#But sometimes I feel like it’s because that small group likes to imagine Batman comics as this wholesome thing

[shokuto]

You can tell when an author hates the Joker 🤣

#Now obviously joker fatigue is an internet thing—in the real world his R rated solo movie that didn’t feature Batman made a billion dollars #But sometimes I feel like it’s because that small group likes to imagine Batman comics as this wholesome thing #And the Joker’s appearances completely dispel that lol #Or maybe it’s not that and they really do just wanna be different iono

[brawltogethernow]

@mirrorfalls​ submitted: Came across this while searching for James Bond’s scrambled-eggs recipe (long story). Your thoughts?

~~

But did you find James Bond’s scrambled eggs recipe?

In this article, Scocca laments his inability to find accessible, lighthearted superhero comics suitable to read with his young son, while also demonstrating a mysterious aversion to looking at DC and Marvel’s lines of comics for children, which is where the accessible, lighthearted superhero comics suitable for reading with young children are. He wants his elementary schooler to be able to safely have the run of all superhero media so he doesn’t have to touch the yucky baby books.

This is not an industry-wide crisis. This is just one dude who got paid to write an article where he accidentally exposed one of his personal hangups.

The child headed toward the trade paperbacks of Marvel and D.C. superhero titles on the side wall […] a few steps in front of me. […] Is he with you? a clerk asked me. I said he was. You know, the clerk said, we have a kids’ section. The clerk gestured backward, at a few shelves near the entrance. I said, Thanks, we know and tried throwing in a little shrug, as the kid kept going.

You can’t just turn a seven-year-old child loose in a comic-book store to look at the superhero comic books. […] My seven-year-old really wanted to see that last Avengers movie […] that is, he wished it were a movie he could see, but he understood that it was, instead, a movie designed to scare and sadden him—a movie actively hostile to people like him.

They have a children’s section. Because comics are a medium suitable for stories for everybody, and they are sold in comic book shops, which have sections, like bookstores. You can use this organization to find books that you know in advance are suitable for children. What goes in that category is determined by industry professionals. This area will be bigger the bigger the shop is. These comics are not lower quality that titles from the main lines. They are actually slightly better-written on average.

Your local comic book shop has considerately wrapped Empowered in a plastic bag, so your child will not be drawn in by a colorful superhero and accidentally read a graphic scene. If you think your kid might find a memoir about internment camps upsetting, it is your job to notice them picking up They Called Us Enemy and read the blurb on the back before you let them have it. This comic adults are meant to read is in a comic book shop because that is where comics are sold. Not every public place is supposed to be Disneyland.

Movies have ratings systems. If you do not want your child to watch a PG-13 movie, you will find that most superhero cartoons are for children. They are about the same characters. Some are quite good! I really enjoyed Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. Your child may like Avengers Assemble. At least I think that’s right. I’m always mixing those titles around.

This is a deeply weird bias for Scocca to casually demonstrate, because he identifies in the article that real childishness is striving for empty maturity.

He compares an old comic,

[…]a 1966 Spider-Man comic in which Spider-Man meets, fights, and defeats the Rhino; participates in a running argument between John Jameson and J. Jonah Jameson about his heroism; buys a motorcycle; breaks up with his first girlfriend, Betty Brant; flirts with Gwen Stacy; and reluctantly agrees to let Aunt May take him to meet her friend Mrs. Watson’s niece, Mary Jane.

and a new comic,

[…]a 21st century comic book in which Thor, brooding in a Katrina-destroyed New Orleans, beats up Iron Man. He also yells at Iron Man a lot about some incomprehensibly convoluted set of grievances, including involuntary cloning, that he believes Iron Man perpetrated against him while he was dead(?), and then summons some other Norse god from the beyond somehow for reasons having something to do with real estate. I think. Where the 1966 comic is zippy and fun and complete, the whole contemporary one is muddled and lugubrious and seems to constitute a tiny piece of a seemingly endless plot arc—simultaneously apocalyptic and inert.

and concludes that the edgier comic is actually less mature. This is true. (This is not news about mediocre comics.)

It also has nothing to do with either comic being child-friendly, the article’s nominal thesis, except in the sense that ASM #41 (yes, I eyeballed that from that summary, yes I am just showing off now) is better written, making it more everyone-friendly. It also has practically more space dedicated to word balloons than art and is about a college student juggling girl problems and a part-time job with a tyrannical boss. But the immature one, as Scocca points out, is dour.

These are both teenagery issues, separated only by quality. It’s true that lots of new comics published by the big 2 are bad in the specific way Scocca describes here, taking themselves too seriously and hauled down by associated stories instead of buoyed by them. Some are not! Some titles from these companies’ main continuities are zippy, contained, and child friendly. Give your child The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl! Or if you like vintage comics so much better, why don’t you…buy some?

The books on the kid’s rack are good and fun and totally suitable for parents to read with their children without wanting to scoop their eyeballs out. Scocca cites the Batman ‘66 comics as the brightly colored, tightly written all ages solution to his problem about sharing superhero stories with his son. My local comic shop stores this title in the kid’s section. I am glad that Scocca’s does not, as he seems to have a peculiar aversion to looking for comics to read with his son there.

Scocca cites Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse as a superhero movie he could watch with his kids. (I was surprised when this line made it sound like he has several. I don’t want to assume the other one isn’t in this article because they’re a girl, but I very much am assuming that.) Great! Go to the kid’s section and look for Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man. It’s a fun, zippy title directly inspired by ITSV where Miles, Gwen, and Peter superhero together. It’s much more tightly written than most of the various Spider-Verse comics, which are ambitiously messy ubercrossovers. You may not want to give those to children because they include murder and so on, but also you just have the choice between the two as an adult reader deciding how much continuity you want to deal with. Adventures is one of the only titles I would buy on sight before corona. The kid comic rack is a reliable place to take a break from How Comics Get Sometimes regardless of how old you are.

This article makes me feel quarrelsome. Maybe it’s that it doesn’t seem like exploration of a single idea so much as a loosely grouped bundle of things to kvetch about. Maybe it’s that the experience of getting into superheroes that Scocca describes experiencing, projects his seven-year-old son will experience, and from which he extrapolates a metaphorical microcosm of the history of the genre is completely alien to me.

Comic books [and] comic-book movies—are […] trapped in their imagined audience’s own awful passage from childhood to adolescence. A seven-year-old has a clean […] appreciation of superheroes. They like hero comics because the comics have heroes: bold, strong, vividly colored good guys to fight off the bad guys and make the world safe.

But seven-year-olds stop being seven. […] They become 13-year-olds, defensively trying to learn how to develop tastes about tastes.

The 13-year-old wants many things from comics, but the overarching one is that they want to prove that they’re not some seven-year-old baby anymore. They want gloomy heroes, miserable heroes, heroes who would make a seven-year-old feel bad. (Also boobs. They want boobs.)

Not because of the boobs line, although that does illicit an eyeroll that this gloomy thinkpiece is fretting over preserving the superhero experience of little boys who resemble the little boy the writer was while casually dismissing everyone else. I was one of those unlikable little seven-year-olds with a college reading level and the impression that maintaining it was the crux of my worth. I only read Books - distinguished media you could club someone with. I have a formative memory of pausing, enraptured, in front of a poster for Spider-Man 3, preparing to say that it looked pretty cool, and being beaten to the punch by my mother making a disparaging comment about how the movie was trash. It wasn’t out yet, but it was a superhero movie. That meant it was for loud, brainless children.

That was the total of my childhood experience with superheroes, excluding being the unwilling audience to incessant renditions of “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells” that left me wondering why in god’s name Batman’s sidekick was named Robin. I certainly never visited a comic book shop. I got into TvTropes, which got me into webcomics, which got me following David Willis, who got me into Ask Chris at ComicsAlliance, which led to me rewarding myself for studying like a demon for the AP tests with three volumes of Waid’s Daredevil, pitched as a return to the character being colorful and swashbuckling. I was seven…teen.

This is of the same thread as Scocca’s point that immaturity is running from childish things. It leaves me baffled that he doesn’t follow that maturity is embracing them.

I will disclose here that while I think it was dumb I had to overcome my upbringing’s deeply embedded shame associated with enjoying arbitrarily defined lowbrow media and children being childish, I think it’s fine that I was allowed largely unchecked access to technically age-inappropriate content. In my limited experience, content small children are too young for is also content they’re too young to understand, so it kind of just bounces off of them, and what actually ends up terrorizing them is unpredictable collages of impressions that strike out at them from content deemed perfectly child-friendly. I would not forbid a seven-year-old I was in charge of from seeing an MCU movie unless I had a reason to believe that specific child would not take it well. These are emotionally low-stakes bubblegum films. It will probably be easier to socialize with other kids if they have seen them.

But then, when I picture being in charge of a hypothetical child, I usually imagine this being the case because they are related to me, and the pupal stage in my family strongly resembles Wednesday Addams. ALL children love death and violence, though, right?? This isn’t a joke point. I know it looks like a joke point.

The MCU thing seems especially weird in light of the article’s particular focus on Spider-Man, which is the kiddie line of the MCU, even if they refused to waver from their usual formula enough to get a lower rating. Though I am more inclined to describe it as “preying on the young” than “child-friendly”.

(MCU movies are increasingly dubious propaganda, but I would not judge them in front of a child who wanted to watch them for that reason, just in case this led to them partaking of them without me the second they were old enough to and then they grew up to run a blog about them while our relationship suffered because they didn’t feel like it was safe to talk to me about their interests…Mom.)

I tried to overcome the philosophy of letting anyone read anything while compiling this handful of mostly-newish superhero recs for the road that anyone can read. (Handily, I have been in spitting distance of being hired as a comic shop clerk enough to have thought about it before):

For actual children:

Marvel Adventures Spider-Man (the new one is reminiscent of ITSV, the old one is more like 616) any DC/Archie crossover, Archie’s Superteens The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (for bookish children who think they’re too good for comics and adults afraid of the kid’s section) Teen Titans Go (even if you hate the show) Superman Smashes the Klan

For teens:

Ms. Marvel Young Avengers (volume 2) Unbelievable Gwenpool Batman: Gotham Adventures Teen Titans Go (the tie-in comic based off the old show was also called this)

Here are a bunch of relevant C. S. Lewis quotes.

#me every time i read a comic book article by a rag not exclusively about comic books: i know more than you. #marvel #spidey #DCU #MCU critical #mirrorfalls #asks answered #submission #unearthed this and bashed it out in one sitting ... i have not been working on it since you sent it last year XD

[deanky]

#Riddlerpost

Cringe this may be btu I will make it anyways OK? In discorp I said I coudl make a whole post about random specific thigns I would want in my ideal interpretation of the Riddler and I’m a man of my word sometimes so I am going to do it. Including both major things and icnredibly dumb minor details. Putting this under cut because I seriously did not realize how long this would get LOL

His original name WAS Edward Nashton and he changed it to Nygma both because of da riddle love and to distance himself from horrible family which he does have, and I think it specifically should be spelled Nygma because he would value the extra .2 seconds it would take for someone to notice that being a pun. However even if it makes it more obvious when said in conjunction with last name he actually does NOT hate being called Eddie specifically. He loves it because it makes it so there’s 2 different ways to do the enigma thing.

He had pretty awful childhood, like realistically awful. Horrible parents bad marriage etc his mom treated him better than his dad but the difference became more narrow over time probably. :( He did not to well in school, he hoped that doing somethign really well would help & entered contest thing. I think he did cheat and feels like he deserved further horrible family thigns due to it but did not he was only a lad! 

 hated school. Did not go to college. Intelligent but not emotionally... he DOES have OCD and it is like compulsive to turn eveyrhting into funny puzzles and games and of course riddles, but it doesn’t stop him from doing ones on purpose of course, and he does like to tell really dumb jokes liek all the ones in the 60s show (BTW he should always and forever do the funny Frank Gorshin laugh). And he is fully autistic. He is so autistic. Believe this. Believe me. He gets along with other villains his like constant compulsive insertion of riddles into things that don’t or shouldn’t have them can cause strife but like everyone in Batman is TWISTED they get it they’re a jolly group terrorizing the town together. United Underworld baby. U.U. should be in every piece of Batman media BTW, unrelated.

The important thign though is! He is a tragic guy deep down he has a sad story behind him all but he is silly. Whatever the ‘present’ is like aroudn the time any actual Batman comics happen, he should be silly. All these thigns should not stop him from being silly. He is egotistical for sure but not USUALLY to the point of like, being Arkham levels of rude. But it can happen. He mostly just like... He does his FUNNYCRIMES to prove himself as being smart, but there usually isn’t even all that malice involved unless it’s like, the one BTAS episode he really wants to get revenge on a specific person. IdealRiddler not as suave as BTAS Riddler though. he most resembles him in that one scene where all the girls are like ‘ahhh so smart bro’ and he’s like “well heh guess you say that to all the geniuses!”

I don’t think he’d ever really intentionally kill anyone. He’s like - he’s not ineffective at the thigns he does but he’s not an incredibly harmful villain. That said he can put together whole insane mastermind plots but they probably won’t be things he really puts into effect a lot because he doesn’t really want or need to. He’s definitely like When is a Door-type Riddler in my head, he doesn’t know where it all went wrong he just wants to have fun and do incredibly silly crimes and it scares him so bad to see everyone else actually killing people even if the Joker was probably already doing it forever

And BTW he is fully gay he is fully homosexual and in a relationship with the Penguin. But this is important - he is completely chaste. He definitely needs to be incredibly gay that’s an integral part of his character. To me. And he does have 1 billion different increasingly silly and flashy Riddler suits like Jim Carrey style you know it and loves funny campy silyl stuff and he definitely has a huge collection of big novelty objects used in ads and like carnivals and stuff. And he is like 5′3 at most. BTW. He is short. He needs to be short OK? He needs ot be an incredibly small man. *Looking at you pleadingly as I say this*

He used to have long hair when he was young but by the time he actually is da Riddler it;s short and he is balding. he tries to hide it under his hat but you can tell you can always tell. He is not like fully shaved bald and tattooed or anything like that, but he is balding. Sometimes he has a mustache I think the only Riddler that’s had a mustache was when he was briefly portrayed by John Astin for part of Batman 1966. But I like to imagine him with a mustache. I think it works and BTW I’m insane.

Like, every single job that he’s been portrayed as having before is something he’d gone through before being da riddler, he’s worked at a carnival he’s worked on video games he’s done it all. He definitely collected all the carnival stuff. I think specifically though aside from probably having bad boss like in BTAS his V.G. work went unappreciated because it was all like, incredibly obscure thigns on ZX Spectrum or FMV games or somehting and he didn’t get to contribute that much to them because he always ended up coming up with extremely ambitious plans for developign them that would be like impossible for a game at the time. He would definitely run a really weird looking web page with all the little weird easter eggs he put into stuff showcased. OK. That’s all I can think of right now. I might add more. But for now I’m just going to smile sweetly

#q:what killed the dinosaurs a:the ice age #batman #riddler

[tessatechaitea]

Justice League #2 (1987)

I didn't know Orgazmo was in this comic book.

Once again, I'm surprised by how quickly an old comic book I read years ago gets to some of the stories I think of as major story arcs. These pseudo-Marvel heroes on the cover are the precursor to The Extremists whom I remember as major antagonists to this team. I don't know if The Extremists appear any time soon though. First, the Justice League have to deal with these peaceniks. Only after they've become allies with Blue Jay and Bald Thor and Brown Scarlet Witch do the Extremists finally come to destroy Earth. The issue begins with Kevin Maguire going, "Look at these lips. You like these lips and this mouth. Well, you're gonna get lots of them! Even Maxwell Lord gets some lovely pouty face slugs!"

I'm sorry for referring to lips as "face slugs."

Batman's main goal is to get to the bottom of how Doctor Light became a member of his League. He'd already hired Black Canary so why would he need another woman in the group? Isn't a ratio of eight men to one woman good enough?! I'm counting Oberon in the number of men just to make it seem even more lopsided. Although Doctor Fate has already ditched (and will become a woman soon anyway, right?!) so, not including Oberon, that makes the ratio six to one! Getting better! Plus add Doctor Light since she was on the cover and has somehow forced her way in, a ratio of six to two! That's three to one if you reduce it! Which is practically one to one if you squint and put your fingers in your ears and go, "Nyah nyah nyah! Everything is already equal! Why are women fighting for more than they already have?!" Anyway, my point was: Fucking Batman. What a monster!

I wouldn't think a sleeveless vest with a wacky collar layered on top of a turtle neck with elbow length white gloves would look so cool!

I prefer to concentrate on Guy's outfit rather than his misogyny and lack of intelligence and terrible haircut. In this issue is an advert for the all new Dr. Fate four issue mini-series by Giffen and DeMatteis. So that solves the mystery of why he was sort of included in the first issue. He was basically a commercial. Jack Ryder's gossip television show has been trying to portray the new Justice League in a negative light because that's the kind of reporting that gets eyeballs and raises revenue. Maybe if people's lives weren't so boring, they wouldn't eat up all that hot take drama shit from people like Jack Ryder and Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham. I suppose I shouldn't wonder how rational people watch that shit because most people, rational or not, are just looking for somebody to repeat their inner views back to them. And Fox News has honed that ability to a razor edge. Sometimes I imagine Sean Hannity doesn't believe the stupid shit he comes up with but then I remember my high school and college friend Soy Rakelson and I think, "Oh yeah. He actually believes that shit."

I recently found this letter by Soy from our college paper. It's been in my head since 1994 when I could not fucking believe he wrote it. Poor, poor discriminated Soy, self-declared "Defender of Western Civilization."

One small note about Soy: maybe a month or two after Trump became president, he quietly disappeared from Facebook for good. I won't speculate on why but I suppose if I spent some time trying, I'd probably come up with his actual reasoning. After Guy throws another tantrum that has to be quelled by Batman, Doctor Fate gets a scene of his own! I guess he didn't completely disappear from the comic book. At least not yet. Although, if Doctor Fate sticks around for a dozen or more issues, I'm going to feel even more shitty than I already feel about my memory. Doctor Fate visits some purple haired guy who sees everything as gray and warns him to take back up his destiny. I don't know who it is. The only purple haired character I remember is Pariah. But what is his destiny other than to watch worlds burn? Also, he has other selves across the world reaching into people's souls. Is he Jim Corrigan? I have no idea! Meanwhile, Blue Jay, Wandjina, and Silver Sorceress (whose costume is brown), from Earth-Marvel-Parodies (or some other new world, I suppose. In 1987, there was just one Earth left, right?), are busy dismantling Bialya's nuclear arsenal. Bialya is one of DC's evil countries. Sometimes you don't want to write a story that exists in a gray world; you just want pure black and white, good and evil. When that's the case, you have the heroes battle Bialyans! Blue Jay and friends are here to rid the Earth of all their nuclear weapons so as to save it from the fate that befell their homeworld. The leader of Bialya sees an opportunity for mischief and power and the destruction of America, so he greets them with open arms. Rumaan Harjavti, the leader of Bialya, teams up with Blue Jay and Friends to help guide them to other nations who have nuclear weapons that need to be disposed of. The first country he sends them to is Israel. Probably because it's close by and not because he has ulterior racist motives. Guy Gardner hears the news and is thrilled because he gets a boner imagining a world where only Ronald Reagan has control over a nuclear arsenal.

When he first mentioned Ronnie, I thought it was a mistake. I forgot how old this comic book is!

Batman is all, "We're going to stop these peaceniks from making the world a safer place!" Because if there's one story that can't be told enough it's the one where we all learn a lesson about how the ends do not justify the means, no matter how amazing the ends will be and how messy the means are. I suppose the ends justify the means if the means are compassionately thought out and done with respect for all parties' opinions! So maybe sometimes the ends justify the means? Or does the statement not work that way because the point is that you can't just make that blanket statement. Like, do you murder five million people to save one little girl's life? Probably not! Or do I have it completely wrong and everybody thinks the ends do justify the means? Anyway, Batman doesn't think world peace should be achieved through the destruction of other people's dangerous property. It's basically the same story that season one of Stargirl just told. The Injustice Society of America wants to make the world a leftist dreamscape but at the cost of 25 million lives or something. And the Justice Society is all, "Well, we really like your manifesto. We agree with all of these points. But maybe the cost is too high?" So in the end, I was left supporting the Injustice Society of America because I guess I believe the ends do justify the means?! Also, I'm fairly certain I don't like a quarter of the population so good riddance? But also maybe the entire season of Stargirl was some sort of anti-leftist parable about how you have to let people come to their own decisions about saving the world because forcing them to get on board is rude and it's better if climate change destroys the world than to force one person to believe that manmade climate change is an actual thing? I had philosophical whiplash by the end of Stargirl season one. One character is all, "Murder is wrong!" and then goes and murders somebody and another character is all "I need revenge because this monster killed my parents!" and then he gets all merciful and lets Solomon Grundy go so he can kill other parents and the Injustice Society is all, "We'll kill indiscriminately to make the world a better place for our rich white kids!" and then their all, "A lot of rich white people's kids are going to die from our plan but that's okay because they're not ours." Also, the worst part of the show, the part of the show that I cannot forgive, is how they introduced us to Doctor Mid-Nite's sad owl back at the abandoned JSA headquarters and Luke Wilson is all, "Yeah, he's just waiting for Doctor Mid-Nite to return. It's sad, right? He just hangs out here alone super sad." And then Beth becomes the new Doctor Mid-Nite and you keep expecting the owl to befriend her but the owl never appears, ever again. Every episode, when the sad owl didn't appear onscreen, I was reminded of the sad owl. So every minute of every episode, I kept thinking, "Is the owl going to befriend Beth now?" And nothing. The season ends with the sad owl still super sad and all alone and fuck the writers and showrunners for that. I suppose they couldn't afford a CGI owl after ejaculating all of their CGI money on the five minute Solomon Grundy fight. I just digressed so much I need to take a shower.

Guy and I are in 99.5% agreement about the dismantling of nuclear weapons. That last bit is where he thinks the U.S.A. should get to keep theirs.

Everybody treats Guy Gardner like his argument isn't even worth listening to but they're all wrong! They're just treating him like a dumb jerk! Sure, I agree that the Justice League just can't take it upon themselves to rid the world of all nuclear weapons. I mean, do I?! Hmm. I'm not so sure I do agree with that! If Superman really cared about Earth, shouldn't he martyr himself by becoming the biggest criminal in the history of the entire world by destroying all nuclear weapons against the will of every nation that has them?! There are plenty of other planets in the DCU that he could go live on after becoming a giant Earth menace! Can't he even make that small sacrifice for the safety of his homeworld?! And if his actions cause some kind of horrible repercussions that cause the world to spiral into chaos, he can probably just blame Batman. Silver But Really Brown Sorceress questions if what they're doing is right. Bald Thor says, "In the end they'll thank us. And even if they don't, at least they'll be alive to hate us." See?! That's what I just said about Superman! He should totally take that bullet! That was not a tasteless George Reeves joke and even if somebody read it that way, it's been like a hundred years since his death! Blue Jay and Friends tell each other their origin story as they remember how their world was destroyed by nuclear weapons and how they decided to interfere with everybody else's lives because of it. I think their origin was supposed to make me see their side of things and feel empathy for them but it totally made me rethink their position and now I totally think they need to be stopped. Because I was fine when I thought the argument was "Destroy all nuclear weapons to save Earth." But I dislike the argument, "Something bad happened to me and now I have to make sure it never happens to anybody else no matter how annoying I make myself!" It's like when somebody's dumb kid gets hit by a bus while riding their bike and then they have to get a law passed making it illegal for busses to run over kids and to name the law after their kid and to get politicians who support the law because it doesn't really change anything (being that busses running over kids was probably already frowned upon if not illegal) but it's good press and makes it look like they're doing something. Then after the dumb law is passed, the parents of the dumb kid can say things like, "My baby didn't die in vain!" Even if that's totally untrue and their baby did die in vain and the law never actually makes the world a better place at all. Guy rushes in to stop Blue Jay and Friends all alone but fails because writers can't reward brash arrogant heroes who are mostly just big jerks. It would be unseemly.

So far, I've liked the bits with Captain Marvel but I'm still weirded out that he's a little boy in a grown man's muscular body.

Blue Jay and Friends fly into Bialyan airspace and the Justice League have to back off. But they'll get another chance to stop Blue Jay and Friends next issue when Blue Jay and Friends try to disarm Russia! Justice League #2 Rating: B+. It gets too complicated when super heroes bump up against the wall of political conflicts. When Batman points out that the Justice League can't chase Blue Jay and Friends into Bialyan airspace without creating an international incident, some readers might start questioning how super heroes can act even within the borders of one specific country! Surely every time they commit their vigilantism, they're creating a domestic incident! Don't make me start asking questions about the fundamental nature of masked people doing whatever the fuck they think is justice without the consent of any kind of laws or political powers, comic book! This is too heady for my tastes! I guess the whole point is to eventually have the Justice League backed by the United Nations so that the reader can think, "Okay, right. So they have the authority to do whatever they want now if I'm willing to believe the United Nations has any real authority at all!" And then the reader goes on to prove the moon landing never happened and that Project Cloverleaf rains human excrement down on our heads on a daily basis for some kind of Nazi experimentation.

#Justice League #DC Comics #DC #Keith Giffen #J.M. DeMatteis #Kevin Maguire

[timeisacephalopod]

Ironbat

Just a little Bruce Wayne/ Tony Stark thing because I felt like it lol. (Also Fun Fact about this: Bruce and Tony accidentally end up with like 6 kids in 2 years because they keep bringing home strays though, in Tony’s slight defense, Peter still has May so he’s only half adopted). Also ignore the hella uncreative name of this D:

Natasha considers Tony for a long moment and its fucking creepy, she doesn’t even blink. It probably doesn’t help that when she first came to America she told him if anyone smiled as much as Americans in Russia she’d punch them in the face but since everyone here does it she keeps that urge to herself. Tony honestly thought smiling was polite but okay.

“What’s he like?” she asks finally.

Oh, she wants to know about Bruce of not the Banner variety. Because they all know what Banner is like. He sighs and Rhodey’s soul dies, Tony sees it, because he knows Tony well enough to know he’s going to say something stupid. “I’m going to give a description and I need you all not to laugh or judge him, okay?” Because Bruce is sweet, and generous, and yeah he’s so dramatic he makes Tony look like an unseasoned chicken breast in comparison but he’s a great guy. He shouldn’t be judged for his dramatics. They don’t judge Tony for his dramatics.

Actually Stephen told him last week that his cars were ostentatious and if Stephen is talking about Tony’s cars being ostentatious they really must be something.

“He’s a damn furry, isn’t he?” Rhodey says and Tony resents that. Mostly because he wonders if the Batman thing constitutes as being a furry but he doesn’t think so. It is, as far as he knows, just a LARPing thing and its fucking hilarious because no one knows its Bruce Wayne under that dramatic ass cape.

“No he isn’t a furry, T’Challa is a furry,” he throws out there just to make Rhodey cringe. Sam and Rhodey basically worshiped the guy only to find out the dude dresses up like a panther on the regular.

“That is a religious thing, it’s exempt,” Sam says, throwing out his shitty rationalization that they all know is fake. 

Tony rolls his eyes, “sure, bud. Anyways, Bruce. Don’t judge him okay, he’s a great guy,” he starts but Rhodey cuts him off.

“If you need to preface this with so much ‘don’t judge him’ he probably sucks,” he points out.

Pepper frowns, “we preface Tony with a lot more than this,” she says.

Tony is offended, truly. “Okay you know what, Bruce is the kind of guy who would say ‘hello darkness my old friend’ unironically and yeah that’s needlessly dramatic but we’re all needlessly dramatic here so no one should judge him for it,” he tells them all.

They all start laughing immediately like a bunch of twats. “What the hell, Stark?” Bucky asks and Tony squints at him.

“You texted everyone in our group chat ‘I imagine death so much it feels more like a memory’ when your cat stole your garlic bread. Rhodey, you drove a whole ass tank into a military bunker as a fuck you to your superiors. Stephen had that weird ‘sorcerer supreme’ phase and forced us all to call his cape a cloak. Natasha got memes banned in Russia and North Korea. Steve has told half the members of congress to fuck off to their faces and Sam made an AI he named Redwing because Bucky refused to let him get a falcon. Not a single one of you have a place to judge Bruce,” he tells them.

They all look properly shamed except Pepper, who grins. “I am not needlessly dramatic like the rest of you so I have all the right in the world to judge,” she tells them and Tony snorts.

“Oh hell no you do not. You’ve decided you hate fellow CEOs so much that you refuse to address them, only their wives. You once told Justin Hammer that you would rather drink paint thinner than spend another second with him. You punched Aldrich Killian into a pool because he made me uncomfortable. You once told a reporter that people fear you because you have the energy of a Lovecraftian monster. You are not exempt,” he tells her.

Sam laughs, “I remember the Lovecraft thing. You ended up being a lesbian meme for awhile after that,” he says.

Tony remembers that too, it had been around when the Babadook was a gay meme. Monsters were a thing that week.

“Is Bruce seriously that dramatic? I thought he mostly read to kids and whatever,” Rhodey says and yeah, he does that too. And a lot of charity work in orphanages. It’d been how they met- sometimes when Tony is sad he goes to hospitals and holds babies and Bruce happened o be donating money to that particular hospital and found him crying over a small premie that was so sweet and precious. They hit it off pretty easily but yes, Bruce is so dramatic he may give Stephen a run for his money.

“Yeah, he is one hundred percent that dramatic. You’ll find out,” he says. Granted most of Bruce’s dramatics went to his Batman character- Tony struggled not to laugh out loud when he heard Bruce unironically say ‘I am the night’ but he’s dramatic elsewhere too.

“Find out what?” Bruce asks, coming up behind them, smiling. Tony has never had a thing for classic Hollywood hot- too fifties for his tastes, but Bruce makes it feel different. Maybe its because nothing about him aside from his classic looks remind Tony of the past or maybe its something else, he doesn’t know.

“Holy Christ, are you even in there anymore?” Bucky asks, jabbing him in the side with his finger. Tony smacks his hand away after jumping a little.

“Yes, now keep your fingers away from me,” he tells him. “We were talking about you being dramatic,” he tells Bruce for reference.

Bruce’s eyebrows draw together, “I’m dramatic?” he asks. “Don’t you have a friend who insisted you called him ‘sorcerer supreme’?” he asks.

Right, Tony forgot about that too. “Yeah, Stephen got a little in character and none of us knew what the character was for but he’s mostly okay now, he’s chilled out a little. Come sit,” he says, shooing at Bucky to get out of the spot beside Tony. Bruce tries to move towards the only empty seat that is, for some damn reason, beside Sam but Tony pulls him back and continues to pester Bucky to go sit beside his damn boyfriend.

When he discovers they’re currently in the middle of an argument he’s not surprised, he’s watched the two of them get into it over Steve’s cat that died when he was ten of all things, but he’s damn annoyed to discover that this particular fight is about Sam not finding bats cute. Bruce lets out a small shiver and Tony holds onto him a little tighter, knowing about his fear of bats.

Honestly that only makes Batman that much more dramatic because Bruce fucking dresses up as his worst fear. Jesus, he really does have a talent for finding people who are so dramatic they could blend into a comic book easily. Bucky moves his ass finally and Bruce sits next to him and looks around. He pinpoints Rhodey as the most important at the table easily and Tony will never understand how he does that. It takes him ten seconds flat to find the person at the top of any food chain and he can figure out how to exploit them in another ten seconds. Its actually useful in business and Tony is surprised that Bruce’s success comes from reading people so well. But then Bruce thought he could do that too and had been surprised that Tony was just following math no one else saw. Pepper can do it now too so that’s neat, usually he can’t teach for shit.

“Tony has told me about your military career, you recently got promoted, didn’t you?” Bruce asks and Rhodey leans into it easily, going off on a tangent about his recent promotion and how he got it. Bruce smiles and listens easily, asking all the right questions because he’s freakishly good at people if they weren’t in a relationship with him. If they were, well, Alfred told Tony he has a fear of being close to people thanks to that time his parents got shot right in front of him as a kid. Tony thinks he deals with it well, or at least well enough that Alfred gives him advice and he’s seen how protective the old man is of Bruce. He’d chase Tony out of the mansion without a second thought if he thought he was a bad choice on Bruce’s behalf.

Natasha watches Bruce’s exchanges keenly because she’s as good at people as he is but when he gets to addressing her- right after congratulating Pepper on her recent multimillion dollar deal that no one else thought was a good idea but Bruce did for the exact reasons she did- he manages to find her soft spot too. “I’ve read about your rat rescue- I had no idea you could buy rescue rats but I suppose they might need it more than most. Its not like people care if rats are mistreated- people mostly want them dead,” he says.

She perks up, “and they’re very clean contrary to popular belief,” she says.

Bruce nods, “I used to have rats as a child. They’re smart as hell too, probably a little too smart for their own good actually. They were both escape artists and Alfred, my butler, was not impressed to find them in the kitchen more often than not,” he says and Natasha laughs. With that he somehow manages to win her over too despite the fact that she’s impossible to please and probably wants to punch him because he smiles.

And Bruce thought this was going to go badly.

*

Bruce is sure he’s managed to screw everything up given how utterly silent Tony has been through the whole dinner. Tony isn’t normally silent- he errs more on the side of dominating the conversation if only by accident but through this entire thing he’s said next to nothing. So by the time they leave he’s worried he’s somehow managed to say something wrong but he can’t for the life of him figure out what it is. He did his research- all of Tony’s friends are as impressive as he is in their own right and he made sure to acknowledge that- the fastest way to impress Tony was to recognize worth in others and Bruce finds it both telling and strange. 

He’s never met someone who’s so attracted to the ability to recognize talent in others but Tony has a clear... thing for it. Maybe because he recognizes potential in the strangest of ways and in odd areas too- its just part of the way his mind works- and Bruce seems to be the only one who picks up on this aspect of Tony’s personality. And the potential Tony sees. Tony thinks he’s bad at people but he isn’t, he just sees them differently and this isn’t really odd considering he sees everything differently. What Tony is bad at is finding conventional ways to relate to people and Bruce likes that about him. It makes him feel less dangerous, somehow, like maybe if he’s different this relationship will be different too. He’s never been good at relationships, Selena knows that better than most.

“How the hell do you manage to do that?” Tony asks when they leave. 

Bruce has no idea what he means and his gut twists a little, worried that he’s managed to botch this too. For the first time since... he hasn’t felt like running and he doesn’t want to do something to make it end. “Do what?” he asks.

Tony frowns, “win people over like that. I’ve never met anyone who managed to make Natasha go from suspicious to smitten like that ever,” he says.

Well, it might help him to know Natasha isn’t smitten, she’s just convinced that Bruce isn’t horrible. Its the best she’ll ever think of him most likely, she’s not the kind of person who would ever fully trust another person, but Bruce already knew that when they met. But he does at least relax because he hasn’t done something wrong, Tony is just impressed with his people skills again. Its an odd trait to hone in on, but its that, his generosity, his love of children, and his ability to disagree with Tony that draws him in. That’s probably the strangest combination Bruce has run into but he doesn’t dislike it either. Those happen to be the traits, minus his ability to manipulate people, that he finds most admirable about himself too.

“I just did my research, Tony,” he says. Its all he’s ever needed to do.

Tony smiles and leans into his side, “yeah well, was ready to write you off and now he thinks I’m lying about how dramatic you are so obviously your research paid off,” he says.

Bruce wraps an arm around Tony’s waist, “Tony he doesn’t think I’m dramatic because he doesn’t know about Batman and you’re not going to tell him. If Cobblepot finds out who I am he’ll use it against me,” he says and Tony bursts out laughing.

“I love you, but this LARPing thing is ridiculous. Endearing, but ridiculous. You do know Cobblepot works in a bank, right? He’s not nearly as impressive as The Penguin even if he sucks at names,” Tony says.

Yes, Bruce knows that already. “I’m aware of all my foes, thank you. Harley Quinn is a psychiatrist who’s real name is Harleen Quinzel and her girlfriend is Poison Ivy,” he says. Pamela a botanist and a very well known environmental activist too, Tony has read her work when considering his green energy projects, actually.

“Jesus Christ, this is so dramatic. How the hell did you get half of Gotham involved in a LARP?” Tony asks.

Well, that’s just an exaggeration. There’s certainly not that many people in the game and frankly Bruce doesn’t care if he’s winning.

#bruce wayne x tony stark #ironbat #fanfiction #alternate universe #writing

[davidmann95]

You once stated the Fantastic Four were the actual best super team. Why is that?

Assuming there’s even a nominal need to explain it any further than “they were Jack Kirby’s main project for just shy of a decade,” or for that matter “it’s the team Ben Grimm’s on” or “they’re where Doctor Doom comes from,” it’s actually a little more complicated than it might seem, because it’s not quite a matter of them collectively being the best characters in comics. Ben’s right up there, and Reed’s great too in the right hands, but Johnny’s while fun still pretty one-note, and while Sue works in the context of the group, I still feel like after all these years people haven’t quite fully fleshed out her deal in the same way as the others. Pound-for-pound, they hardly match up to the Justice League. But a team is a lot more than the sum of its parts; it’s the dynamic, the context they’re framed in, and the scope of what you can do with them. And in those regards, no one else is even close.

Let’s cover the other major players. I like the Doom Patrol from what I’ve read (Morrison’s run and what there’s been so far of Way’s), but they seem really shifty in terms of lineup in spite of being a small group, making it tougher to build long-term stories around character dynamics, and most of their adventures seem to be them just trying to wrap their minds around what’s happening to them; like the Spirit, they’re the spectators, not the spectacle. The X-Men are…a whole piece in and of themselves, but long story short, as far as I’m concerned they’ve spent over 30 years coasting on a run that got by on trying *slightly* harder than its competition at the time and a strong if muddled central metaphor, with any attempts at doing anything actually interesting with them since then smothered as soon as they start to gather any steam. Ditto Teen Titans, without even the symbolic strength of the central concept; all they’ve got is the cartoon, and DC’s spent over a decade resolutely making sure absolutely none of what made that show work gets into the comics. The JSA is Fine, Just Fine, and Jay Garrick and Ted Knight are both great, but their integration into the main DCU was - aside from scrapping the multiverse - the biggest mistake DC ever made in terms of large-scale continuity reengineering, and aside from the pretty clearly failed Earth-2, everything with them for the last 30 years has been built on the back of that illusion that any of them are in any way anywhere near as important as Superman or Batman. I’ll cop the Legion of Superheroes might have more meat on the bone than I’ve seen, but I’m not willing to shell out however many thousands of dollars on archive editions I’d need to find out, and while I imagine the Defenders were great under Steve Gerber, that seems to have largely been it for them.

That leaves the big two. I’ve covered it before, so keeping it relatively short: the Justice League is the best team in terms of average character quality so long as we’re sticking to the Big Seven model, but because each of them is iconic and important enough that they all have their own stuff going on, the focus in their best runs is on big action, with character work necessarily taking a back seat. They try to shake it up sometimes with B-listers, presumably on the basis that that’s how the League was conceived of in the first place, but it never works; the minor characters in the beginning were elevated to the A-list by sheer dint of being on Superman and Batman and Wonder Woman’s team, and shortly afterwards the rules of that world and who was important in it were codified enough that you couldn’t really replicate that more than once in a blue moon with one or two characters. The Avengers meanwhile were originally more genuine B-listers - only truly elevated above that by the movies, or if you’re being generous Bendis - and as such the Avengers as a group was the most significant thing in any individual members’ life, turning it into a meaningful institution that made them more than the sum of their parts, while the Justice League has always been less than the sum of its own. But at the same time, while they can do more within the boundaries of being the big team than their distinguished competition, they themselves just aren’t as big a team, and can’t compete on those grounds. Maybe I’d have a different mindset if the Avengers were a big deal to me personally, but as far as the ‘classic’ members go, I maybe, generously, care about four or five of them at all.

The Fantastic Four on the other hand? For starters, they’re a pretty universally regarded perfect balance of powers and personalities - tough enough to get into some wild adventures but not so overwhelmingly so that they can’t be easily thrown in over their heads; arranged character-wise with personality quirks both complimentary and irreconcilable that let you just as easily show them hugging it out or at each others throats. But the deal-maker is that rather than a club, or a gathering of the big guns when they have time off from their solo adventures, or an after-school hangout, or a strikeforce, or a ragtag bunch of misfits, or about 938 backup dancers of varying degrees of quality lucky enough to have Wolverine and Emma Frost to carry them, they’re a family, both born and found, and moreover they’re a family of explorers. And that makes all the difference.

Obviously there’re other teams that work as families in reality or in spirit, but the FF work that way in terms of dynamic, even above their status as superheroes. Yes, if they hear about the Mad Thinker wrecking downtown they’ll go deal with that, so you can tell regular superhero stories with them. But at the same time, you don’t need any elaborate explanation to get them to the Savage Land or the Negative Zone, or even to Yancy Street; they’re as likely as not to head out there on vacation (or to stop Ben from tearing it down in the latter case). They’ll go do big, interesting things purely on the basis of going to do it together as a family, and when it’s a family that diverse in terms of interests and personal goals, that means you can organically throw them in a bunch of different directions. And because they’re science adventurers above all with superheroics as just one option on the table, that gives you all the justification needed to dish out any wild high concepts you like, on the simple basis that Reed’s interested and the rest will humor him if it means a fun afternoon. And when real danger finds them, they care for each other and argue with each other and worry about each other and keep each other on their feet the way family does, perpetually keeping the emotional stakes as high as possible.

So yeah. They play off each other perfectly, you can justify them going nearly anywhere and doing nearly anything, and at their heart they have the warmth and the bickering and the strength that comes with family. And Kirby threw everything he had at them, and they have Ben Grimm and fight Doctor Doom. That’s why they’re the best. And among Marvel’s myriad other problems at the moment, its world is always going to be the lesser and the lonelier for it whenever it’s missing The World’s Greatest Comics Magazine.

#Fantastic Four #Kirby #Stan Lee #Justice League #Avengers #Doom Patrol #X Men #Teen Titans #Justice Society of America #Legion of Superheroes #Defenders #Opinion

[247krp]

— Rejoice, little lambs! We have recovered our own Hwan Jaemin, spotted prancing about in the Southwest Side. I don’t remember seeing him with any clique back in high school, but I’m not here to spill yesterday’s tea. So straight to the rundown: can you say analytical and self-assured? Apparently now he spends time as an advertising and editorial photographer at PJJ Publishing, and keeps skeletons buried at Geumsang Apartment Complex, B302. But those won’t stay hidden for long, if you and I have any say on it. Welcome back, Boy Blunder; we missed you so.

In case you don’t remember the devil’s name, here’s to refresh your memory:

Samuel was rather shy and nervous during the first year of high school, but it never showed. He kept his expressions blank, only his light hand shakes and twitching would betray how he really felt. He slowly gained the confidence needed to discover who he wanted to be, brisk and rather forward, he always knew what he wanted and how to get it, it was a sort of confidence in one being, and thought process. He was never rude to the other students, but he did make sure to avoid certain cliques and groups. He heard of the rumours floating around, who wouldn’t when it was spoken of so frequently, and he had made sure to never slip up, and to do so he kept himself distant from others (it was rather easy after all, Samuel was always rather awkward, and never knew how to handle small talk). When it came to his reputation, he was rather viewed as a loner, someone hard to reach, cold and closed off. Students were weary of speaking to him, teaming up with him for group projects and what not because he was something hard to understand. It was easy to judge someone when they had a label, but Jaemin seemed to avoid all of them, and find his own box to get into. For that reason, most people avoided him and deemed him weird, an anomaly and something unable to be understood.

Nevermind the memory lane though, the present is always the ripest fruit:

Samuel’s personality didn’t change much from how he was in high school, he’s still straight forward when it comes to his goals and thought process, though his social skills if anything seemed to deteriorate with time. From high school to college, Samuel seemed to keep avoiding people regardless of any situation. Old habits die hard, don’t they? At least he isn’t in denial about it anymore, making sure to get help for his social anxiety, apparently there’s a name for those types of things now. It’s a work in progress. Behind the mask, Sammy transforms into someone confident, never cocky, snarky and sarcastic. As for reputation, the same thing seems to keep following around: too cold, distant, a loner, boring, weird and uninteresting. One thing did change, apparently he’s pretty to others, whatever that means. Maybe it’s the hair?

But we are nothing if not open books – my job is to ensure you get to the best pages:

Hwan Jaemin was born on the 19th of July in Manchester, England, and was abandoned at an orphanage when he was just a baby by his birth parents. Adopted by Josie and Jake Jones, he was given his English name and became Samuel Jones. His parents were high up in the social hierarchy, one could call them rich, which they indeed were. Samuel lived in the Jones Manor which he would soon realize was rather recluse and far from the city; there was nothing much other than a forest and greenery around him. Despite his parents adopting him, he quickly learned they did so only so he could become the next in line to inherent Jones Industries. You see, his mother, Jessie, was infertile, and his father, Jake, wouldn’t simply ever want to lose his company he worked so hard to gain. And so they trained him to be proper and prim. No son of theirs could ever be anything but perfect. From etiquette lessons, to manners, it was all ever so suffocating. Samuel figured if he could pull through and could prove to them that he would make heir, maybe they would start paying attention to him and love him. He was wrong. All he ever got was scrutiny, and nods of approval, cold and calculating, there was no warmth for him there in their lives. Sammy quickly grew to hate being their heir. He didn’t want it.

Their behaviour never seemed to quite change, and so, Samuel learned to be silent, and quiet. To him, it was better if he ceased to exist in their eyes. He would rather to pretend he didn’t exist than to constantly receive disapproval for not breathing the proper way, and for not replying the proper way, for not existing the right way. It was all too exhausting. It worked, somewhat. The young boy would disappear into his room when his parents would finally come home after their long trips to foreign counties that they seem to never consider taking him along with. He was always alone in that big, cold manor that he grew to loathe. Every morning he would wake up feeling cold and empty; sometimes a nanny would be there if his parents remembered (though most of the time they didn’t). It was the sort of cold and clinical type of relationship that would haunt him forever, and that would never cease to terrify him. He had to be strong though. At a young age, Samuel knew the didn’t want to fall into his parents shoes, he didn’t want anything to do with them or the company they owned.

He lived in his own fantasy world, escaping the hurt and neglect he faced. Going to school in England was hard, the city that never completely slept and the students were never too kind, but Sam found something that helped him go on, a hobby of sorts, well two: photography and comic books. It might seem like an odd choice at first, but it really wasn’t. Sam enjoyed capturing the world into small, rectangle pieces of memory. It gave him meaning. He fell in love with the city at night, climbing on top of his rooftop, he would use his allowance to buy packets of any comic book he could find, and he fell in love with superheroes.

It was hard not to enjoy the fantasy world he fell into every night, each universe was so unique, from Marvel to DC, Samuel read it all. He would have to admit, he had a soft spot for the Batman series, maybe it was because they were all human, they usually were, they didn’t have any extraordinary powers, but they were able to be extraordinary regardless. And Sammy just wanted to be like that. He wanted to be important and make a difference. He saw how cold hearted the world truly was, and his pictures taken only proved his point further, he witnessed homeless people being treated like dirt, assaults and robberies; why couldn’t he intervene and change things, why couldn’t he make his neighbourhood a better place? And so he did. It wasn’t that hard to either, he had all the instructions needed to be the best vigilante in his comic books anyway, and if crime slowly stopped happening it would only be a good thing.

When he started high school, he was sent to Cheongnam. Samuel always imagined he’d stay in Manchester the rest of his life with his adoptive parents. He always knew he was adopted, and really, it wasn’t that hard to figure out, his features never seemed to match up with his parents’. All he had to do was dig up his birth certificate that was filed in their study and ask his nanny, and lo and behold, he found himself on a quick airplane ride to South Korea. If he knew it would have taken a simple question just to get away, he would have done it sooner.  Cheongnam was prestigious and highly suffocating, the whole time, all Samuel could remember was his childhood. Using his Korean name helped him dissociate from his past, and helped him find himself a new identity. He would always be the quiet one who sat in front of the class taking notes, and he’d always be the kid who’d answer the teacher’s questions correctly, but now he had hobbies and a passion, he had drive. He didn’t have his parents around anymore to judge him, or to mold him into being a carbon copy of them. He could do what he wanted, and he did, from joining clubs, to getting his ears pierced, Samuel- no, Jaemin, never felt so free in his life. Maybe he didn’t have many friends in high school, he never was able to develop the ability to make friends quite well, he was always a bit too awkward, a bit too shy, but he never shied away from his interests. High school might have been a drag, but at least he was able to get into the art college he had wanted to study in photography (he never heard the end of it from Jake and Jessie, but he did it anyway).

Now a full, actual adult, Jaemin works as a photographer for PJJ Publishing, and at night, he continues to fight crime and purge the city of criminals as Red Robin, his alias.

#247: accepted

[geekade]

Zwia Reviews: Justice League aka At Least it's Better than Batman V Superman

Right up front, here are some things I want to make clear for this review.

Justice League is not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination.

I personally LOVED it, and will be spending much of this review explaining why it was bad but also why I can’t wait to see it again.

To get into A LOT of what I liked about it, there is at least one big (and super obvious) spoiler, so I will have a section dedicated to those thoughts at the end of the the review. 

Anyway, THE REVIEW!

Let's talk about all the bad parts. First of all, the dialogue is cheesy. It’s just... it’s bad. It also doesn’t help that the plot is basically the plot from The Avengers. Now, I get it. Building a superhero team-up movie isn’t the easiest thing, and you’re naturally going to have some similarities between Justice League and The Avengers… but it’s too similar, right down to the magical Earth-destroying boxes they have to find. At least with Marvel, the characters are fleshed out in their own movies, so The Avengers feels way more like a celebration after taking all the time it took to get there. Justice League, on the other hand, is largely rushed and forgettable. Going their own non-Marvel way, the DCEU went ahead and put all these multi-faceted, interesting characters together without delving into most of them with their own movies. That decision didn’t do Justice League any favors. The backstory to each of the new characters is instead established through off-topic jokes. They try their best to connect with the audience by being almost comically over-the-top in their “personalities,” and the first half hour of the movie with Batman and Wonder Woman trying to get the team together is just the choppiest piece of editing I’ve seen in theaters since Suicide Squad. Literally the minute you get almost kinda connected to one of the recruitment stories, it just jumps without warning, to a whole other character. If there was ANY movie in the DCEU that should have been more than two hours, it’s this one. Instead, they squeezed as much as they could in every scene EVER, and the movie is worse off for it.

There were a lot decisions made in this movie that you could probably gather were a direct result from the outcry of people upset about Batman V Superman. Justice League is shorter than BVS. The writing has a different tone, and there's cheesy comedy strewn about. The big change that stood out to me, though? The visuals. This movie has color. The reds are red. The blues are blue. The grass is… radioactive looking? This is a movie that was very clearly designed in pre production to still be all dark and gritty looking, but was lightened up afterwards. As such, some of the colors looks VERY off. This decision to lighten things up is also probably why the special effects look RIDICULOUSLY bad. Like, bad for a cheap indie film-level bad. That is HORRIBLE for how much money went into this.

As you can see in everything from pre production to post production, there are huge amounts of glaring issues all over this movie. Even the acting, which I praised in Batman V Superman, isn’t quite up to par here. Affleck, who I still think is an incredible Batman, just seems a little off at times. Gal Gadot, I’m starting to think, isn’t really a great actress but simply has a lot of interesting weight to her words because of her accent. (You know, kinda like how British people still sound super smart all the time even if they are saying something dumb.) And then the rest of the League, well, are just comically over-the-top in their “personalities.” But the characters are actually where we get into why I love this movie. These characters ARE the Justice League. Maybe its because the characterization for DC has been so poor in the past that I just have low expectations, but when I sat in the theater I was giddy because THIS IS THE JUSTICE LEAGUE. THESE ARE COMIC BOOK CHARACTERS TO A T! This is a Batman who isn’t killing people left and right, who goes out of his way to be self-sacrificing and smart, rather than the toughest guy in the room. I especially adore how many times he realizes he can’t fight and just runs to some Bat-Vehicle. This is a Wonder Woman that... okay she was perfect in her own movie too. I don’t really have to sing the praises of Gadot’s Wonder Woman. She’s noble and fierce and one of the big guns, as she should be. This Aquaman? I mean, he’s not accurate to the comics at all, but damn he’s a comic book character if I ever saw one. Plus, Aquaman does occasionally have a pretty stubborn streak, so I’ll take it. This Cyborg? Sure, maybe he’s the super loner of the group, but this is early Cyborg. I can accept him having some struggles and learning to get comfortable in his… skin. Cyborg has always had those underlying difficulties, and it was great when Cyborg didn’t think about his differences and had times to shine.

Then we have this Flash. Okay, this is NOT Barry Allen, AT ALL. Barry Allen is nice to a fault, and boring as hell because of it. He’s the type of guy who would wear bow ties to work every day at a place that allows jeans. This is NOT Barry Allen. But God help me, he’s a speedster through and through. Ezra’s performance is much more in line with some other fan favorites like Wally West or Bart Allen. You know, the playful, sometimes distracted, but well meaning Flashes. I think he’s the farthest thing there is to Barry Allen, but Barry is kinda lame so I am totally okay with the movie adopting some of the other Speedsters' qualities here.

And honestly, at the end of the day, this is why I liked the movie. The characters. This movie felt like a longer episode of the Justice League cartoon. It was largely forgettable, not deep or complex, but the characters were all themselves and it was a lot of fun to watch. Sometimes that's all you need. By no means am I going to tell you to go watch it. It’s a pointless movie. But if you love DC and their characters as much as I do, you might enjoy it. Finally, the biggest reason I enjoyed it is in the Spoilers section. Read it at your own risk. Its a huge spoiler, but its nothing that you won’t see coming. SPOILERS BELOW

FUCKING SUPERMAN. Okay, so Superman historically is a character that I usually write off as boring. To me, if Superman is your favorite character in DC, I always figured you either didn’t know enough about the character, or were a fool. Lately, much like my similar growing love for Captain America, I’ve learned to appreciate this big blue boy scout and I think I can, in an odd, sick way, thank Batman V Superman for that. See, Superman IS a symbol for hope in comics. When Superman shows up to help in other character’s stories, there's usually a feeling that things will be okay. It’s why Superman going evil is such a big thing for DC to do, since it really shatters those hopeful expectations of the character. He is someone who, when he isn’t around or when he’s fallen from grace, it's a rough experience for everyone. And when he is there, you know that no matter how tough, he’ll always take time for the little guy and be as supportive and kind as he can.

This movie franchise has not had that Superman. This Superman is an angsty, whiny, brooding boy, who abuses his power and portrays himself as a God more than a friend. I’ve enjoyed these movies, but I have hated how Superman was portrayed because it disrespected everything I expect from Superman. Superman is someone who would always find a way and always be able to lighten the mood. Well, then Superman died. And then he came back. And suddenly, after he got done fighting the Justice League, he got himself together and finally became the Superman I’ve been waiting for. (Also real quick, Superman and Flash during that fight? THAT WAS THE COOLEST THING) Superman spent the entire finale helping the other heroes. He would be the big gun when he needed to be, but he also would just be moral support, or assist Cyborg, or assure Cyborg that everything would be okay, or assist Flash with saving people and giving him work he knew was in his ability. Superman was just a kind, fun guy the entire fight, who never showed an ounce of doubt in his trust that everything would be okay. That fight had stakes, but you didn’t feel them BECAUSE Superman let you know everything would be okay. (Also because of the entire town of people that were in danger we only saw one tiny family… so… yeah) I just really loved Superman in this movie and I NEVER thought I would say that.

Also that end credits scene where Superman and Flash race for fun??? LIKE COME ON!!! HOW COULD YOU NOT LOVE THAT???? I honestly still think we should expect better from DC, because seriously… these characters can do SO MUCH BETTER. But this is a small victory in the right direction, and I’m going to enjoy the hell out of it.

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