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genericpuff · 2 months

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Hey puff you have a day job right? How do you keep the motivation/discipline to create comics regularly and be an active blogger?

I've mentioned this a few times before and generally try to be as transparent as possible as I can when it comes to my real life circumstances and how they affect - and allow - my comic production schedule, because when it comes right down to it, I'm in a very privileged position that allows me certain luxuries that other comic creators simply don't have. And I don't really like the idea of someone seeing what I do and like... thinking that's a bar they have to meet because it often comes with a complete misinterpretation of what circumstances I'm in that may vary extremely from their own. Y'all are seeing a tip of a very large iceberg, y'know?

I do have a day job, I work as a tattoo artist, however my schedule is very much my own to control and while that comes with a lot of pressure to find my own work, it also allows for me to have flexibility with my other projects. That said, I'm only able to be that flexible because when I'm making money, I'm making really decent money (and with far less hours than I would need to make my living if I was working in retail still) and when I'm not, I've got a partner who makes a more consistent living that may have a much smaller hourly than what I get hourly for tattooing, but is still a decent hourly compared to minimum wage that he's able to handle bills while I get back on my feet (and there have been tons of times where our situations have been reversed, where I've been making good money and he's been needing extra help; it's honestly kind of some cosmic prank, the two of us can never seem to be doing financially well at the same time lmao)

Right now, we're just starting to come out of a slow winter season, so I've had more time than ever to sink into my personal projects. It does get stressful at times having such inconsistent payouts through the ebbs and flows of tattooing, but I try to be at peace with those slow seasons because it allows me to work on my passion projects. Especially when I've got not one, not two, but three separate tattoo expos (so far) to do this summer, which is gonna be (hopefully) three separate 30 hour weekends of straight tattooing haha And while I say hopefully (because yay good money and good publicity!) it's also gonna be extremely stressful and exhausting so I'm trying not to take the slower season for granted, because I know I'll be wishing for it again when I'm in the midst of it. And that's not even including all the other events I have booked this year that are purely for vendoring (so unrelated to tattooing) that are also gonna be crazy.

That said, the past couple years have felt particularly hard, but I know it's because we're unfortunately in the midst of a massive economic recession that has seen people spending less on luxury things - and that includes tattoos. But my comics and other personal projects give me a great outlet for my ideas and thoughts, and while projects like Rekindled are unfortunately not something I feel comfortable monetizing, they are ultimately projects that bring me a lot of joy and I think that's the best I can ask for nowadays while I wait in the hopes that things get better soon in the real world.

As for getting that motivation/discipline, I don't really have one solid answer. The reality is just that I've been doing this for a long, long time, so not drawing comics feels like not doing any other established good habit. What you may feel wondering how I manage to work so long on a single comic project with such hefty updates is undoubtedly pretty close to what I feel wondering how the fuck people manage to go to the gym LOL It's taken a lot of routine building and repetition and it's as natural as breathing to me at this point, I just feel gross when I've gone a day without drawing comics in some form. That routine has helped me get better and faster at creating as well. When I started my first long-form comic series, I started out just drawing a page a day - often taking 3-4 weeks to complete a chapter - and by the time it was done 7 years later, I was putting out a chapter a week. And then that turned into 60-90 panels of full color art a week... nah, I don't recommend anyone do that on their own like I did, I can't even do that anymore and looking back I'm in shock how I was able to pull that off, and not in an amazed "why can't I do that anymore, I used to be so awesome!" way, but more in a "oh god why did I do that to myself, no wonder I'm burnt out" way.

And honestly that's kind of the reality of it, while I'm putting out consistent updates of Rekindled that are in full color and are - in my opinion - some of the best work I've put out in the last few years, I'm also struggling to rebuild habits with my original project because I've simply fallen out of practice. I'm one person responsible for all the work I've put out, and yet when it comes to looking at the projects I still have sitting on the backburner, I still feel a sort of internalized version of Person A looking at Person B and asking "how the hell do you do it???" just like you're asking me now lol I'm working on it though and trying to get back to it little by little, day by day. On rare occasions I actually get something productive done and make progress LOL

That said, none of it has come without consequences. I've spent the majority of my artistic journey working on the same project which I feel has severely stunted my outreach and set me back in my growth; after all, we only ever see and judge the merit of webcomic projects based on the 1% of people who got lucky and achieved some semblance of fame and recognition out of it, you never see the people who have spent years still picking away at the same project from the bottom with little to show for it besides the work that's going unseen. I've also already got way more back and hip pain than one should have by their late 20's and that's definitely a consequence of spending so many hours every single day working on comics. As much as I've built some great habits that have made my comics and art better, I've also ended up with some very bad ones that a lot of people don't see because all they see is the results from the good ones. So that's something that I hope I can at least warn people about, even as a reminder to stand up and stretch every now and then and get their proper amount of sleep LMAO

And then when it comes to the blogging... I'm an AuDHD person with a lot to say and I can type at 137/wpm. So that's all there is to that ♡( ◡‿◡ )

#ama #ask me anything #anon ama #anon ask me anything #lore rekindled #lore rekindled ama

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whywoulditho · 10 days

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I'm glad, that DC writers are changing constantly and therefore the characters are protected from the Bat-family. The Bats are the cancer of DC comics. There wouln't be any independant characters anymore if they could gez their grubby hands on the other DC families

That's another way to look at it.. I agree that they're trying a bit too hard to connect every character to the bats' storyline. so you might have a point there. maybe it would create more bad than good if they let batfam authors interfere with the other storylines... but i still wouldn't call the bats the cancer of DC. I think if you took the bats out of DC, it would lose like half of its charm and quality.

with all that being said though, i still think the biggest problem of DC romances (or comic book romance in general) lies in each run having separate authors. think about why harley x ivy worked. it's because both of those characters already existed before they got together. both of them were loved villains and later anti-heroes, they both have their own story, their own past and their own redemption arcs. they're both INTERESTING. and when DC made the risky choice of making them a couple, it worked.

i'm not saying it would work with any other characters, or that they should make all their major characters date each other. but if you want to explore romance in your comics you have to give the readers an actual relationship, involving two realistically written and interesting people. not a major character and their accessory love interest. that's my issue with tim x bernard, or jon x jay. no one will get attached to, or even invested in, these relationships because we don't know anything about the love interests. they're just some random people. even if you try to give them personalities they will still not have a story outside of their relationship with the major character. bernard and jay were only created so tim and jon would have someone to kiss. it's hard to care about them, and therefore their relationship. they're just boring romance side plots.

you can introduce a character with the sole purpose of making them a couple with one of your major characters and still make it work, like batman and catwoman. you can create chemistry with a new character just as well as you can with already existing ones. but i think we need more of the first option. less last minute love interests and more people falling in love. i think what makes DC special is that they show us so many different versions of their major characters, we get to see them grow and change (take notes, marvel) so it wouldn't be off-brand to see already existing major characters, like superboy and robin, ending up together. not when it's DC. to be honest i think it would be like super iconic of them to do that. and i also think that DC fans would much rather have their favorite characters end up with the kind of person they went through hell and back with instead of like, a random citizen. tim and kon have so many parallels. they're both people who didn't have to be heroes at all, but still chose to do it. they both struggle with carrying a mantle too big and the fact that they were not chosen for it makes them even more insecure. they also have a past together, they're close friends, they would take a bullet for each other. so much potential. dont even get me started on damian and jon. those two are like, literal mirrors of their fathers. they have huge legacies on their shoulders and they're like quite literally the only people that could understand one another. again, so. much. potential. i'm not saying they have to be together, but if DC was gonna write romance for these characters I wish it could have been with each other.

#DC comics #DC #timkon #tim drake #conner kent #kon kent #damijon #jondami #damian wayne #jonathan kent #jon kent #ships #thoughts #asks

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clean-casual-analysis · 3 months

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How I’d Ruin it: Transformers

Inspired by Tyrantisterror and his “how I’d ruin it” series, I’m doing one for Transformers. I’m gonna take this one step at a time, because I’m crazy about transformers and I got a lot of thoughts on what I would do if I had three phases of a comic book.

Part One: Lore

For the general lore of this hypothetical series, I’d lean into the Primus vs Unicron storyline. Ironically appropriate for my How I’d Ruin It, because I know a good number of TF fans who prefer the quintesson origin and want to return to it. Sorry fellas, I just think the thirteen primes are neat. We also take a look into the (possible) future of the cybertronian race at the start of phase two of the hypothetical comic. I’ll be dividing this lore into ages for simplicity's sake.

Prehistory: At the very beginning of the universe, there was an omnipotent being made of light with no name. This being, referred to by cybertronian historians as The One, had cosmic powers beyond space and time. With this power, it saw into multiple timelines and dimensions out of young curiosity. There were so many different lifeforms, all with their own cultures and beliefs. There was peace and war, creation and destruction. As its knowledge grew, so did its internal conflict. Why were these unique beings fighting over seemingly pointless things? Was it individual philosophy that sparked greed and violence, or was it differing beliefs that each species held? If they were to all unite under one banner, would they lose that which made them unique. Was it morally correct for such a perfected and powerful being as The One to judge and interfere with mortals? The One had become so confused and anxious from this internal battle, that its mind and body split into two separate beings. Primus, the great creator, adored and even envied mortals. Where The One was flawless and blank, these miniscule lifeforms were varied and colorful. These beings could change and grow. Even the smallest could evolve and transform into something beautiful. Then there was his brother, a being who hated these ununiformed and petty insects. He vowed to destroy and reshape these species into a singular kingdom of rigid order. No longer would there be conflict, for he would punish and unite all as their one God. He would be Unicron, the chaos killer. These cosmically powered twins became natural enemies the moment they were created, the following battle lasting for billions of years. The battle ended in a draw, Primus and Unicron were so exhausted that both entered a deep sleep. In this coma like state, meteors and other space debris formed around them to become seemingly dormant planets.

Age of Primes: Sensing that Unicron was regaining strength and reformatting his planet into a colossal body, Primus began to plan his defense. Not wanting a repeat of their last battle, Primus decides on a different approach. He creates the thirteen primes, incredibly powerful, autonomous robots with unique abilities. Together, these thirteen would prepare for the return of Unicron and become a sort of family through their training. After the deed is done and the chaos killer is defeated from the inside of his vast body, the thirteen are left to their own devices on the metal world of Primus. As his final act, the great creator formed the well of all sparks. It was here that new robots were created and the planet would be known as Cybertron. Thirteen tribes were created, each led by a different prime, which led to the foundation of cybertronian culture. Much like previous TF stories, the thirteen primes had a falling out due to the manipulations of one manipulative and ambitious prime. The primes nearly went to war with one another, until the near death of one of their most beloved siblings shook them out of their anger. Realizing that they were not the infallible gods that they thought they were, nearly all the primes either left Cybertron or merged with the planet’s inner core. Only one prime remained to overlook the planet’s development, Alpha Trion, who gave one of the mythical artifacts of primes (the matrix) to one worthy of leadership.

Age of Function: After receiving what would later be known as the matrix of leadership, the prideful but valiant Nova Prime unified the thirteen tribes into one civilization. What follows is the planet wide construction of cities and government. Because the masses were still freshly made and unsure of their purpose in this new world, Nova decided to create functionism. Each cybertronian’s alt-mode would determine their role in creating Cybertron. At first, when the species was still relatively small in number, this system served well in accelerating Cybertron’s society. But when the contruction was near its end their optics looked towards the stars, the inherent flaws of functionism reared its ugly head. The rigid caste system quickly led to class envy and great inequality among the masses. Despite Alpha Trion’s insistence in changing this system, Nova Prime ego wouldn’t allow him to admit his prejudice. As space travel was fully realized and Nova set out to discover new worlds to colonize, his pride at his species’ accomplishments leading him down the road of becoming a cybertronian supremacist, a terrible discovery was made. During the first great battle between Primus and Unicron, their blood splashed across the galaxy. Not only were energon crystals (formed from Primus’ blood) found on foreign worlds, but the blood of Unicron was discovered as well. Before he realized what it was, dark energon infected Nova Prime and a number of his crew. They became more aggressive, burned through their energon at an alarming rate, and began to hear whispers of a dark god thought to be dead. Despite his smugness and stubbornness, Nova knew what terrible things could happen if he became Unicron’s herald. The corrupted prime gave up the matrix to the unaffected cybertronians in his crew, took those who were infected and went into deep space in self-exile. • The Golden Age: The next cybertronian to own the Matrix was Nominus Prime. Although he was overly invested in his personal appearance/hygiene and was somewhat of an elitist snob, he also possessed a good moral framework and a kind spark. His first major act as prime was the elimination of functionism, making him both beloved and hated by many. Not long after, the cybertronian race began to colonize worlds with the strict policy of not claiming worlds with significant life on them. Seemingly every new colony world produced new subcultures and different kinds of cybertronian. Although Nominus arguably just piggybacked off of other leaders and inventors, this was an age of artistry and prosperity.

Age of Rust: Seemingly out of nowhere, a slow acting but fast spreading disease began to appear across the farthest colony worlds named cosmic rust. Metal skyscrapers began to crumble, citizens were falling apart in medical beds, space bridges were forced to shut down to stop the rust from spreading. This was the first major disaster that Nominus Prime had to face and he was utterly mortified. Then, when all hope of saving the colonie and their species was lost, a strange race of techno-organics appeared. These beings were the quintessons, five faced octopus like people who claimed to be the creation of one of the thirteen prime to aid cybertronians in understanding the organic side of the galaxy. They offered a cure to cosmic rust and asked to use the space bridges to help spread the cure. Desperate to end this nightmare, Nominus gave them access to the space bridges without question. Almost immediately, he would regret this decision. These were not benevolent geniuses, but black hearted and capitalistic entrepreneurs. Not only were they the ones who invented cosmic rust, but they had created a great number of gadgets, combat drones and weapons specifically designed to annihilate cybertronians. In the blink of an eye, the whole of the cybertronian race was conquered and enslaved. Nominus was publicly executed, the matrix was taken, and the cybertronians were sold as commercial goods or military hardware to all other species in the galaxy. This would go on for thousands of years, until a hardened soldier named Zeta began to lead a rebellion with the aid of Alpha Trion and a brilliant engineer named Termagax. The cybertronian uprising was slow and bloody, but through cleverness and determination the quintessons were defeated. The matrix was found, Zeta had become Sentinel Prime, and the cybertronian race was free.

Age of Restraint: When the dust settled and the quintessons were driven away from the colony worlds, Sentinel Prime and Termagax went to work on rebuilding their civilization. Sentinel, having seen their kind’s technological power used against lesser beings firsthand, initiated the Nominus Edict. Unless there was unanimous agreement of every senator of Cybertron’s cities and other colony worlds, no new colonies would be made, and no technology was to be shared with other alien races. While he had the wellbeing of both his race and all other alien species in mind, his time as both slave soldier of the quintessons and uprising leader left him scarred and paranoid. Through the cybertronian government, he enforced the law to a borderline imperious degree. Termagax grew to resent Sentinal Prime, believing that the cybertronian race could thrive in the galaxy if they weren’t so restricted. She formed the Ascenticon movement, a growing group of bots who not only wanted to explore the cosmos but cooperate with the organic races that they’ve distanced themselves from. This philosophical debate between security and isolation vs freedom and alien collaboration went on for dacades, neither side quite gaining significant ground over the other. Eventually, the exhausted and embittered Termagax stepped down as Ascenticon leader and gave the reigns to her protégé. That protégé was a quintesson mining slave turned gladiatorial champion named Megatron, who had big plans of his own.

Age of Civil War: Not long after becoming leader of the Ascenticons, Megatron began to fully preach his personal doctrine. He believed that the cybertronian race deceived themselves into believing that they shouldn’t be proud of their power. The gladiator fear mongered that another species like the quintessons would conquer them if they didn’t show their dominance. True galactic peace can only be achieved through tyranny. Many cybertronians, in the ascenticon movement and beyond, were radicalized by Megatron’s words of might making right. In short time, Megatron amassed an army and called his new empire the decepticons. The mad tyrant and his followers overthrew the government and imprisoned Sentinel Prime. But much to Megatron’s surprise, the matrix did not deem him worthy of being a prime. He angrily dismissed the matrix and the lineage of primes as outdated and weak as his empire rapidly grew. Alpha Trion, sneakily taking the matrix back, set to work on creating a counter resistance to this new militaristic regime. The elderly prime already had a perfect candidate for the next prime; a former ascenticon who disavowed Megatron’s violent means of peacekeeping despite once being friends with him. A young data clerk named Orion Pax, who believed Cybertron had a responsibility to aid to those who needed it, and that freedom was the right of all sentient beings. And so, Optimus Prime was born. This counter resistance, named the autobots, grew arguably faster than the decepticons did. Cybertronians across the galaxy could see Megatron for the warmongering tyrant that he is. The civil war, waging primarily on Cybertron, lasted for eons. It all culminated in Megatron seizing Vector Sigma, a supercomputer near the well of all sparks that gave newly formed cybertronians the basic history and knowledge of their kind. The decepticon leader planned to hack Vector Sigma to forcibly program his beliefs into every new cybertronian to be protoformed. Horrified by this assault against free will, Optimus journeyed to the core of Cybertron to do something unthinkable. Through communication with Primus, the great creator poured his life-giving power into a device known as the all spark. Optimus threw the all spark into a space bridge with randomized coordinance, and it was lost to the stars. Their home planet torn apart and essentially dead, the Great War began to spread across the galaxy like wildfire. Earth, rich with crystallized energon beneath the surface, is the latest battleground.

Age of Beast Machines (possible future): Manipulating Megatron through dark energon, Unicron is revived. The very first planet destroyed is Cybertron with his new herald Galvatron and an army of terracons. The chaos killer goes on a galactic rampage, consuming stars/planets and creating heralds to spread his influence. Scrambling to save the galaxy, the remaining autobots and decepticons join forces in an effort to slay Unicron. Against all odds, they defeat the chaos killer once and for all. But their victory is bittersweet. The galaxy’s remaining stars and worlds are few and far between. The night skies feel unnaturally blackened. Their war now made pointless, the remaining cybertronians join together in rebuilding on the planet earth and the one surviving colony world known as biosfera. With virtually no energon left, the first order of business was to create a new type of fuel. The scientists of biosera, a jungle world primarily made up of beast mode cybertronians, came up with an unorthodox solution. They would alter their biology and transform into a techno-organic race, flesh and metal fused at the cellular level. Through this technology, they’d be able to live off of solar energy, need minimal energon, and even be able to consume meat and plants for substance. While a good number were hesitant to make such a radical change, they had little choice. Slowly, the cybertronian race flourished once again. Once new generations were protoformed, two sections of one government began to spread across the stars. One group was the Maximals, scientists and explorers that aided young civilizations and researched the new galaxy. The other group were the predacons, the core military that fought off space pirates and crushed growing dictatorships. Although the two groups bickered amongst themselves over their clashing ideologies and methods, they still cooperated and respected each other. But rumors are circulating that a small handful of Unicron’s heralds are still alive. If they are, their willing to bend space and time itself to assure their fallen master’s ultimate victory.

Notes: This lore is a combination of Aligned, both IDW continuities, Beast Wars/Machines and a dash of Last Autobot Standing. One major difference is that Solus Prime survives in this continuity, but we’ll get to that in the next part.

#transformers #maccadam #optimus prime #Megatron #thirteen primes #alpha trion #Unicron #primus

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kitausuret · 1 year

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would you be willing to recommend me some venom comic runs? i'm a comics guy generally but i've never read venom. recently watched the movie and it was baller.

Hey there friend! So, Venom is coming up on 35 years as of 2023 (wow!) so you have a lot of options. There's pretty much something for everyone out there, but given that you liked the movie, I can probably point you in the right direction...

If you can get your hands on trades (or even just use them as a guide for your favorite Digital Comics Avenue) that's gonna be your best bet. The Epic Collections (link to Wikipedia) are really comprehensive. The chart even has them in order! Handy!

If you don't want to be flipping between fifty different Spider-Man series, though, you can definitely start with some of the Venom-titled books! I've tried to pick ones that don't require a whole lot of backreading.

So, easy starting point is going to be Venom: Lethal Protector (1993) #1-6. I strongly recommend reading Amazing Spider-Man #373-375 first if you can, since #375 is the first appearance of Anne Weying. LP is to this day one of my favorite series, and it has some of the best Venom and Spider-Man moments. All are written by David Michelinie, and pencils are by Mark Bagley or Ron Lim.

If you like Anne Weying, Venom: Sinner Takes All and Venom: Along Came a Spider are the two miniseries that feature her the most. Both are written by Larry Hama. The latter has art that is... kinda rough in my opinion, but if you can look past it, they're both neat. The other thing to keep in mind is that with ACAS is that it does take place in the middle of Spider-Man Clone Saga (well.. after Ben Reilly has taken up the mantle) so it's not as new reader friendly but it IS fun. I like when Anne whacks Ben.

Are these comics good? Eh... "Sinner" is probably the stronger story of the two, but when you like Anne, you can't be too picky about what you get, unfortunately!

I also absolutely have to recommend the Planet of the Symbiotes event, which immediately follows Venom: Separation Anxiety (one of my personal favorite series). I recommend "Separation" First and then just checking out a collection of the PotS event, like this one here (link to readcomicsonline). Otherwise you have to sort out which Super Specials to read and it's annoying and dumb. The nice thing about PotS is that it's an excellent story by Michelinie with.. hmm.. let's say inconsistent art, but it's very fun and even if you're a little lost by the Clone Saga stuff, don't worry about it!! You'll be fine.

And finally, if you're looking for something a little more wacky, you can't go wrong with Venom: The Madness (W: Ann Nocenti, A: K. Jones) and Venom: Carnage Unleashed (W: Hama, A: Wildman, Nichols)! They are both very 90s off-the-wall insane and just like. Absolutely bonkers-nuts. The Madness also has the distinction of introducing Eddie (and Venom's!) first love interest since Anne. Mwah! 😘

If you'd like more modern recommendations, or if you're willing to check out other hosts, I'd be happy to provide those as well! But this should be a good starting point for some fun books. Happy reading, and if any other Venomaniacs have recommendations, feel free to add on!

#venom #reading guides #comic reading guides #eddie brock #carnage #spiderman #kita talks comics #asked and answered #also sorry not recommending anything past the 90s because i've been feeling particularly grumpy about modern venom as of late lmao

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bloodonmysqueegee · 10 months

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Ok I'm gonna do a bit of a tangent here:

Superior Spider-Man is coming back. Here's some things I'd love to happen, as well as some general predictions :]

(Here's some doodles to start)

We still don't know the time period of when this volume will be like if it's in the past or not, but I'm going to assume it's in the present timeline.

Predictions:

The way he'll be brought back will be some contrived bullshit. There's honestly no other way to do it aside from maybe a scenario where he comes back as a multiverse variant, but I don't think they're gonna do that. (I don't really mind, things happen, but still)

He'll get at least one change to his suit. Even if it's something subtle like changing the eyes from black to white in vol 2 (not saying they should, but I think it'd be cool to see them cook up a new alt. costume)

His story will have something to do with the multiverse stories that Slotts also been writing at the time (I haven't read those so I can't say if they're good or not, but either way adding superior to anything tends to bring more interest anyway)

What I want:

For Superior to be brought back as a separate entity from current comic doc ock (would he probably be brought back in some bullshit way? Yes.) But imagine the story potential that could have! Also it would potentially save superior from being erased again

For him to have a down to earth conversation with 616 Peter. PLEASE. Just let them talk about their problems, they share so much with eachother! Let Peter confide in him about the bullshit stories he's been in.

Superior is self aware of the current state of spiderman books and how much of an ass pull his vol 2 death was

ACKNOWLEDGE SPIDERGEDDON PLEASE (SUPERIOR HAD A FRI E. ND IN THAT ARC AND HIS NAME IS 1048 PETER)

Allow him and Anna Maria to remain platonic! They were lovely to see as friends in vol 2, I don't really want them to be romantic together though, give us some good platonic bestie rep

Allow superior to be in other media now that he's back! Crossovers! Go nuts! He's such an interesting character to bounce off of.

LET HIM BE HAPPY. GIVE HIM A BREAK. Have him sit down with a coffee in casual clothes and acknowledge that yes, he is doing better

Stuff I REALLY want (but won't happen)

Superior goes back to e-1048. Even if it's for one issue. I know I'm insane for those two, but we really need more content of them. Hell, have him move away from 616 to get away from his past life troubles and live in 1048 with someone that enjoys his company.

Superior gets a moment to just relax. Let the man sleep. I need a panel of him napping or relaxing.

ACKNOWLEDGE THAT HE HAS GROWN AND CHANGED. Yes, there's room for improvement, but he was a generally good person in vol 2 and I don't want them to forget all his development please PLEA

And most importantly: this new arc better not end with him dying or getting erased again or I'll lose I'll hope in humanity.

#otto octavius #doc ock #superior spider man #superior spiderman #superior spider-man #spiderman comics #comic spiderman #spiderverse #marvel 616 #going mental #nothing i like will happen i know this #im desperate #spiderman fanart

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dailycass-cain · 1 year

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So a few weeks ago I hit over 5,000 followers on Twitter. As promised, tonight I look into the history Cass has with Bruce Wayne and Barbara Gordon. By doing so I'll answer the question: is Cass more of a Gordon or a Wayne?

To fully answer this question we've got to start all the way to the beginning with "No Man's Land" the Batman event that introduced Cassandra into the Batman world. Though originally in the comics Cass didn't show up until midway into the event. The novel by Greg Rucka however-

--Cass is shown in the story early on. The move plants the seeds of the bonds the two will share for quite a long time. Here's the section involving Cass from the audio drama based on the novel.

More so, it has to be understood that the novel is the first time Cass is called by her name, and it is Barbara who gives her it. As the comics only called her Batgirl or an agent of Babs at the time.

This bit is retconned later in Batgirl Vol. 1 with the name business being more associated with Cass making the connection that she and Lady Shiva share a similar first name and--

-- in Batman & Robin Eternal where David Cain is the one to give Cass her name.

You could theorize the reason this was taken away was to further separate Cass from Babs (and we'll get to that portion) and balance the Shiva as Cass' mother revelation.

It should also be noted, Babs watches through NML and then realizes that someone has taken up the Batgirl mantle (Helena Bertinelli) and Bruce is okay with it. This sets off Babs as it wasn't given her approval.

When Helena makes three mistakes, she's sacked as Batgirl. This is where Bruce enters our picture with Cass. It's this fallout that causes Two-Face to further try and heighten his power in NML by taking out Jim Gordon.

Leading to him hiring assassin David Cain and Cass being caught in the crosshairs as she saves the father of her guardian (Babs). It's thru foiling these two attempts and her method of ending the contract Two-Face put on Gordon that puts Cass on Bruce's radar.

With Bruce realizing he can't conquer NML problem on his own, decides he'll need the Bat-Family to fully assist him on this. However, comes the sacking of Helena as Batgirl.

The move is later retconned in "Batman knew what Helena would go and do" thus ensuring he didn't have to look out the area she was at. Plus conquer taking a stand against the Joker in the final month of NML.

But back to the Bat-Family gathering, with a new member a title had to be bestowed on her, and with Babs blessing, Cassandra Cain became the new Batgirl.

The next step in the evolution of both came with Batgirl Vol. 1 #1 as both Bruce/Babs were key to Cass's supporting cast in the comic. Bruce more the stern boss, while Babs the motherly figure that watched and helped her.

I think this distinction should be noted as well the fatherly aspect didn't really develop over in Cass's main book. Rather, Batman: Gotham Knights (but more on that soon).

Instead um... 😶😶😶

Okay, I'm gonna talk about the "bat in the room" aka the thing mostly everyone just buries when it comes to Bruce being a father figure to Cass and that's well the latter having a MAJOR crush on him.

It's something the Kelley Puckett run doesn't focus on thankfully (more going onto boss and later parental). Dylan Horrock's run which followed however um...

See the key to Horrock's was Cass coming to terms with her teen hormones, sexuality (both her own and seeing others lust after her), and how to properly deal with them.

In the end, she realizes how to deal with two (Kon she just wants to be friends with and Black Wind well-- he kind of dies).

Then there's Bruce. Who she feels maybe is jealous of all her suitors (he’s acting more parental at least overbearingly). And it leads to um.. moments like this in #50 which Babs theorizes.

Now it's known by Babs, that Cass does have a crush on Bruce. Something that's brought up also in Gotham Knight at this time period during the whole "Is Bane Bruce's brother subplot".

So this whole period has this um.. sketchy subtextual period. However, it is also Batman: Gotham Knight that also begins to lay the foundation of Bruce to treat Cass like a daughter.

Likewise, Cass's interactions with Dick/Tim are here in this comic too (which I covered in their evolutionary relationship with Cass) where their bonds became sibling-like.

Here for Dick and here for Tim.

Though it's not like Cass just had thoughts for Bruce, as we learn creators in the late '04 to '05 period creators on both Batgirl/Robin thought of the pair as romantic interests (hence why you have A LOT of ship art from that period until '07 when a certain heel turn basically sank it until a little bit or revival in ‘11).

So yeah, Puckett era and most of Horrocks' run? Cass was a Gordon. Literally, she even thinks of Babs not as something more than just a sister in #25, but as a mother.

Likewise, Babs sees the warning signs that something is truly up with Cass throughout the whole Shiva subplot whereas Bruce is more, "She has to confront Shiva and get thru this phase." And Babs is all, "THIS IS GONNA KILL HER!"

ut as we know Cass still goes thru with confronting Shiva, even with Babs' attempts to sway her from doing so.

Regardless, Cass is more Babs' daughter from Puckett to Horrocks.

Where it begins to shift toward fatherly with Bruce and her becoming a Wayne? You can probably begin with "Bruce Wayne: Murderer/Fugitive" where four BIG events happen in Cass's life.

David Cain targets both Bruce and Babs.

Cass learns Bruce is Batman.

Cain's “motive” for targeting them both (he’s honoring a contract made by Lex Luthor.

Cain surrenders to confess to the murder of Vesper Fairchild leading to his incarceration.

Why target both? Because David figures both turned their daughter against him. However, it is AFTER this Bruce develops his more um-- bat dickery approach to Cass but also the sketchy stuff. At least for Horrocks. This is where Puckett has Bruce be more parental toward Cass right after this event.

So it's near the end of Horrock's run that we reach our impasse where it all diverges. Because at the end of the "War Games" event, Babs was leaving Gotham, taking away her as a mentor/mother role to Cass.

The other being the loss of Stephanie Brown aka Cass's best friend. Two key supporting members of Batgirl Vol. 1 and Horrocks left the book because of it.

Still, he wrote the catalyst which would break Cass/Babs apart in #54. Something that I covered when talking about Cass's Dyslexia disability.

The reasoning is understandable as Cass was neglecting her lessons and well mistakes are made. But this moment is what leads to the two having a fractured relationship.

While later Batgirl writer Andersen Gabrych does lay the seeds to mend that relationship in #67. Well, he didn't have to time to finish it. Nor did Gail Simone, writer of BoP either.

Though he did showcase more how much Cass was the mirror to Bruce during this time period.

Because basically, all this is happening right around...

The period of the end of Batgirl Vol. 1 and the beginning of Cass's "heel" turn. Though we can hate on the turn there is one moment within Robin #148 which has Babs reacting rocked with Cass "dying".

Likewise, we have in BoP when Misfit showed up in her intro arc wanting to be the new Batgirl and Babs snapping at Charlotte when "Cass" is brought up.

The thing is if we're gonna go on and say who truly made Cass fully a Wayne in the conscious mind. It would be Batgirl Vol. 2 #1-6 aka “Redemption Road”.

I get the "why" as it takes Cass FULLY into being a Wayne here. Bruce/Tim are full-on family mode trying to keep Cass afloat while writer Adam Beechen addresses the grand flaws with the main Bat Books and Bat-Family (aka Dick).

I get the "why" this is Beechen trying to cement Cass and giving her the direction the story was going with the character AT THAT POINT.

That's not to say he disregards Babs' time with Cass though. As in the story, she helps aid Cass in her quest of revenge. Though again, David Cain attempts to take her out (this time more for what she does than for the secondary reason).

But it's clear by stories' end where Cass is going as a character. She's a Wayne.

I get it the "why" as Beechen was undoing the damage he himself accidentally wrought on the character during this time period. This was him correcting the great claws in the infamous period of '06 to '07.

Aka...

This hot mess:

But as we know this is where Cass's journey with both ended abruptly as minds were made to put Babs' back as Batgirl and for Cass to be ousted from the role.

Except things went another route instead. Let's just say '09 was a rough period because DC was gonna DC.

Though when Cass was brought back. I'd be curious to know what Gail would've done if she was allowed Cass as she originally wanted during her "Brightest Day" run of Birds of Prey.

It's a little "what if" I wonder what would've happened if Grant Morrison and Fabian Nicieza hadn't beaten her to the punch and reinvented the character as Black Bat with a path being the Batman of Hong Kong and further seeding the brother/sister dynamic she had with Tim.

Because sadly that's where the trail ends for Babs/Cass in the Pre-New 52 era. Wayne portion though? “Gates of Gotham” by Scott Snyder and Kyle Higgins continued to build where Batgirl Vol. 2 left off.

This mini though never fully said aloud basically strengthens the bounds of Cass and her brothers. We get so many good moments in this mini with her, Tim, and Dick while also the first meeting she has with Damian.

I think unknowingly this and the New 52 is why mostly Cass is more associated with the Wayne side than Gordons. Because unfortunately right across the horizon was...

We all know how DC "handled" Cass during this era.

I think this is where the clear distinction was fully cast off here. Because DC thought by having Cass around it would negate Babs' return as Batgirl.

HOWEVER!!

It's never said during the Future's End: Batgirl #1 but it sure as heck implied that Babs went on an adopting spree taking in Cass, Steph, and Tiffany.

I think of it and three other stories as the last beacons of Cass being a Gordon.

Because two years after this Cass was reintroduced into the DCU. However with provisions. One of those was crystal clear: no history with Babs.

Why?

If you know the "age-old" DC rule of this era. To acknowledge or establish Babs back as a mentor/mother figure to Cass it would "age" Babs up. Certain folk at DC wanted Babs as younger not older.

So it's not surprising AT ALL that Cass never appeared in Batgirl Vol. 5 until the very end. Now it's not surprising given Babs was doing her own thing with creators trying to find the character's path in the Rebirth era.

Not to mention for Cass? She was branded more toward Wayne side in her new origin as she appeared during Dick Grayson's "first year" as Robin now and was retconned being the second child Bruce encountered and tried to protect.

Which led us to this glorious moment.

However, DC still didn't want to fully dive into this because again it would "age Bruce up". So "half-measures" were taken and Cass was a "backseat Bat-Family member" than the "inner circle" (Bruce, Alfred, Damian, Babs, Dick, and Jason).

That's not to say writers (Snyder and his student James Tynion IV) wanted that reestablishment with either.

Oh, it was literally throughout the Rebirth Tec era. Just in small doses until the very end. When we got the FULL shot.

Along with this additional nugget of Cass going off to be mentored by Babs. Though those looking in Batgirl Vol. 5 would find this instead:

And again continued to find that until the very last issue for some reason. A part of me always wanted to ask any of the writers of Batgirl Vol. 5 but... just never felt the need given--

-- we got "an answer" aka the third bone tossed on the side of Gordon with Bryan Edward Hill's Tec run aka #983-986 where we got MANY nods to the past with Babs/Cass.

It's just before we got any more with the two the door kind of closed shut on this side tightly.

Oh sure, we got Batgirls and so much. But never once (sadly) does it feel like Cass is a Gordon or Babs is mother/mentor to her. It's more Babs feels like the out-of-touch older member of the trio who's trying to fit in with the youths.

The Wayne side on the other hand? Oh, Bryan Edward Hill's Batman & the Outsider run was ALL about reestablishing that thanks to a concerned mother (among other elements).

And that whole end reached its crux with the series' end, a certain someone getting fired from DC, James Tynion IV's Batman run, and Batman Wayne Family Adventures.

All of this mish-mashed together gave us Cassandra Cain Wayne. But what of the Gordon side? I feel it's important to understand that there is one graphic novel that realized the importance more of Babs had with Cass more than Bruce did.

Of course, I speak of Shadow of the Batgirl. Where Cass gets TWO mother figures in the series. Jackie and Babs.

Writer Sarah Kuhn showcases WHY Babs is so critical to Cass's origin more than Bruce is. Thematically, Kuhn realized elements that are just more poetic between the two and we have the closest thing to what Puckett originally established.

Kind why the work is so highly recommended Kuhn took all the stuff that worked, took out what didn't, and added her own spin to the material.

It really showcases why Babs is more a necessity to Cass than Bruce is. I mean sure Bruce has his positivities too as a parental figure. It just takes what NML was giving. The next Batgirl finding Babs and her giving the teen the life she so craved.

However, Babs/Bruce represents the two sides to what Cass craves so in the end, she is both a Gordon and a Wayne.

It's just that during the "New 52" one side got lost because it would "age" Babs up, while for Bruce it was light on the "Wayne" side.

Why you have more Wayne than Gordon. But even with the bias we have still gotten nods to the past.

That's not to say there is a current DC writer who fully understands BOTH sides to the coin. Just that she's never fully gotten the chance to. *cough* Mariko Tamaki *cough*

So there is my final say as to "Is Cassandra Cain a Wayne or a Gordon"?

#cassandra cain #barbara gordon #bruce wayne #dc comics

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rachelcommitscrimes · 1 year

Text

im gonna rant abt how much i hate the ghost eyes fandom (as a former fan) bc im just kinda mad rn

so uhh yeah major TW for s3lf h4rm, romanticizing mental illness, su1c1de, sadomasochism, infantilization, and rlly just anything related to that

(also sorry if this looks weird idk how to separate stuff on tumblr)

also DO NOT harass the creator or anyone mentioned here, you’re no better than them if you do that

——————————————————————————

ok so i read ghost eyes like 2 years ago but i stopped reading about the point where they were on that field trip. i still think it’s a nice comic and i’m sure the author is a cool person, also the art style is awesome. but the fandom is so fucking gross that i’m surprised more people haven’t talked about it.

for some backstory on this, i used have REALLY bad depression and was cutting myself regularly (i’m much better now, i have medication, therapy, and i’m almost a year clean) i also stopped reading due to the comic severely damaging my mental health and i’m very glad i did. i was younger and immature and thought i could handle such content. this led to me becoming extremely obsessed with the comic to an unhealthy level, and getting severely attached to one of the characters (rudy) because i could relate to him at that time. i seriously thought that i WAS him sometimes.

i understand now that i should NOT have ignored the label and what i did was definitely wrong and if the creator is reading this i deeply apologize. i’m in a much better place now and i’m just glad that i was able to get the help i needed.

ok now to the angry part

if you don’t know what ghost eyes is, it’s a webcomic about a severely traumatized boy attending school for the first time and meeting a bunch of other severely traumatized kids. this comic has a crap ton of triggering/sensitive/disturbing topics (which is not a bad thing as long as you do it right) and like i said before, the creator has kindly put a warning before the comic starts stating that you SHOULD NOT romanticize/idolize/sexualize/kin any of the characters, do not read unless you can handle such topics, and so forth. now i know i should have definitely put the comic down before and not gotten obsessed over it, but i knew damn well enough that it was messed up to romanticize/sexualize any of the characters/things that happened in the book.

there are several scenes in which a character is self harming or harming someone else, and the comments will say shit like “nooo my poor bean” “awww baby don’t do that” or my personal favorite “protect the smol bean.” first of all, the characters are like 16-17, second of all, i cannot even tell you how fucked up it is that people see someone ruining their lives and putting themselves in danger and think it’s “cute” or “anxiety smol bean uwu” THERES LITERALLY A SCENE WHERE SOMEONE IS GETTING STABBED AND PPL ARE DRAWING THIS MF IN A MAID DRESS.

another reason i despise these fans is that they see an abusive relationship and start making ships/kinning them. as someone who has gone through pretty much everything rudy has gone through, i cant tell you how irritating it is to see people shipping him with his abuser or calling him a “cutie patootie masochist boi uwu” cause lemme tell you what-it doesnt feel good to have to put your health in danger and ruin your relationships with others just so you can get off somehow. ITS NOT FUN. the whole point of rudy’s character is to not romanticize someones fucked up mental health.

i could spend hours talking about this group of immature brats, but i’m tired and it’s a school night and i have a test tomorrow. i might add on if i feel like i need to but overall i really hope those immature fans grow up and realize their mistakes like i did, or get the help they need.

#ghost eyes #webcomic #rant #angry ramblings #angry rant #i hate this fandom #tw su1c1d3 #tw sh implied #go get some help please

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underpaid-paragon · 9 months

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Your VTM comic book covers are simply GORGEOUS, I'm totally in awe! How did you get the super cool halftone/coloured dots effect? It looks super cool and realistic, I love it! Have a lovely day! :)

Thank you so much!

So to get the halftones, I use an old-ass tutorial I got off deviantArt literally....more than a decade ago? (Rosalarian's Golden Age Tutorial). The account appears to be deactivated, but I'll go through the steps here:

For reference, I bounce between Clip Studio Paint and a very old-ass copy of Photoshop, but if you're using other programs that have fun pixelate filters and you can change the color mode, you should be ok.

NOW...

Ink your drawing in straight black on its own layer

Block your colors on another layer (I hunted up some old comic color palettes thanks to madformidcentury dot com/2013/10/mid-century-color-palette-in-comics dot html)

Turn off any and all blackwork (this is INCREDIBLY important), and take your colorwork into Photoshop. (if there are any gaps in your color work, fill a separate layer with white and then merge the layers so it's all solid)

Set the mode to CMYK

Go to Artistic Filters >> Pixelate >> Color Halftone (the only thing I mess around with is the size of the dots; the default for my era of Photoshop is 8 and that's a lil big for my taste--all the VTM covers are between 4-6. It's up to your own best judgement, but I go by how "readable" things look--does the face still look like a face at a reasonable distance or is it just a smudge? If it's not readable, undo and change your dot size)

Add 3 new layers to your document and LABEL THEM: Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow

Then go to your channels panel and click on the Cyan layer to make a selection of it

Back to your Layers panel, make sure you're on your Cyan layer, and SELECT INVERSE

Then FILL the selection with the CMYK cyan that you've picked out

Deselect your selection, move to the next layer (and make sure you've got CMYK magenta in your bucket) and repeat steps 6-8 selecting Magenta and Yellow respectively

NOW you've got the beginnings of retro-feeling halftone. At this point, I import the halftone manipulation back into CSP and turn my blackwork back on.

For the ✨ grunge ✨ effect, I grab an old paper texture (after reducing its saturation and upping the contrast until it's mostly black and white splotchy) and set it to OVERLAY at anywhere from 50-20% (this is a 'let your soul decide' moment) over the whole thing

Then I grab another old paper texture and put underneath the Overlay Texture Layer, on MULTIPLY, at anywhere from 65-25% (again, let your soul decide). Both layers will give you a nice level of funk to go with your halftone shenanigans

A lot of the colorwork is going back and forth and back and forth because what looked ok in flats didn't translate after toning, but it works out eventually!

Some important things to remember:

Cool tones tend to fade back and warm tones tend to move forward if you're gonna use this method on any kind of scene

Keep your shapes SIMPLE; don't get bogged down in tones of gradients and fades and all of that because most of it WILL NOT come across once you start toning! Think of it this way: mass-production doesn't have time for fine detail, that's why comics are a lot of heavy black inks and flat color contrast

Experiment with the colors! You're working in a limited palette (if you're using any of the old Marvel/DC print books especially), and it doesn't have to be photorealistic/absolute. For instance, my Nos isn't actually green, but the tone suited the funky retro vibe so I went with it!

Let yourself fall down the research rabbit hole of pulp covers because they're both hilarious and informative. Same dot energy is an interesting collection website to go through, you can also go through your search engine (remember to add -pinterest -youtube to your search term to filter out that crapola)

HAVE FUN!

💖

#art tutorial #art tips #art resources #halftone tutorial #retro tutorial

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minimoefoe · 3 months

Text

finished my morganville vampires reread so here’s some rankings and misc thoughts

I didn’t really note anything down as I was reading so this is just misc thoughts off the top of my head for the most part. next time I reread I’m defo gonna keep note of as many thoughts as possible and figure out definitive rankings and stuff and ramble on and on to the three ppl who also post about this series

book ranking

two separate lists bc I reread books 1-5 back in mid 2022 and that’s way too long ago for me to remember how I feel about them in comparison to the books I’ve read over the last month

feast of fools (4)

lord of misrule (5)

the dead girls’ dance (2)

midnight alley (3)

glass houses (1)

carpe corpus (6) / last breath (11)

ghost town (9) / black dawn (12)

fade out (7) / daylighters (15)

bite club (10) / fall of night (14)

kiss of death (8) / bitter blood (13)

characters

top four

myrnin - literally obsessed with him I don’t even know how to explain it, I wouldn’t say I read the series JUST for him but if he wasn’t in it I would like it significantly less and would’ve reread a lot less times

amelie / oliver - both soooo interesting, love moments where they show the less big bad vamp sides of themselves, makes me crazy

sam - gone too soon I’m crying

glass house gang

claire / eve - queens

michael - mild annoy moments but I love him

shane - I do really like him but also he’s so annoying sometimes and it gets old quickly

others

miranda - claire mentioning how miranda starts to blossom towards the end of the series and seems finally happy is very sweet but overall I find most of her appearances annoying like I dread seeing her name pop up and it’s a big reason why bitter blood isn’t my fave

monica - has interesting moments for sure and gets better throughout the series but overall idrc

jason - flip flops between good and evil so much idek what’s going on, love him in kiss of death

morley - what I’d give for a small series set in blacke

naomi - coulda been so interesting, gay rights

hannah - we love her

theo- kinda makes me uncomfortable but it’s fine

jesse - actually love her

richard - okay

frank - evil but has interesting moments

ada - very annoying but it’s not all her fault and I like the drama

duos

claire & myrnin - truly no other duo matters, as friends, as more than friends, idc, I love whatever they have going on

claire & amelie - love the idea that amelie kinda sees claire as her daughter and goes on her etc sometimes, actually kills me

amelie & sam - I’m crying

amelie & oliver - the ultimate enemies to lovers kinda

michael & eve - very cute, love them

claire & shane - very cute, love them even tho shane is a bit of a prat sometimes

myrnin & jesse - the thing of jesse being around making myrnin not be as into claire makes my clyrnin obsessed brain sad but it makes my myrninxjesse brain very happy bc I love them, I wish there was so much more of them. the midnight bites stories fed me a little and it was great

misc series thoughts

monica is kinda comically evil in book one and it’s a bit weird like girl calm down. same with whichever of her friends is evil too like can we relax idfk

the ‘mime fangs’ thing is a lil cringe

the series is SO obsessed with claire being 16 and it drives me crazy like eve michael and shane act like they’re a decade older than her and it’s like omg stio being so dramatic

I do not care about captain obvious

what happened to the two officers that claire is friendly with early in the series i feel like they basically are replaced by hannah like where tf do they go

I do not care about claire’s parents like please go away. god bless her dad’s heart condition or whatever is wrong with him get those twats out of that town. also the whole being protective over claire about shane thing does my head in like idc idc IDC

the stuff with bishop is absolutely some of the best stuff in the series (minus every single myrnin scene) like yeahhhhhh

oliver being forced to hang around with everyone in kiss of death is 10/10

oliver running a coffee shop kills me like omfg I love him he does not need to be doing that

I would sell my soul for any information on morley and the librarian who’s name I can’t remember’s relationship like AHHHHH

I don’t dislike the pov changes later in the series, I think they work pretty well for the most part tbh

shane following claire to college is INSANE behaviour like genuinely what the actual fuck is that

I love sam so much he makes me so sad

fuck the ghost hunters I do not care

shane’s reluctance to get used to michael being a vampire is annoying sorry like I get it, he grew up hating them blah blah blah. grow up idc

I think I like that michael ends the series as a human. him having a moment when he was out in the sun nearly made me cry

the fact oliver is hinted to be oliver cromwell lives in my mind rent free and idk why bc I didnt even know who oliver cromwell was til I read these books. I also saw a thing earlier today that said jesse is meant to be lady jane grey which is fun

idk why these children are so determined to marry each other like omg. I do think the whole vampires and humans marrying each other is drama thing is interesting so I’m like okay it makes sense for michael and eve to be determined to get married purely to show that part of things to us but ultimately I’m like.. why does it matter if you can’t get married. like first of all, it’s paper, second of all you’re 12. and shane and claire getting married in the final book is like okay good for you I guess idk

I genuinely could read another 15 books of morganville fuckery liike I love these books an insane amount it’s not even funny

I defo had more thoughts and I’ll probs think of more stuff to add to this once I post it but it’s fine I’ll just save them all for whenever I reread next which might be near the end of this year or might be early next year or might be even longer depending on how well I’m able to distract myself with other things, bc as much as I love this series more than I love myself and wanna spend all my life engrossed in it, it also makes me feel a lil sad and takes over my brain and the lack of fandom is genuinely painful. so the more distance I can make the better I fear

#natchats #morganville vampires #the morganville vampires #reading thoughts

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yunomagic · 1 year

Text

Every single way Luz Noceda and Movie Sonic are similar (and why i think they should be besties)

These two are genuinely my moods, my kins, and my children and i actually do think they would be besties and its all gonna make sense in a minute i swear. Do be warned that this may be incoherent cuz I am like that, and that some things might’ve been said wrong. The elaborations are in no particular order and some explanations may be longer than others. ALSO this contains spoilers for both The Owl House and the Sonic Movies so if you haven’t watched one or both of em please do so when you can and come back to this. anyways Here we go:

Both resemble the archetype of a bubbly and kindhearted goofball of a protagonist that can be naive and/or impulsive at times during the time they first debuted

^^^ As they get older and as their stories progress, they start to mature and learn from what they experienced on their adventures

Both have dealt with a form of parental loss during an early part of their childhood ( Manny Noceda for Luz, and Longclaw for Sonic )

Both use escapism methods as coping mechanisms to compensate for their traumatizing childhood

( Luz indulges in TGWA books or fiction in general, and it’s implied she also does amvs and art, which can be interpreted as both hobbies and stress relievers. As for Sonic, he indulges in comic books like The Flash and pretends to be a part of Tom and Maddie’s family so he doesn’t feel so alone )

Both children were alone for a majority of their life and didn’t have any real friends until they found them in different worlds ( In the Boiling Isles, Luz ends up finding Eda, King, Gus, Willow and eventually, Amity. On Earth, Sonic ends up finding Tom and Maddie Wachowski, b4 meeting Tails and Knuckles later down the line )

Both strive to feel appreciated and accepted, and they execute it in similar ways

( Luz making grand gestures and extreme antics [like the snakes and the spiders in ep 1] to try and impress her classmates and Sonic trying to be a hero to make Longclaw proud, and to possibly gain acceptance from other humans )

^^^ As a result, both of their methods are seen as reckless and dangerous

Note: At this point in the ramble, the mobile version of tumblr won’t allow me to add more images cuz of a 10 image limit and I can’t figure out how to add more on desktop. So any evidence I provide is gonna be in quotes, parenthesis or paragraphs of elaboration. I’m so sorry there’s gonna be no visual flavor, if anyone can help me find a loophole that’d be great. Anyways back to the show:

Both pin the blame on themselves for things that weren’t their fault, and push themsleves to right what they believe they did wrong… by rushing into immediate danger ( can also be seen as some form of people pleasing behavior )

Both of them also refuse to accept any sort of help from the people who care about them

^^^ When Eda got captured trying to save Luz near the end of season 1, Luz’s plan was to straight up rescue her while being fully aware of the risks. This repeats again in season 2, episode 1 with the entire premise of the episode being that luz feels like a burden and is the cause of Eda losing her magic and everyone in the owl house financially struggling. Going all out to fight a selkiedomus in order to free Eda and king.

While Eda talks to Luz about it, the behavior doesn’t stop. Carrying over to Hollow Mind, and the episodes after that. If you know what happened in Hollow Mind, we’d know that Luz is now adamant on stopping Belos and the Day of Unity. While still being aware of the risks, she believes that she’s the sole reason for the Day of Unity happening, therefore she continued to risk her life in order to save others

“Please try to understand, Eda was in the situation because of me. Because of my stupid choice, I have to make up for it.” - Young Blood, Old Souls

“Because you stuck with me you lost your magic, you almost got turned to stone, and now you can’t even afford your apple blood because you’re worried about what I need to eat.” - Separate Tides

“I am NOT hiding, I’m going to stop Belos from completing the draining spell.” - O Titan, Where Art Thou

In the second act of sonic movie 2, Tails gets knocked unconscious by Robotnik and Sonic narrowly saves him in the nick of time b4 an avalanche could envelope them. Near the beginning of the movie, during the boat scene, the blue blur had a talk with Tom about how being a hero meant to take responsibility for other people. As Sonic accidentally caused chaos in Seattle for trying to stop a robbery and be a hero. It’s also implied that this has been happening more than once. One of the things Tom said to Sonic was, “You put people in danger and that’s not what a hero does.”

^^^ This statement indirectly affected Sonic’s way of thinking. While said with good intentions, as a result of what happened to Tails, Sonic believes that he needs to make up for what he did wrong by pursuing Knuckles and Robotnik for the master emerald. Thus, he thinks he’s automatically no longer a hero once a new friend of his almost died

( It should be worth mentioning that there was some visible regret in Tom’s face when he realized that he made sonic think that way. It’s also possible that Sonic blames himself for Longclaw’s death, the first movie also explicitly states that Sonic’s number one fear is hurting people because of being himself. Making the boat scene, what Tom said, AND what Sonic says next, extremely deep and depressing )

“You see that little fox over there? He came all the way across the universe to meet his hero, and what did his hero do? I practically got him killed! You were right, my moment came, and I blew it. I’m no hero.”

Key takeaways of these moments is that this is the kind of mindset both these kids have is somewhere along the lines of, “I accidentally made a mistake = Everything is my fault and I should take the blame and all responsibility for it no matter what other people tell me.”

^^^ This kind of thinking is reminiscent to people pleasing behavior and is v self-destructive. While Luz is undoubtedly a people pleaser, Sonic seems to be more of a subtle kind of people pleaser

Both kids may be afraid of rejection and/or abandonment due to past trauma

Both kids were forced to be sent away at some point in their childhood. The reasons and the circumstances differ, but the incidents were similar. In the end, it resulted in both Sonic and Luz not liking the idea of being sent away, even if it’s for their own safety

Both kids feel the need to become something or someone else in order to feel accepted by other people ( Luz wanting to become a witch in season 1 and Sonic wanting to become a hero in sonic movie 2 )

Both kids were forced into thinking that they are the problem or that they are a burden and danger to everybody around them. Just because they are being themselves.

^^^ Thus, they think that the solution is for them to either leave permanently or to never exist at all ( Luz initially planned to stay in the human realm and was vocal about her possible suicidal thoughts. Sonic planned on leaving Earth because that’s what Longclaw told him to do and he believed he would cause harm the longer he stays )

^^^ Luz says, “Who cares, about the RIPPLE effects? He was just a pawn in someone else’s game! A-And he was NEVER smart enough to realize it! If his friends and family knew about his existence… they’d know that their lives wouldn’t be in danger if it weren’t for HIM! They should hate his guts! And it would be better— if he literally, never EXISTED!” - Season 3, Thanks To Them

^^^ Sonic says, “I don’t wanna go, but I can’t stay. As long as I’m here, I put everyone in danger… I can’t do that.” - Sonic The Hedgehog 1

They’re both ridiculously selfless to the point where they won’t hesitate to sacrifice themselves under any sorr of circumstances

In the season 2 finale, King’s Tide, as the Boiling Isles is torn apart by the Collector, Luz intended to leave herself behind to keep the portal open with plant glyphs so Amity, Gus, Willow and Hunter can go through to the human realm. Luz also wanted to go find Eda, instead of heading for safety

On the other hand, during the final battle with Robotnik, Sonic wanted Tom and Maddie to get away from him in exchange for THEIR safety because he knows what Robotnik wants. It’s also possible that Sonic wants the Wachowski’s to get away from him because he can’t handle the idea of them dying because of him. The same way Longclaw did all those years ago

What both of these scenes have in common is that there’s this whole thing with families trying to stick together and the kids trying to participate in altruistic sacrifice. Which is very dark imo

Ultimately, the core of both of their stories and characters is that they both long to be understood and accepted by the people around them

OKAY— so i believe im done here, but there’s definitely more and i just forgor about it, and that there are some parts that are missing or i havent explained thoroughly. And it is getting late and this thing has been sitting in my drafts and i wanted to get this posted. But i do believe that these characters would get along super well, as they both have the similar demeanors and similar stories. (Insert that one barbie song /jjj) If these two met, they would either ramble, read each others comics, or commit crimes together /hj. I gave no doubt that ever met, their friendship would be instantaneous and strong. Anyways, imma head to bed, you guys can do whatever you want with rhe info i provided. Nighty night

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maurofonseca · 7 months

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Are you working on any personal projects? Any comics from you on the horizon?

Hopefully!

I've got a main idea of comics I want to do, but I'm gonna take longer talking about it, so I'll first mention a couple others-

I've in the past drawn a lot of like, online meme characters. Not this exactly, but stuff like "Earth-chan". Lately been thinking about revisiting that, making them my own characters, changing designs and names, and working from that for small slice-of-life things.

I've got a friend I collab with on ideas, and I asked him ideas for short stories. Planning to draw a couple of his ideas, both for portfolio and because he does good stuff.

However, the main thing, of course, is my ideas involving my characters Lalla Shepherd, Jackie Pollard, Lily Rock, etc etc.

Gonna go on at length about it now, so putting it under a read more.

I've got a setting of characters etc I've nurtured for a few years now. It's a setting of cartoon animal people, adventure, fighting, etc. Very much trying to replicate the Disney comics I grew up on, stuff like Barks, Cavazzano, Gottfredson, but also stuff like Tintin, Indiana Jones, Sonic the Comic. It's set in a fantasy version of Earth circa the 1960s, by which I mean it's just Earth, but everything's been renamed for denial purposes, a layer of distance. If I want "London" to be the 60s but "Lisbon" to be the 80s, I get to do so, because it's not really London or Lisbon, it's Fumdon and St. Vincent, right? If I want there to be a war in the backstory, it can be WW1, WW2, Korean War, and Vietnam War all at once, because it's not really any of those, it's a fantasy one. Kinda what Pokémon does with its regions.

The idea is to do multiple stories, small stories, short stories, in this setting. Again, like the comics I grew up on- adventure stories of 10 pages, rather than epics of 1000.

You can read an early first go at an introduction to it here. It's kind of outdated, in aesthetics at least, but it's still overall matching what I plan.

The starting point is, there's these three characters- Lalla Shepherd, a racer and former soldier dealing with what happened to her during the War, Jackie Pollard, a girl with a mysterious past who appears in Fumdon looking for a job and with an amazing aim; and Lily Rock, a supremely confident fighter who's travelled the world and is sent to Fumdon to cover the upcoming Tournament. Said Tournament is going to be a combat tournament held in Fumdon but part of the culture of a separate small nation-estate, as a diplomatic move between countries. This is attracting weirdos and people with ill intent, so our three main characters get made into a team of sheriffs to deal with it in the months leading to the event proper.

The tournament is primarily just a plot excuse though- it'll be happening "soon" for as long as needed. It's a near-future event that excuses why any character would be appearing now and making their entrance in the public stage, no matter how weird they might be.

It's also about a bootlegging criminal in another country, whose wares get stolen by a wannabe gentleman thief, and how that drags a lot of other characters into that story.

Open and obvious about it, it's primarily made of me seeing characters and ideas in other stuff, and going "I want to make my own version". Very Alan Moore League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in that sense- "I want to make fanfiction where James Bond fights The Avengers (the british spy team) and Mina Murray (from Dracula), but I don't have the rights for them, so I'll switch names around etc." Very cape comic books in that sense too- "we want to tell a story about Superman, but we're Marvel, so we make a Superman pastiche called Hyperion".

Part of it was influenced by the upcoming wave of public domain stuff in the US. As you can see by my drawings, it was planning to use specific characters like Mickey Mouse, but then I got confirmation that that's really really not gonna work internationally. Ah well.

Some of you might've been here long enough to recognise a lot of these ideas and characters were part of an abandoned webcomic I was doing before, 4QC. Well yeah, this is me trying to make that one work and avoid the pitfalls that killed it lol.

Dunno, hope that's enough context. I'm hoping I can get a new story of this, a remake of the old one I did maybe, out before the end of the year; and then to do a lot more next year, using the money I'm saving from Sonic work this year.

#ask #comics

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archandshri · 18 days

Text

12 April ‘24 - [arch] Making a Comic in a Week, Disability and Burnout (all unrelated, of course!)

Hey Shri and folks!! LOVED seeing part three of the Lionheart Brothers cover. Stunning!! And awesome to see your process. Also cool to see what you’ve been looking at lately - I’ve just finished a rewatch of Firefly and the characters are still living in my brain a bit.

Life is a bit relentless, huh. I’ve spent a lot of time and energy working on disability stuff - meal prepping, sorting silly government forms, all that sort of thing. Exhausting and super easy to burn out on - but also sets me up for the future in my personal life and for illustration! I want to discuss the balance of pushing and burnout this week with an excellent example - I tried foreshadowing to make a comic in a week.

When I was in uni, it was easy to create cool stuff regularly - you’re constantly receiving prompts, doing activities, getting feedback etc. I still have access to these things, especially through my shared studio community, but it’s not as easy as it used to be. I miss creating finished books, in particular, so frequently. So! I challenged myself to make a comic in time for Something’s Fishy Zine Fair in Plymouth tomorrow, which was just over a week from when I started.

I had come up with the concept for the comic while travelling, written the script and done a couple of sketches. I often come up with concepts while travelling - I just don’t often follow through :P Here’s a couple of sketches I did on the journey.

I’ve been chatting to lots of people about what they enjoy about art - I’ve noticed that I tend to crave the end of the project and having the physical thing with high expectations of myself, which doesn’t lead to a very enjoyable process. Many people I’ve spoken to enjoy the ‘zone’, the focus of the project where you’re just figuring stuff out and not thinking about anything else. Bearing this in mind, I wanted to make the process as fun as possible - this comic is for fun and not for the purpose of having the thing at the end.

I started with a few development sketches of the characters and the vibe. I used ink and my funky kakimori dip pen, plus some brushes. These mediums are hard to control, which makes them good for development for me - they don’t have to be good, this time is for gestural drawings and ideas generation. Some continued doodles in my sketchbook from some downtime :) Fish wouldn't leave my brain.

After a bit of character development, I began by adapting my script into pages - I read the script and try to feel the vibes on how I want to pace the comic, considering:

How much dialogue and plot do I want to put on one page?

Do I want it to be more text or image-heavy?

Do I want it to feel fast and snappy, or slow and dreamy?

Which parts of dialogue feel like a page-turner?

Are there any twists that should be separated from the rest of the scene by a page-turn?

Are there any moments that should sit next to each other on spreads?

You can see me changing some dialogue around, writing as I draw a bit. Also playing around with some weird looking fish?? With noses???

I got a bit stuck at this stage. I was scared my script wasn’t good enough. And worried about if I could even draw fish. After a couple of chats with art friends, and some rambling in my slides, I reminded myself that the lesson this time is fun!! Have fun goddamn it!! No point doing it if you’re not having fun. (it’s not like we make any money from riso printed zines anyway)

Screenshots from my slides - these things are wonderful for gathering inspiration and venting when you run into a problem with the project.

So I decided to just go for it. Not even thumbnail, but just take a scene and draw it. I asked a studio friend to choose a number, and I drew that scene.

Because of the chatty style of the comic, and how much dialogue there was gonna be, I knew there would have to be a LOT of panels. I decided to make it A4, and use a 8x6 grid. I’ll draw the images at A3, and than scale them down to A4 when it comes to printing.

left: A3 grid on the lightbox, for tracing over || Right: A4 grid with boxes of different sizes for me to reference while choosing the layout - this way I can see the final print size

First drafts of a couple of random pages from Moon Noodles.

The first day I drew several pages that I was really happy with! It gave me a lot more confidence in my script - seeing it come to life with the characters on the page - some pages even got some laughs which was nice. I would look at the page plan, script, and spend a few minutes thinking about the pacing and how I wanted the dialogue on the page, and the go straight in with the dip pen - with the awareness that it might be wrong. This process taught me an important lesson - you have to just do it. The thing is, if you do it and it’s bad, you just do it again but different. Repeat. Staring at that script thinking it wasn’t good enough wasn’t actually going to get anything done, be fun OR make nice stuff. You have to do the thing. Then you make it better.

The other thing I learnt from this process was to give it space. There was a day where I did one page, hated it and thought the pacing was off, and spent the next day trying to translate it into two pages. It didn’t work. I came back the next day and realised the first page I’d done was fine and just needed a couple of tweaks. Do the thing. Let it be.

Here’s a little picture of my setup.

(Sorry all of Printhaus for hoarding the light box and getting ink all over it :( love u)

Useful stuff!!!!

Finished pages to refer to, plus more A3 paper underneath for future pages

Laptop with script

Dip pen, ink and water for keeping that little guy clean!

development sketches for relevant scenes

Page plan (you can see I have shortened it considerably since last time - now it's 20-24 pages and noted on scraps of paper so I can move them around if there's any changes of plan)

A4 sheet with boxes to show the sizes of the final print

also scissors??? i don't remember why they're here

But then monday morning came. I realised that if I wanted to get it all printed by friday, I needed to:

Plan and 12 pages on Monday, and 12 on tuesday

Get the final files for every one of the 24 pages by Thursday

Print friday morning

Travel down to devon Friday afternoon

Fair Saturday

Not only is that basically impossible, but it would be very bad for my health, make for a rushed comic, and most importantly, not be fun. The thing is, I’ve made whole comics in a couple days before. I figured I could still do it. But that’s not actually a good thing - my skills and taste have increased, I'm aiming for bigger, more ambitious projects and yet I expect the timelines to stay the same? It doesn’t exactly work like that now, does it?

But I kept going anyway.

Tuesday morning, I decide to get the cover put together so I can get the preorder post-out. I get pulled into an unexpected meeting, and then spend the rest of the day inking this thing and getting the files sorted. At this point, I know for sure It’s not possible to get this done. Thankfully my two Printhaus besties were in. They helped me drop it. I love this comic, it feels fun and joyous and I’ve enjoyed working on it - lets not rush it and end up with a bad product that will bother me. Let’s take time, explore it and really enjoy the process!!!

All is not lost for Something’s Fishy Zine Fair, though! Originally, I had planned to do a print of the Moon Noodles Cover for preorders only, but why not print that for Something’s Fishy?? Anyone who buys the print will also get a discount code for the pre-order :D (also here’s the pre-order link)

So here’s a few images of the Moon Noodles cover print and the process!! I hope to see some of you at Something’s Fishy. It’s a joy to visit Plym again :D

Sketch printed out at A3, and 2 of the layers. I scanned these in and edited them on photoshop to get the files ready to print.

Coming to terms with the fact that 1) I don’t have illustration superpowers even if my expectations are that high and 2) I’m disabled (yes it’s been years and it’s still hard to face) is really hard!! I need to spend most of my time when I’m well preparing for when I’m not AND fight the urge to work until I burn out, which I always lean towards because it’s nice escapism.

The thing is that living, and not being too exhausted to move is much more important than a comic. And if I am gonna spend my functioning time making comics, they’re gonna have to be enjoyable to make. Otherwise your life slips away from you and you haven’t been really living it.

Hope that hasn’t got too deep for you. I think that stuff is important to face, especially since the creative life is so incredibly busy.

Thank you for reading this goddamn essay, I hope that it helped in some way! As usual, feel free to drop an ask if you have any questions.

Chat soon :D Archie <3

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batmanego · 9 months

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hello i was wondering if you had any favorite batman comics or ones you'd reccomend for someone who wants to read more batman or know any good reclists, ty hope you have a good one^_^

hiiiii hi! yes, absolutely!

my favorite batman comic of all time is batman: ego, which is collected here with some other darwyn cooke batman work!

i'd also highly recommend scott snyder's 2011 batman run and the companion batman and robin run -- though keep in mind that damian's death happens in a different run and batman and robin explores the aftermath of it.

i'm currently rereading no man's land, which is a really influential and important piece of gotham city lore in general that explores the aftermath of a series of events (catyclysm and contagion, but also knightfall!) that lead the US government to declare gotham city condemned and separate from the united states: nobody gets in, nobody gets out. (if you want to know what led here, bruce briefly mentions knightfall, contagion, and catyclysm. i'd say knightfall is pretty important, but these are really only "mandatory" if you want to know the exact circumstances that led to no man's land).

i don't keep up with too many modern comics, but batman: failsafe (which starts here and ends at issue 130) is pretty okay. i mostly liked the zurr-en-arrh backup stories. tynion's detcom run is also pretty good. i enjoyed some pieces of batman: urban legends, but it's an anthology series, so not everything is gonna be to your taste.

all of those have to some degree focused on bruce-as-batman, which makes sense, because he's batman most of the time, but two dick-as-batman recommendations i have are the 2009 morrison batman and robin run and batman: the black mirror, which is a horror comic with a lot of gore, if you're not into that.

dick-as-batman is directly on the heels of final crisis, where bruce, uh. Dies, but that's not really introductory material.

how about some villain stuff? scarecrow year one and face the face are two favorites, along with some previously mentioned stuff like knightfall, no man's land, black mirror, etc.

if you want to know more about the life and death of jason todd, a death in the family and under the red hood are the places to start. do not read red hood and the outlaws. everyone who likes it is lying to you. it isn't good. red hood: lost days fills in some gaps about jason's time post-resurrection. dailyjasontodd has compiled a wonderful list of jason reading that i highly recommend!

i also like batman black and white (and its two sequels, the one from 2013 and the one from 2020. they're all anthology series) and batman: gotham knights (NOT the video game. the comic book).

batgirl 2000! also really fucking good! i forgot it the first time i wrote this post! whoops!

i also really recommend the batman unburied podcast, batman the animated series, the batman beyond tv show, and batman forever (which is a really stupid, awful movie. i love it deeply.)

i hope this helped and gave you some ideas on where to start! batman comics are an intimidating thing to get into, but these are some things i'd consider introductory. happy reading!! <3

#ferris reading list #batman #:D #i had fun making this thank you anon!

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arabian-batboy · 2 years

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is it me or have you been doing nothing but complain all the time lately? like is there anything you like?

Well I like DC vs Vampires, the first issue of the current TEC arc seemed interesting and if the rest of the arc continued being like this then I will probably like it too, I recently started World Finest because its a sequel to Batman vs Robin and I really like it, Batman: The Knight has started getting enjoyable in the past couple issues and depending on the story of the month, B:UL can be really good imo.

I'm sure there are better comics out there, but I'm only interest in Batman-related stories at the moment, so can you really blame me for complaining? I personally don’t want to be negative all the time, but lets be real here, it's not like DC is giving me anything that I can be positive about when it comes to the treatment of all the members of the Batfamily, I tried to bear it but almost all of them have it bad at the moment.

Alfred is dead because of a dumb storyline that no one liked and DC is dragging the shit of his death, Bruce is back to being an emotionally constipated manbaby, Dick is being written by Tom Taylor in one of the most bland and cringey runs of all time, Barbara is still an empty-shell of her past self and is nothing but Dick’s girlfriend/the Batgirls' mom, speaking of the Batgirls, Cassandra and Stephanie are infantized as fuck in their run and are treated like a package-deal at all time with no sense of individuality, Jason had everything that made him interesting/formidable stripped away in favor of being an over-sized moody teenager whose role is basically “spare Batkid #3” whenever his daddy wants him too, Tim is deaged and back to being Robin again at the expense of Damian and I already complained as much as I could as to how in the past 2 years following his character assassination in TT:R, Damian has been turned into a generic bland teenage character (even though it makes no sense for him to already be a teen when everyone around him is being deaged) without any of his past personality or skills that made him himself in sight, just an angry dumb whitewashed teenager that literally only appears in one book only and separated from the rest of the Batfam except for his manbaby father (The only one who kinda has it semi-okay is Duke.........who only had lines in like 3 or 4 comics a year, I'm sure if he had his own book they will fuck his character too)

I'm not gonna say its the worst era of the Batfamily, because much worse things have happened to them in the past, but usually it was only some of them that had it bad while others had it good, but this is the first era where almost all of them had unenjoyable comics out at the same time.

So with that being said, can you really blame me for complaining all the time?

#anyways let it people hate things in peace #the last issue of Robin is dropping in a couple of days and I'm charging up to talk shit about it #so if you don't like that I suggest you unfollow me because I'm about to go in #someone at DC need to say stop lets take a moment to revaluate what we're doing with these characters #because it seem like they think that having all of them appear in everything is good enough #and this quantity over quality approach needs to go #actually look up what people like about these characters and build your about it #your story*#instead of these weird unnecessary stories that no one asked for and underwhelming characterization #barabra gordon #jason todd #tim drake #damian wayne #dick grayson #cassandra cain #stephanie brown

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