in the prison of andor "no one is listening", there is still the quality of a secret in what vader and sabé know about padmé. even if, in his fear of weakness, all vader can see in that secret is death.

[rivercule]

What the fuck, Lucas

[felidaefatigue]

i feel like a gotham/batfam (what i really mean is tim drake) hyper fixation might be coming on again

[angstandhappiness]

COOL

This is death itself. This is the biggest and baddest thing in all of fairy tale, and you want to set it free.

[age-of-moonknight]

Werewolf by Night: Red Band (Vol. 1/2024), #2.

Writer: Jason Loo; Penciler: Sergio Dàvila; Inkers: Jay Leisten and Aure Jimenez; Colorist: Alex Sinclair; Letterer: Cory Petit

[westofwonder]

Pull List (02/07/2024)

Birds of Prey #6 Fantastic Four #17 Fire & Ice: Welcome to Smallville #6 Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Return #1 Poison Ivy #19 Shazam! #8

Birds of Prey - The last issue artist change really threw off the momentum of this issue. My goodness was that art not up to snuff. Still intrigued on what's coming next.

Fantastic Four - I'm not gonna bother I am woefully behind. Gomez is on art and I usually like his stuff.

Fire & Ice - I am not a big JLI fan so I'm not surprised this series didn't hit for me. And to that one fan who absolutely hated this series from the jump: sucks to be you!

MMPR: The Return - Excited for this. Really keen on what AJJ has to say here.

Poison Ivy - Retelling and reexamining Ivy's origin is tricky, but we are nineteen issues into what was originally a six issue miniseries - it was bound to happen.

Shazam! - Ha! Space dinosaurs! Waid why are you leaving this title? Oh the things to come.

Feeling kinda weird, so I pumped this out quickly enough.

Happy readings!

[afreakingdork]

Support Rise of the TMNT: Tips on Buying the TMNT 40th Anniversary Comic

As someone who has been reading comics for over a decade, i understand that the comics world can be a confusing place that isn't kind to new readers. I've seen many people confused about the new TMNT anniversary comic and as such I wanted to make a helpful little guide for those trying to get a copy.

As you may know, besides getting a new 8-page rottmnt story and those sweet future designs, picking up this comic is an actionable way to get more rise content.

Now it may seem easy to pre-order this bad boy. You'll see pre-orders for the book pretty much wherever books are sold online, but these are The Deluxe Editions i.e. Hardcovers i.e. This is the comic equivalent of what is known as a Trade. Now Trades, also known as trade paperbacks, are usually collections of single comic issues that are reprinted into book form. I imagine that in this case it will be the original comic plus bonus content such as spreads of the alternate covers, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

THE PRE-ORDER IS NOT FOR THE COMIC THAT COMES OUT JULY 10, 2024.

The issue that is going to come out on July 10th is the true single issue of the comic i.e. the classic floppy comics you picture from years of olde. Now we can go back and forth on what's more important to the industry (a sale is a sale supposedly), but traditionally, a comic lives or dies by its single issue sales. Comics typically don't get trades if their single issues don't sell well. Now this is already getting a trade so we don't have to worry about that, but Ron seemed to heavily imply here that the sales that are important on this one are the single issue sales. This means:

IF YOU CAN, YOU SHOULD BUY THE JULY 10TH SINGLE ISSUE COMIC IF YOU WANT TO SUPPORT RISE.

Okay, but how do you do that? Comic book stores are intimidating and they don't exist everywhere. It goes without saying that if there's no comic shop in your area or if you are not financially able to then don't feel pressure to get this comic. However, if you can, we know for a fact it will help us get a chance at more content. With that said, here's how you do it:

New comics come out on Wednesdays (July 10th in this case)

Most comic shops have a designated area for that week's new comics

Most comic shops operate on a first-come-first-serve basis unless you have a pull list

Anniversary comics sell fast because they are special and collector's items.

Summarized: Go straight to your local comic book shop the moment they open on Wednesday if you want to secure a copy.

Something else to note: Variant covers of the comic exist. Now, the typical cover is going to be a cover by Laird and Eastman, but there are a bunch of variants as listed here. All letter variants may or may not be sold at your local comic shop. This is up to their discretion to buy. The 1:# variants are based on how many units they buy and will always be more expensive because they are even more limited in quantity.

I hope this helps! Let's support Rise of the TMNT!!

[bunnys-kisses]

Hello bunny!!!! I love your bakery series, it's so cute! I have zero clue if you even write for it. But is it possible to get a Jason Todd from DC? Can I get cinnamon rolls with a side of martini & energy drink!

Thank you so much <33333

bakery menu

want to submit your own order? then hit up the menu! there's tons of items on there along with all the guidelines for submitting an order! as for this anon, thank you for submitting it! i haven't received a dc or marvel request so this is very exciting! so thank you, i hope you enjoy!! (if anyone else wishes to submit anything comic related, please do!!)

cinnamon rolls ("no one needs to know.") + martini (mafia au) + energy drink (doggy style) served by jason todd/red hood (dc comics)

cw: smut/pwp, mafia au, doggy style, mafia boss!reader, boxer!jason todd

you wouldn't consider yourself a bad girl. you in a lot of ways were servicing the people of gotham. you were doing what you felt was right in a broken system.

but even one of the most dangerous women in the city needed a little assistance. that was when your beloved boxer came into your life. his name was jason, a boy thrown out then became a broken man. but, you liked to fix broken things.

you gave jason purpose again, even going as far as to tend to his injuries he got in the ring. kissing along his side and across his knuckles. the red hood was your pride and joy and he in turn adored you more than weeds on the sidewalk loved the sun.

you had returned from the art gallery that evening, it was open late on wednesdays and jason wished to come with you. you held his hand the entire time and kissed him gently when he gazed at a picasso.

"did you have fun?" you asked as you slipped your shoes off.

jason nodded, "i did, i mean, you were more beautiful than anything in that gallery." he chuckled as he took off his sweatshirt and put it over the side of the couch.

you looked at him and walked over to him. you placed your hands on his chest. in all fairness, he was more beautiful than anything in that gallery. if a true artist could capture him in a piece of work, they could probably make millions.

even with all the scarring, the damage on him. to feel his heartbeat under your palm felt nice. you leaned up to kiss him on the lips. he wrapped his strong arms around you.

when you pulled away, you ran a finger across a scar on his face and said, "thank you for coming with me." you had to get up on your tip-toes to get closer to his face.

he chuckled, "ah well, who else would go with you? isn't my job to protect you?"

you chuckled, "no, your job is to punch very hard for me." you joked before you pulled him in for another kiss. you did very little to hide your relationship with jason, you didn't feel the need to. as head of the family, who you were with was not a concern to those below you.

one time you had heard an insult fall from the lips of a a rival family and you simply upper cut the man. jason may be at your side as your defender, but you were more than capable of taking care of yourself.

it was just nice to have a companion.

you both ended up in your shared bedroom. jason got you onto the bed and you started to unbutton the blouse you wore. and he took off the white undershirt he wore. you got a better look at all his scarring and once your shirt was off, you reached for him and grazed your fingers across the scar down the middle of his chest.

he never told you what happened, and you didn't want to pry too much. you believed it would all come out at one point or another. even if it didn't, you'd still love him.

"you're looking at them again." he said softly.

"no one needs to know." you said as you met his gaze, "what happened. you're still my jason, whatever happened to you." you said softly in return.

jason felt his chest tighten as he said, "thank you." before he started to get his jeans off, followed by your skirt. then he was on top of you on the bed, his hands planted on either side of you as he pulled you in for a kiss.

you both took off your undergarments down to your socks and laid in be for a moment, naked in each other's embrace.

jason then got you onto your elbows and knees, his strong hands on your hips as he rubbed his cock up against your slick slit. he groaned through his teeth as he continued to do so. it felt so good against him.

the most dangerous woman in gotham in bed with a boxer. what a sight. you felt the love for him cloud your chest, leaving it tight.

"you have my entire heart." you admitted.

"and you have mine." he replied. he slowly slipped his cock into your pussy and held onto your hips. he sank into you with ease. he knew that he was much bigger than you, so he had to be careful as to not harm you.

he kept his pace steady the more he rutted against you.

jason had never felt more alive then when he was with you. he thought that his life revolved around punching the shit out of people in the boxing ring. the sound of his fists hitting against flesh, that was his purpose. that was what made him feel alive.

but you lit a flame in him. the spitfire woman who handled the family with ease. he wanted you, yearned for you in ways that he never thought he would with another person.

his cock nudged against your cervix and you whimpered against the sheets a little with your back arched. you felt like a dream, the perfect woman for him. he sped up the pace a little bit, keeping a steady rhythm against you.

"you feel so good." he said, "i wish i could nail you up against the wall of the gallery. since you're the most beautiful thing there." he chuckled a little bit.

you arched your back a little but, "you're so fuckin' cheesy, jason."

he chuckled a little, "only for you, babe." the sounds of your love making filled the room, he felt hot all over as he continued to move against you.

"please." you panted, "shit." you gripped onto the bed tightly and moaned a little bit, "you feel so good. no one else does it like you, jason." you whimpered.

he clutched onto his hips tighter and moved faster. he swallowed back the pleasure as he continued to move. he buried his nose into the back of your neck, his broad chest against your back. his arms now wrapped around your middle as he bullied his cock into your pussy.

it all felt so overwhelming, hot all over and he thrusted up into you. you felt protected by your lover, he'd always keep you safe. always love you in ways that neither of you could put into words.

you gripped onto the covers under your body and panted wildly into them. you felt the curl of heat in your gut as you raised your hips further to give your lover a better angle.

the solid mass of a man with that streak of white hair hit against the softest parts of you. it made you whine into the bedding. such a submissive position for such a strong woman. jason would always take care of you. with a few more thrusts, you came around his cock.

"please, jason." you panted.

he continued to rut up into you, feeling the pleasure up and down his spine. he gave a few more hearty thrusts before he finished inside of you with a loud groan. his chest was pressed against your back as he yearned to be close to you.

skin to skin. lover to lover.

he slowed down and laid on top of you when you dropped your hips. he then peppered your shoulders with kisses before he pulled out and laid next to you on the bed. his strong body exposed in the low lamp light of the bedroom.

"jason."

"yeah, hun." he said as he tried to level out his breathing.

you were both panting as you rolled to your side and up against his side. your hand on his chest, fingers grazed the scarring. between heavy breaths you said, "my number one."

he chuckled a little as he pulled you closer. he kissed your sweaty brow and replied, "of course, only the best for my girl." then laid a sweet kiss on your lips.

the mafia boss and her boxer, tangled in the sheets. you guessed that he saved your life as much as you saved his. because you'd always find comfort in the beat of his heart. <3