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pnwdoodlesreads · 4 years

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Seattle's largest Hooverville occupied nine acres that are now used to unload container ships west of Qwest Field and the Alaska Viaduct. (Courtesy King County Archives).The failure of Depression-era policies to alleviate unemployment and address the social crisis led to the creation of Hoovervilles, shantytowns that sprang up to house those who had become homeless because of the Great Depression.

The towns were named “Hoovervilles,” because of President Herbert Hoover’s ineffective relief policies. Mass unemployment was rampant among men aged 18–50, and the lack of a social safety net continued to push them down the ladder. By looking at the Vanguard’s news coverage from 1930–1932 and the history of Hooverville written by its self-proclaimed mayor Jesse Jackson, we can see that the creation of Seattle’s Hooverville was due to an ineffective social system and the inability of local politicians to address the Depression’s social crisis.

Even though these men wanted to care for themselves, the social structure forced them toward charity, a dependent position many unemployed men in Seattle rejected. As a reporter for The Vanguard, the newspaper of Seattle’s unemployed, wrote of one Hooverville resident, “He had a distaste for organized charity-breadlines and flop-houses so he decided to build a shack of his own and be independent.[1]

This rejection of organized charity was due as much to a desire for independence as to the low quality of the shelter and food on offer. While there was shelter for sleeping, it was often on the ground in damp and unhygienic surroundings, and while charities such as the Salvation Army offered soup kitchens, the food was often barely digestible and contained little to no nutritional value. The creation of a Hooverville in Seattle, then, was due to the lack of social safety net, the desire for self-sufficiency, and the poor quality of Depression-era charity.

Jesse Jackson, the self-declared mayor of Hooverville, was one of the men who had a strong distaste for organized charity. After finding men that shared this feeling, they decided to do something about it. In recalling the foundation of their Hooverville, Jackson explained,“We immediately took possession of the nine-acre tract of vacant property of the Seattle Port Commission and proceeded to settle down.[2] Jackson and his friends rounded up whatever they could find and began to create shelters. Seattle city officials were not thrilled about this new development.

In an original attempt to disband these shantytowns and unemployed “jungles”, city officials burned down the entire community, giving the men only seven days’ eviction notice. As The Vanguard argued, this only made the social crisis worse: “If the County Health officer orders the Jungles burned out this year, as he did last year, a large number of men will be thrown upon organized charity, for no very good reason.[3] Hooverville residents, for their part, were not thwarted by the city’s attempt to disband them. They simply dug deeper embankments for their homes and reestablished the community. Noted The Vanguard, “Meanwhile, new shacks go up everyday, and more and more buildings uptown are empty.[4]

In June of 1932 a new administration was elected in Seattle. They decided that the Hooverville would be tolerated until conditions improved. However, they did demand that Hooverville’s men follow a set of rules and elect a commission to enforce these rules in conversation with city officials. Among the city’s new rules was one outlawing women and children from living there, a rule almost always abided by. This agreement between Seattle and its Hooverville improved relations between the two greatly. Businesses that were originally hesitant become friendlier, donating any extra food or building supplies to Hooverville’s residents.

The Vanguard drew vivid pictures of the atmosphere of Seattle’s shantytown: “Little groups of men huddled around forlorn fires, ‘boiling-up’ clothes begrimed by their peculiar mode of travel, or cooking food-the worst kind of food… out of smoke-blackened cans these men eat and drink.[5] While the surroundings were not optimal, Hooverville mayor Jesse Jackson;s more personal portrayal of Hooverville pointed out the resilient nature of residents: “…for the most part they are chin up individuals, travelling through life for the minute steerage.[6] Either way, Hooverville was growing: very quickly after its original settlement, Jackson noted that Hooverville “…grew to a shanty city of six hundred shacks and one thousand inhabitants.[7]

Jackson referred to Hooverville as “…the abode of the forgotten man[8] His characterization was correct in regards to the men who lived in other jungles or shanty communities around Washington, but not accurate of Seattle’s Hooverville. One Vanguard journalist noted that “Perhaps if some of these Jungles were as conspicuous as Hooverville, the problem of unemployment would be recognized to be really serious by those sheltered dwellers on the hilltops who live in another world.[9]

The men in the average city jungles were in fact forgotten men. Hooverville, however, was a jungle with power. Wrote sociologist Donald Francis Roy, who lived in the Hooverville as part of his research, “Within the city, and of the city, it functions as a segregated residential area of distinct physical structure, population composition, and social behavior.[10] Residents were not only to gain community involvement but also a place in the Seattle city board of commissioners. Hooverville was becoming a city of its own.

A different Hooverville near 8th Ave S. in 1933 (Courtesy University of Washington Library Digital Collection)

Despite its growing influence in the city, Hooverville was by no means a secure place to live, but a temporary and improvised shantytown. With a backdrop of skyscrapers that boasted of Seattle’s economic might, Hooverville, on the edge of the waterfront, was situated in a location where it stood out completely.

One town member commented on how “The sea appears to be eternally licking its chops in anticipation of swallowing the entire community in one juicy gulp[11] While Hooverville’s small shacks seemed to suffice for the time being, they were not sturdy homes. Some were lucky enough to contain solid walls built of wood with separate bedrooms inside, while others barely had a wall and ceiling built from flimsy boards. One journalist described Hooverville simply and accurately as “…approximately one thousand shacks, inhabited by about fifteen hundred men, who have discovered how to exist without money.[12]

The shantytown consisted of almost all men, aged 18–60, with little to no income. Considering that the majority of Hooverville’s population was older men in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, many historians have been shocked that there weren’t higher death rates. Some observers of the community claimed that the shanty lifestyle provided a stability that actually improved some of the men’s health.

The only variable among these men was race, which was reflected in Hooverville’s elected board of commissioners. As Jackson wrote, “The melting pot of races and nations we had here called for a commission of several races and nations. Two whites, two negroes, and two Filipinos were selected.[13] As noted before, the Seattle city commissioners did not allow women or children to live in the community. While some floated in and out, they were rarely permanent fixtures.

The spirit of these men was their most notable characteristic. Jackson declared that “If President Hoover could walk through the little shanty addition to Seattle bearing his name, he would find that it is not inhabited by a bunch of ne’er do wells, but by one thousand men who are bending every effort to beat back and regain the place in our social system that once was theirs.[14]

Jackson’s goal was to point out that these men were not lazy, but simple, average, hardworking men who had been failed by the social system. While these men created a community together, Jackson felt that a community sensibility was not the only one in the town: “I would say it is more of an individualistic life, but we do divide up a lot around here, but it is more a settlement of rugged individualist.[15] One of the traditions of Hooverville was for residents who found a job (a rare event), to ceremoniously give their house, bed, and stove to others still out of work. While the men of the community clearly were used to living their lives independent of others, they still found a way to help those struggling around them.

The political structure of Hooverville was based largely around the self-declared mayor Jesse Jackson. While the city did demand that the town create a commission of representatives, Jackson was still looked upon as the voice of Hooverville. Jackson claimed that “mayor” was never a role he sought out, but rather fell into: “I am just a simple person, whose status in life is the same as theirs, trying to do the best I know how to administer in my poor way to their wants.[16]

The only benefit he received for being the leader of this shantytown was a donated radio from a Seattle company, which he made available to the men by hosting news and entertainment listenings in his shack. While the community seemed to have a substantial political structure, individually Jackson noted that the situation was different. “My honest opinion is that the average working man doesn’t know what he wants in a political way.[17]

The community’s naïve opinion toward politics might have been the reason why it was so easy for them to look to Jackson to lead of the community. While there were no laws established within Hooverville, there were common rules enforced. Jackson pointed out one example. “You can’t come here and do just what you want. You can’t live alone. You have to respect your neighbor, and your neighbor must respect you.[18] He noted that troublemakers were not thrown out by the men within Hooverville but by outside authorities.

The men in Hooverville did far more to help themselves than any established social and political structures did during the onset of the Depression., but their collective action was often not enough. One Seattle journalist still put it most bleakly by describing the men of Hooverville’s future as “… blacker than the soot on the cans [they eat out of],” while politicians quibbled … “about the exact number of unemployed but do nothing to relieve distress.[19]

Lee took this photo June 10, 1937. Close to 1,000 men lived in Seattle's Hooverville. (Courtesy University of Washington Library Digital Collection).

Many politicians looked away at other, more “important” issues, but it was still noted that there was a crisis of housing taking place. Reported The Vanguard, “According to the report of the Central Housing Committee of the U[nemployed] C[itizens’] L[eague] to the central federation the unemployed are expected to be content with shacks, rookeries hovels in brief, a pig-pen standard of housing.[20]

Politicians, in some cases, did far more harm then good. For instance, after ordering the burning of Hooverville, Mayor Dole of Seattle proceeded to evict more people out of their homes. He suggested that they obtain temporary, low-quality housing, then move quickly into permanent housing again. Articles in the Vanguard asked, “Just where they were going to find permanent dwellings, when they had no money to pay rent in their previous homes, was not explained.[21]

This plan was clearly flawed and poorly thought out: “…he was going to see to it that property was protected. Human rights apparently came second.[22] Mayor Dole claimed he was just upholding the rule of law. However, in a time of economic depression, with hundreds of thousands of American’s struggling to make ends meet, what is the duty of the law? It was established the protect individuals, not persecute them when they are down and out. “All these men ask is a job, and until that job is forthcoming, to be left alone.”[23]

Lessons from Hooverville still have not been learned today. Seattle, in 2009, is currently facing a recession that may be the most serious since the Depression of the 1930s, and a community similar to Hooverville has formed. The current “Nickelsville” is a nod to Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, just as “Hooverville” was a sarcastic nod to President Hoover’s inaction. Additionally, the mission statement on Nickelsville’s website is eerily reminiscent of the Jackson’s description of Hooverville’s founding: “

Nickelsville will keep operating due to the inescapable fact that there are people on the streets with nowhere better to go. They are taking the initiative to organize so they can provide for themselves a basic level of safety and sanitation when their government steadfastly refuses to do so for them.[24] Sinan Demirel, executive director of the local Seattle shelter R-O-O-T-S, which has supported Nickelsville, referenced the history of tent cities in an interview, saying,

“Like the Tent Cities that preceded it, Nickelsville is part of a long and proud tradition of homeless persons organizing themselves to provide each other safety and to educate the broader community about their plight.[25] The leaders of Nickelsville urge its members, as well as the members of the community, to encourage government action to fight homelessness.

If members of the Seattle community do not take action, they might experience a modern-day Hooverville. Demirel noted that, “If it is successful during its next move [in June 2009] in establishing a permanent site and permanent structures, then Nickelsville will join an even prouder tradition, dating back to Seattle’s Hooverville over three quarters of a century ago.[26] If Seattle does not learn from the example set by Hooverville in the 1930s—that the failure of the social and political system, not individuals, leads to homelessness—it is doomed to allow history to repeat itself.

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hopeymchope · 3 years

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Godzilla Singular Point

I came into Singular Point with some trepidation because Godzilla’s history in anime is both very recent and extremely bad. The three anime movies released between 2017 and 2019 are easily the worst work of famed writer Gen Urobuchi and honestly contain more bullshit than I can even get into here. Those movies and this series were both Godzilla anime properties commissioned by Netflix, which didn’t get my hopes up very much. Thankfully, Singular Point is a very different beast from the anime trilogy. One could argue it’s very different from most Godzilla media, actually — at least from my perspective. And I’m still a pretty entry-level fan of Toho’s Big G, all things considered.

Let me just warn you right up front: This smartphone-based virtual assistant is basically the breakout star of the series.

When you think “Godzilla,” you probably don’t think “incredibly dense sci-fi concepts,” but with the big G’s first-ever anime series, the writers clearly set out to change that perception. Before the first kaiju even appears, the lead characters are plucked from obscurity and dropped into a mystery that involves fourth-dimensional time travel, physical objects that look different from all sides, theoretical math concepts, self-propagating A.I., and a whole lot more. And it’s NEVER made clear how all of it connects to the rampaging kaiju! Although we spend a lot of time investigating a red dust or sand that is very obviously tied to the monsters in SOME way, no one ever makes a connection that explains the relationship. Maybe we’re supposed to wait for a later season to connect the threads... but let’s get into the idea of “another season” later.

I like to think of myself as someone who typically enjoys hard sci-fi, but even with the characters spending loads of time trying to explain the high concepts driving the story, I was never able to fully wrap my head around what was going on in the mystery at the center of GSP. I rewound and rewatched a few explanations, but I still walked away feeling lost. I eventually settled on some vague, loose understandings of most of the ideas mentioned, but those understandings were subject to being ripped apart in subsequent scenes when I was shown or told something completely at odds with what I thought I knew. I can’t say I was ever bored with the thick, dense scientific concepts on offer — trying to find purchase with these far-out ideas kept me glued to the screen — but damn, I sure wish I was able to comprehend them.

What do we want?! DENSE SCIENTIFIC DISCUSSION AND DEBATE! When do we want it?! AFTER THOROUGH RESEARCH, TESTING, AND PEER REVIEW!

Another weird thing about this show is that the lead characters remain in separate locations and on separate tracks for the entire duration. We have Yun — a mechanical engineer and programmer who has an amazing grasp on physics and human behavior. And we have Mei — a grad student who is deeply invested in theoretical science, UMAs, cryptids and other far-flung concepts. Both of them are basically geniuses in their fields, and even though they take opposing views of just how flexible reality is, their shared ability to think “outside the box” becomes the crucial component in solving the mystery at the core of the series. Because they don’t even know one another (despite being separated by like, ONE degree), they only ever interact via text messages and behind screen names, which feels pretty damn weird. At least I immediately liked both of them, with Yun being the standout to me because of how his lowkey reactions to crazy shit generates a lot of humor.

This soundtrack cover LIES; you will never see these characters in a room together like this.

Alas, we don’t get to know the characters a whole lot beyond what we learned of them in the first two episodes. It’s not long before they’re trapped in a series of complicated exposition dumps, endlessly attempting to explain the high concepts of the show to other characters as well as my dumb ass in the audience. The fact that I liked them in the first couple of episodes carried me through more than half of the show, but I was always hoping to see them share more of themselves or just display more emotion. Anime as a medium excels at emotional storytelling. But despite the major, world-altering events the characters are constantly warning us about, none of them seem to have many emotions about said events.

Further complicating matters is how, when major events finally occur in this show, they are often kept off-screen. One character shockingly dies, but the portrayal of that death is so piss-poor that I didn’t even realize it’d happened until someone mentioned their death in the next episode. After that vague death, I was particularly sensitive to anything that looked like it might possibly be lethal. Yet a later event that is played up as a tragic, fatal occurrence ends up... fine, somehow? It’s not clear how the character survives, because — even after one of our heroes is left screaming their name in despair as they seemingly die — nobody ever talks about or explains how he’s just fine a couple of scenes later. And near the end of the series, there’s a major transformation that occurs for one of the characters, and we never see it happen nor do we understand HOW it happened. It’s just that suddenly, this character is extremely different due to off-screen reasons that are only vaguely verbalized.

I guess these two really bonded at some point for some reason? And what you are seeing here is literally the height of emotion shown in the entire show.

Even though the overarching story of the series so far pretty clearly wraps up in episode 13, we then get a post-credits tease for a potential second season. So the question becomes: Would I watch that?

Well... Godzilla Singular Point is a series with a lot of issues that kept me at arms’ length from it — tons of extremely confusing dialogue, highly frustrating choices in direction that lead to baffling storytelling, characters who are mostly exposition-dumping — and yet there’s still some foundational work here that I appreciated a lot. When the action occurs, it’s pretty cool/fun. And when urban destruction occurs, it can be awe-inspiring. The human characters, though little-explored, have likable and interesting foundations to them that could be expanded upon. And I didn’t even mention the soundtrack, which features a variety of musical styles combined with the classic Ifukube theme music and an OP that is an absolute banger. (I have a weakness when it comes to music; a good soundtrack can carry me through even the blandest series sometimes.) Even the core idea of centering a Godzilla series around hard science and mathematical concepts is a compelling one, I think! I just hated the execution of it; they went waaaaay too far on poorly explaining incredibly complex, mind-bending concepts for my pea brain to handle it. They spend so much time trying to explain things, yet somehow they never succeeded for me.

Ultimately, I’d probably give the show another chance. But if I do give another season a chance, it’ll be on probation. I wouldn’t watch the entire season unless I could see within four episodes that they’d definitely improved things.

Would I recommend that anyone watch the series as it currently stands? I mean... not really? I guess if you really dig complex math, hard theoretical science, and/or Toho’s stable of monsters, then maaaaaaaaaaybe give it a shot. But otherwise? Naaaahh. It’s not good enough at anything to make it stand out from the anime crowd. I didn’t hate it like I hated the Godzilla anime films, but Singular Point is still something that both casual viewers and most fans can comfortably ignore for the time being. It’s not a complete disaster, and it’s not without its highlights... but it’s definitely disappointing in my opinion.

OKAYOKAYOKAY, so let’s talk about the kaiju for a bit!

Below will be SPOILERS revealing all of the kaiju that appear in Godzilla Singular Point and giving my feelings on them.

Godzilla — It’s interesting to see a version of Godzilla that borrows some ideas from Shin Godzilla. Shin G has been incredibly unique until now, but this Godzilla manages to fold some of Shin’s distinctive aspects in with the more classic/typical versions to build a fun new depiction. Be forewarned that Godzilla doesn’t show up until the series is halfway over, and he doesn’t get a ton of screen time, either. He’s used quite sparingly and kept in hazy settings, often framed from the neck-up when they show him. It’s a little frustrating that they felt the need to shroud him so much, but I respect the fact that whenever Godzilla is shown, the destruction he causes is on a scale far beyond anything that the rest of the kaiju ever do. He is pure devastation.

Rodan — He’s easily the biological kaiju with the most screen time in Singular Point. Rodan is first introduced as one gigantic pterosaur, but if you’ve seen ANY trailers for this show then you already know that his depiction transitions into an asston of smaller pterosaurs, all of whom are also called “Rodan.” (Apparently the word Rodan is both singular and plural, like the word “buffalo.”) Although he looks kind of cool at first, pretty soon Rodan showing up isn’t special or threatening anymore. Rodan appearances go from “a big goddamn deal” to “some bland background noise” before the series is even 1/3 finished. The design might be a little too far removed from the original for my own taste, but even if I didn’t think that, I wouldn’t be able to care for this Rodan simply because he’s rendered so unimportant and unimpressive.

If you go out in the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise...

Anguirus — Now check this guy out! Anguirus gets one of the coolest fights in the show and also demonstrates some powers that are well beyond anything we’ve seen him do before. Because he sticks to unpopulated areas, we never see him do much damage to Japan, but he is definitely holding all the attention when he’s on-screen. He’s a highlight for me — a total badass who is very unique in his abilities. And the stated origin for his name is goddamn adorable.

Manda — Yup, Manda is in this series... but I don’t have much to say for him. It seems like the creators of the anime didn’t have much to say about him either. His role amounts to little more than a repeated cameo, and in most of those cameos you only ever see his tail. When we finally see his full body, it’s done so briefly and kept at a distance, leaving me with no real impression. I had to look up his design online and... yup, that sure looks like Manda. Final score: MEEEEHH.

Kumonga — I definitely did not see this appearance coming! Kumonga is much smaller here than you may be used to, but she gets to star in the most suspenseful sequence in the series and easily earns the most exciting cliffhanger moment at the end of an episode. I was utterly glued to the show during her screen time, which comes with a lot of icky twists. Good ones! I honestly like Kumonga here more than I ever have previously.

NEW PHONE WHO DIS

Salunga — Uh, who? This is the one monster that isn’t based on a classic Toho kaiju but instead is a brand-new creation. I suppose that everybody who touches the Toho Kaiju franchise wants to make their own mark on it in some regard. But a big part of the fun of this series for me personally was the anticipation of seeing new interpretations and designs of classic Toho monsters. And so, given that he kind of resembles both Baragon and Gabara, I never stopped wishing they’d just used one of those guys as the basis and namesake. Taken on his own, however? He’s... pretty neat. Not unique or exciting, but solidly above par. He resembles a cross between a lizard/dinosaur and an ape, plus his head has some nifty coloration.

Our Jaguar!

Jet Jaguar — I guess Jet Jaguar isn’t exactly a kaiju in the traditional sense because he’s a Giant Robot. However, if you want to consider him one, then I wager he probably gets even more screen time than Rodan! We meet him almost immediately when the series begins. Initially an odd pilot-driven robot that was constructed at the whim of a quirky old factory-owner with too much disposable income, Jet Jaguar grows and changes over the course of the show, ultimately undergoing a transition in episode 7 that makes him pretty damn impossible to dislike. In fact, I utterly adored him by then. This is definitely the best Jet Jaguar I’ve ever seen. His design is recognizably similar to the original yet utterly distinct, too. Like many of the other kaiju here, he’s not nearly as big as he was when he was first introduced to the movies, but his size is ideal for battling the smaller-scale monsters that we spend most of the series on.

#godzilla #godzilla singular point #anime #anime reviews #kaiju

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dweemeister · 3 years

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Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993)

In American animation outside of Disney, no other studio inspires as much reverence as Warner Bros. The Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes shorts precipitated into worldwide recognition for those series’ stock characters. Despite this success, Warner Bros. did not release an animated feature until the musical Gay Purr-ee (1962), in association with United Productions of America (UPA). Animators at Warner Bros. from the 1930-1960s knew they were not making high art, nor were they pretending to. Warners, since the 1930s arguably the most financially stable of the major Hollywood studios, has historically seen little need to bankroll animated features. With that in mind, it might come as less of a shock that Warner Bros.’ first in-house animated feature is Eric Radomski and Bruce Timm’s Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. Originally intended as a direct-to-home media release, Mask of the Phantasm – based on and made by the production team behind Batman: The Animated Series (1992-1995) – transcends those modest intentions. It is among of the best superhero films ever made.

In the wake of Tim Burton’s Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992), Batman: The Animated Series, unlike Burton’s efforts, affords time to characterize Bruce Wayne rather than surrendering ample screentime to thinly-written but scene-stealing villains. For that and many other reasons including the looming, vertical art deco-inspired production design of Gotham City; the distinctive and moodiness of its black paper backgrounds; and its balance of dark and lighter tones, BTAS remains a high-water mark among Batman fans – perhaps the best adaptation of the character there is. Mask of the Phantasm builds upon that foundation, in addition to crafting its own unique contribution within the DC Animated Universe (DCAU). As tired as origin stories are, Mask of the Phantasm is part-origin story for the Dark Knight – something largely avoided in BTAS – and somehow integrated here without distracting from the present-day scenes. Rarely is any Batman media a character study of Bruce Wayne, but Mask of the Phantasm proves itself a wonderful exception.

One evening, Batman/Bruce Wayne (Kevin Conroy) attempts to stop a gaggle of gangsters led by Chuckie Sol (Dick Miller) from laundering counterfeit money from a casino. Amid the scrum, Sol escapes from Batman, but immediately confronts a shadowy figure later known as the “Phantasm” in the parking garage – Sol dies in the confrontation. Batman receives the blame for the killing and the concurrent property destruction from Gotham City Councilman Arthur Reeves (Hart Bochner), who just so happened to be profiting from Sol’s racket. Across the film, Bruce reminisces about his courtship with Andrea Beaumont (Dana Delany), their breakup, and the lead-up to the creation of his Batman alter-ego. Juxtaposing Bruce’s past and present, we see how he channels his regrets and profound loss into being Batman. The past haunts him still, overhanging the high roofs of Wayne Manor and the ledges of Gotham’s skyscrapers. Back in the present day, the Phantasm has murdered another crime boss; a third murder involves the Joker (Mark Hamill), initiating an emotional dénouement that, because of the intricacies of motivation that the film develops, elevates the film beyond what might otherwise be sloppy storytelling.

The dramatis personae also includes crime boss Salvatore “The Wheezer” Valestra (Abe Vigoda); Andrea’s father, Carl Beaumont (Stacy Keach); the Wayne family butler, Alfred Pennyworth (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.); GCPD Commissioner James Gordon (Bob Hastings); and GCPD Det. Harvey Bullock (Robert Costanzo).

The screenplay by Alan Burnett (producer and writer on various DC Comics films and Hanna-Barbera productions), Paul Dini (head writer on BTAS and Superman: The Animated Series), Martin Pasko (a longtime DC Comics writer), and Michael Reaves (head writer on BTAS and 1994-1996’s Gargoyles) keep the film’s attention on Batman/Bruce Wayne, despite the introduction of various subplots and Joker – whose somewhat-questionable presence might seem to indicate a project going off the rails. Shadow of the Phantasm’s placement of flashbacks stems the awkwardness that Joker’s inclusion brings, assuring that the film stays grounded into Batman’s psychology. In past Bruce we see a charming young man with time, money, and looks to spare. His romantic side with Andrea is an element of his life, one that connects – inevitably, tangentially – to the trauma his parents’ murder. His most personal motivations – that which a younger Andrea could never see, and privy to only Alfred – are stuck in the past, circulating around that childhood loss.

The occasional reflections from Bruce Wayne on what his life has become make Mask of the Phantasm the most introspective piece within the BTAS continuity, freed from the constraints and expectations inherent of episodic television. No BTAS episode forces its eponymous character to confront himself to such extents. What Bruce Wayne and Batman have become in the present-day treads perilously close not to his style of vigilante corrective justice, but vengeance. The tragic paradox that lies at the heart of this tension is the soul of the Batman mythos. Anyone with the most basic understanding of who Bruce Wayne/Batman and the Joker are will at least have a glimmer of understanding of that paradox. This portrait of what Batman stands for is more maturely handled than any of the twentieth century live-action Batman films, and with less sensational filmmaking than Christopher Nolan and Zack Snyder could produce. But with the film’s screenplay and Kevin Conroy’s iconic voice acting as the Caped Crusader, it becomes an inquest into Bruce Wayne’s tortured soul.

If Mask of the Phantasm ran longer than its seventy-eight-minute runtime, Andrea Beaumont, too, might also have received similar character development as Bruce Wayne here. Even within those seventy-eight minutes, Andrea – with a great assist from Dana Delany’s voice acting (Delany so impressed Bruce Timm here that she was given the role of Lois Lane in Superman: The Animated Series) – is a nevertheless fascinating character. In a cruel irony, her ultimate role in Mask of the Phantasm is to be an incidental mirror to the violence that occurs in this film. Her decision is not an imposition, whether conscious or unconscious, from someone else, but hers and hers alone.

In this drama fit for opera, this Batman occupies a world of operatic proportions. The background and character animation are not as pristine as the best examples of BTAS due to some scattered bits of animation outsourcing. The animation of BTAS might seem stiff and janky to modern viewers expecting Flash hand-drawn animation or hand-drawn/CGI hybrids. However, Mask of the Phantasm retains the gravity-defying art deco of the animated series that somehow does not clash with the ‘90s-influenced and futuristic elements it integrates. Its primary inspirations are of film noir and the Metropolis seen in the Fleischer Studios’ Superman series of short films (1941-1943). The black paper backgrounds provide Gotham’s street corners and rooftops a nocturnal menace, immersing the viewer into the city’s seediness.

Composer Shirley Walker (orchestrator on 1979’s The Black Stallion, conductor and orchestrator on 1989’s Batman) was one of the few women composers in Hollywood at the turn of the twentieth into the twenty-first century. A pianist (she played with the San Francisco Symphony as a soloist while still in high school) who studied music composition at San Francisco State University, Walker would later become one of the first female film score composers to receive a solo credit for composing the music in John Carpenter’s Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992). But it is her work in the DCAU that distinguishes her – of particular note is her arrangement of Danny Elfman’s theme to 1989’s Batman for BTAS and a wholly original main theme for Superman: The Animated Series. Though Walker could adjust her style to suit a more synthetic sound, she specialized in composing grand orchestral cues. That style was apparent in BTAS and is adapted here from the opening titles (the lyrics here are actually gibberish and are the names of Walker’s music department sung backwards). The foreboding brass and string unison lines seem to reverberate off the animation’s skyscraper-filled backgrounds. Numerous passages in Walker’s score, as if taking hints from Richard Wagner, elect not to resolve to the tonic – setting up scenes where tension escalates alongside the music, forestalling the dramatic and musical release.

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One stunning exception to Walker’s ominous, atmospheric score is the gentle cue “First Love”, an interplay between solo oboe and synthesizer. Bruce’s flashbacks are not only a balm to the grimness of his present situation, but a musical reprieve from the intensity of the action scoring. That Walker can navigate between such differing moods exemplifies her compositional dexterity and overall musical excellence. Walker, who cited Mask of the Phantasm as her personal favorite composition for any film or television production, was one of the DCAU’s greatest under-heralded contributors. And how I wish she was given more chances to score different sorts of films.

Warner Bros.’ last-minute reversal on Mask of the Phantasm’s release strategy – abandoning the direct-to-home media debut for a theatrical release – meant minimal marketing for a low-budget film that made barely a dent at the box office. The film’s home media release would more than make up for the film’s theatrical release failure. Upon the success of BTAS and the critical acclaim lavished on Mask of the Phantasm, Warner Bros. kept the DCAU on television for another thirteen years, with infrequent direct-to-home media movie releases as recent as 2019.

For numerous DC Comics fans, the DCAU is an aesthetic and narrative touchstone. The limited animation is sublime for this period in animation history. In addition, one will overhear fans remaking that a certain superhero’s definitive portrayal might be thanks to the DCAU. The superhero benefitting the most from the DCAU’s characterization and storytelling is unquestionably Batman. And justifiably so, as Mask of the Phantasm shows due respect for Batman and Bruce Wayne – what molded them and how each persona intertwines with the other. The mythos behind any superhero is found not in fight scenes. Instead, it resides in the psychology and rationalizations that forces a person to directly confront another’s wickedness. Mask of the Phantasm realizes that such confrontations test Batman/Bruce Wayne’s remaining vestiges of humanity, and braves to ask moral questions that too many figures of superhero media would rather not think about.

My rating: 8.5/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

#Batman #Batman: Mask of the Phantasm #Bruce Timm #Eric Radomski #DCAU #Kevin Conroy #Dana Delany #Hart Bochner #Stacy Keach #Abe Vigoda #Dick Miller #Efrem Zimbalist Jr.#Bob Hastings #Robert Costanzo #Mark Hamill #Shirley Walker #Glen Murakami #My Movie Odyssey

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mfkinanaa · 4 years

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SUN IN CANCER.

Cancer: Cardinal Water

Ruler: The Moon

Keywords: Nurturing, Enclosing, Protecting, Intuiting

Functional Expression: sensitive, emotional intelligence, nurturing, psychic, family oriented, empathetic, reliable.

Dysfunctional Expression: hyper-sensitive, overly emotional, extreme selfishness, fearful, overprotective, smothering.

Emotionally Active.

Born with the Sun in Cancer, you are likely to be motivated by the urge to establish emotional connectedness with others, and then take action to nourish, support and protect them.

Cancer is a Water sign, and so, concerned with emotions, intuition, imagination and the psyche.It is also a Cardinal sign, implying the need to act. Within the realm of emotion, Cancerians are likely to be actively engaged. The emotional ties that bind to those closest are of primary concern. For this reason, Cancer is strongly associated with family and domestic life.

Home is the natural domain for those with the Sun in Cancer, for it is here that they are in their strength. Home life is especially important, and Cancerians often need to feel safe and secure within a loving home environment in order to feel at ease.

Therefore, the home needs to be as calm and serene as possible, for the home environment acts almost like the shell of the crab, protecting what is soft and vulnerable on the inside from the harshness of the outer world.

For this reason, Cancerians will spend a lot of time getting the home ‘just right’.A calm home life is necessary for emotional equilibrium. From this foundation, they can then project themselves out into the world.

When the Cancerian is happy at home, they can then become a source of great nourishment and delight. They make great hosts and entertainers, and enjoy nothing more than taking care of the ones they love through good food, rapport and empathetic conversation.

Many excellent cooks are born under this sign. Anything connected to the hospitality industry them well. Providing nourishment is a concrete way of taking action around emotional needs. This allows those with the Sun in Cancer to feel a sense of purpose.

Although Cancer is concerned with action, they often tend to move through vacillation and side-stepping. They may avoid direct moves until external circumstances feel favourable or ‘right’.

In this way, they have much in common with their celestial namesake – The Crab. On the outside, they appear tough, hardened or impenetrable, capable of a formidable tenacity. But underneath, they are typically soft and sensitive as can be, protecting their vulnerabilities from the harshness of the outer world.

Cancerians often come at problems sideways in the attempt to avoid being hurt.

Home and Family Life.

Cancerians usually feel deeply connected – for better or for worse – to their family of origin or those they consider close to heart. These strong connections mean Cancers often feel personally responsible for the well-being of others. This becomes both a blessing and a curse.

On the upside, Cancerians can be especially warm, loving and devoted. They enjoy taking care of others. On the downside, they may feel themselves overly responsible for others’ wellbeing, and project too much onto others, or based on what they feel loved ones “should” do.

Cancerians have a tendency to involve themselves in the emotional lives of others. In doing so they can lose sight of their own needs. As they become less in touch with their own individuality, they become increasingly moody and erratic.

At times, they can be clannish and crabby. They tend to react at the slightest trigger, feeling themselves in the middle of situations that may, in reality, have very little to do with them.

This can be both draining and dysfunctional, as it creates feelings of obligation and guilt that are difficult to resolve. Learning to separate from feelings of emotional responsibility is a key life lesson for many Cancerian individuals.

They must recognize that their need to be needed may not be the same need that others have, and must learn to hold back – staying focussed on their own lives. Assuming responsibility for what is not theirs to take on means that Cancerians have a way of making unwelcome intrusions into others lives, creating turmoil where they really want peace.

Learning to recognize when ‘good advice’ and emotional involvement is not wanted is important but will take time.

In these ways, the home and family are both a source of strength and the shell those with the Sun in Cancer must outgrow. The need to experience a warm, safe and nurturing home life is paramount. It is imperative for Cancerians to create the right kind of living circumstances to feel calm, serene and connected to other people.

Yet leaving the safety of home is also necessary if they are to make their mark on the world. As a Cardinal sign, they are usually not satisfied unless they are creating an impact in the world. To do this they must first establish a stable base, and then get out of their comfort zone by leaving it. Cancerians can, at times, avoid the challenges of the outside world by staying indoors. This keeps them emotionally stuck.

Remembering What is Past.

This sign is connected to memory and the things of the past. Cancerians like to surround themselves with objects that have emotional resonance, or remind them of what they have done.

Those born with the Sun in Cancer often prefer what is vintage, hand-made or antique to what is shiny and new. They tend to value objects and experiences that evoke emotional depth. They may collect trinkets and mementos, keeping these stored away for years.

In this way, Cancerians may lose themselves in figments and memories. At a deep inner level, they may refuse to let go. Holding onto the past function can be a way to resist letting go of emotional experiences. They enjoy losing themselves in the memory of what is comfortable and known.

On another level, Cancer is connected to continuity and tradition. Cancerians love to reminisce and retell stories from the past. Yet on the down-side, they can become enmeshed in the nostalgia, and quickly lose perspective.

This problem is especially activated around family members, bringing up past hurst or disappointments instead of moving on. Cancerians can find themselves feeling responsible for how others choose to be, and becoming overly focussed on trying to ‘fix’ what is no longer relevant.

Emotional upsets flow thick and fast when Cancerians try to act based on their own perceptions of how others should think and feel. They may then find themselves on the receiving end of resentment when this attempt to assume responsibility is not wanted.

Vivid Imaginations.

Cancers are often gifted with vivid imaginations. This tendency to imagine should be acknowledged and developed. For many with the Sun in Cancer there can be creative and artistic talents that need an outlet. This can range from creating in the kitchen to design around the home. It may be expressed building homes and properties, or creating a business from scratch.

Cancerians have a way of tuning in to what others need, and then employing their active imaginations to bring it into form. Many excellent writers are born under this sign, displaying an intuitive ability to tune in to what the public wants and needs.

Other Cancerians have an uncanny sense of business timing, knowing when and where to act. Many tycoons are born to this sign, and Cancerians often have a particular business flair. The ability to imagine realistic yet original outcomes is a powerful trait, and one Cancerians can draw upon easily.

Their active imaginations and intuitive responses mean they tend to ‘pick up’ on new ideas all the time. Then the natural impulse to take action coupled with capacity to sense what others need means they are in an excellent position to act at the right time and place.

When Cancerians employ their sense perceptions with some degree of objectivity they can be especially insightful. They can respond to passing impressions with uncanny precision and accuracy.

Cancer is a deeply sensitive sign, so that learning to listen to an internal and rhythmic sense of timing is most important. Feelings tend to ebb and flow like the tides. Accepting this is fundamental for their well-being.

As Cancerians learn to distinguish intuitive perceptions over emotional projections, they find their niche in life. Through their imaginations, they can ‘see’ a perfect solution or way forward that will meet the immediate need in their own as well as other’s lives.

When the imagination is denied, or instead allowed to run riot, it can lead to all sorts of toxic situations. Cancerians can also use their emotional sensitivity and powerful imaginations to apparently ‘interact’ with the world outside them, imagine what they believe is going on, and then decide not to participate. Then that famed Cancerian imagination works against them.

The propensity to imagine the worst means they can come to very inaccurate conclusions, and feel hurt by situations that may not even have occurred. Reliving past emotional hurts and upsets can take precedence over what is actually happening now.

Cancerians then become the emotional casualties of all sorts of imagined slights and social grievances that become excuses for not leaving the comfort of home. This then leads to an emotional disconnection from others, which is the opposite of what they truly seek.

Sun in Cancer: Your Solar Journey.

With the Sun in Cancer you are gifted with extraordinary emotional and intuitive insight. This can be turned to your advantage by taking action to support and foster those you hold dear, or to develop projects that you wish to get off the ground. Acknowledging your sensitivity and imagination provides you with highly effective tools.

Although you are likely to respect continuity and stability in your emotional life, you must also remember to let go of the past. Tendencies to attempt to assume responsibility for others emotional needs should be kept in check, or you will notice resentment from those you care most deeply about. With your finely tuned intuition and concern for other’s needs, you are often the most caring and family-oriented of souls. In the end your sensitivity to others is both your blessing and philosophical curse.

#astroworld #astrology #astrotips #aries sign #taurus #gemini #cancer sign #leo #virgo zodiac #libra #scorpio #sagittarius #capricorn #aquarius #pisces

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shangakarkumardas · 3 years

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Summary upon Computer Science and Information Technology

The Computer is a man-made electronic programmable robot meant to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic and systematic operations. Here, we are giving a summary of Computer Science and Information Technology which has covered every one the essentials of computers.

Computer science focuses almost creating programs and applications, though recommend technology focuses concerning using computer systems and network IT professionals in addition to campaigning a dogfight as data analysts, computer preserve specialists, and data scientists

Information Technology (IT) is a broader showground that encompasses Computer Science and even programming. So can be both easier or harder. IT courses or majors tend to be broader but shallower than CS courses or majors tend narrower but deeper in that particular place.

Programming language theory and formal methods:

Programming language theory is a branch of computer science that deals with the design, implementation, analysis, characterization, and classification of programming languages and their individual features. It falls within the discipline of computer science, both depending on considering quotation to and affecting mathematics, software engineering, and linguistics. It is an alert research place, following numerous dedicated academic journals. Formal methods are a particular subsequent to-door to of mathematically based technique for the specification, go ahead and statement of software and hardware systems. The use of formal methods for software and hardware design is motivated by the expectation that, as in supplementary engineering disciplines, the theater takeover mathematical analysis can contribute to the reliability and robustness of a design. They form an important educational underpinning for software engineering, especially where safety or security is operating. Formal methods are a useful integrate with crime to software investigation past them in the future happening avoid errors and can with meet the expense of a framework for breakdown. For industrial use, tool preserve is required. However, the tall cost of using formal methods means that they are usually without help used in the get on your nerves of high-integrity and dynamism-necessary systems, where safety or security is of utmost importance. Formal methods are best described as the application of a fairly wide variety of speculative computer science nitty-gritty, in particular logic calculi, formal languages, android theory, and program semantics, but then type systems and algebraic data types to problems in software and hardware specification and publication.

Computer Systems Computational and systems processes:

Artificial severity (AI) aims to or is required to synthesize set sights on-orientated processes such as encumbrance-solving, decision-making, environmental getting used to, learning, and communication found in humans and animals. From its origins in cybernetics and in the Dartmouth Conference (1956), precious height research has been necessarily gnashing your teeth-disciplinary, drawing in description to areas of finishing such as applied mathematics, symbolic logic, semiotics, electrical engineering, philosophy of mind, neuropsychology, and social intelligence. AI is allied in the expertly-liked mind when robotic touch ahead, but the main auditorium of practical application has been as an embedded component in areas of software influence to the front, which require computational concord. The starting reduction in the late 1940s was Alan Turing's investigation "Can computers think? And the ask remains effectively unanswered, although the Turing test is yet used to assess computer output almost the scale of human intensity. But the automation of evaluative and predictive tasks has been increasingly wealthy as performing for human monitoring and charity in domains of computer application involving rarefied genuine-world data.

Computer visualization and graphics:

Computer graphics and visualization. Computer graphics is the scrutinize of digital visual contents and involves the synthesis and exploitation of image data. Psychotherapy is related to many added fields in computer science, including computer vision, image incline, and computational geometry, and is heavily applied in the fields of special effects and video games.

Sound and Image processing: Information can publicize you will the form of images, hermetic, video, or substitute multimedia. Bits of mention can be streamed via signals. Its processing is the central notion of informatics, the European view up for computing, which studies recommendation giving out algorithms independently of the type of opinion carrier - whether it is electrical, mechanical, or biological. This arena plays important role in flavor theory, telecommunications, warn engineering and has applications in medical image computing and speech synthesis, in the middle of others. What is the lower bound going around for the air unwell of sudden Fourier transform algorithms? is one of the unsolved problems in conservatory computer science. Academia: Conferences are important behavior for computer science research. During these conferences, researchers from the public and private sectors proficiency their recent feint and meet. Unlike in most new academic fields, in computer science, the prestige of conference papers is again that of journal publications. One proposed relation for this is the unexpected build taking place of this relatively new field requires terse evaluation and distribution of results, a task improved handled by conferences than by journals. Software engineering: Software engineering is the chemical analysis of designing, implementing, and modifying the software in order to ensure it is of tall feel, affordable, maintainable, and hasty to fabricate. It is reasoned access to software design, involving the application of engineering practices to software. Software engineering deals as soon as the organizing and analyzing of software, it doesn't just treaty with the foundation or build of accumulation software, but its internal conformity and child support. For example, software investigation, systems engineering, highly developed debt, and software exaggerate processes. Anything: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's, George Boole's, Alan Turing's, Claude Shannon's, and Samuel Morse's eagerness: there are unaccompanied two objects that a computer has to concur moreover in order to represent "all" All the auspices of approximately any computable shackle can be represented using by yourself 0 and 1 (or any added bistable pair that can flip-flop in the middle of two easily distinguishable states, such as "an apropos the order of/off", "magnetized/demagnetized", "high-voltage/low-voltage", etc.).

Concurrent, parallel, and distributed computing:

Concurrency is a property of systems in which several computations are executing simultaneously, and potentially interacting once each appendage.[48] A number of mathematical models have been developed for general concurrent computation, including Petra nets, process calculi, and the Parallel Random Access Machine model.[49] When fused computers are linked in a network through using concurrency, this is known as a distributed system. Computers within that distributed system have their own private memory, and reference can be exchanged to achieve common goals.

Information theory:

Information theory, a neighboring door connected to probability and statistics, is associated with the quantification of opinion. This was developed by Claude Shannon to locate fundamental limits regarding signal doling out operations such as compressing data and going not far afield off from for the order of reliably storing and communicating data. Coding theory is the scrutiny of the properties of codes (systems for converting hint from one form to other) and their fitness for a specific application. Codes are used for data compression, cryptography, error detection and correction, and more recently than for network coding. Codes are studied for the strived for of designing efficient and adroitly-behaved data transmission methods.

Note:

The opening of punched cards into the adjunct engine was important, not unaccompanied as a more convenient form of control than the drums, or because programs could now be of unconditional extent, and could be stored and repeated without the problem of introducing errors in setting the robot by hand; it was important as well as because it served to crystallize Babbage's feeling that he had invented something in reality totaling, something much more than a following calculating robot." Bruce Collier, 1970. See the entry "Computer science" concerning Wikiquote for the records of this suggestion. The word "anything" is written in reference marks because there are things that computers cannot reach. One example is: to unadulterate the question if an arbitrary unadulterated computer program will eventually finish or run forever (the Halting problem).

See the entry "Computer science" concerning Wiki quote for the records of this suggestion. The word "anything" is written in reference marks because there are things that computers cannot reach. One example is: to unadulterated, the question of an arbitrary unadulterated computer program will eventually finish or run forever (the Broken problem)

#graphic edit #technology #software #information #intel 11th gen core tiger lake h gaming workstation laptop cpus announced core i9 11980hk core i7 core i5 intel #online

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ojpovkjopsk · 3 years

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davidmann95 · 4 years

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For definitely no reason whatsoever, in response to nothing specific, can you rank the DC Multiverse Earths and tell us a bit about why each is in its place on the list?

Were this in response to an article, I could assure that I generally enjoy the writer’s output perfectly well from what I’ve seen and was absolutely baffled by the bizarrely selective research that went into it. Anyway, I hope you feel guilty enabling the amount of work I put into this truly ridiculous task by the end.

Cliff notes for the relatively uninitiated: that gorgeous monstrosity up above is The Map Of The Multiverse from the miniseries Multiversity, presented as a series of concentric circles bordered by the ‘Overvoid’ that all of reality is suspended in (and framed in such a way as to make clear it is the white of the pages comics are printed on). You go inwards from the borders of creation - moving moreso with each sphere from abstraction to the realm of the physical - to the Monitor Sphere in which once lived the near-omnipotent, now nearly extinct Monitor race that observed and maintained the multiverse, into the Sphere of Gods where the various beings of myth and divinity dwell, and into the innermost sphere where ‘we’ live. The 52 Earths you see within aren’t the whole of the multiverse but the ‘local’ 52 worlds, with infinite other Earths dwelling in their own dimensional pockets; all these universes actually exist in the same three-dimensional space at the same time but suspended in a higher-dimensional substance called ‘the Bleed’, and vibrating at distinct frequencies. Also there’s a ‘Dark Multiverse’ that’s cosmologically speaking ‘beneath’ the map, disintegrating half-formed potential realities that new proper universes are culled from. There’s a lot more to it than even all of that, but that’s enough to explain what’s up with these.

My ranking here is obviously subjective, but mostly comes down to a mix of ‘how cool is this Earth’, ‘how much would this Earth be worth using again’, ‘how well does it work in the context of being part of a shared multiverse’, and ‘do I seriously see creators unearthing any of this Earth’s potential down the road’. Also, Earths 24, 27, 28, 46, and 49 aren’t here, as they’re among the 7 Unknown Earths on the map that were left behind for future creators to define; 14 and apparently 25 have since been revealed.

64. Earth 14

A worthy bottom-place entry, Earth 14 is at the top of the Multiverse Map, and is shown as physically different from the other Earths, seemingly vibrating as if in two places at once; map co-designer and illustrator Rian Hughes suggested in an interview the intent was that this was where new universes entered the multiverse. Instead, ending up the first Unknown Earth to be revealed after the doors were opened to other creative teams, it was shown as a generic dystopian world home to a ‘Justice League of Assassins’ that were quickly dispatched by a generic cosmic threat. A monumental tribute to contextual ignorance and creative laziness.

63. Flashpoint

This is one of several Earths I’ll touch on that exist in neither the ‘local’ nor Dark Multiverse, but has directly crossed over or been framed in reference to the currently operating version of the DC Universe and so is probably worth a mention even if I’m not going over every Elseworlds and Imaginary Story DC has ever published. Another dystopian world, in this one an attempt by The Flash at fixing a change to history resulted in an Earth torn apart by war between Aquaman and Wonder Woman, where Cyborg was America’s greatest hero and Kal-El was held captive his entire life in a military bunker rather than becoming Superman. Aside from the prospect of a Thomas Wayne who became Batman when Bruce was gunned down as a child rather than vice-versa - resulting in him being pulled into a recent Batman run after this worlds’ destruction, the reason for this Earth’s inclusion - absolutely nothing of value came of this or the stories tied into it, such that astonishingly in spite of being the impetus for one of the biggest DC reboots of all time with theoretically an entire revised history to play with, essentially no one cares about this anymore.

62. Earth 1

The site of DC’s standalone, bookstore-market oriented ‘Earth One’ graphic novels. The incredible tunnel vision of marketing these for that purpose with titles that exist in reference to their multiversal structure aside, the Green Lantern book is the only one of those I’ve heard about being even kind of good; the rest top out at an interesting failure in Wonder Woman, with a standard forgettable failure in Teen Titans and truly flabbergasting misfires in Superman and Batman. Even Multiverse Map co-designer and writer Grant Morrison described this Earth in a blurb as having a history ‘in flux’, implicitly permitting the reader to believe it’s something else if they really want to, but as it stands in spite of the theoretical wide-open possibilities the foundations have already been built on salted Earth.

61. Watchmen

Home to the cast of characters of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ seminal miniseries. Crossed over with the DC Universe 30+ year later in Doomsday Clock, which clearly intended to set up this world as one ripe for future stories and development rather than a singular text, but instead misinterpreted, stripmined, and otherwise nuked essentially everything that might have had one interested in exploring it further in the first place (in spite of the source text’s very definitive conclusions to all major narrative threads and characters). The only reason this is not ranked even lower is the possibility that the upcoming, as-yet untitled Watchmen project by Tom King and Jorge Fornes might manage to dredge something out of this.

60. Earth Negative 11

The first of the Dark Multiverse Earths here, a gender-flipped Earth where Bryce Wayne generically altered herself into an Atlantean in order to do battle with Aquawoman and the forces of Atlantis. As the Dark Multiverse worlds we have seen thus far are described as being borne of Bruce Wayne’s fears, it’s odd that as opposed to the ‘want of a nail’ scenarios shown on all others, this includes the additional twist of making Bruce a woman, yet does nothing with that. Anyway, this is a very clear product of the Dark Multiverse’s debut in Dark Nights: Metal wanting an evil Batman to correspond to each member of the Justice League, and it’s the oddest, most perfunctory of the lot.

59. Earth 34

Home to the heroes of the Light Brigade, defenders of Cosmoville, this is an Earth meant to evoke the classic creator-owned superhero comic Astro City. However, as Astro City is itself made up of archetypal signifiers yet isn’t meta about its usage of them, being defined by its storytelling principles rather than the shared universe it builds up in the background, there are essentially no stories to be told here that couldn’t be told with the regular heroes of the DC universe. Which is a shame, those are some neat character designs.

58. Earth Negative 12

A Dark Multiverse Earth where believing Wonder Woman killed in a battle with the war god Ares, Batman took up the deity’s helm in hopes of redefining war, instead being corrupted by it and becoming an unstoppable monster. There’s basically nothing here.

57. Earth Negative 44

A Dark Multiverse Earth where a computer program meant to replicate Alfred after the butler’s untimely death, attempting to protect its charge, takes control of Batman by way of mechanizing him and turns Gotham into a digital nightmare. A little more on-point than the previous entry, but still not much here.

56. Earth Negative 22

A Dark Multiverse Earth where Batman is finally pushed into killing the Joker, but the Clown Prince of Crime secretes a particularly potent Joker Toxin upon his death that corrupts the Caped Crusader into a second Joker known as The Batman Who Laughs, who slaughters his way across his universe before ultimately making his way to the ‘main’ DCU. The prospect of a Batman/Joker combination is interesting, but an origin for the ultimate corrupted Batman ‘he got drugged into going bad’ falls short.

55. Earth Negative 32

A Dark Multiverse Earth where Bruce Wayne moments after his parents’ deaths was judged worthy of a Green Lantern ring, but having only his hatred of crime rather than the discipline and morality he would come to develop becomes the murderous terror of the underworld, with even the Corps unable to stop him when he manages to force the darkness of his heart through the ring into ‘dark constructs’. Another ultimately throwaway Earth, this at least illustrates the properties of the Dark Multiverse in an interesting way: the constructs he creates aren’t something that’s ever been indicated as being possible or even sensible with the ‘real’ Green Lantern, but as this is a world literally made of nightmares that’s irrelevant.

54. Earth 39

Home to the United Nations superspies the Agents of W.O.N.D.E.R., who operating using super-technology with eventually deleterious side-effects. A pastiche of the obscure T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, it’s hard to imagine anyone with much to say about them wouldn’t simply wish to write an actual comic about them under the current rights-holders, though the concepts described in Morrison’s provided information are enticing.

53. Earth 41

A riff on several of the superheroes published by Image Comics over the years, they’re worth having around for the occasional heroes of the multiverse groupshots for your big crossover comics and Dino-Cop turned out to be charming, but it’s doubtful someone with a big Spawn story in them for instance would use Spore as their outlet.

52. Earth 9

All I know about this is that this is a ‘what if superheroes really changed the world’ Earth, and when those are a dime a dozen, the additional conceits of the names of the various characters not at all corresponding to their traditional backstories and attributes, and being the brainchild of creator Dan Jurgens, are far from enough to sway me. I understand there are some fans out there who may heartily disagree, to be fair.

51. Earth Negative 52

Another Dark Multiverse throwaway Earth, this time one where a Batman shattered by losing his various partners taps into the Speed Force so that he can finally be everywhere at once to stop all crime. This is distinct however in that he achieves this by defeating The Flash, chaining him to the hood of the Batmobile, and driving it so fast their atoms explode and merge, which is thoroughly rad and gets it big-time bonus points next to its contemporaries.

50. Earth 37

An Earth based on the DC works of creator Howard Chaykin, its conceit of being a world that progressed technologically far faster than our world but culturally remains decades behind us is interesting, but I’m not much of a fan of his work that I’ve read and most of what’s been drawn upon here doesn’t seem to have much of a following.

49. Earth 30

The world of Superman: Red Son, where Kal-L landed in the Ukraine and grew up to become leader of a global Soviet Union, before realizing he had deformed humanity’s development and faking his death. Leaving Earth in the hands of a Lex Luthor who while still very much a bastard found public approval in America for fighting Superman, Lex ultimately led Earth into a utopia that over time fell into complacency and became its universe’s version of Krypton, Jor-L (Luthor’s distant descendant) and Lara sending their baby back in time to survive and establishing a predestination loop. While several elements of the DC Universe are present in a limited capacity that could in theory be expanded on, Superman and Wonder Woman are the only superheroes of long-term note and both their stories are very much concluded, seemingly leaving little to do here except have the Superman with the hammer and sickle logo show up in event comics.

48. Earth 6

The world of the Just Imagine Stan Lee Created The DC Universe series, where the father of the Marvel Universe rebuilt several DC figureheads from the name and a few pieces of imagery up. The results were mixed at best, but a series of gorgeous artists involved in the projects mean the characters certainly look interesting even if it’s hard to imagine creators going back here in any meaningful capacity.

47. Earth Negative 1

A Dark Multiverse world where Superman turned on humanity for reasons unknown, and Batman deliberately infected himself with the ‘Doomsday Virus’ to gain the properties of the hulking monster and defeat his former friend. Now numbed to human emotion and vulnerability, this Batman hopes to spread the virus as to make humanity similarly indestructible, as well as shield them emotionally from what he has come to see as the false hope Superman represents. This Batman didn’t end up a major figure in the same way as The Batman Who Laughs, but the conceit is killer and I hope someone picks up on it one day.

46. Earth-52

A universe somewhere outside the local 52, a ‘remnant’ of sorts of the main DC universe circa 2011-2016 prior to cosmic revisions resulting in the current setup. A world where superheroes had emerged approximately 5 years earlier and home to lots of dudes in very dumb battle-armor, most fan-favorite stories from this era have been carried forward into the current history, and its unique version of Superman under Grant Morrison - a socialist crusader in a t-shirt and jeans who battled corrupt institutions and cosmic supervillainy in equal measure - was depicted as set loose from his world after 2016′s continuity changes as a defender of the multiverse. While a significant part of DC history both in-universe and publishing-wise, there wouldn’t seem to be all that much left here worth exploring.

45. Earth 2

A world where Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman alone represented the first wave of superheroes, they nobly fell in battle repelling an invasion of Earth by Darkseid. In time a new generation would emerge that were modernized, youthful iterations of the Justice Society of America, the superhero team predating the Justice League in DC’s publishing history. While the logline’s an interesting one and the successor to Superman Val-Zod debuted to some acclaim, for the most part this reinvention didn’t end up received well by either new or longtime fans, and a last-minute overhaul where this bunch was transplanted into a rebooted world without superheroes probably didn’t help. You still see them in crossovers and there are promising concepts, but this world seems basically dead.

44. Earth 50

When Lex Luthor ascended to the presidency and soon thereafter executed The Flash, Superman snapped, executed him, and took over the world alongside his allies as the Justice Lords, until they were ultimately overthrown by way of a parallel universe Justice League and a repentant Lord Batman. A Better World unequivocally rules, but given this is supposed to be those specific versions of the Lords rather than a new iteration, it’d be weird to see them up against any universe other than the DCAU. And, well...

43. Earth 12

The DCAU, currently world of Batman Beyond and a future Justice League. The DCAU, you may be aware, extremely rules, but is also somewhat redundant in this context - the ‘regular’ DCU already has all its core components without too much aesthetic differentiation, and there’s already frequently a Batman Beyond in the future of said universe. It has its unique attributes that make people love it, it’s cool that it’s here, but on the macro scale it’s too clean an adaptation to bring much to the table to crossovers and whatnot, and you’d never see any further stories told there otherwise as really being part of the DCU cosmic landscape so much as a comic tie-in to the TV show.

(Also it’s odd this is placed here with the Justice Lords Earth as if to go ‘it’s secretly been part of the 52 all along, you just never noticed when it only crossed over with the one other!’ when there were two other parallel universes in the DCAU.)

42. Earth 43

A nightmare world haunted by the once-heroic, now vampiric Blood League, the obvious potential would be for this world to function as DC’s equivalent to Marvel Zombies. Recently however DCeased has come to fill that position, and while this world in practice if not concept skews more closely towards that source material as the former heroes still have vestiges of their old personalities - in theory distinguishing it as its own spin worth keeping around - it’s hard to imagine most takes on ‘Justice League but monsters’ won’t come out under the DCeased banner for the foreseeable future.

41. Earth 40

A world of pulp villains made to oppose Earth 20, these guys are simple but a hoot.

40. Earth 35 aka the Pseudoverse

More analogues to analogues, this time of the Awesome Comics characters largely defined by Alan Moore in Supreme. This opens up the promising vista of ‘DC if it were designed by Alan Moore’, but in practice as demonstrated by his work with both DC and the analogues these mimic, that would just be...well, good DC comics, which you don’t need a whole extra universe for. The notion of this as a universe artificially created by Monitor ‘ideominers’ however both gives it a unique place in the multiverse, tackles its status as a pastiche in a unique way, and gets back to ideas of the power of imagination in both Supreme and Moore’s other works, so it’s likely there could be something to be done here.

39. Earth 11

A bit of a study in contradictions. This is seemingly a rather straightforward ‘gender swap’ Earth with Superwoman, Wonderous Man, and so forth. Also, its version of Star Sapphire implied it’s not subjected to constant crises in the same way as the main universe it mirrors, maintaining a greater degree of consistency in the process. At the same time however it’s mentioned that the Amazons rather than leaving Man’s World for Themyscira shared its technology and philosophy with the world, changing it forever, suggesting a far different world from what we’ve seen in glimpses here. Until it decides one way or another whether it’s a simple mirror to the regular DCU or a radically different take, it hovers in a state of uncertainty.

38. Earth-2 aka Earth Two

The original version of Earth-2, home to the DC Universe of the 1940s with aged versions of Superman and company and the original Justice Society of America. The first take on a DC universe that would progress in something resembling ‘real time’ rather than keeping the headliners as perpetual twenty-to-thirty-somethings, this was also the birthplace of heroes such as Power Girl and Huntress. I’m of the perhaps controversial opinion that this is a concept that was explored better in later takes: there’s a sense here that the largely forgotten follow-up generation eventually introduced, with the exception of the two heroes mentioned above, will never really matter in the same way as their still fully-active predecessors in spite of ostensibly taking over the family business, meaning you never quite actually get what you want here, which is to see a DC where things meaningfully change and move on - well into his middle age and his mentor’s death long behind him, Dick Grayson is still Robin. Add in the odd, ignominious demise of the original Batman and its Superman’s odd eventual fate - which slide from bizarre to intolerable if you accept the frequent implication that these are meant to be the original versions of them from the 1930s - and I can’t help but think the enjoyable high concept was never realized as well as it could be here.

37. Earth 4

The Earth of the characters of Charlton Comics who would go on to inspire Watchmen, this initially seemed like one of the most promising worlds after its debut in Pax Americana drew perhaps the most pronounced critical acclaim of any single issue in the past decade as the site for creators with something to say to work with Watchmen without actually touching that property. Now, however, Watchmen itself is in the mix: most wouldn’t reasonably go here while the material they’re truly referencing is now freely available (especially those simply wanting to draw fan attention by visibly playing with those toys, the way Earth 4 sidestepped) even though that world itself is now massively compromised past the original text, and with the ‘Watchmen Earth’ no longer an option and the characters themselves - if cleaned-up, more mainstream versions of them - existing in the DCU proper, this world’s role seems to have been largely stripped from it. I have to imagine there’s still potential here for those with the talent and commitment though.

36. Earth 44

A world where in the absence of natural superhuman beings, Doc Tornado created a Metal League of robot superheroes to protect the Earth. A promising concept definitely worth a few stories.

35. Earth 15

Once a perfect universe destroyed in a rampage by another Earth’s Superman, it was artificially reborn through the will of Countess Belzebeth - a cosmic vampire - as a copy of the Prime universe with the Green Lantern Corps replaced by Belzebeth’s despotic Blackstars, the uncertain and bitter heroes of this universe warped through the lens of Belzebeth’s perceptions of them had no chance against her forces. While its inhabitants are a bit samey what with all life having been subsumed into the diamond will of Blackstar Controller Mu, the idea of a conceptually weakened DCU being turned into an army against the rest of the multiverse makes for a terrific threat, and the prophecy of the ‘Cosmic Grail’ (a Green Lantern power battery lost somewhere in the multiverse) and that the First Lantern of the multiverse Volthoom hail from its original incarnation lend it some extra mythological weight.

34. Earth 32

A mashup world hosting the likes of the Justice Titans, Young Justice International, and the Doom Society. A world that’s home to Aquaflash will probably never have an ongoing all its own, but plenty of stories, miniseries, and even a brief line of comics have been based on mashup characters before, so there’s plenty of proof of concept for this being able to endure.

33. Earth 23

An Earth where Batman (naturally) is the only white guy on the Justice League, and Superman is not only President of the United States in his secret identity as Calvin Ellis, but the leader of the multiverse-spanning superteam Justice Incarnate. It reads like Morrison trying to do his idealized take on an ‘Ultimate DC’, a more diverse and politically engaged superhero landscape that doesn’t scale down its big ideas in turn, and if I were ranking it at the time it was introduced it would go much higher. The problem is that its version of Superman is modeled after Barack Obama, and that guy isn’t President anymore (and for that matter his legacy seems to grow more complicated by the year). As a result the vibe goes from triumphant to wistful mourning if not outright bitterly ironic, and that’s a needle that would have to be threaded before doing any substantial work here.

(Also, since several Justice Leaguers here rather than being made black are replaced with various black counterparts they’ve had over the years, that means Wonder Woman here is the 70s Amazon Nubia. And, uh, that name is something that would have to be...something.)

32. Earth 19

Steampunk superheroics; superhero period pieces are usually fun, and this is built on a foundation of pretty Mike Mignola art (though confession that I’ve never read Gotham By Gaslight), so sure, this one has potential.

31. Earth 18

Same as above but cowboys instead. This gets extra credit because cowboys mesh better with superhero conventions, and the additional twist of this world being frozen in history by the Time Trapper, forcing them to approximate modern technology with 19th century resources.

30. Earth 31

A post-apocalyptic waterworld where humanity is protected by Captain Leatherwing and assorted other pirate superheroes. Another ‘superheroes but in another genre’ setup, the post-apocalyptic, environmental twist makes it unfortunately more relevant than its peers, though I don’t think it’s quite the best end of the world as we know it on the list.

29. Earth 42

Home to the adorable, innocent world of the chibified Little League...secretly robots unwittingly enacting an endless stage play for the malevolent being known as the Empty Hand, running scenarios of his devising in preparation for a coming war with the rest of the multiverse. It’s a neat little multipurpose world, able to be played both as amusing contrast, or as parody whether light-hearted or cynical, in their endless ‘playtime’.

28. Earth 7

Formerly home to counterparts of the heroes of Earth 8, it was shattered by the Empty Hand’s forces and its desiccated cities made his throne, the zombie hordes that were once its champions his armies. The ‘Ultimate Marvel’ to Earth 8′s Marvel proper (and now Marvel Zombies), the idea of the broken remains of the cool version of the cool superhero universe as the lair of the ultimate evil has a certain appeal.

27. Earth 52

The last of the Earth 52s on this list, this newly added 53rd core Earth is home to Frank Miller’s Dark Knight books. Much as the reception to it over the years has become...mixed, at best (for my money Dark Knight III is the only one that’s not at least bad in a very interesting way, and even it still has its moments), the surprised generally positive reception to the most recent entry in Dark Knight Returns: The Golden Child suggests there’s still life in this oddball corner of the cosmos yet.

(Fun fact: this was Earth 31 in a previous version of the multiverse, and Morrison intended it to be included as such in Multiversity - hence why Earth 31 is made up of inky scratches on the Map - but Miller requested he not since he wanted to keep his domain separate from DC’s ongoing storylines. Instead he agreed later to Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s use of it in Dark Nights: Metal as DKR is famously Snyder’s favorite comic, bringing it in as Earth 52.)

26. Earth 47 aka Dreamworld

Where the Love Syndicate of Dreamworld dwells, baby: all is groovy. It’s incredibly specific in both era and theme, but a psychedelic universe with heroes to match invites tons of possibilities.

25. Earth 10 aka Earth X

It’s the Nazi Earth that sucks. It has superheroes who unnervingly are about as well-intentioned and effective as the standard set in the New Reischman, opposed by the few remaining dregs of the Freedom Fighters led by Uncle Sam; only their Kal-L, Overman, once Hitler’s weapon, truly understands the scope of the atrocities that led to their ‘utopia’, having grown a conscience too late and ever-aware that no feat in the present can ever redeem the oceans of blood on his hands. You can do horrifying introspective stuff with them as in their Multiversity chapter, you can tell Freedom Fighters stories like the recent miniseries, or you can just have the Justice League show up to fight the Nazi Justice League. A Nazi world is a standard one in multiverse stories for a reason, you don’t get easier targets.

24. Earth 5G

The DC universe that’s...sort of here and sort of not. Doomsday Clock and other upcoming stories appear to be shifting us over to this, but in most of DC’s line of titles the leap hasn’t taken place yet. As we haven’t seen the bench of successor heroes apparently primed to take over only so much can be judged, but the vast changes suggested by the new ‘official timeline’ that’s been leaked suggest a bizarre attempt at incorporating as many of their editorially-favored biggest hits as possible into a bizarre selective mishmash, without particularly serving the status quos any of the constituent characters said history is meant to bolster (with the exception of Wonder Woman, now framed as the first superhero, which would at least be interesting and a deserved bolster to her profile if there were any particular impression her new standing would be meaningfully followed-through on), while also not only reinstating the mutually destructive retcon of the JSA as preceding Superman, but taking the absurd extra step of actively presenting them as his inspiration. Of course we haven’t seen it in practice yet, and at the end of the day good stories will surely still be told here, but the foundations here are about as shaky as they’ve ever been for the ‘core’ DCU as a wholehearted capitulation to placing dotting all the i’s and crossing all the t’s over the actual narrative logistics of making a shared universe function smoothly.

23. Earth Negative Zero aka Betwixt

A world where those whose senses of self entire disintegrate fade away to seeking to feed on those still well-defined, this bears similarities to the realm of Limbo where ignored superheroes reside, but with just enough conceptual differences and a hellish, malleable twist that makes it the best thing anyone’s come up with to date to do with the Dark Multiverse.

22. Earth 48 aka Warworld

While its iconography is rooted of all things in castoff characters from Crisis On Infinite Earths and no-hopers from Countdown To Final Crisis, the actual conceit here of a world where literally everyone and everything is a superhero that operates by superhero rules, a world built by the New Gods as defenders of reality, is wide-open and tantalizing.

21. Earth 38

Another major shot at a DCU that aged in real time, this version has its own idiosyncrasies but far more of a sense of forward momentum and meaningful change, with the original Superman and Batman still leading the pack one way or another but successors to both them and the rest of the heroes truly stepping up. Also the predominant hero of the 21st century is Knightwing, the grandson of both Superman and Batman who has only partial Superman powers but also Batman training, which is just really cool.

20. Earth 3

The good ‘ol classic evil mirror universe, where strength is the only law, the forces of evil always win in the end no matter how bright the day may become, and thus the Crime Syndicate operates as it pleases. It’s never quite as interesting as you want it to be - its villains are largely one-note - but its warped societal and cosmic rules, and that each character has a handful of twists on the mythology of their counterparts rather than being an exact (if morally inverted) duplicate, means it could easily one day come to live up to its obvious potential in the right hands.

19. Earth 21

Here, most superheroes were forced into retirement after World War II by McCarthyist paranoia, but at the dawn of the 1960s the few remaining and a new generation are emboldened to step back into the light, spearheaded by the Justice League of America. DC: The New Frontier is a modern classic, with a direct standalone follow-up virtually out of the question; as it doesn’t quite lead into the world of the actual 1960s DC Comics either, its sole function in its capacity as a world in the multiverse is as a 60s ‘period piece’ Earth. Given that’s where most of the architecture of DC as we now know it was built however, that’s hardly a problem.

18. Earth 26 aka Earth C

Funny animals are fun, and in a superhero universe that means you get superhero funny animals, courtesy of Captain Carrot and his amazing Zoo Crew. What’s not to love?

17. Earth 22

While time has somewhat dimmed the acclaim that originally surrounded it, Kingdom Come and its tale of a Superman coming out of retirement alongside his allies to try and reign in an out-of-control new generation remains a landmark moment in the genre, and in many aspects still holds up. Unlike many stories of its stature this world has always played nice with the mainline universe in terms of guest appearances and crossovers, including works by the original creators Mark Waid and Alex Ross, and as the most iconic and conceptually expansive work to date set in a DC universe that has joined in the march of time, that makes it a prominent and useful one to have around.

16. The Antimatter Universe of Qward aka The Reversoverse aka the Anti-Verse

The original dark flipside of DC reality, this has occasionally also played home to the Crime Syndicate - and their best stories by far, to boot - but mainly serves as a home base to the Weaponeers of Qward and occasionally Sinestro. While largely unexplored it has a massively central place in DC’s cosmology and the birth of the multiverse, the glimpses of a society of pure evil in early Silver Age Green Lantern and JLA: Earth 2 are far more fun and interesting than anything seen in Earth 3′s history, it’s about to get even more room under Morrison to find definition, and as the ultimate mysterious Forbidden Realm of the DCU the possibilities could be essentially endless in the right hands.

15. Earth-1985 aka Earth One

The DC universe of 1956-1986, and the dragon an entire generation of creators have spent their livelihoods chasing as the ‘classic’ iteration, as evidenced by one of them flat-out confirming it still exists somewhere out there. While that makes it frequently redundant when the main DCU is trying hard to mimic its feel - a few divergent notes such as Maggin’s idiosyncratic take on latter-day Superman and its version of Jason Todd aside - the prospect of a DCU that remained in that mold forever to a greater or lesser extent even if time may have moved forward could, in principle, free the main universe to go off in wildly different directions, knowing this image of DC always exists in its own space to return to when so desired rather than actively turning the current status quo to face backwards.

14. Earth 17

The Atomic Knights of Justice quest across the radioactive landscape of Novamerika in a world decimated by nuclear was in 1963 in search of Earth 15′s Cosmic Grail, their only hope against the coming of Darkseid. A mashup of the Justice League with the protagonists of one of the most fascinatingly bizarre comics of DC’s Silver Age in the Atomic Knights, a mythic quest, and most relevantly “What if Fallout had superheroes?” leaves this feeling like it’s just waiting for its moment to shine.

13. Earth 8 aka Angor

Known across the rest of the multiverse as the protagonists of the Major movies and comics (as opposed to the sub-imprint Essential Major reflecting Earth 7), in actuality the non-actionable champions of Angor - the Retaltiators, the G-Men, the Future Family, and The Bug, among others - are as real as any other superheroes, and while they struggle under the weight of both mistrust by the general public and frequent in-fighting, they’ve thus far protected their world from threats global, universal, and multiversal alike. The Big Two having stand-ins for each other is a longstanding tradition for good reasons: it not only allows for crossovers where the legal stars don’t align (and adds an extra fun shock of recognition whenever the reader realizes what’s happening), but provides each of them an ongoing version of those archetypes to play with within the confines of their own narrative, whether as contrasts or bending them to fit the tone of a very different shared universe than they were originally created for.

12. Earth 16 aka #earthme

The world where every sidekick, super-son, successor, and short-lived ‘new generation - of HERO!’ at last seize their moment in the sun...in a world already saved by their predecessors, with little left to do but lap up lives of super-celebrity and wish for one, just one little alien invasion or immortal tyrant to justify their existences for them. The best of DC’s futuristic/what-if-time-mattered alternate Earths in my opinion, taking to its logical conclusion the notion as stated by Morrison in interviews that as the Justice League will stick around as long as there are evils that need fighting, the ever-present promise of the torch being passed could only ever truly, permanently take place in a world where the job was already redundant. Playing as it does with in-universe history, real-life publishing realities, celebrity culture, generational divides, and the question of what being a superhero even means sans the usual confrontational justifications, it’s by its nature only going to become more expansive and interesting a commentary as time goes by and the regular DCU goes through its cycles of reboots, rebirths, and returns to form.

11. Pocket Universe 54471

Exactly what you see: Superman made a little pocket universe a half mile wide to go fishing in and he was gonna take Bruce and Dick there for the former’s bachelor party, and he knows about and/or created at least 54470 others. It’s absolutely delightful not only in its own right, but as an opening of the door to what the multiverse can mean in DC comics as a sci-fi idea generator beyond riffs on existing properties, while still being presented with a distinctly DC sense of playfulness.

10. Earth 45 aka Earth 45™

The origin of one of the best Superman villains of all time in Superdoomsday - the Superman idea in a world without him brought to life but twisted by committee into a murderous living brand - a horrifying corporatocracy standing for all Superman and company are meant to stand against, and an enduring threat with the world still in shackles and those in power still able to dream to life whatever vision they please of absolute power to be wielded in their name.

9. Earth 36 aka Terra

Justice 9, the defenders of Terra - or I suppose Justice 7 now after the losses of Optiman and Red Racer, though how long does that matter in a superhero universe? - is the most interesting of the direct analogue groups for my money. Technically speaking they’re another twice-removed set like 34 and 35, standing in for the heroes of Big Bang Comics, but given my understanding is that there’s no major “Like the DC heroes, BUT” twist in that book the way Astro City and Supreme have other than a retro ‘good old days’ bent (which definitely isn’t the case here with at least two queer members), Justice 9 basically function as direct analogues for the Justice League...in the same comics as the Justice League. To me, that’s actually fascinating: one of the most useful elements of stand-in characters like this is the ability to tap into the iconic power of archetypes without the familiarity surrounding the actual figures, in the way Planetary for instance uses just enough distance from the source material to make a couple dozen decades-old pop culture touchstones feel completely new, and this implements that approach to the material to the DC characters with heroes who can actually themselves team up with DC proper. As many approaches as could be taken with that though, that potential alone probably wouldn’t be enough to shoot it this high up the list if not for a major additional factor: in the same way that in the old-school DC universe the heroes of Earth-1 had comics reflecting the adventures of the heroes of Earth-2 long before learning they were real in another universe, DC Comics are published on Earth 36. Aside from the neat trick of putting our leads in the same position as the Golden Age heroes, it means Justice 9 grew up with the Justice League as their heroes in the same way as us the audience before becoming heroes themselves, and then they grew up to learn they were real. These folks absolutely deserve to become multiverse standbys.

8. Earth 51

The Earth where all Jack Kirby’s ideas live as a single cohesive world and adventure. No further justification is needed.

7. Earth 13

A world of occult danger where DC’s traditionally superheroic magical figures such as Zatanna and Deadman are given the full Vertigo horror treatment, while the more intimidating and morally dubious figures such as Etrigan and John Constantine get logos and codenames. Not only an expansion but an offputting inversion of one of DC’s most acclaimed corners, this oddball bunch could bounce off of the capes and tights crowd as easily as your Shadowpacts and Justice League Darks, in ways no other team from any corner of the multiverse could.

6. Earth 20

Pulp champions of a 21st century that remains aesthetically moored in the early 20th, of the handful of Earths converting DC standbys into different genre territory in the local 52 the homeworld of the Society of Superheroes hits hardest, given the role the likes of Doc Savage and The Shadow played in that time shaping the conventions of superheroes as we know them. Add the wealth of concepts presented in their oneshot and the decision to hew away from the traditional Justice League riffs of parallel Earths, and of all the truly new worlds introduced in Multiversity, Earth 20 is the one that most feels like it could support an ongoing all its own.

5. Earth 29 aka Htrae

You gotta have Bizarro World. You just gotta.

4. Earth 33 aka Earth Prime

The in-universe representation of our very own pale blue dot. Whether it’s the birthplace of Superboy Prime where assorted DC creators had to deal with a visiting Flash and Superman throughout the 60s and 70s, meta games with the various incarnations of Ultra/Ultraa, a looming threat yet also victim in need of rescue through the eyes of Justice Incarnate, or the unwitting home of the ‘Superman’ or ‘Batman’ of Kurt Busiek’s off-center takes on the characters in Secret Identity and Creature of the Night, over the years DC has shown a decent amount of restraint in not going back to this particular well too often unless someone has a really clever tale to tell, and as a result it has maybe the single best batting average of all the ‘parallel Earths’ that have been regularly returned to by DC over the years. Give yourselves a hand, folks!

3. Earth 5 aka Thunderworld

Home not to ‘Shazam’, but Captain Marvel and the Marvel Family in all their glory, a technicolor world playing by the rules set down by Otto Binder and company where a superhero can literally battle planets and the most dangerous villain of all may be a very, very mean worm with glasses, a place of dream logic and childish innocence even by the standards of superhero comics. Captain Marvel at his best is one of DC’s most iconically potent players yet many seem to agree that much of his woes in recent years have come down to trying to find a unique space for him in the DCU proper. While I don’t know that it’s at all impossible to make that work, it’s certainly true that Marvel as he was originally presented doesn’t quite make sense in that world, whereas back in his own he keeps a flavor entirely unique to himself and his partners, whether for solo adventures or teamups with the heroes of the other worlds, playing it straight or examining some of the unsettling implications established by Thunderworld or finding a new way to make it work. Much like Bizarro World, it’s simply a locale the place doesn’t quite feel whole without.

2. Earth 25 (?)

While I’m a bit dubious on it definitely being Earth 25 in the core 52 based on interpretation of an offhanded line from Mr. Terrific (it has a multiverse all its own!), the fact of the matter is that America’s Best Comics came roaring out of the gate as proof of its own title, and basically didn’t stop until it ended. A couple after-the-fact Tom Strong miniseries (containing perhaps the most singularly cowardly hack move in the history of shared universe comics in undoing the end of Promethea) can’t detract from the core ABC lineup being made up of some of the most singularly clever, gorgeous, and heartfelt superhero titles to hit the stands, pretty much the platonic ideal of what you want books like these to look like. If this universe can hang around in any capacity at all until someone god willing picks them up again in a big way, it’s a win in my book.

1. Earth 0 aka Prime Earth

The extant version of the main DCU for at least a little longer, it really does feel like more than just about any version before it - at least for my money - they finally got all their ducks in a row, albeit right before blowing everything to hell. Most of the stories you really want to still have some sort of weight for the major characters are still in play to be built on, and most of the stories that clearly needed to be dropped are dropped. The cosmology’s fleshed out and expanding, the big names mostly work as they should ideally work while still heading into new territory, the JSA is mysteriously somehow around in the past without interfering with the primacy of Superman and the Justice League as the first known superheroes (a mystery that will never be resolved now due to the current reboot; damn shame) and the Legion of Superheroes have a new coat of paint, and there’s room for stories cosmically massive and intimately personal and utterly bizarre throughout the line rather than there being a single overriding idea of what these books should be. It may not be the perfect DC Universe by any means, but it’s a real, real damn good one, and of course without that thing, none of the rest of these universes would have been there in the first place.

#DC Comics #Multiversity #Opinion

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joanaflbarbosa · 4 years

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How Therapy Works: What it Means to "Process an Issue"

People are often advised to go to therapy to “process” some issue. But what does “processing an issue” actually mean? And why and how does this “processing” help?

For starters, we may define “a process” as a series of actions or operations taken toward achieving a particular end. “To process,” hence, is to perform a series of operations on something in order to change (or preserve) it—processing milk to make cheese or yogurt, for example. In therapy, these operations are performed through the therapist-client interaction, and they may take several forms.

First, processing an issue in therapy may mean working to place it inside a coherent life narrative. We experience our life as a story, of which we are both protagonists and narrators. And we make ourselves known to others in this manner, too. If someone wants to genuinely get to know you, giving them a list of facts and numbers describing you will not suffice. They will want to hear your story. For human beings, processing information involves organizing it in narrative form.

In this framework, shocking or traumatic events damage us by disrupting our stories, mangling our established narratives of self and the world. They do this by refusing to fit into our established narrative (“This is not me; this can’t be happening”) or by flooding and overwhelming it (“I can’t stop thinking about it; nothing else matters”). To “process an issue” in this case is when therapy helps us to either integrate the traumatic event into our life's narrative or pull our story out from under the weight and confusion of the trauma.

Second, processing an issue in therapy often means bringing past events or habits into present consciousness and analyzing them using our current tools and knowledge, resulting in fresh insight. One reason this is helpful is because difficult events often lead to avoidance. Places, emotions, and memories associated with the traumatic event are avoided, and thus they fail to undergo the constant reevaluation and examination that would have updated their meaning in light of new knowledge and experience. Thus, the meanings of these difficult events remain frozen in a past perspective. This means that the only reactions in our repertoire regarding these events are our original ones, which by now may be dated, ill-fitting, or suboptimal. If a dog bit you when you were 4 years old, leading you to hate dogs and carefully avoid any contact with them, whenever you do finally encounter a dog, you will have the terrified reaction of a traumatized 4-year-old, which you no longer are; likewise, the dog you are responding to is the one from your childhood, not the one in front of you now. Such a rigidly disproportional reaction is, by definition, neurotic, and neither healthy nor helpful.

Another example: Children often experience their parents’ divorce in real time as somehow their fault, and thus may harbor guilt and self-doubt related to the event even many years later. Observing the events of a divorce from an adult perspective allows the client to realize that their parents’ divorce was not their fault, and that the childish expectation that their behavior could somehow have mended their parents’ rift was both developmentally understandable, even inevitable, but also factually incorrect, even absurd, when viewed from the perch of the grown-up perspective.

“Processing” in this context often includes not only updating and reexamining the meaning of old memories and emotions, but also developing a new language with which to describe, experience, and understand the past and present. Moving from a language of powerlessness (“I’m a victim”) to a language of resilience (“I’m a survivor”) is one example. Moving from self-demeaning, perfectionist language (“I made a mistake; I’m stupid, deserving of punishment”) to a language of empathy and self-nurture (“I made a mistake; I’m human, deserving of compassion”) is another.

A third way to understand the notion of “processing an issue” is through the prism of cognitive developmental theory, specifically the seminal work of the pioneering cognitive theorist Jean Piaget. According to Piaget, the child is akin to a scientist, exploring her environment and experimenting with its properties in order to gain an understanding of the world and its laws. As the child experiments with objects, she learns about the character and attributes of reality itself. The child thus develops cognitive “schemas,” the building blocks of her mental architecture. Piaget defined a schema as, "a cohesive, repeatable action sequence possessing component actions that are tightly interconnected and governed by a core meaning."

In other words, schemas are organized ways of interacting with the world. Through experience, our schemas over time become increasingly numerous, at once larger and more specific, and they help guide our movement in the world. Having acquired a "restaurant schema," for example, allows me to know how to behave and what to expect in any restaurant, even one I had never visited before. Because I have a "party schema," I know a party when I see it, I know how to behave at a party, and I have a set of party-related expectations by which to evaluate whether the party was any good.

According to Piaget, schemas develop through two cognitive processes: assimilation and accommodation. We assimilate when we use an existing schema to understand novel information. Accommodation happens when the new information cannot fit our current schema, and we must then adjust our schema to fit the information. My “mammals” schema may easily assimilate a lion glimpsed for the first time. But upon encountering a whale, I may need to change my schema to accommodate this new information. If your wife gives birth to a new baby boy, assimilating him into your "male family member" schema will be easy. Yet if your adult daughter decides to transition to become a man, then you may need to accommodate your old "male family member" schema to include transgender persons.

From this perspective, processing an issue in therapy amounts to an effort to assimilate and accommodate new information, to improve our ability to understand and move in the world more seamlessly and effectively.

Fourth, processing an issue in therapy requires that we engage it, think and talk about it. In doing so, we are practicing de facto exposure with regard to the emotions attached to the issue. Exposure is a therapy technique that lets a client face up to a scary or uncomfortable situation. The goal of exposure is to achieve physiological habituation, psychological mastery, and behavioral skill. Physiologically feeling your emotions and remembering your memories will result in nervous system habituation and, with that, lower anxiety. Psychologically confronting difficult memories will lead to a sense of agency, courage, and achievement. Behaviorally learning to feel, identify, express, and discuss one’s emotions will lead to improved communications and interpersonal skill. Moreover, with exposure, the client learns new associations regarding the issue at hand. (Through interacting with dogs, I begin to associate them with playfulness and companionship rather than with the pain of the initial attack.)

Processing in this context can be viewed as a way to familiarize a person with unfamiliar territory. When we process an issue, we learn the terrain, thereby becoming less afraid of it and more able to navigate within it.

Working for many years in this area, the influential psychologist Edna Foa has proposed that fear is represented in memory as a cognitive structure, a program to escape danger (e.g., you see a lion; your heart races; you run away). The fear structure however, may in the course of one’s life become faulty, acquiring inaccurate associations between benign stimuli and exaggerated fear response (e.g., you see a lion at the zoo; your heart races; you run away). In Foa’s system, emotional processing, achieved through exposure practice, involves activating a person’s fear structure and then introducing new information that is incompatible with earlier faulty associations (e.g., hanging around the lion’s cage is safe; your heartbeat will eventually come down; you don’t have to run).

Fifth, processing an issue in therapy means bringing the issue into the light of another’s benevolent attention. Such interpersonal light is often, as it were, the best mental disinfectant. We are social animals, and we define ourselves, and our circumstances, in part by others’ responses. For example, if you kill your enemies in socially approved ways (say, by becoming a soldier and going to war), then you become a hero, but if you kill your enemies in a way that is not socially approved (you poison your nasty neighbors), then you have become a murderer. It’s all about how others see and judge what you have done. Receiving a 5 percent raise at work will make you feel good, but only until you find that all your coworkers have received a 10 percent raise. Your mood is determined not by what happens to you, but by how it compares to the experience of others. For good or bad, social connectivity is our foundational psychological currency. As Alfred Adler argued a long time ago, in the human psychological calculus, social connection is akin to health. Social isolation is akin to illness.

The engine of therapy is the human connection at its core. In this context, processing an issue means communicating it inside a safe, supportive interpersonal space. A secret loses much of its power to paralyze and poison us internally when shared with others who are capable of resonating with our experience, accepting and understanding it. In the act of discussing difficult matters, we become less alone, less opaque to ourselves, and thus less fragile. We manifest and build our strength when we express and own our weakness.

In sum, therapy may help you “process” a difficult issue by helping to place it inside a coherent life narrative; by reviewing past events using current tools and knowledge; by adjusting your cognitive schemas to include new information; by helping you confront previously avoided uncomfortable feelings in order to increase your competence in managing them; and by bringing the issue into the light of another’s benevolent and empathetic attention, thus reducing shame, fear, and isolation.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/insight-therapy/201801/how-therapy-works-what-it-means-process-issue

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