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yuzukult · 3 years

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i’m bad too 06 (m) || kdy & reader

title: i’m bad too - drabble series pairing: kim doyoung x reader genre: angst, fluff, smut, goodboy!doyoung, nerdy!dy (basically he’s a dork) & badgirl!reader, hitman!au, oc-isn’t-a-hitman-but-she-could-be!au, there’s just a lot of unspoken things happening here lol word count: 1.7k warnings: blowjob/handjob (lucky doyoung), sexual usage of ‘oppa’ lol don’t judge a/n: still tryna learn the correct jargon for warnings but this is a drabble so.... very minimal stuff here lmfao

please let me know if anyone wants to be tagged! taglist: @wownajaemin @crescent-iak @ncttboo @byunbaekby ← previous chapter || next chapter →

Doyoung makes you watch an obscene amount of superhero movies. For clarification: Marvel-Cinematic-Universe-kind-of-movies. However, you barely complain. If it means more time with him, you’d even watch Sesame Street just to be in his arms.

He doesn’t like to watch those movies where there’s a way deeper message hidden behind the plot. He lives for the action, sprinkle of comedy, and occasional love interest. But not a ton. Too much romance might set unrealistic expectations, according to him.

Albeit you sort of think he still has a vastly different depiction of love in comparison to you.

For one, in this alternate universe where there’s villains and superheroes, you, without a doubt, are a villain. You’ve tried explaining to him that you fit the stereotype—the whole leather attire plus motorcycle really takes the cake, but he doesn’t even know what you’re up to half the time. In fact, almost every single event you’ve performed a task, you’d show up at his front doorstep, hands remaining dirty from a mission for the Boss, and he’d welcome you with open arms with no idea.

Doyoung doesn’t even have an ounce of a clue what you do.

He’s such a nice guy. Girls practically eat that shit up when they meet him, often overlooking the fact that he holds so many great boyfriend qualities. When you’re sore from “work,” (he questions what you do all the time but you just shrug nonchalantly) he’d always slip off your socks, massage the soles of your feet and finish off the rest of your body with no resistance. He doesn’t expect anything in return—not even sex. Doyoung just gives and gives, nearly never taking.

On one side, you’re glad that most women don’t recognize how perfect of a significant other he is. It gives you time to figure yourself out; how do you become good enough for Kim Doyoung? You’ve already dropped smoking. You’ve been putting more effort in your studies, granted he is your tutor. And you’ve spent the majority of your free time with him. If you ever needed to review material, you’d do it with him, just to show how much you’re trying.

Even if there isn’t a label for the two of you.

You’re friends—but you’re definitely more than just friends. You fuck, but you’re not just fuck buddies either. You’re exclusive but you’re not straightforwardly dating. Doyoung doesn’t hide the fact that he wants you to officially be his girlfriend, although he never forces the idea upon you. He’s content with the circumstances he’s under even though he hopes to have you be his and his only. Nonetheless, it’s under your terms and he never forgets to remind you that.

Honestly, you thought that you might be okay with this. That is, until a pretty gal with shiny black hair, toned body, and gentle voice named Joy came into the picture.

Joy is a given nickname. Her actual birth name is Park Sooyoung, a name as beautiful as the beholder, but people had gotten into the habit of calling her Joy, since… well, she’s such a joy to be around. She’s part of the school’s cheerleading squad, called the ‘Red Velvet Queens,’ plus extremely involved with other extracurriculars, including the competitive tennis team that Doyoung is on. There’s a lot of bitches on the squad, especially with the encounters you’ve had with them, but Joy isn’t one of them. She’s an angel. She’s the woman version of Doyoung.

Doyoung likes to wait outside in the parking lot, right in the unspoken designated spot where you leave your bike. You’ve offered him a ride to school since he often stands idly, except he politely declines, and you speculate that it’s from fear. He remains cute in your eyes despite being a bit of a wuss.

Today, however, he’s not alone. It’s a daily routine that the view of Doyoung leaves you breathless, heart pumping like you’ve gone running, but today is different. Your blood is boiling, smoke whistling out your ears like a kettle on a stove from the heat that lingers around your neck region. Joy stands beside him, the widest grin smacked across her cheeks, lips stained as red as her cheerleading uniform. You wobble on your bike into the parking spot, shutting off the engine before kicking out the stand, pulling the helmet off your head while obnoxiously chewing on a piece of gum in your mouth.

Joy’s gaze meets yours.

She’s sweet, and none of this is her fault. But you kind of hate her presence right now, just because she’s got all of Doyoung’s attention.

Spitting out the gum on the asphalt, you shuffle through your pockets for a toothpick. This stupid toothpick that you’re stuck with because you quit smoking cigarettes for that charming boy. Popping the wooden stick in your mouth, you rake your fingers through your greasy hair, slinging the backpack over your shoulders before walking past Doyoung.

“Sorry, Joy, I’ll catch up with you later,” You hear faintly before his heavy footsteps are rushed, catching up with yours. “Hey-Hey! Where are you going? We’re supposed to meet here. Why didn’t you wait for me?”

You shrug. He’s not happy with that response.

Hand grasping on your shoulder, he halts you in your steps to turn you to face him. As much as you hate to admit it, but you feel this green-eyed monster gnawing on your insides and you’re not a fan of it. “What’s wrong? What did I do? Talk to me.”

“Nothing. I’m busy. You still wanna tutor me later or are you busy making plans with Joy?” You snarl, munching on the pick. Doyoung’s eyes lighten up; he knows the problem now. “Are you jealous?”

“That word isn’t in my dictionary.” It’s a blunt reply, and your unfazed stare is there to support it. “Why would I be jealous of a nice girl like Joy who wants to get with a good boy like you?”

Doyoung likes you, no matter how hard you try to push him away. Your dilemma before was that you always thought a guy like him, so generous, so kind, could never love someone with a charred heart like yours. And yet, here you are, evidently jealous of a girl practically his equal when he’s done nothing but proven to you that you’re the only one he sees.

You want more, and the longer you continue to deny and swallow these feelings, you’re even more desperate to be held by him. In the midst of a tutoring session, you’ve managed to unbutton his cute sky blue dress shirt, unzip his trousers and suddenly his dick is in your mouth.

“We’re supposed to review l-limits,” He stutters over a moan, fingers reaching to comb back your hair. “S-So I told her I couldn’t hang out with her today.”

“Mm,” You hum against the tip, tongue gliding down his shaft. “I heard you the first time.” His thighs tighten when your mouth envelopes down his dick to the base with his head thrown back in the chair of your bedroom. He’s glad that he noticed you take initiative to lock the door today since you often don’t, and the possibility of one of the staff members entering in while sucking on him is kinky but he’s still scared of your brother.

Doyoung lets out a soft gasp when your tongue swipes over his slit where a pearly bead of precum sits. “S-Shouldn’t we— oh fuck—be reviewing materi—ohh?” He sighs; your hands are everywhere; it’s hard for him to focus on anything when you’re gazing up at him through your pretty long lashes with tinged pink cheeks from his cock hitting the back of your throat. He melts under your touch when you graze over his thighs, claiming the territory that he’s succumbed to you willingly. You kiss the head of his cock and he bucks into it. “We’re reviewing a different kind of material. Have you ever been sucked off by a girl before?”

He shakes his head ‘no’, looking down at you with hooded eyes. With his arousal still in your grip, it twitches, yearning for your attention. You hate to admit it, but you’ve obviously tainted his ‘good boy’ persona with him in your bedroom like this, but Doyoung doesn’t think that. Disheveled hair, mouth gaped open, and sweaty forehead is a view of him you engrain in your memory.

Doyoung is a good boy, but he has a body of a bad boy. There’s no way that tennis is the reason behind those washboard abs, toned thighs, and built arms. He’s not as muscular in comparison to Johnny, nor his friend Lucas, but Doyoung is gorgeous like this, perfect in your eyes.

That’s why when you moan around his girth and he sputters, you think he’s got a halo over his head. He’s so pretty, so gorgeous, and you want to see him in all types of forms. Your hand wraps at the base of his dick, mouth wrapping around the red and angry tip, it’s glistening with your saliva as you start pumping him at a pace that leaves his jaw slack, groans bouncing off your bedroom walls.

“Baby,” He calls out the term of endearment raspily, heart racing and abs tightening. A familiar feeling stirs in his stomach, and he knows he’s about to combust. “I’m about to cum, I need a tissue, I—”

“Cum in my mouth, oppa,” You whisper, quickening your movements but calling him “oppa” is what snaps within him, ropes of cum shooting down your throat along with a string of curses and a breathy moan escapes from his lovely lips.

“So,” Doyoung begins, fiddling with his fingers anxiously across the lunch table from you. “You called me ‘oppa’ the other day. That was uh… new. You’ve never called me that before.”

Tying your hair up in a bun with a bobby pin between your teeth, his cheeks flush pink at the thought of you giving him a blowjob in your bedroom the other day, his fingers streaking through those luscious locks, and him cuming in your mouth. Popping out the pin, you slide in to push back a short piece of hair. “Yeah, well, there was a reason for it. You know why.”

Doyoung blinks blankly, utterly confused. “I… don’t. W-Why’d you call me oppa?”

“So you wouldn’t get nervous and just let me swallow.”

#neosmutcollective #doyoung smut #doyoung x reader #nct smut #doyoung #nct 127 #nct u #gyukultfics

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taiblogcomics · 3 years

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I Can’t Pet Force You To Read This One, But...

Hey there, high school crushes. Well, it's finally here. Can you believe it? Yes, counting from the original Xanga site (which, yes, still counts. It's like our own Golden Age publication or apocryphia), this is our 10th anniversary of reviewing comics. That's fantastic. I'm excited, can't you tell? I can tell, since I'm writing this preamble a good two months before the actual anniverary~

So, last year we reviewed the absolute pile of dreck that is Heroes in Crisis. And while that was worth ripping into, I'd rather not spend the 10th anniversary hating on something. I'd like to do something actually meaningful to me. I've teased about this one for many years, probably for as long as I've been doing this blog, and I think it's time we stopped pussyfooting around and reviewed some Garfield. But not just any Garfield. It's finally time, my friends. This... is Garfield's Pet Force.

I dunno how many people will remember this one. Maybe you recall the direct-to-DVD movie adaptation from 2009, or at least advertising for it. I never saw it, but apparently it differs a bit. They also appeared a few times in those Garfield comics from back in the day. We even reviewed a couple (some were on the Xanga blog). But what we're looking at here are the original novellas published between 1997 and 1999. So yeah, these really are from my childhood. And since I've long espoused that Garfield was always funnier 20 years ago, this must be actual premium Garfield content, yeah? By golly, I hope so, because we got five whole books here today. So we should probably get into them~

Book 1: The Outrageous Origin

This is a classic sort of superhero cover. Standard team shot of poses, and that's fine for a first volume. In fact, that's great. Later editions of this would replace the lightning-filled gradient background with a pure white one, but I have this original version. We'll get to specifics about these characters in the meat of the story, but let's talk about the costumes for a bit. Very classic early-'90s sort of look, before the Dark Age kicked in. Reminds me a lot of Jim Lee's X-Men designs, actually. Making all your characters visually distinct is important in a team book. The heavy lean into secondary colours is unusual for heroic characters, but not unwelcome.

So we actually start with a cold open in the superhero universe. This is pretty much to introduce us to the characters as soon as possible, and thus I'll do the same for you here.

*Garzooka, team leader, super strong, has a razor-sharp claw, and can shoot radioactive hairballs from his mouth. That's... at least a unique power, I don't think anyone on the Justice League can do that~ *Odious, the dumb muscle with the accent on the "dumb". Possibly even stronger than Garzooka, and possessing a "super-stretchy stun tongue", an elastic tongue that can scramble the minds of whoever it adheres to. *Starlena, the team girl. She can fly, and she has a siren song that can put those who hear it into a hypnotic trance. Garzooka is the only one immune to its effects, for reasons that are never explained. *Abnermal, the kid-appeal character. He has ice powers, forcefields, and an ill-defined "pester power" that means he can annoy people on a greater scale than normal folks. It's pretty much only used for comic relief, but that could be a brilliant power in the right hands. *Compooky, the brains of the operation. Other than flight, his powers are limited to super intelligence, which means he's usually the exposition guy. There's probably a reason they left him out of the movie adaptation~

You got all that? Don't worry, we'll introduce you again later in the book. What actually happens in the intro chapter isn't really important, it's just setting up the universe. In fact, it's all taking place within Pet Force #99, a comic just enjoyed by Nermal. Yes, we quickly cut over to the main Garfield universe ("our universe", the narrator calls it), where Pet Force is just a comic book. The Garfield gang is all outside, enjoying a cookout prepared by Jon Arbuckle. Nermal is extremely enthused by his comic book, and brags about how he has all 98 previous issues sealed and polybagged, and this one will soon join them. Sorry, Nermal, this came out in 1997, the speculator boom already went bust~

Garfield dismisses comic books as stupid because you can't eat them or use them as a blanket, and declares that none of the stuff that happens in the comic could possibly happen in real life. Uh oh, irony! Because these things can happen, and do! It's a parallel universe, baby! This might be one of my earliest introductions to a "parallel worlds" concept. Much like Earths 1 and 2 in pre-Crisis DC, the events of the comic are essentially the real life adventures of their super-powered counterparts in another dimension. Most of the action in these stories will take place there~

So here's the setup: Vetvix (the parallel equivalent to Liz the veternarian) is an evil sorceress and scientist, who essentially wants to experiment on animals in peace, and possibly subjugate the universe while she's at it. You could argue that Liz is an odd choice for villain, since our universe's Liz isn't particularly evil. But then, our universe's Garfield isn't particularly heroic either. She operates out of a deadly space station called the Orbiting Clinic of Chaos, and at present she's waiting for the arrival of her henchman, Space Pie-Rat, who is a six-foot-tall anthropomorphic rat dressed in stereotypical pirate getup. Vetvix has just finished inventing a levitation ray, and she'd like Pie-Rat to go out and use it to steal all the food in the universe. Vetvix doesn't think small, is what I'm saying.

The counter to Vetvix is Emperor Jon, ruler of the planet Polyester. He's kind and benevolent, even if he's a little dippy and his fashion sense atrocious. Having gotten wind of Vetvix's latest plan, he contacts Pet Force in their ship, the Lightspeed Lasagna. Upon learning the problem, Pet Force gives chase to Pie-Rat. They eventually corner him on some desolate planet, landing and entering an abandoned factory. Unfortunately, they're not safe amongst the dangerous machinery, because this turns out to be a trap. Vetvix has been busy as hell, because she's also invented a metal that's impervious to their powers. And that's not all, because she's also basically invented the Phantom Zone, where she traps Pet Force forever. It specifically mentions it doesn’t kill them, because it wouldn't be kosher to murder the heroes in a Garfield book~

The Lightspeed Lasagna has both onboard cameras connected to the heroes' belts as well as automatic return protocols, so within two days, Emperor Jon knows exactly what's happened to Pet Force. He needs help, so he calls upon his most trusted and powerful advisor: Binky the Sorceror. Binky's just as loud and obnoxious as in the main universe, but he's also a powerful magician. He conjures up a spell for Emperor Jon that lets him pierce the veil between universes. It's basically Equestria Girls rules: parallel universes have similar characters between them. So to replace Pet Force, they need the nearest genetic equivalents from another universe. And that's the versions of Garfield, Odie, Arlene, Nermal, and Pooky that we know and love~

Back in the main universe, it's another day entirely. Another cookout is taking place, and Nermal has received his special anniversary issue of Pet Force #100. The cover's really special, dripping with '90s cover gimmicks like glow-in-the-dark and embossing. A rarely used one, though, was "portal to another universe". That was pretty expensive to print, so you won't find many comics like Nermal's. Maybe he had something there with the collecting after all. The cover glows, and while Jon is distracted by the grill, Garfield and Friends disappear~

They reappear in Emperor Jon's wood-paneled throne room, now transformed into Pet Force. Emperor Jon and Sorceror Binky try to explain the situation, but Garfield--now Garzooka--is disbelieving of the whole thing. In fact, even the idea that Jon can now hear him talk absolutely floors him. Since he's about to deliver the exposition for everyone, can we talk about Compooky for a minute? This spell has just granted sapience to Garfield's teddy bear. I don't expect deep philosophy from a children's novella, but the ramifications of this are really under-explored. Like, never mind the whole idea of a teddy bear having the same genetic makeup as an alternate universe equivalent. He goes from inanimate object to fully conscious being, and he just rolls with it.

Anyways, once everybody gets caught up on what's going on and accepts the new reality, a training montage ensues so the group can all learn to use their powers without killing each other. Once at least reasonably trained, the reborn Pet Force is sent out to stop Pie-Rat. He's gotten sloppy in the times with Pet Force dead, so they track him down easily. After a brief scuffle where Garzooka takes his eyepatch, Pie-Rat flees in his ship. They follow Pie-Rat back to the Orbital Clinic of Chaos, but they can't go in the front. That led the original Pet Force into a trap. Finding an unguarded maintenance hatch--standard on any big space station--they enter Vetvix's lair for a final confrontation!

After dealing with the Waiting Room of Doom, which slowly fills with outdated magazines, they enter Vetvix's inner sanctum. Frustrated with Pie-Rat's failure, she uses her magic to turn him into an ordinary mouse. Vetvix then attempts to use her same weapon on this new Pet Force, but thanks to story contrivance, it only works on beings born in this universe. As other dimensional visitors already, they can't be banished to another dimension. She then pulls a Dr. Claw and runs off cursing Pet Force's name while her base self-destructs. Vetvix is a very "discard and draw" sort of villain, it seems. Pet Force, of course, makes a harrowing escape just in the nick of time.

Returning to Emperor Jon, they vow to be ready to return whenever they're called on, since evil never stays dormant for long. Odious even gifts Emperor Jon with the mouse-ified Pie-Rat as proof of their victory. Well, I'm glad they remember that, so they didn't accidentally murder a major villain in their first superhero outing. They're returned to their own universe, and the time differential between them places them back with Jon having not had time to even look up from the grill. Garfield begins to doubt the adventure even happened--until that night, when he finds Pie-Rat's eyepatch still on his person. Ah, definitive proof of... eyepatches, I guess~

Book 2: Pie-Rat's Revenge!

You have to wonder where, in a space-faring superhero setting, Pie-Rat got the inspiration for his classic pirate motif. It's a little incongruous is all I'm saying. And hey, remember when I said earlier that Garzooka's purple-and-green colour scheme was odd for a hero? Well, here he is as a villain! That'll catch your eye. This would be a terrific comic cover, which is what you want in a series like this.

The book opens with a brief recap of the previous story's events, then moves into the new plot. See, Emperor Jon has opted to keep the polymorphed Pie-Rat as his pet. How very Ron Weasley of him. That's pretty apt, actually, because similarly Pie-Rat has maintained his intelligence in his new mousey form. Pie-Rat gets sick of being Emperor Jon's pet and plans a daring escape, exploiting the emperor's dimwitted and loving personality against him. Pie-Rat jams the lock with a food pellet and makes his escape that night.

Once free from his cage, he encounters Binky's cauldron, still left in the throne room from when the sorceror summoned Pet Force from Garfield's universe. Figuring he has nothing to lose, Pie-Rat jumps in the leftover brew. Suddenly he finds himself growing. He returns to his original anthropomorphic state--but with a twist. He's now twice his original height, a staggering twelve feet tall. He scoops up the rest of the remaining potion for later, and sneaks out of the palace as best as a 12-foot rat can sneak. Desiring revenge on both his former employer and his longtime foes, he steals Pet Force's ship and makes his escape from the planet, headed for Vetvix's newest base.

After his guards help Emperor Jon put the pieces of the problem together, they decide they must once again call upon the powers of Pet Force to recover their missing vehicle and stop the newly embiggened Pie-Rat. Fortunately, Garfield and friends have been watching movies all weekend, so Jon doesn't notice when his pets disappear from the living room in a bright flash. Of course, once returned to the alternate universe and the situation explained, they still have a problem: how do they give chase to Pie-Rat when he's got their ship?

And speaking of Pie-Rat in their ship, he's followed the trail of a mysterious energy output, and it's led him right to Vetvix's new base, the Menacing Moon of Mayhem. See, this is why you don't blow up your base: the backup base is never as good. if it was, it wouldn't be the backup. Given that it's such a shoddy base, Pie-Rat is easily able to get inside and get close to Vetvix. She's expecting a technological attack, so she's unprepared when he pulls out that vial of magic potion and sprinkles her with it. And naturally, the potion that made him grow 12 feet tall makes Vetvix shrink to 5 inches. It's magic, we don't have to explain it!

Pie-Rat takes the magic crystal that Vetvix uses to fuel her powers, which of course didn't shrink because magic is just bullshit. See previous paragraph's last sentence. And while Pie-Rat takes over the base and begins plotting a further revenge against Pet Force, we cut over to them. They're at Sorceror Binky's own castle, and it's clear he's a bit of a hoarder. This is to their advantage, though, as they eventually piece together a working spaceship out of old car parts and other things, all patched together between Compooky's know-how and Binky's magic. This seems like the sort of book where I could use that "it's magic" quote every other paragraph. But craft a new--if small--ship they do, and speed off in the newly christened Planetary Pizza.

The rickety little ship does eventually find its way to Pie-Rat's base, saving him the trouble of being proactive as a villain. The magic thing keeps happening, and Pie-Rat basically becomes Discord for a bit while he fights them, doing things like turning Starlena's siren song into actual living music notes. One by one, the members of Pet Force are taken out, with only Garzooka is left. He and Pie-Rat struggle, while Pie-Rat tries to aim the magic crystal at Garzooka. Garzooka uses his claw to rip the crystal from Pie-Rat and defeat him.

Unfortunately, here's where the cover comes in. It seems the moments Pie-Rat was focusing the crystal during the struggle affected Garzooka's mind. He puts the crystal around his own neck. which turns him evil. He helps Pie-Rat to his feet, and the pair escape in the Lightspeed Lasagna. While Pet Force pursues them in their ramshackle ship, the new criminal duo strikes the storage planet of Deli to steal their food. Pet Force manages to catch up as the villains celebrate their spoils, and use a magic blast from the systems Binky installed to short out the Lightspeed Lasagna. This enables them to dock with the ship and climb aboard for a contfrontation.

The group fights, and once again the bearer of a bullshit magic crystal subdues the heroes easily. Annoyed now, Garzooka takes hold of Starlena and prepares to kill her or something. She taps into the one thing she has left: she's not fighting just Garzooka, but Garfield in his body. She drops some heavy put-downs, which resonate with Garfield, and he hesitates long enough for her to cut the crystal off him. The crystal hits the floor and shatters, undoing its evil magics on Garzooka's mind as well as on all his teammates. With Pet Force reunited, Pie-Rat is easily subdued and locked up.

The group waits for the ship to power back up, then speed off to apologise to the planet Deli. Following that, they head back towards Vetvix's moonbase. That night, though, the magic that was making Pie-Rat 12 feet tall wears off, and he escapes from his cell. He steals the remaining shards of the crystal, climbs into the Planetary Pizza, and makes a getaway. As a bonus, he also repeats the power-down spell against the bigger ship, giving him ample time to escape. And he's not the only one. Over on the Menacing Moon of Mayhem, Vetvix also returns to her proper size, and abandons this base as well. And when Pet Force fails to find her, they simply return to their own universe, ready to be called on once again in the future~

Book 3: K-Niner: Dog of Doom!

Another very basic comic book-style cover. K-Niner is a much more typical villain in style. This one's actually a wrap-around, and features the rest of Pet Force reacting to K-Niner on the back cover. Which is good because, other than the first cover, the covers all have a heavy Garzooka focus. Which makes sense for a book series, I suppose, you wanna assure the kiddos that Garfield's gonna be in the book. But as a comic book series, this would be a bad look for a team book~

So after our standard introduction and recap, we start off with Vetvix in yet another new base, the Floating Fortress of Fear. I'm sure it's very intimidating, if she can keep hold of it for more than a single book. She's picking up from the epilogue and putting the last touches on K-Niner, mostly enhancing his intelligence. Now, you look at the cover and tell me what kind of voice you'd expect. Some sort of German or Austrian accent, like the doberman on Road Rovers? Does anyone remember Road Rovers~? Anyways, but no: he speaks with a posh British accent. You know, the "I say, good chaps, looks like we're in a bit of a sticky wicket, eh wot?" type. Trust me, you can tell. But just because he sounds refined doesn't mean he's not evil.

I also love that after the initial "trapped them in the Phantom Zone" bit, the villains just go whole ham. K-Niner here demonstrates that he is indeed evil by threatening to rip out Vetvix's throat. Let your villains be villainous is all I'm saying. She's pleased he's so vicious, but feels he needs to learn his place as well. She force-chokes him until he complies. She then gives him his assignment: she thinks dogs should be liberated. The Boy Mayor of Second Life would approve, and so does K-Niner. Turning pets on their masters is just his style.

K-Niner takes a portable evolution gun, and immediately sets off. He begins on the planet Kennel. Isn't it neat how every planet is named after an English word that describes its function? K-Niner quickly takes over the dog population and turns them against their masters, because boosting their intelligence also makes them evil, of course. They use enslavement collars on their former owners, and within a few days, the dogs now run the planet. We cut over to Emperor Jon on Polyester, where a man has crash-landed a ship. He's an escapee from Kennel, and he's here to report the events so we can get the plot moving and once more summon Pet Force!

And summoned once more they are, Garfield and Friends once more conveniently disappearing in a split second while Jon's back is turned (this time they're outside playing volleyball). And once back in the parallel universe, Emperor Jon fills them all in on K-Niner's dastardly doings. Garzooka, naturally, takes great offense to dogs being in charge, and takes his duties as a hero completely seriously for once. Pet Force takes off for a confrontation with K-Niner in the Lightspeed Lasagna. And speaking of Pet Force's ships...

The Planetary Pizza, piloted by Pie-Rat, plants its pads down on polar planet Glacia. Pie-Rat is here seeking a way to restore his magic crystal and regain his mighty magic powers. He's sought out the home of a legendary evil wizard, who's known by the name of... Barfo. I see why Barfo keeps his location a secret. But anyway, Barfo is the one who made the crystal, so naturally Pie-Rat reasons he can restore it as well. Suprisingly once on Glacia, Barfo's evil lair is pretty easy to find. His manservant, Hobart the Gnome, brings Pie-Rat before the wizard, and within moments the crystal is restored! Pie-Rat turns to thank Hobart, but Hobart suddenly turns into Vetvix!

Yes, Vetvix knew all along that Pie-Rat's quest would lead him here. And as she was once Barfo's student in the ways of evil magic, she knew she could get the old coot to go along with her plan. Barfo returns the crystal to Vetvix, restoring her powers. And so Pie-Rat, a recurring villain in three whole books, is unceremoniously done away with, as Vetvix teleports him inside an asteroid, trapping him in solid rock. Even if the asteroid were hollow or he displaced the interior when he teleported in, no doubt he'll suffocate within moments. That's pretty harsh.

With that over, we rejoin Pet Force as they approach Kennel. K-Niner's battle cruiser spots them incoming, and shoots the ship down, even in spite of Abnermal's forcefields. Pet Force bail out of the ship, and Abnermal uses his powers to make snow to cushion their fall. Upon landing, a contingent of mutant animals attack. The mooks aren't much, but K-Niner himself puts up an impressive fight. However, one of the mooks pulls a gun and points it at Compooky. This is why Compooky usually stays aboard the ship, but that wasn't an option. Rather than let their friend get hurt, Pet Force surrenders.

Pet Force is held prisoner separately from Compooky, with both the cell's technology making it freeze-proof and threats of "don't break out, or we'll shoot your compatriot". Their imprisonment is not long, though, as suddenly the power goes out. Pet Force takes advantage of the situation and make their escape, quickly running into Compooky. K-Niner didn't think the hyper-intelligent teddy bear needed a high security cell, and just locked him in the basement. It was easy for him to then break out and shut down the local power grid. This also has the side effect of turning off the control collars the humans were wearing. How convenient!

With control of the planet now tilted in their favour, Pet Force now has time to both fix their ship and reverse the polarity of the brain-boosting weapons, turning the dog population of Kennel back to their normal selves. Though the experience did change the pet owners of Kennel. Having experienced life in their pets' shoes (so to speak) for a bit, they've resolved to treat their canine companions a bit more equally. More being allowed on the furniture, less stupid tricks for treats. Still, Pet Force can't stay long, and they head off in pursuit of K-Niner's battle cruiser. This is why most superheroes don't have spaceships (Jedis don't count): if your enemy also has one, they can flee way more easily than on foot.

Not willing to let another place go to the dogs, as it were, Pet Force catches up with K-Niner. With his previous success, Vetvix has stepped up the timetable and sent him after Polyester right away. Emperor Jon is in danger! They enter the planet's atmosphere, and are attacked by fighter craft. They fend them off, but their weapons system is damaged in the fight, so they can't simply use the reverse brain-rays and solve it quickly. The team splits up instead: Garzooka and Abnermal will go after K-Niner, while the other three will find the planet's power source and knock out the collars, since that worked so well the last time.

The two heroes quickly make short work of K-Niner's guards, and then turn the battle to deal with the Dog of Doom himself. While the struggle goes on, the rest of Pet Force reach the planet's power grid. Using a clever tactic, Compooky overloads the power and causes and electrical storm that simultaneously undoes the brain-boosting effect and shorts out the enslavement collars. There's only a few pages left, after all, and we have to wrap this up. K-Niner is reverted back into an ordinary dog, and the emperor is reverted to an ordinary non-enslaved person. The day is saved!

And now once again, Pet Force prepares to return to their own universe. However... when the spell clears, the five heroes are still standing there. Something is blocking the passage between dimensions, and Pet Force is trapped. And while Pet Force's adventures have taken place between mere moments in their own universe, they have always returned quickly enough that Jon didn't notice a thing. But this time, as Jon retrieves the volleyball and turns around to his pets, he's surprised to find they've all vanished into thin air...

Book 4: Menace of the Mutanator

This one's very striking because of its more painted look compared to the heavy black outlines the rest of the covers have. Does this one count as having the whole team on the cover? Because, spoilers, that's what the Mutanator is: the rest of Pet Force mashed up into a villain. Again, though, that's definitely a striking image that'd draw in readers to a comic cover. In fact, while Garzooka may be over-used as a cover focus, several of these also show him imperiled in some way, and that's nice for character stuff. That helps balace it a bit~

I wanna say, before we start, that I'm impressed by the continuity for the series as a whole. They could've just written each story as a standalone, but for a series of 100-page children's novellas starring Garfield characters as superheroes, things happen in these books. Like, maybe not sweeping status quo changes, but events affect the plot of each next book down the line. And that's where we pick up! Right where the last book left off, with Pet Force now stuck in the alternate universe, unable to return home to Jon. But if they can't go home to Jon, well, maybe then events will conspire to bring Jon to them~

Yep, because Jon happens to wander into the room where they keep the copy of Pet Force #100 that acts as a portal to their universe, he gets transported into the Pet Force universe. And since Emperor Jon is still an extant entity, there's just two Jons now. Jon, of course, is a bit freaked out, and it takes several pages to explain the whole deal to him, and also have a showcase of all their powers to pad out the book some more. Eventually, they decide to call in Sorceror Binky to examine the problem. When he has a go of it, a sudden tornado emerges from the cauldron and whisks away Pet Force--save for Garzooka, whose prodigious strength keeps him anchored.

Garzooka heads out in the Lightspeed Lasagna to track Pet Force's signature, glad to get away from a double trouble Jon. And while he's searching, the scene cuts to Vetvix's Floating Fortress of Fear. Hey, one of her bases actually lasted more than one book! This is where Pet Force has been transported to, once more in a power-proof cell. Vetvix monologues to the heroes, as she is wont to do, explaining that she's the one who cast the spell to keep them from returning home. And further, she's brought them here to mutate them into her servants.

While Emperor Jon exposits about his backstory (turns out he is not of royal blood, and has about as much legitimate claim to the throne as you or I do), the search continues. Sorceror Binky detects Pet Force, giving them all a view of what happens next. The trapped members of Pet Force are literally broken apart and reassembled: Odious' body, Compooky's brain inserted into the chest, Abnermal's hands, and Starlena's head. She christens this beast "Mutanator", and it is soullessly obedient. I also wanna say, Mutanator's kind of a non-binary icon, aren't they? (The comic uses "it", but it was 1998 and alternative pronouns weren't really a thing yet.) Muscular, masculine body, but confident enough to still wear lipstick. It's a look, is all I'm saying~

Mutanator continues to possess the combined powers of Pet Force as well. Vetvix sends them to attack the planet Armory to gear up before attempting to conquer Polyester. And meanwhile, thanks to the convenience of being able to scan all of Compooky's memories now that his brain is part of Mutanator, Vetvix has the perfect trap to spring on Garzooka--or should she say Garfield. Yes, she really knows the whole origin for Pet Force now, and now she knows all Garfield's weaknesses, likes and dislikes, and probably blood type and other dating profile stats~

Thus, when Garzooka receives the coordinates from Emperor Jon and arrives at the Floating Fortress, he finds himself menaced by giant spiders. Vetvix couldn't think of a way to get Mondays to attack him, so the Giant Spider Invasion will do. Spiders are apparently very formiddable foes, Garzooka's personal fears aside. They can swat gamma hairballs out of the air, they can construct webs as quickly as certain Marvel heroes, and their hairy exoskeletons are resistant to both claw and strength. But despite his fear and Abnermal's running commentary, Garzooka manages to trounce the spiders with a carefully applied flame--taking Vetvix's blueprints with them.

Garzooka heads out once again to track down the Mutanator, leaving his less-than-all-together friends in the safety of their forcefield prison. While he's off, we return to the perspective of his target. Using their combined powers, the Mutanator swiftly conquers the planet Armory and sets their sights on Polyester next. It's not a bad plan, honestly. With the stockpile from Armory, not only will the Mutanator be more powerful, Polyester won't be able to use the planet for backup. Fortunately for the two Jons, though, Garzooka intercepts the Mutanator before they can leave Armory.

The fight's actually pretty good. Very back and forth. But even despite Garzooka's great strength, the Mutanator wins in the end. Thankfully, Vetvix puts her conquest of Polyester on hold to take the time to retrieve Garzooka and add his power to the Mutanator. This, of course will be her undoing--in a completely ridiculous way, of course. For back in the palace, our universe's Jon is watching Pet Force's struggles with the scrying cauldron. And he leans in a bit too close. Sowhile Vetvix is prepping the machine to divide Garzooka's body like she did the rest of Pet Force, Jon suddenly tumbles through the dimensional warp caused by the cauldron and lands on Vetvix, which causes her to put the machine in reverse. A real Jonnus ex cauldrona there, eh?

The Mutanator disappears, their existance as a unique being wiped out as their pieces return to their proper Pet Force owners. With Pet Force reassembled, Garzooka takes out Vetvix with one of his gamma-radiated hairballs while she's distracted by Jon. Pet Force decides that the vile veternarian should have a taste of her own medicine, and stick her in the body-splicing machine with some of her guards. This divides them all up and mixes them into bizarre combinations. It also has the side effect of disabling Vetvix's magic, so they can return to their own universe now.

The book wraps up here. Pet Force first returns to Armory to both return the stolen weapons and also make repairs on the buildings that were damaged in Garzooka's fight with the Mutanator. That's the sort of thing I'd like to see in more superhero stories in general. The two Jons part ways, with the Emperor believing the other Jon's heroism to have been deliberate. And thus are Garfield and friends returned home. And just like the end of their first adventure, where Garfield couldn't be sure if it really happened, so too is Jon's memory fading. Had he really witnessed all that? Only his pets know for sure--and in this universe, they can't talk~

Book 5: Attack of the Lethal Lizards

This one's another wrap-around, showing the rest of Pet Force engaging the remaining Lethal Lizards on the back cover. This is one advantage books have over comics: a front and back cover you can use for your story-telling. The Lizard designs are pretty good for a villain group too. Like Pet Force, they don't adhere to a particular theme, but they do look good individually. Garzooka roasting a hot dog on a stick might be a bit too comedic for a superhero story, though. It sets the tone wrong. How "lethal" can they possibly be if Garzooka is out here roasting hot dogs in the middle of battle?

So here we go, last book. After the usual recap, we open with Jon explaining to Garfield and friends his latest plans: they're going to WackyWorld, a theme park dedicated to Jon's favourite cartoon, The Wackies. Both Garfield and Nermal think the show is lame, and if those two agree on something, you know it must be so. In less lame universes, however, trouble is once more a-brewing. So it turns out Vetvix's Floating Fortress of Fear has been orbiting the swamp planet Reptilius this whole time. And her various experiments in the last two books have been radiating the planet in magical energy...

From that magical power, three reptiles find themselves uplifted in intelligence and granted fantastic powers. Please say hello to our three main villains for this book: Snake, an enormous snake (the only one without an anthro design) with stretching powers; Chameleon, who can shapeshift; and Dragon, a komodo dragon with fire breath and the bad attitude to match. While Snake and Chameleon figure out their powers, Dragon declares himself the leader as he's clearly the smartest, strongest, and most powerful. They name themselves the Lethal Lizards and start plotting how to rule the planet.

After that exciting intro, though, the book kind of slows down. First we get a whole chapter of Emperor Jon also deciding to go on vacation, to planet Funlandia. With Vetvix out of commission for a while, there's no better time. In short, he's out of the castle and Sorceror Binky is in charge. This is followed by a chapter of Jon and his pets at WackyWorld. It's certainly an accommodating amusement park to allow pets on its grounds. Garfield at least gets along with the food, but if you know anything about amusement park food prices, the amount Garfield eats will make your wallet weep. Jon takes his mind off it by dragging the pets along to a ride. Surely they have to be under the height restriction~

Fortunately, we get back to the actual stars of this book, and we see a bit more of their dynamic. Snake is the sort who sucks up to whoever's calling themselves "Boss" at the moment. Dragon is power-hungry, and it's clear he'll sell out his allies at the drop of a hat. Chameleon is Starscream. Anyway, they trek through the jungles of Reptilius until they find a downed spaceship. Reviewing the logs reveals it was a scout ship from Vetvix, and they also learn of Vetvix and her mission. However, they don't know where Emperor Jon lives, so they crowd into the the newly christened Rapacious Reptile and set course for the stars.

The first planet they come across is a world called Klod. Quickly the Lethal Lizards beat up the populace and find the local government. Chameleon shapeshifts into a dignitary, pretending to be an advance entourage for Emperor Jon, schmoozing with the governor until he learns both what Jon looks like and the name of his planet. With this information secure, Chameleon nips out suddenly, and the trio sets forth towards Polyester. Governer Klutz calls up the palace as soon as the reptiles depart, and reports the incident to Sorceror Binky.

Binky wastes no time, and he dials up Pet Force. Since all five are in one place, he's able to pull them through even without them being near the gateway through issue #100's cover. Convenient! Pet Force, however, does waste time, as a lengthy comedy scene eats up several pages before we just get on with it. Eventually, the situation is conveyed, and they figure it's safer to keep Emperor Jon on Funlandia for the time being. Compooky stays behind to help plan some strategies, while the rest of Pet Force boards the Lightspeed Lasagna to intercept the Lethal Lizards before they even arrive.

Pet Force spends the next few minutes both scanning for incoming ships and bickering with each other, so I'm very glad when the Rapacious Reptile appears on their detectors before too long. Dragon threatens the ship, telling them to move or he'll knock them aside. It's a spaceship, dude, you can move in three dimensions. The ships trade shots, and while Chameleon's piloting is actually pretty good due to his independently-rotating eyeballs, eventually both ships crash land on whatever planet is nearby.

Both ships crash right next to each other, which is improbable but less ridiculous than some of the contrivances in these books, so I'm okay with it. Now you'd think what with the enemies being reptiles and Abnermal having freezing powers that this battle would be over really easily, but no. In fact, Garzooka and Dragon are pretty evenly matched. Snake turns out to be immune to Starlena's siren song because snakes don't have external ears. See, now there's a contrivance I find a bit weird. Snake swallows Abnermal whole, and Chameleon and Odious get literally tongue-tied. The Lethal Lizards actually live up to their name pretty well.

As the fight continues, half of both sides are laid out when Compooky comes rushing up, saying he has an urgent message from the emperor. And that's when he sucker-punches the team. It was actually Chameleon in disguise, having gotten knocked away when he and Odious separated. So yeah, round one goes to the Lizards, and they make their escape first. Pet Force regroups, and they give chase. The Lizards have enough head start to really lay siege to Polyester before Pet Force arrives, though. They even get access to the palace using Chameleon's shapeshifting, leading to Sorceror Binky letting slip the real location of the emperor just as Pet Force arrives.

Another fight ensues--see, now it's really a superhero story--and the Lizards leave again 2 and 0. This time Snake uses his venomous fangs to attack Starlena. This leads to the weirdest contrivance yet. Maybe not the worst, but definitely the weirdest. They have only minutes to save Starlena. So how do they do it? Well, they notice that Odious drools quite a lot. It's very "fluid output". So they have Binky magically reverse Odious' drooling, so that he has "fluid input" on his tongue instead. It becomes a big suction sponge and sucks the poison out of Starlena. They then restore the drooling, and he just harmlessly drools out the poison. What.

With their teammate saved, Pet Force pursues the Lethal Lizards to Funlandia. They get there just in time to rescue Emperor Jon from their clutches, with Garzooka and Odious combining their strength to literally rip a kiddie ride out of the ground. Starlena corners Chameleon in a hall of mirrors, turning his own trick against him. Snake is undone by Odious' strength. And Garzooka fights Dragon to a standstill, finally trapping all three on a roller coaster still operating. When the ride comes to an end, Abnermal freezes them all until the authorities can retrieve them.

Naturally, Emperor Jon thinks it's all part of the show (because Jon is dimwitted in any universe). The Lizards are sent to a lizard-proof prison (seriously, it specifies this), and Pet Force returns to their own universe. As usual, Jon didn't notice his pets go missing during the dark amusement park ride. The book concludes on an ominous note, however, as the ship carrying the Lethal Lizards makes its jump to lightspeed just as it passes the Floating Fortress of Fear. The shockwave knocks over some debris that reactivates the combining machine, restoring Vetvix to her full evil might once more!

The end!

No, really. Those five books are all there was. I hear it may have continued into the comics, but I don’t know how accurate that is. I didn’t really look into it.

But boy, what a ride, huh? Let’s dissect the books one at a time, since it only seems fair to take them as individual stories.

The Outrageous Origin: It’s a fairly basic origin story, I’d say. It kind of has to be. I guess my main gripe is that, like Rita Repulsa’s entire run on Power Rangers, the heroes never fight the main villain directly. In fact, there’s barely even an evil plot in this one. You have henchmen and some traps, and that’s about it for the menace.

Pie-Rat’s Revenge: A cautionary tale about why you treat your minions with respect. This one’s pretty good, but the events depicted on the cover make up such a small part of the book. Wouldn’t it have been more fun if Garzooka was turned at the beginning of the story? Book 4 would at least do the reverse of that, so it’s not a major complaint~

K-Niner, Dog of Doom: I think this one’s about as middle of the road as you can get. What a coincidence that it’s also the middle of the series! Like I said in the recap portion, it’s a shame that Pie-Rat’s story ended here. This one definitely feels more “villain of the week” than most.

Menace of the Mutanator: This one might be the best book in the series. Garzooka, alone, battling against the best parts of his team? That’s gripping stuff. I guess the main problem is that the Mutanator isn’t really a character in and of themselves. Like, K-Niner, he may have been a generic rent-a-villain type, but he had a personality. Mutanator is little more than an extention of Vetvix’s will.

Attack of the Lethal Lizards: I’m a bit split on this one. The bits with the titular Lizards are great. They steal the show! But the parts where it focuses on either Jon kind of drag, and Pet Force is a bit too jokey here. Like, I get the point is that they’ve relaxed into their roles now, and there’s not much point of doing it as a Garfield story if they don’t actually use the character personalities, but... I dunno. It’s good, but it could have been better~

And that’s it! Like, I dunno how to wrap this up. Pet Force was neither my first exposure to superheroes nor my first introduction to the Garfield brand (you can thank Saturday morning cartoons for both of those). But for some reason, maybe just the absurdly goofy premise, it always kinda stuck with me. And I think that’s a good enough reason to make it my 10th anniversary review, don’t you~?

#books #reviews #Garfield #Pet Force #Garfield's Pet Force #Taiblog

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daresplaining · 4 years

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A Few Thoughts About the Current Run

I feel like I ought to say a few things about my feelings on Zdarsky’s run, as of right now (August 2020, pre-Annual-- that may be important). I haven’t said much about this run, and I should admit that I actually stopped reading it for a while. At a certain point, I realized I was dreading the release of each preview, and took that as a sign that maybe I should take a break and just re-read some back issues instead. This is, above all, supposed to be fun; I never, ever want reading DD to feel like a chore.

That said, I am now caught up and feel ready to begin untangling exactly why this run is so distasteful to me. I’ve been fortunate to have other DD fans to chat with about this, which has helped me to pinpoint what my problems are... because on paper, this run seems like something I’d enjoy. Matt accidentally kills a guy; that’s always fun. Marco Checchetto is great. The story explores Daredevil’s relationship with the citizens of Hell’s Kitchen, which I love. Foggy helps Matt with an action-y Daredevil thing; that’s awesome. There are some very cool fights. Elektra is in it. Stilt-Man is (briefly) in it. It has all the trappings of an interesting narrative. But there is a giant hole in the middle of this run, and that hole is Matt Murdock-shaped and impossible to ignore.

I read Daredevil comics for a lot of things (anyone who’s been following me for the past few years might think I read Daredevil comics for Mike Murdock, and you may have a point there) but first and foremost, I read them for Matt. There is a lot that makes a good DD story great-- historically, the comic has featured great supporting casts, and that’s another problem with this run that I’ll get back to in a minute-- but Matt is always the anchor. One of the greatest strengths in Daredevil comes from the fact that the protagonist is such a compelling character. You are interested in what he’s doing. You want to follow his story. You enjoy being inside his head. I’m not saying that you can’t write a good Matt-free Daredevil story-- you definitely can. But if Matt is present and written poorly, the whole story will collapse around him, and that’s been my experience with Zdarsky’s run. Part of the reason I’ve taken so long to write this post is because I’ve been trying to figure out if my complaint comes from my own personal taste-- which is not a basis on which I can critique this comic-- or whether the problem is inherent in the work itself. Having discussed it with other people, I feel comfortable saying that I think the problem is in the writing.

Zdarsky’s Matt feels profoundly unfamiliar to me, and that in itself isn’t necessarily a problem, but I don’t find this new version of my favorite superhero interesting. I actually find him a little repellant. If this run had been my introduction to Daredevil, I would’ve said “Nope” and read something else. Matt is a character with depth. He is intensely multifaceted. His relationship to superheroing is complicated, his views on justice and morality are rich and often contradictory. Zdarsky somehow missed all of that and has crafted a one-dimensional character with a blatantly black-and-white sense of morality. Matt’s reaction to accidentally killing someone seems to be to decide that all superheroes are bad-- something I complained about at the beginning of the run and which, unfortunately, only grew more annoying as the story progressed. Zdarsky’s Matt is painfully self-righteous, to a degree that makes him extremely unlikeable (at least to me). And yes, Matt has been written as unlikeable before. I actually love when Matt behaves badly; I find that fascinating from a narrative perspective. But I’ve realized that the key reason that has been effective in the past is because the story has never condoned that behavior. When Matt was emotionally abusive toward Heather Glenn, Frank Miller went out of his way to show us-- via the side characters, via blatant expressions of Heather’s pain-- that Matt was in the wrong. When Matt was a jerk in Bendis’ and Brubaker’s runs, when he drove his friends away, when he acted irrationally and harmfully, the narrative commented on that jerkiness and irrationality.

But Zdarsky does not do that in his run. He presents Matt’s irrational and jerkish behavior without comment or nuance, as if it’s a perfectly normal, reasonable way for Matt to act under the circumstances, and I have been surprised to realize how distasteful I find that, and how bad it makes Matt look. There’s a difference between having a character who is comfortably flawed-- whose behavior you’re supposed to occasionally question-- and a character who is just unpleasant and unlikeable, seemingly by accident. In the most recent issue (#21), Matt has an extremely upsetting interaction with Spider-Man, one of his oldest friends, and Matt is positioned as heroic for behaving this way, and it made me feel a little ill, because there’s no textual examination or questioning of this behavior. It’s just Matt, pushing people away, being Angsty(TM) and Gritty(TM) and lone wolf-y just because, in a way that is grating and unpleasant and completely lacks nuance.

The other major element of Zdarsky’s characterization of Matt is religion. I’ve mentioned before (as have other DD fans before me) that Matt is not generally written as religious, and it’s a strange phenomenon that this characterization has appeared in multiple adaptations (the movie and the Netflix show) while having very little actual presence in the source material. But it was a key theme in the Netflix show, and while hopefully that influence will disappear from the comics as more time passes, we are still in a honeymoon phase wherein MCU elements are still popping up in the 616 universe. It’s clear that Zdarsky really liked the show, and Soule as well; I’m certainly not letting Soule off the hook here, because the idea of Matt being devoutly Christian showed up his run first. But there, you could get away from it if it wasn’t your thing (which, for me, it’s not). Soule had whole story arcs that didn’t mention it. But Zdarsky has made it 75% of Matt’s personality. When he isn’t fighting or sleeping with someone in this run, Matt is angsting about God.

I hesitate to complain about this because it’s Zdarsky’s right as a DD writer to change the protagonist however he likes. It’s frustrating, yes, but not actually a sign of bad writing per se. Plus, not everyone is me. Many people-- probably including many people who were fans of the Netflix show and are entering the comics via that connection (which seems to be the target audience for this run)-- may be religious and may connect to MCU/Zdarsky Matt in that way. And that’s wonderful. I want to be very clear: it’s not the religiousness itself that I’m complaining about. My complaint is this: if you’re going to drastically alter a character, you need to back it up. You need to dig into it, make that new personality element feel powerful and real, and integrate it into the character’s pre-existing personality. And if you’re going to base the entirety of that character’s emotional journey on that new trait, you need to work to make sure it’s accessible to your readership. I, as a non-religious person, have no sense of why Matt is so upset about God. I have no frame of reference for his pain, either from my own experiences or from previous Daredevil continuity, and Zdarsky does nothing to develop or explore the basis of Matt’s faith, and so it all just falls flat. I feel alienated by this run. I see an angsty, self-righteous, prickly jerk ranting about needing to do God’s will, and then I put the issue down and read some She-Hulk instead. If Zdarsky (or Soule-- again, he could have done this too) had made an effort to actually explore and explain Matt’s feelings about his religion, rather than lazily shoving that characterization in there and assuming readers will just accept it, it wouldn’t bother me nearly as much as it has.

Also, I feel I have to mention; this is a fantasy universe. Matt went to Hell and yelled at Mephisto in Nocenti’s run, and it was awesome. Maybe this is just me, but if you’re going to bring in religion, at least have some fun with it! Bookend Nocenti’s run: Matt goes to Heaven, runs into God, and she gives him some free therapy and a souvenir t-shirt (or, I don’t know, something). To give Zdarsky credit, he did at least hint at that sort of thing in Matt’s conversation with Reed Richards in #9.

I'm going to cut this post short, because I really don’t enjoy writing negative reviews. I’d much rather post about things I love, and over the next few weeks I do plan to highlight aspects of this run that I’ve enjoyed. But I’ll end by saying that the weaknesses in Matt’s characterization could have been mitigated by a great supporting cast. Having prominent secondary protagonists would have provided outside perspectives on Matt’s behavior and given the reader other characters to root for when he got too out-of-hand. They would have drawn out the human elements in Matt’s character and helped give him that nuance he so desperately needs. But this run, just like Soule’s before it, is woefully underpopulated. Foggy’s presence is extremely weak and his appearances far too infrequent. Apart from brief cameos in MacKay’s Man Without Fear mini, Kirsten McDuffie and Sam Chung have both vanished, and I’m worried that Kirsten might have joined Milla Donovan in the limbo of still-living-but-permanently-benched ex-love interests. The women in this run are all either villains or people for Matt to sleep with (I was pumped about Elektra’s return and the idea of her training Matt, but her characterization was disappointing (I may write a separate post about this), and Mindy Libris could have been really compelling as a moral person trying to survive life in a crime family, but instead she was just a one-note, underdeveloped victim for Matt to lust after). To Zdarsky’s credit, he has clearly been trying to give the Kingpin a humanizing story arc, but even that I haven’t found compelling enough to want to keep reading (though that could just be me). Cole North was intriguing at first, but he ended up feeling more like a concept than an actual person. And none of these characters engage with Matt on a human, emotional level, which is what a good supporting cast needs to do. I commented early-on that this run felt like all flash and no bang (Is that a term? It is now.) and I think I still stand by that-- it’s all bombastic plot concepts and big ideas without any of the actual development or nuance necessary to make them work. There is nothing in this run that has pulled me in and held my interest; in the absence of a Matt I can connect to, I need something, and so far I haven’t found it.

I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point. This run was nominated for an Eisner for best ongoing series, so apparently someone likes it, but it has become clear that-- so far, anyway-- it’s just not right for me.

#Daredevil vol. 6 #Daredevil #Commentary #This is very negative. I'm sorry. Feel free to ignore it.

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sanemreid · 3 years

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tehlikeli oyun. — self para.

( feat. the spawn of satan elliott langham )

After locking up the studio — which hadn’t happened until a good little while beyond actually closing up for the day from classes and lessons, not uncommon for her to be the last one out whether staying late because of business related things, or simply to take advantage of the serene atmosphere to work on routines. Tonight’s reasoning stemming from the former — she’d popped over to her previous home in Goldfinch to asses a few things before officially putting it on the market. Would there have been a better time in the day to do this ? Probably, however this week proved to be busy for a myriad of reasons, thus for her this so happened to be the best allotted free moment, at least just to do an initial sweep. Luckily enough too her sister was out of town for a job so it could really just be a quick pop in. Regardless if she didn’t have a current ETA on the when she'd have it up for sale, more than likely after the wedding, she still wanted to be sure in the case anything might’ve needed to get revamped, it could get done sooner rather than later.

Truthfully though the place was in fairly as peak condition as it’d ever been since she lived here, plus the youngest of the Bayrak clan seemed to have the same trait of immaculate upkeep. The basement was probably the only feature that may need attention, seeing as it’d remained partially unfinished this whole time. Making her way downstairs after grabbing a forgotten item from the move into the manor, the plan was to raid the kitchen before actually heading home, when a knock resonated through an otherwise steady silence, halted Sanem on the second to last step. Weird. She’d hadn’t expected anyone obviously, maybe it was one of Damla’s friends, but wouldn’t she have mentioned she’d be gone. Maybe it really was old Edith coming back to haunt her. Brows furrow with a slight perplexity before continuing her movements, this time towards the entrance, another knock came halfway.

Opening the door – not fully – she was first able to catch a glimpse of the figure opposite’s profile against the front light, more features coming into view as he turned. There’d been an indistinct familiarity that the dancer was now trying to rack her brain over, all the while as his own vision landed on her a grin spread over his features that unnervingly could only rival the Cheshire cat. ❝ Sanem, hope I didn’t catch you at a bad time, ❞ Beginning with a tone that was saturated with far too much pleasantry, especially in the way her name fell. He knew her and yet she didn’t or — did she ? ❝ Mind if I come in, it’s kind of cold standing out here. ❞ Words fly in one ear and out the other as she continued to search for how and where she possibly knew him. Then like the cogs of a machine did the wheels start slowly clicking things into place, it might’ve been almost a year ago, but deep within her memory did she place him, outside the courthouse when she’d waited for Allison after a case. When she first laid eyes upon none other than the ghost himself.

Elliott fucking Langham.

Second passes when the realization hits, that she’s immediately moving to slam the door in his face, but is stopped before it can happen, his hand catching and pushes it along with herself, essentially shoving his way inside. ❝ Now that was just rude, here I thought we could just have a little talk. Guess there’s no need for formal introductions either then. ❞

Fleetingly stunned; she stood her ground just a short distance from him, almost rigidly on guard, arms crossing tightly over her chest. Attempting to keep calm though that bubbling ire was igniting beneath her skin, while he appeared rather cool and collected. ❝ Not sure what we possibly have to talk about — not unless it’s how you decided to force your way in here, ❞ A pause as dark hues narrow. ❝ Or maybe, you wanna talk about how you’ve been stalking around, making ominous phone calls like some d-list movie villain. Otherwise I suggest you walk back out the door and all the way to whichever hole you slithered out from. Better yet, straight into the ocean, please do the world a favor. ❞

One corner of his mouth twitched upwards, as if he merely felt amusement in every syllable uttered, smugness radiating the atmosphere around them. ❝ They were certainly right about you — you know you should be a little more respectful to the people who are supposedly about to become family, in what, a couple weeks now is it. ❞ nonchalantly his eyes dart around the interior as he speaks, inspecting, or more probably scrutinizing. All she could do was scoff, no surprise in the slightest to hear Rachel and Christopher were in the mix in conjuncture to him. Contempt curls on his features briefly as his line of sight returns to her. ❝ You’re a smart girl.. well, enough that I’m sure you already know what, or who, we need to discuss. I’ve been very considerate with Allison, letting her have her fun with — whatever this is, but now my patience is starting to grow a little thin. ❞

Again she hears his voice but she doesn’t listen, at least not anything beyond her partners name rolling off his tongue, sending a bristling sensation down her spine as embers ignite into full flames behind her stare. If only looks could kill. ❝ Don’t you ever fucking say her name again, ❞ She spat venomously first, a warning while she took a step closer. It may not have been the best idea to create a smaller gap between them, but the more her emotional level steadily rose, the less better judgement crossed through her mind. ❝ Let me be as clear to you as I was to them, there is nothing for us to discuss, much less my fiancée. I don’t care what kind of plan you have cooked up, or how you think attaching yourself to Christopher and Rachel like a parasite is gonna help and I’m just assuming you’re here because they ran and told you how mean I was to them at the gala. You won’t be getting anywhere near her again, I’m sure you’re smart enough to understand that. But maybe not, I mean really how pathetic do you have to be to resort to playing these games— ❞ One by one the words cascaded away from her like lava towards his direction, hoping to slowly engulf and vaporize his existence.

Perhaps if she hadn’t been so focused on that, she might’ve caught the shift in his demeanor, to an extent her proclamation was working, maybe too well. It happened in the flash, before she could even react to Elliott’s movements, one hand reached out easily to clasp around her neck. While she feebly attempted to pry his arm away, he kept firm, sending her backwards till she was pinned against the nearest wall, wincing a bit as the back of her head made a thud. Sanem could feel his palm pressing against her trachea, though not quite hard enough to cut the airflow. Glint of fear was overcast by a grim determination not to give him the satisfaction of seeing. ❝ Has anyone ever told you, you have too much of a smart mouth for your own good. It’s cute what you’re trying to do but it’s only making things more difficult, and that’s over now. You really think you and that little dance studio are good enough ? I know what’s best for her I can give her the life she deserves. Allison is just a little confused, and I’m simply here to remind her of that, how good it was before, how we loved each other. ❞ Possessively menacing did he spit back.

Snorted laugh involuntarily erupts from her throat, humorless – mostly at least, because was he being serious, did he not hear himself right now ? Judging from the expression though he certainly wasn’t expecting to garner that reaction. ❝ You really are warped, ❞ Retorting against a partly strained voice. ❝ That’s not love, you sadistic fuck, that’s control. Of course you don’t know the difference... all you ever did and keep doing is hurt her, but you won’t have that power over her anymore. She is so much stronger and better than you know.. threatening me is only gonna make her hate you more.. ❞

Now; if just stepping closer had been a terrible idea, then antagonizing him was surely an even worse call — made evident by his grip squeezing harder as soon as the last declaration left her mouth. Was he just desperate or truly unhinged, both seemed the most plausible. Sanem never considered herself a fighter, not in the physical sense, in fact anytime her fight or flight response kicked in it almost always veered towards the latter. Nor had never found herself in this sort of situation before. Though in the same vein, she wasn’t clueless or weak, and if that’s the assumption he’d been under, the it was one on the list of mistakes made coming here. Adrenaline rushed through her system, induced by a mixture of fear and fury, between the belittlement that came from him and the Hawthorne parents, but importantly the negligent grief they all imposed on Alli.

There was a futile attempt to pry his hand away, so in a less than thought out, survival instinct way, she reached out to grab his face, digging her nails in, before wildly kicking out a leg that made contact with some part of his body. Less than graceful but worked to release her as he stumbled back with a harsh groan, gasping for a breath while in the process of commotion did her temple managed to clip against a shelf. Hissing and silently cursing her choice of décor momentarily. Glancing towards him with sharp intakes of air, hazardous ire still beamed off both, but including her tempestuous emotional state, it drove Sanem to ball a tight fist and strike it across his face. Did the connection send an ache through her hand, yes, but it was worth it still. ❝ Stay the fuck away from us ! ❞ Shouting at the top of raspy vocals before taking the opportunity had to go for her phone sitting in the living room.

She’d fully expected him to be close behind, but managing to secure the device her line of sight peered up, frantically glancing around to find no one. Scrolling through the contacts, in the back of her mind ebbed the notion that she should call the lawyer — knowing she would have to tell her no matter what — but aware of the frenzy it’d only send her in at the moment. Instead tapping the next name to flash in her mind, who’d luckily lived in this very neighborhood now, Lily. Shakily putting the phone up to her ear, she took tentative steps back towards the entrance, Elliott, for all she’d been aware, was gone, leaving just an idly open door, and affrighted Sanem, in his wake.

#( self para. )#/ translation: 'dangerous game'#choking tw #violence tw #/ *blurryeyes emoji intensifies*#/ it got a little longer than i anticipated #/ tbh if you wanna get to the good part just skip the first like 3 paragraphs lmfao

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mst3kproject · 4 years

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Light Blast

What’s this? A death ray movie in which we actually see stuff get death rayed? Aw, man, that might disqualify it for MST3K right there! Fortunately for us, however, Light Blast was directed by Enzo Castellari, who brought us Escape 2000, and it stars Erik Estrada. Estrada was never on MST3K but he was on pretty much all the 70’s cop shows they kept referencing, including Mannix and Police Woman, and Mike and the bots would never have let him forget it.

So what do we want out of a death ray movie? I dunno, some faces melting like the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark would be cool, and Light Blast apparently read my mind on that count because we get the first melting face action before the ten minute mark! A couple of young people go to have sex in a boxcar (this scene includes a real classy upskirt shot, just three minutes in) while the bad guy tests his death ray, and in the fine tradition of kids just trying to bone at the beginning of movies, they get zapped. Meanwhile, somewhere else, Erik Estrada in a speedo takes down a couple of bank robbers by hiding a gun inside a roast turkey.

This is gonna be a weird movie, isn’t it?

Sadly, Light Blast never again rises to that height of absurdity. Evil Professor Yuri Svoboda has a death ray, and has decided to hold the city of San Francisco hostage for the princely sum of:

Was that even a lot of money in 1985? According to dollartimes the conversion rate is about 2.5, so that would be $12.5 million today... still seems a little low for a major city. Anyway.

To show he means business, Svoboda death rays the announcer’s box at a demolition derby. Thence ensues a series of extremely uninspired car chases and a scene in which Estrada is repeatedly kicked in the avocados by a woman dressed as a nurse (I liked that bit). Eventually he puts the pieces of the puzzle together, and never even bothers to tell us what the finished picture looks like before running off to what looks like it’ll be the final Power Plant Confrontation. No such luck. Svoboda escapes again, and Estrada has to chase him down to the final final confrontation.

There are two things here Castellari seems to really like. One is digital clocks, which are frequently the focus of the death ray for some reason. The other is men staggering around on fire, filmed in the type of loving slow motion that turns this agonizing death into a moment of over-dramatic hilarity. Remember in the Making Of Documentary for Return of the King, when Peter Jackson acknowledges that Denethor falling off the top of Minas Tirith while on fire is ridiculous? Enzo Castellari is definitely not that self-aware.

He is also fond of car chases. There are three or four of them in Light Blast and they’re competent, I guess. They’re definitely better than the budget version you sometimes see in really cheap movies, in which the camera turns to watch one vehicle pass by, then repeats the shot with another. There was probably a storyboard and so forth. But they’re still pretty monotonous and mostly just look like people driving around with no sense of a destination or a narrative. Instead, the movie tries to add interest by giving them ‘gimmicks’.

In one of the chases, Estrada doesn’t want the villain to know he’s being followed, so rather than using his own vehicle, he just hops into random people’s cars and makes them do the following. In one he shows his badge and tells the driver he’s a cop. In another he tells the woman driving that he’s playing a practical joke on a friend from college. Astonishingly, he never gets slapped or shot.

In another, he steals a race car in order to chase down Svoboda, who is fleeing to a boat from which he plans to death ray the entire city or something. This chase includes two separate shots in which Estrada jumps the race car over some obstacle in his way, again filmed in slow motion. In neither was there any sort of ramp to get the car off the ground. It’s like that scene in Speed where the fucking bus somehow jumps over a gap in the highway except they did it twice and slowly to give the audience time to think about how stupid it is. Then Estrada jumps the car again onto Svoboda’s boat, which has already left the dock, and somehow manages to stop on a dime rather than falling into the water.

I recognize that movies are not bound by the laws of physics, but those that get away with breaking them do so by walking a fine line. Things have to look possible. People running away from explosions looks like it should work, and very few of us have ever been in a position to find out what it’s actually like first-hand (partly because those of us who have probably didn’t live to tell about it). The car jumps? Nah.

Wikipedia includes a couple of reviews of this film that have been translated, not very well, from Italian. They’re kind of hard to understand but they do seem to fixate on the preponderance of car chases. They also reference another staple of 80’s action movies, which is excessive police brutality. Estrada shoots a whole bunch of people, breaks into a power plant and a funeral home, steals cars, causes a dozen accidents and untold property damage, and bullies his girlfriend into risking her job in order to get him the information he needs. Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.

Other clichés drift by. The villain gives a pretty classic monologue all about how he Showed Those Fools At The Academy and how his death ray will make him supreme ruler of the world and he’ll bring about a new age of peace. There’s a bit where Estrada and his partner, the Tall Guy (these characters do have names, I just don’t care) sit down at the kitchen table and put together what they’ve learned… but instead of some exposition to tell us, the audience, what that is, we get a Ryan And Shane Look For Forrest Fenn’s Treasure montage but without the irony. We can just barely hear fragments of voices through this, as the characters talk about it… enough to tease us with what they know and we don’t.

I dunno, it’s possible the audience is supposed to have already figured this stuff out and I just wasn’t paying attention. I was pretty bored during most of this movie.

During the montage, the bad guys sneak up outside Estrada’s house (which is on a boat? I think?) and open fire, basically shooting everybody but Estrada himself, who escapes completely unharmed. His personality-deficient girlfriend isn’t so lucky… but she was only in this movie so it would have a part for Estrada’s real-life girlfriend Peggy Rowe. This bit is right up there with The Phantom Creeps as a perfect example of why Women In Fridges is screenwriting for hacks. Estrada is already determined to get these guys. He already cares about the people they’ve killed in the past and the ones they plan to kill in the future! He is already frustrated by his failures to catch them! ‘Making it personal’ is completely unnecessary! Did the writers really think her death would add anything, or were they just trying to fill up their Action Movie Cliché Bingo card?

In the villain’s evil monologue, Svoboda reveals that apparently Estrada killed his wife? I guess she was the mortician? This doesn’t help, because I don’t think Svoboda actually knows that Estrada’s girlfriend is dead and even if he does, she wasn’t his target. His henchmen were after Estrada and Tall Guy.

Then there’s the ending, which is in no way a ‘climax’ and barely even counts as an ‘end’. Remember I said Estrada jumps his racecar onto Svoboda’s boat? This knocks the death ray over and it melts Svoboda himself. Estrada watches this, then basically just shrugs and walks the fuck away. So… that was it? No confrontation? No fight? Just a failure to properly secure the superweapon?

Isn’t the rest of the boat gonna melt now, too? In previous uses the death ray seemed to melt things over a fairly wide area. Isn’t anyone worried about that? No, we’re just rolling the credits? Okay, fine. At least the movie’s over.

Is there anything nice I can say about Light Blast? Well… I guess it passes the Bechdel Test. There’s a bit, completely irrelevant to the plot, where two women who work at the police station discuss perfume. It’s as if one of the writers had read about the Bechdel Test and shoved that in there just to pass it, without bothering to think about what the point of the ‘test’ is.

For all I’ve bitched about it, Light Blast isn’t a full on disaster. It’s merely a mediocre 80’s action movie. What makes it so damn disappointing is the wackiness of that early scene with Estrada in his underwear and the gun in the turkey. That bit has the same effect as naming your movie Hercules Against the Moon Men – it gives the audience the impression that you have a sense of humour, and then the rest of the film can be nothing but the slow downward spiral of realizing that you were, in fact, serious. Even then, it still could have been fun if the writers and director had kept up that kind of cheese throughout but no… Light Blast couldn’t even be bad enough to be good.

If any of you MSTies reading this are aspiring film-makers, let this be the lesson for you: the introduction of your main character sets the tone. Do that wrong, or in a way that doesn’t match the rest of your movie, and you’re sunk. And if you only have one interesting or funny idea, for love of Apearlo put that at the end of the movie, not the beginning!

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #light blast #women in fridges #80s

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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The Power Rangers Turbo Deleted Scenes That Could Have Saved the Movie

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Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie is, at best, a glorified TV movie. Made when Power Rangers’ popularity was in slow decline after the zenith of the Mighty Morphin days, the film makes no pretense that it’s trying to be any kind of cultural event like the first film attempted to be. Instead, it only half-heartedly tries to bring in a new audience with the addition of kid Ranger Justin and struggles to please hardcore Power Rangers fans.

The story –new villain Divatox makes her way to a mystical island to marry an ancient evil and the Rangers have to stop her — limps along with little forward momentum. Guest alien character Lerigot, who speaks in an alien language nearly the whole movie, gets equal if not more screen time than Justin. There’s little to no character development for the main cast. It also takes over an hour and 10 minutes for the Rangers to actually morph and fight.

The two saving graces of the film are Divatox, played by Hilary Shepherd Turner, who brings a demented joy to the baddie, and the return of former Rangers Jason and Kimberly, who provide most of the memorable moments.

Overall, it’s a fairly dull movie… but it wasn’t always that way. Hidden in two early drafts of the film (specifically the third and fifth drafts) are some deleted gems, which, while they wouldn’t have completely saved the movie, would have made it a more enjoyable one. The characters all get more moments to shine, Justin (sort of) gets a character arc, we’re given more reason to care about Lerigot, Kimberly gets some snappy one liners, and there’s even an explanation of the changeover from the Zeo to Turbo powers!

Like we did with an early draft of the MMPR movie, we’re diving into these earlier versions of Turbo, but we won’t be covering every single change from script to screen. We’ll instead focus on the biggest changes and deleted bits that shed the most light on what could have been for the Turbo movie.

The Zeo to Turbo Transition

Considering this film is very clearly aimed at fans, let’s start with the biggest sticking point for them at the time when this movie was released. In the final version of the movie, there’s no explanation regarding what happened to the Zeo powers from the previous season of the show. Power Rangers Zeo, the fourth season in the franchise, featured a set of powers that were supposedly the most powerful, able to grow stronger overtime. However, the Zeo powers were completely tossed aside in Turbo with no explanation as to why (maybe after they saw the Zeo morph sequence could be disrupted by water they decided to get something better). The Rangers accept their Turbo powers, and not much else is said on the matter.

For years this has bothered fans… if only they knew how close we got to a real explanation. The third draft starts out with a partial explanation, that the Zeo Zords don’t have the power to withstand passage through the Nemesis Triangle and, as Alpha lays out, “the force of the triangle has mangled many power sources.”

However, it’s a later line of dialogue that could potentially solve every single problem fans have ever had with this.

As the Rangers work on the Turbo Zords, which will take them through the Triangle, Alpha specifically says, “the transfer of powers is complete.”

Now you can be nitpicky and say this was only referring to the Zords but considering that the Turbo keys and morphers appear in the same room as the Turbo Zords, it’s close enough. Plus Zordon makes it clear in the fifth draft of the script that Justin’s powers can’t be transferred to Rocky and that, “from this moment on, you are the Blue Ranger” lending more credence to the idea the Zeo powers have become the Turbo powers.

(This runs contrary to what the show implied in “Shift Into Turbo Part 1,” which made it seem like Justin could give the powers to Rocky if he wanted them.)

Zordon also reveals they had the keys in their possession for safekeeping, which seems to solidify the idea they transferred the Zeo powers into the Turbo keys in a way that would allow them to cross the Triangle.

This is truly the best explanation fans will ever get. After nearly 20 years of endless theories, forum battles, and debates, there was truly a simple explanation for all of this.

Justin

Without a doubt the most controversial addition to Power Rangers at the time, Justin was a legit child who bafflingly got the chance to become a Ranger. Like the film, the early scripts provide no real reason why a child gets to be a Ranger, although it does try to have Justin explain.

“It was an emergency and all, Zordon said I had the right stuff to be a Power Ranger, even if I was a little young, and Rocky thought so too…”

Considering Zordon’s “right stuff” for recruiting the original Rangers was that they were “overbearing and emotional,” I strongly question his decision making process here. Does he just find the closest person who won’t ask too many questions and go, “good enough!”

At least the script does delve a little more into the idea of a child being a Ranger, with Tanya and Kat both unsure if Justin really knows what he’s going up against. Tanya reasons they’ll have to be his family now, which was a line that made it into the film (albeit spoken by Kat) but doesn’t carry anywhere near as much weight there, considering that both of Justin’s parents are dead in the scripts!

In the fifth draft, that backstory is downgraded to just his mom but it’s still given much more time to impact Justin. Tanya and Kat comment several times how much trouble Justin has had since she died and his dad moved away. He’s clearly taken to Rocky quite a bit and is really disturbed by Rocky’s injury. This comes full circle at the end when, in a deleted scene, Justin worries he won’t be a Ranger anymore but Rocky reassures him that he deserves the powers. For someone who looked up to Rocky so much, this is huge.

Justin’s story even gets tied into Lerigot’s! It only happens at the very end but in another deleted scene in the fifth draft (that was briefly glimpsed in the film’s end credits) Justin gets to hold baby Bethel and sorrowfully observes, “it must be great to have your whole family together again.”

Damn, that made me feel things for Justin! I wish this connection had been explored a bit more but perhaps it was something they had planned to develop in the TV series. Still, these little glimpses into Justin’s life would have made the idea of a kid Ranger easier to accept and given him a more emotional arc.

Lerigot’s Backstory

Lerigot was… certainly a choice. Someone in the Turbo movie production office must have thought they’d be making some serious tickle me Elmo money off this alien but uh… he’s horrendous. His face is the stuff of nightmares. His eyes are that of a killer. His voice is what you hear as you’re slowly dragged into hell.

As mentioned earlier, he takes up way too much of the film’s runtime, especially the first half as we watch him play with animals in Africa. Both in look and execution, Lerigot is a huge misfire. However, the fifth draft of the script at least gave us more of a reason to care about him and, delightfully, tied his backstory to Maligore.

In the film, it’s revealed that Lerigot’s key can get Divatox through the Nemesis Triangle to Maligore. It was kind of strange how this specific key could do that but in the script Zordon explains to the Rangers that Lerigot’s ancestors, the Liarians, were the ones who exiled Maligore to the island Muiranthias in the Nemesis Triangle. Lerigot inherited the golden key, which, as in film, opens the gateway to the island.

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Speaking of keys, the keys the Rangers use to morph were also tied into Lerigot’s backstory. In the film, Zordon just calls them “similar” to Lerigot’s key but the script reveals that the keys and morphers were entrusted to Zordon for “safe keeping with the hope that they would never have to be used.”

So hey, uh, Zordon. Were you gonna… tell the Rangers about those powers at all? Could have been real useful all those times they lost their powers before now! Maybe you wouldn’t have even needed the Zeo Crystal if you just opened that wall and gave everyone the Turbo powers! Why do you have so many secret powers, Zordon?! We know you have a Zord fleet hidden away on an alien planet! I know you’re all about “don’t escalate battles” but people are dying!

Anyway, tying in Lerigot to the Rangers’ powers is a cool idea and does give both the powers and Lerigot more weight in the film since they’re the only things that can take on Maligore. The powers aren’t just something Zordon cooked up in a few minutes. It also conjures up images of ancient Liarian Rangers, possibly multiple teams who inherited the powers from each other.

That’s incredible! Even though it was scrapped, the idea of more alien Power Rangers out there isone I’m always open to, plus it gives us the image of Liarian Power Rangers beating up Maligore. This is an image I will treasure for all time.

Aqua Power Suits

One would think introducing the Turbo powers would be enough for a film but there were plans to feature a second set of… powers as well. Actually, it’s a little confusing so I’ll try to explain as best as I can.

In the script, Tanya and Adam are actively tracking Divatox’s landing on Earth instead of just kind of hanging around the Power Chamber while Tommy and Kat go off to Africa. Zordon instructs them to investigate and the two bust out the Aqua Power Suits, which are described as“five armored suits split down the middle and peeled back.”

Adam and Tanya don’t morph into them, they, as the script describes, “step backwards into their suits. The suits close from the feet up, snapping into place. The face shields show half of their faces as they step forward to reveal a small jet pack on their backs.”

No explanation is given as to where these suits came from; they were just hiding in a wall. At least, unlike the Turbo powers in the script, the team already knew about them and Zordon wasn’t hoarding them away until it was time to (sell some new toys) face a great threat.

Showing half their faces in the suits brings to mind the abandoned plans from the first movie, which featured open visors during fight scenes. It makes more sense here considering the suits, as written in the script, sound more like souped-up scuba gear than actual morphed suits. A later scene reveals that the suits have miniature radar screens, a button on the helmet that allows the wearers to talk to each other underwater, and a weapon attached to the hip.

The suits were mainly used in an altered scene where, instead of Jason and Kimberly simply being captured by Divatox, Tanya and Adam tried to save them in a thrilling underwater battle. The two former Rangers are taken into the subcraft, and before Tanya and Adam can try and get inside, Divatox electrifies them. It’s a great sequence that would have added some much needed action to the start of the film.

Aqua Suites, power up! #PowerRangers pic.twitter.com/YZcQgKIyiZ

— Jackie Marchand (@jackieyo) October 29, 2018

Concept art of these suits has been released by longtime Power Rangers writer Jackie Marchand but the images don’t match the script at all. The art features the regular Turbo Rangers, only with additional underwater equipment. They depict the aqua aesthetic as more of a power-up rather than a whole other suit.

So uh… how would that have all worked if the Aqua Power Suits were introduced BEFORE the Rangers got their Turbo powers? Would the Aqua Power Suits have appeared over the Zeo suits?

One explanation might be that in an even earlier draft of the script the Rangers did use the Aqua Power Suits later in the film. According to Power Rangers: The Ultimate Visual History, the original script for the film (which we assume is the first draft) was 150 pages, so there was ample time for the new suits to appear. (For reference the third and fifth drafts we’re covering are 87 pages and 91 pages, respectively.)

Another possibility is that, while the suits were designed for the film, Turbo didn’t really have the budget to film the scenes they were used in. As cool as an underwate fight scene would have been, it wouldn’t have been easy to pull off. Doubly so with actors in costumes like Ranger suits. Actor Johnny Yong Bosch (Adam Park) revealed in 2013 that, while some scenes leading into the Aqua Power Suits were filmed, they were ultimately cut during production.

Bulk/Skull/Lt. Stone

The unexplained change from Zeo to Turbo powers isn’t the only plotline that left fans of the TV series baffled when this movie hit theaters. In the finale of Power Rangers Zeo, Bulk and Skull were recruited for a secret detective mission off the coast of France, quitting their positions working under the former Lt. Stone. It was a seismic shift that was almost completely dropped in the film; the trio’s suddenly back on the police force that they’d been fired from with the only acknowledgment being Stone remarking they were lucky to be rehired.

While the scripts don’t address the France mission cliffhanger, it does at least provide some explanation for how the trio got back on the force. Stone tells Bulk and Skull at a baseball game that, “we are in the middle of the international summer festival. The department is short on manpower. Trust me… they must be if they hired you back.” It’s not much but… it’s something and does lead to a series of deleted scenes.

During the same baseball game scene, as in the film, Stone instructs Bulk and Skull to relieve him at the international danceathon. This is a reference to a subplot that never made the cut, with Stone stuck at the dance after Bulk and Skull were kidnapped by Divatox. Twice during the film we cut back to him being forced to dance, first to German polka and then a Jamaican line dance. This plot was to be wrapped up in a final scene where Bulk and Skull finally show up, only for Stone, in Kabuki makeup, to chase them down with a stick.

While I’m glad to see Stone get something more to do, these scenes are of little consequence and it’s no wonder they were cut. They were filmed though, and the footage that exists isn’t all that funny, especially since it features several cultural stereotypes that are downright offensive.

The Malichians make an appearance at the festival in these deleted scenes (seemingly having followed Bulk and Skull back from the island), and just like in the film, they’re a painfully out of date and racist depiction of native people.

Mandika the Mermaid

Ever wonder how Bulk, Skull, and Kimberly made it to shore after escaping the sub craft? In the film, it’s implied they floated back up but the script gives us a far more entertaining explanation. It was a mermaid! And not just a random mermaid but one that was going to share a subplot with Adam!

In the script, the Rangers face a much longer trek to get to the Ghost Galleon, needing to follow a river in the “Digathian Forest.” The Rangers drive there but can’t find their way until they spot “a beautiful young girl of about eleven. Her skin is the color of alabaster with long blue/black hair that trails in front of her bare chest.” (What a creepy description.) “She dives and a silvery tail flips out of the water.” The mermaid is named Mandika and is friends with Alpha! That robot must get up to some amazing adventures off screen.

Just after that introduction Adam is unnerved by a vision of Maligore at a campfire (the image of Maligore in fire recurs in the script) and goes for a walk. Mandika leads him to a pirate skeleton, which points the way to the Galleon. After that, Mandika pops up to save Bulk and Skull and then Kimberly before needing to be saved herself, which also helpfully fills in a plot hole.

In the film, as two missiles streak toward the Galleon, Kat suggests, “We can’t be detected inside the Turbo vehicles.” Which is completely pointless since the missiles end up hitting the ship anyway and the Zords simply withstand the blast.

In the script, the Rangers getting into the Zords diverts the missiles…to Mandika! She’s unaware of the missiles and Adam, on a recon mission, takes a bungee cord out of his power box and leaps down to save her in the nick of time. She thanks him and dives back into the water, never to be seen again.

Mandika is completely pointless. She has zero personality and is only there to help bolster the movie’s attempt at being a big adventure. But we’ve already got five Rangers plus the villains. We don’t need anymore side characters.

Notable Deleted Sequences

Director David Winning said in an interview for the Ultimate Visual History book that the script for the film was “massive – a series of one adventure after another. The original edit was over three hours long, so, realistically, it had to be cut down.”

While that edit was probably a very early rough cut, it still means a lot of sequences had to go, even some potentially great ones.

Power Rangers fans have hungered for these scenes for years, clues to their existence slowly trickling out. The script finally sheds some light on what these scenes were all about.

One of the biggest of these is Kat firing a flamethrower, with Tommy looking on, an image advertised on the back of the Turbo movie VHS. The script reveals their target was a crocodile, which followed Tommy and Kat after they reunited in the water. Tommy gets Kat out just before the croc tries to attack, getting into a full on brawl with the animal, even grabbing it in “an upside down bear hug” and shoving a branch in its mouth. Tommy gets to shore and Kat scares the croc away with a blowtorch that was in a power box. This sequence was probably cut for time or maybe the image of Tommy wrestling a crocodile wasn’t as cool as the script made it out to be.

Another scene known to fans was of the Rangers traveling through several different chambers to get to Maligore’s temple. This scene was briefly featured in a short music video at the beginning of the Turbo VHS tape, and while it promised something exciting, the script makes it seem pretty boring.

Tommy opens a door to the temple with his Turbo key (which makes more sense than Justin just happening to find a random entrance in the film) and the team enters the “Serpent’s Temple.” There’s an oil slick lake covering the floor, and as they move through, they see cobra statues with real snakes all around them. Tanya hates snakes because Indiana Jones reference and then they just… run into the main chamber. They don’t even fight some snake monsters.

Much better are two scenes that did show up in the film but only in silent form in the end credits. The first is made up of several shots of Lerigot, his family, Jason, Kimberly, Bulk, and Skull entering the Turbo Megazord. Kimberly and Jason share a hug with Tommy looking on, leading some fans to speculate Kim and Jason were now a couple. The script does not mention or indicate that at all but it does contain a great bit where the Rangers react to Bulk and Skull’s weirdness, and Jason bemusedly observes, “I’ve known them since Kindergarten and I still can’t figure it out.” This is the kinda character moment the movie needed more of.

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The second is the shot of Justin getting to hold Bethel that we mentioned earlier, but it also ends with Alpha getting Lerigot to say in English, “Go… go… Power Rangers.” Ugh. I kind of love it.

Fans haven’t heard of all the deleted scenes, though. One particularly interesting one occurs as the Rangers are about to enter the Triangle but first have to pass through some fog. There they see a phantom ship appear and vanish, along with a “world war fighter jet” and even a UFO!

This is a scene I really wish had been kept in the film. It gives the island more weight

because it’s a place humans have at least tried to interact with (and earlier dialogue in the script makes it seem like the Triangle is a well known myth.) It makes Earth just as magical as any of the far off planets the Rangers have encountered. If our planet is hiding this kind of power, it’s no wonder villains are always looking to conquer it.

Another great scene is an extended version of the Putra Pod fight where the Rangers actually morph! In the film, they take out Divatox’s minions on the ship unmorphed but in the script the fight is longer and much more exciting. There’s much more action described, with my favorite bit being Tommy having to fight his way into the captain’s room so he can pull the Turbo keys out of the ship. We even get an early version of the morph call, “It’s morphin Turbo time.”

That’s a mouthful but I desperately wish this has been in the film. It still takes way too long but it gives us some Ranger action earlier, which the film badly needed. Even the first film, for all its flaws, knows it has to bust out a Ranger fight early on to keep you interested.

Deleted Character Moments

Without much action to break up the film, a huge problem quickly arises, there are very few character moments. When the film isn’t shoving Lerigot in your face, the Rangers are mostly given painful amounts of exposition or mind numbing dialogue that doesn’t feel specific to them as characters. One could argue the Rangers were never that deep to begin with but there was enough to draw on if they wanted to… and the script did.

Unfortunately, when editing a movie, the first thing to go are little character moments, and that’s a real shame because there are some fantastic ones here. One of my favorites comes early when the Rangers and the shelter kids are all at the baseball game and Tanya catches a speeding ball hit into the stands. It’s a perfect little bit that references her baseball skills from Zeo and gives her a moment with Justin where she gives him the ball, producing his first slight smile in the movie.

There are actually several deleted little bits about Tanya. When Jason and Kim see Bulk and Skull acting strangely in the subcraft, Jason’s reminded of a report Tanya did about trauma and how people respond to it. Hey, they remembered Jason knew her! Tanya also tells Tommy and Katherine to “send my love to Africa” before they teleport there.

The whole team also gets an absolutely brilliant scene where they’re all around a campfire just before Justin shows up. They all talk about how they used to be afraid of the dark, with Tanya remarking, “That’s when all the monsters camped out under your bed.”

It’s such a sweet bit, especially with Tommy being the first to admit his fear. It also subtly feels like the team is comparing their childhood fears of monsters to their present day lives of fighting them all the time. This moment lets the Rangers feel like genuine people with the weight of the world on their shoulders. If this had made it in, it would have easily been the stand out moment of the movie.

Or maybe it would have been anything Divatox says. She was already one of the best parts of the film but the script gives her even more time. Early on, she gets Rygog to draw up a prenup for the marriage. Rygog dutifully confirms, “Everything that is yours remains yours. And everything that is his becomes yours as well” to which Divatox says, “Sounds fair to me.”

Later, during the big Volcano fight, she threatens to “throw a few Ranger wimps on the barbie” and adds, “You should appreciate that, Pink Ranger!” Divatox remembers more about Kat’s backstory than the final film did.

But none of these scenes even hold a candle to a line that should have been in every trailer because it would have sold this movie. Jason, having just been brought to the volcano, gives the very standard Power Rangers line of “Don’t you know bad guys never win?”

To which Divatox responds,

“Of course they don’t. Guys are complete idiots. Now women on the other hand…”

I LOVE IT. I ADORE THIS LINE SO MUCH. How could you not film this? How could you cut this? It’s brilliant! Perfect for Divatox.

How Much Better Is The Script From The Finished Movie?

Look, many of these deleted bits are great. The character bits help give the film more depth. It made me want to know more about Lerigot, and that’s a true accomplishment! There are some killer lines, acknowledgement of the TV show’s continuity, and Justin is far more likeable. For the hardcore fan, these moments do a lot.

That being said, these little bits don’t fix the film. It’s still a deeply flawed movie that, like the first film, seems to be ashamed of the TV show and tries to tell a story that is as far away from it as possible. But it’s just not that good a story on its own so the only thing that’s worthwhile are those moments that connect to the show and the characters we already love — which are few and far between.

The script gives us more of those but it doesn’t fix the major flaws, like the painfully slow start, the overuse of Lerigot, the lack of character arcs, and too little Ranger action, though the extra scene on the ship is appreciated.

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So yes, the script is better than the film but it wasn’t exactly a super high bar to clear in the first place. At least if some of these scenes had been included, the movie would have been more enjoyable for Power Rangers fans, which really are the primary audience for the film anyway. I’m not saying that’s whom the studio should have been exclusively catering to but the only time the script is able to shine is when nodding at hardcore fans. Without that, Turbo is just a forgettable ‘90s kids movie.

The post The Power Rangers Turbo Deleted Scenes That Could Have Saved the Movie appeared first on Den of Geek.

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dagenspear · 3 years

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Crisis On Infinite Earths Outline Fix, Part 5: Laurel Returns!

This is the conclusion to the Crisis, Part 5! This is a bit of a longer one again. For parts 1, 2, 3 & 4, here:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

I thank God for these ideas, if He wills, that He blessed me with:

The bright green light consumes the screen.

Kara, Wally, Jjonn, Ray, Sara and Kate all wake up in their new earth.

But things are different. Black Lightning's, Supergirl's, Earth 1's, Earth 3's and another earth's are now all merged into 1. Lex is the head of the DEO. All the speedsters remember everything. Cisco's powers are back, which when he touches Wally, vibes his pre-crisis memories back. The history of Earth 3 is now apart of that earth's, the Justice Society Of America having been prominent heroes, with the members of Jay Garrick Flash, Dinah Drake Black Canary (Laurel and Sara's mom), Ted Grant Wildcat, Dr. Fate, Hawkman/Hawkgirl, Alan Scott Green Lantern, and others, apart of the team in the 80's & 90's. Barry Allen's Flash has been erased, having never existed. Wally is seen as The Flash, the 2nd Flash there's ever been, after Jay Garrick. John Diggle's life has been altered as well.

Cisco misses Barry, but has become accepting of the situation after the preparations made for it and sees it as his responsibility to maintain the protection of the city. He uses his vibing to give Caitlin, Ralph and the others their memories back, but Wally stops him from giving them to Joe and Iris, saying that he doesn't want them to bear the heartbreak of losing Barry all over again.

Iris is the head of the Central City Citizen, which Post Crisis is a prominent newspaper.

Wally is left to ponder that the people see him as the Flash, him refusing to wear the costume, stating that he's not the Flash. Cisco tells him that the people think he is.

Mia is angry and guilty about the loss of her dad. Diggle has guilt that he couldn't be there for him when it happened.

Cisco picks up a reading of something coming from space, and traces it to landing outside STAR Labs, which he confronts, to find a man landing there.

Sara and Diggle talk about Oliver's loss and she tries to assuage his guilt, stating that no matter what, Oliver wouldn't have wanted him to die fighting this threat, and that Oliver was very stubborn, which they both have a small laugh about.

Sara comforts Mia, whose beginning to be accepting of her dad's death and that he died saving the multiverse, seeing him as a hero.

Sara, though having wanted to continue fighting, is still depressed about the fact that so much of her family is gone and that she has almost no one in her life. Which she talks with Mia about.

That's when they're attacked by some shadow creatures. They fight them, but are pinned down, about to be torn apart, when suddenly...

A sonic scream emerges from the side! BLASTING THEM BACK! And from the side...

Emerges Black Canary.

Sara is shocked. But apprehensive... until Black Canary looks at them and acknowledges Sara as her sister with a smile and rushes to her. Sara realizing that this is E1 Laurel. Alive. Laurel helps her up and Sara touches her shoulders, almost in disbelief that this is real, tears springing to her eyes, before hugging her, crying, in tears of happiness and grief. Mia almost smiles at the moment as well. Mia realizes and says that if they attacked them, they may attack the others as well.

They go to STAR Labs to warn them about what's happening. And are met with Cisco stating that he knows it's not over, as they've been told by someone, that someone revealing themself as the Green Lantern AKA Guy Gardner, from the Justice League Of America 1997 TV Movie, played by Matthew Settle.

Everyone is brought together, Diggle, Kate and Mia included. Guy Gardner tells them that he was from the other earth that was merged with the others, and is questioned by Diggle in how he survived the merge with all his memories intact. He says that his ring protected him. Cisco and Guy explain that the antimatter verse portal is still open, but is slowly closing as this new timeline, of sorts, cements, and if it does, those shadow creatures will be stuck here. Cisco determines that they're gonna need to recreate the sonic pulse to try and get those shadow creatures to them, so they can somehow get them into the portal before it closes. Laurel volunteers to do it, in spite of Sara's concern. Cisco explains that because there's no way to know where they are, they're gonna need to double the pulse from before to get all of them to them. Diggle suggests Dinah. Laurel questions that, but Cisco states that the Dinah Diggle is suggesting is Zinda Blake post-crisis and doesn't have a sonic cry and Laurel's mom has never had powers. Diggle realizes that he hasn't gotten all his memories straight yet. Cisco then says that there's someone else who can help them.

We cut to E2 Laurel standing in front of Laurel. Laurel is uncertain about this. E2 Laurel maintains her memories of pre-crisis. Laurel asks how this is possible. Cisco speculates that with the merging of some universes there may be holdovers from the previous, then stating that both Laurels have the metagene for the canary cry, a now discovered gene post crisis, and, with his memories of EX Laurel, he speculates at least most, if not all the Laurels in the multiverse, have one as well. But E2's was activated by dark matter, while post crisis Laurel's was activated by a gene bomb HIVE set off in 2014, HIVE post crisis being an organization who sought to enhance humanity, using techological and biological enhancements. Laurel asks E2 Laurel if she can be trusted with her history as a villain. E2 Laurel points out that she remembers nearly dying to help and hopes that's gained something. Sara vouches for her. Laurel trusts Sara's judgement and agrees.

The group all agree that the only reason the shadow creatures would have a reason to attack them is based on the Anti-Monitor being alive still. They talk about how that's possible, Sara, among the Legends, suggests that as time hasn't fully cemented yet, he may not be erased, Cisco then suggesting that he also may be acting essentially as a time remnant or using something to keep himself from erasure, like tech or something. Jjonn tells them that he read the Anti-Monitor's mind before he transported himself away and he read that because his plan to cause an antimatter universe of his own in place of our multiverse has been stopped, he's willing to try and prevent the multiverse from forming at all, even if it means his own destruction. They work out how he'd do that, coming to the conclusion that he can use the temporal zone to go to the dawn of time to try and undo it at it's inception.

As the group works out their plan, Guy Gardner uses the STAR Labs computers to look into information about his friends post crisis, from his earth, and where they are now.

His Barry Allen is now Darryl Frye, a detective in Central City.

B. B. Dacosta is now Green Fury, her alter ego as a pop star, Madonna-esque.

His Ray Palmer is now Al Pratt, a respected physics college Professor, and first Atom post crisis.

Tori Olafsdotter is now Mary Pratt, married to Al Pratt, and a reporter.

His Martian Manhunter is unable to be located here.

Diggle is there and tells him glad that a lot of his friends are okay on this earth. Guy Gardner understands that he speaks from a place of a grief at his friend having died in the crisis. Guy Gardner and Diggle bond over that, Guy telling him that now all his friends are found, that Martian Manhunter from his earth is still missing, but he has faith that he's out there somewhere and Diggle has to have faith that his friend is somewhere out there too. Diggle agrees that he does, that it's like Oliver said, it's God's plan.

The team works out the plan.

Before starting, Sara apologizes to Laurel for what happened on the boat. Laurel tells her that she didn't go through with it. Sara says that she would've and that kills her, for being jealous and petty like that, saying that she wanted to have what Laurel had, be her, but she was just hurting herself and her whole family, stating that she doesn't want this, hating herself, to hold her back anymore, that she wants to move forward. Laurel agrees.

Kara and Kate talk, Kate telling her that she can't find Bruce and doesn't know where he is. Kara tells her that she can't give up.

The majority of the group tracks the energy signature of the Anti-Monitor, courtesy of Cisco with combination of tech and his vibe powers, through the temporal zone in a waverider pod, as Diggle, Wally, Guy Gardner, E2 Laurel and Laurel remain on the waverider, above earth. The waverider pod containing Sara, Kara, Alex, Kate, Ray, Cisco and Jjonn.

The 2 Laurels begin their sonic pulse. Guy Gardner explains that they're going to have to act quickly, as his ring is running out of power, and that's why he can't use it for flight while he's using it for the trapping of the shadow creatures and why he'll have to stand at the open door of the waverider as he does it. When Diggle asks if he can recharge it, Guy tells him that post crisis the ring isn't his anymore and will seek out it's true bearer when the time comes, and because of that he doesn't have access to charging it. When the shadow creatures are drawn to the waverider by the sonic pulse, Guy Gardner uses his ring to capture them, giving the go ahead to Wally to superspeed a speedforce portal into the closing antimatter portal, allowing Guy Gardner to funnel the creatures into it.

Meanwhile the others chase after the energy signature of the Anti-Monitor in the wavrider pod, as he flies through the temporal zone. They get close to him, but, realizing they can't catch up, Cisco breaches them both into a neutral area, the vanishing point. The waverider pod crashing. When the group climbs out, they see...

Anti-Monitor standing, unscathed, towering over them, in full comic book Crisis On Infinite Earths Anti-Monitor tech body armor.

Cisco breaches away quickly.

The Anti-Monitor mocks them for that and bringing him here, stating that he's been erased from existence, so the vanishing point no longer holds it's sway over containing him.

Sara states that they didn't bring him here for that. They just didn't want anything or anyone to be in the crossfire, when they destroy him.

They begin the battle:

Atom blasting the Anti-Monitor, even trying to fly into his ear, shrunken, but he's slapped away.

Jjonn flies into him, reaching into his chest by phasing, but the armor he's wearing electrocutes and burns Jjonn. The Anti-Monitor then responding by punching into his chest, him flying backward, being smashed into the ground.

Kara and Kate double team him in an attack of distraction and offensiveness, but are blasted away by an energy beam.

Alex begins shooting at him from behind, telling him not to touch her sister, but he, unaffected, simply redirects his beams at her, which she just barely dodges, then, on the ground, leg badly hurt, being met with another blast directly at her.

Kara quickly superspeeds inbetween her sister and the beam, trying to hold it back with her heat vision, him walking up to her, pushing her heat vision back into her eyes, grabbing her head, placing his hand over her eyes, the heat vision burning them, BLINDING HER, her yelling out in pain.

Back on the wavrider Diggle, flying above earth, tells those on board that it's time. The 2 Laurels are ready.

Sara comes up behind him with a blade, but he grabs her quickly by the throat, destroying her blade, mocking her for thinking it'd work, then saying that now she's alone again. Sara smirks, saying that she's far from alone.

Suddenly a breach opens and Brandon Routh Superman emerges, flying like a freight train into the Anti-Monitor. The Anti Monitor's grip on Sara is immediately broken, him being SMASHED into the ground.

Cisco exits the breach right after, as Cisco as ever, exclaiming, "Was that a bird? A plane? Why, I think it was Superman!" He then asks Sara if she's okay. She says that she is, but what took him so long? He explains that they had a couple last minute additions.

Out of the breach emerges:

E1 Black Canary

E2 Black Canary

Killer Frost

Citizen Steel

Heatwave

Tyler Hoechlin Superman

Black Lightning

Tom Welling Superman

Obviously Brandon Routh Superman, as he re-positions himself.

They all engage in battle with the Anti-Monitor. Their powers all together do some damage. Atom's blasts, the canary cries, the electric blasts, the cold blasting, the flamethrower flames, the heat visions of all the Supermen doing the most damage. But he's still too powerful to defeat. Cisco tries to use his breaches to slice the Anti-Monitor apart, but his suit breaks the breaches apart when they close in on him.

Alex crawls over to check on Kara, whose eyes seem almost seared in a way.

In the waverider, Guy Gardner is having a hard time containing all the shadow creatures as he funnels them into the antimatter portal. Diggle, flying the waverider with some difficulty, tells Wally that the others need help down there. Wally's uncertain he can. Diggle lays it out, telling him that it doesn't matter what he thinks, because they still need the Flash. Wally takes the Flash ring out of his pocket, pondering it. Diggle asks him if he's ready to do what it takes to save everyone. Wally, in resolve, places the ring on his finger, and extends his fist, the Flash symbol on the ring glowing in almost a lightning crackle blaze.

In the battle, Sara tells them to try to hit the Anti-Monitor with all their powers all at once. They make an attempt, but he's too powerful for them to get at with all those hits at once. Cisco tries something, throwing his breaches around the Anti-Monitor's hands, then giving the Supermen the go ahead. The Supermen do so. Brandon Routh Superman grabbing his left arm, Tom Welling Superman grabbing his right, Tyler Hoechlin Superman grabbing his head, them all holding him in place.

On the waverider, Guy Gardner's green lantern power ring starts to drain, just as the last batch of the shadow creatures are getting to the antimatter portal. He tells Diggle he's almost there. Diggle tells him it could kill him. Guy states that they have to make sure they're all gone now, as the antimatter portal's about to close, it taking all of his willpower to hold it. Just as the last shadow creature gets in, the portal closes, Guy's power ring runs out and he falls unconscious from exhaustion, falling out of the waverider into earth's atmosphere. The Green Lantern ring slips from his finger and flies off as he falls. But just before Guy's about to be hit with the heat of re-entry...

Diggle swoops in with the waverider and catches him!

The Supermen holding the Anti-Monitor gives the others the room to throw their powers (canary cries, lightning, etc.) at him at the same time. It does more damage, but he still struggles. Tom Welling Superman stating that they can't hold him much longer. Sara asks how he's still so powerful.

Kara, hearing this, realizes, and tells them, that he's still empowered by the energy of the sun that was used to cause him to form and it may take a similar energy to destroy him. Cisco, as he holds the breaches around Anti-Monitor, intensely struggling, his nose bleeding a lot, says that it could work. Sara states that the only way to be sure would be to drop him into it directly. Cisco says that could result in the energy of the sun blowing back and killing all of them here. Kara tells them no, then asking Cisco if he has enough power to drop her in front of the sun. Cisco begrudgingly says yes, understanding her goal. Kara stands up, her eyes still seared, telling him to do so on her go ahead. Alex asks Kara what she's doing. She tells Alex that Nazi Supergirl could absorb enough of the energy of a sun to explode, and that if she gets enough, she could destroy him. Alex asserts that Nazi Supergirl died from it. Kara acknowledges that. Alex telling her no, she won't accept that. Kara hugs Alex tightly, telling her that she can't lose her home again and quickly pushes Alex away from her, telling her that she loves her and tell Lena she's sorry, then telling Cisco "now", the breach opening around Kara, taking her and closing just as quickly before Alex can stop it.

Tyler Hoechlin Superman asks what's happening.

Kara floats before the energy of the yellow sun of earth, it energizing her, the energy flowing to and healing her eyes, her opening them, with the energy of the yellow sun making them glow.

At Kara's request, Cisco breaches her back into the battle.

Kara floats over the battle, telling the Supermen to get away from the Anti-Monitor. Tyler Hoechlin Superman, realizing himself what's happening, tells her no, that he can't let her die, there has to be another way. The other Supermen agree. Kara states that he has a son to take care of, all of the Supermen do, it has to be her, that protecting him was her job in the first place. Tyler Hoechlin Superman continues to reject that.

But in a flash of lightning, all the Supermen are pulled away from the Anti-Monitor, and Wally stands before them, in the full Flash costume.

The Flash lives again, as Wally circles the Anti-Monitor at superspeed, throwing lightning at him multiple times, this keeping him in place...

Allowing Kara to enact her plan. She says to Tyler Hoechlin Superman, "I love you, Kal-El." and flies towards the Anti-Monitor, her heat vision BLAZING with the fire of the sun, searing into him, it burning through his armor, burning him from the inside out, FLAMES igniting from the eyes of his suit! This use of her powers causing her eyes to crack with yellow sun energy bleeding out, the cracks spreading more and more. The Anti-Monitor, enraged, yells out, "NO!" And Kara collides with him, the force of it IMPLODING THEM IN A FLASH OF LIGHT!

Leaving nothing but a crater, and Kara's torn cape. Alex and Tyler Hoechlin Superman rushing there, seeing only the cape, them both breaking down, almost leaning on eachother, Alex devastated, inconsolable. The other Supermen stand silently in mourning, placing their hands on their shoulders in an attempt at comfort. Everyone else surrounding them, in silence.

The President gives a speech, honoring the sacrifices of Supergirl and the Green Arrow with a statue of an \S/ in National City and one of Green Arrow being built in Starling City.

Diggle visits Guy Gardner in the hospital who tells Diggle that his time is over and now it's his turn. We confirm that Diggle, now having gained full memory of both earths, in this post-crisis, his name is John Stewart.

The team honors the Flash silently with a Flash symbol built in it and empty seats for Barry, Oliver, Kara, even Bruce at the new table, in the Hall Of Justice.

In the montage of showing the earths with show the same things, but now with inclusions of:

The Birds Of Prey TV Series Earth, showing that team now working with Kevin Conroy Batman, who has a renewed pursuit of heroism.

Tom Welling Superman with Lois, watching their kids, before he gets an alert on a fire in Metropolis, with Lois being proud of him.

Justice League Of America TV Movie Martian Manhunter alive, leading martians on Mars.

Earth 1 Bruce, alive, stranded on another earth, but on the search for a way back.

Gotham TV Series Bruce as Batman in his earth.

Some quick flashes with the Batman 89 earth and Batman 66 earth.

On a re-established Earth 90 E-90 Flash speeds through the city, before getting a message from Christina McGee of a bank robbery by Trickster, E-90 Flash smirking and then speeding off to it.

On earth prime, something falling to earth in front of Diggle, but stopping just short of hitting the ground and it redirecting and pointing right at him. It emanating a green light reflecting on his face.

Ending still on the Superman The Movie nod of Brandon Routh Superman flying, his symbol back to yellow and red.

THE END.

In case ya’ll are curious, Kara and Barry aren’t really dead and aren’t gone for good. In their respective seasons, they’d return after a couple episodes or so. Please review and tell me what you think!

#Crisis on Infinite Earths #laurel lance #The Flash #supergirl #arrow

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