#hes a marvel boy but he has all these 90’s DC comics….

[vveakfish]

oh my god. I found my brothers comic stash…

#hes a marvel boy but he has all these 90’s DC comics…. #i’m STEALIMG #𓆟 #fish food

[rubychan228]

...

ETA: I posted this before the show came out. It has now and I've added a few edits. ETA2: Added better pics

So, I've been sitting on this for a while, because I don't particularity like saying negative things about stuff I don't like (like Marvel's Exiles comics, which I'm not at all a fan of #foreshadowing) but I've seen a few things that make me want to talk about this. (Also, I started writing this a while back but wasn't sure if I wanted to post it. But saw stuff more recently that I definitely had to speak about. There's a bit of a shift in tone towards the end as a result).

I decided to post this mostly because certain statements about X-Men '97 (a sequel the 90's X-Men the Animated Series) have gotten bigots up in arms, which can understandably lead to people side-eyeing anyone shitting on the show, but I think their may be legitimate problems that justify some complaints.

Essentially, I think it may an issue similar to that of the Captain Marvel movie. There was huge, fully unjustifiable misogynistic backlash to the movie. But, there were also some quite legitimate critiques of the militaristic messaging in the film. While shutting down the sexist nonsense being hurled at the film was good, there still needed to be space to discuss the actual, real problems the movie had.

And, from what I've seen, there are some real criticisms to be made of X-Men '97. Both about plot stuff and about some ways a bit of intended representation may not be as good as could be hoped.

So, here's the thing. I was obsessed with X-Men the Animated Series as a kid and especially with a (sort-of) show original character named Morph. He was very much my first Blorbo. I know way too much about the character.

And now said character is at the center of some drama, due to the upcoming sequel, and I want to address it.

So, a note on Morph's pronouns. All non-97 versions of Morph go by he/him pronouns. In an older interview, the term "non-binary" was originally used for the X-Men '97 version without further clarification. But there's a more recent interview with the show's creators (which I will discuss more at the end of this post) that implies the character is more specifically gender-fluid (rather than agender or having a non-binary gender identity) and said creator used he/him pronouns to talk about the character, not they/them or any neo-pronouns. So that's what I'm going to go with for now. ETA: Except the show does seem to be using exclusively they/them so IDK what the fuck that article was.

A bit of backstory on the character.

Back in the 60's X-Men comics they fought a villainous mutant shapeshifter named Changeling. Changeling later reformed after discovering that he was terminally ill. He replaced Xavier, who needed to go into hiding for plot reasons and ultimately died in Xavier's place.

A few months before the Animated Series began in 1992 an issue of She-Hulk saw the villain Black Talon resurrect several deceased characters as zombies (called the X-Humed). Changeling was one of them.

Originally, the X-Men TAS writers wanted to kill off a character in the second episode and were thinking of using the character of John Proudstar aka Thunderbird. Thunderbird had been a member of the second X-Men team appearing for the first time in Giant Sized X-Men #1. He would later die in #95, the first time an X-man died.

They eventually realized that giving the show Native rep only to kill him off in ep. 2 was a terrible idea and started looking for a disposable white guy. They eventually found the Changeling character, though at the time the character now known as Beast Boy was going by "Changeling", meaning DC had the rights to the name. And so, "Morph" was born.

Despite being a throw-away character he was surprisingly popular with fans and the network was also not real happy with the whole killing-of-an-x-man-thing. So a decision was made to reveal he survived the events of the pilot. When he returned in season two he initially had a slightly zombie-like appearance (probably a reference to the She-hulk thing).

So, the show starts with him as part of the team. He is "killed" by giant robots called Sentinels. He is later revealed to have been saved by a villain known as Mister Sinister. Sinister attempts to brainwash him into being a loyal slave that hates the X-Men. This only partially works. His mind shifts between his true self and the artificial evil slave personality Sinister implanted (because this was the 90's and mental health education was bad, this psudo-DID was sometime referred to as him being "schizophrenic"). He is eventually rescued and sent for treatment at on Muir Island (which is in Scotland). A side from a few half-assed cameos and weird omissions his main appearance after that is in an episode where he tries to return to the X-Men but the Sentinels are back and his PTSD is too severe. He comes through in the end but acknowledges he's not ready yet. He does properly return in the finale referencing his comic origins by briefly imitating Xavier. The show ends with the implication he's on the team for good.

TAS may have inspired the Age of Apocalypse comics run. The AoA comics introduced a (very different looking) shapeshifter named Morph (who claimed that he had previously called himself "Changeling"). The relevant TAS episodes include both OG Morph and an unnamed character that looks like what the Age of Apocalypse comics Morph would look like.

Finally, Marvel would start a comic line called Exiles in which a bunch of characters from the Marvel multiverse would get pulled from their timelines to fight inter-dimensional threats. A Morph would be a main character. That Morph would look identical to the Age of Apocalypse one but have a different backstory (obviously).

X-Men '97 is retconing the show to replace their OG Morph with a take on Exiles Morph. And it has to be a retcon. It's generally held that shapeshifters can't hold alternate forms while unconscious or dead. And we see both! He is knocked out multiple times and flat-lines while Sinister is working on him.

So this can't have just been a form he always had but was hiding. Also, I don't know if the new show will use it, but Exiles Morph has no scent and thus cannot be tracked, something that is explicitly untrue of 90's Morph. Anyway...

I fucking hate Exiles Morph and always have!

Exiles Morph is an annoying horndog who creeps on women and arguably crosses the line to sex pest at times. Morph in the original show never once, in any episode that he appears, flirts with, leers at, or shows any romantic or sexual interest of any kind in any female character present. You could arguably HC the original character as Ace. Though he did have a lot of...tension with Wolverine, so gay is also a possibility. The aggressively heterosexual reimagining of Exiles has always been boring and annoying to me. I don't know that any of this is going to make it into the new show (I hope none of it) but I hate the idea that it could.

Additionally, while the original Morph was playful and lighthearted, he was hardy incapable of being serious when need be. Exiles Morph is often described as hardly ever serious. And creator comments say that is part of why they're using this Morph in the new show. (Apparently his PTSD was too much of a downer.)

Also, I know it's an extremely toxic fan thing to complain that an adaptation doesn't conform to your personal headcanons, but I always liked imagining the character as more of a light skinned POC, rather than just the white guy they intended. (My usual go-to was that he was Japanese American, possibly with a white parent. This was because he's super close with Wolverine, who lived in Japan for decades. So, like, I would imagine that Morph grew up bilingual and Wolverine was, of course, fluent so they'd chat in Japanese and whatnot. Maybe Morph would go to Japan sometimes to visit family and Wolverine would sometimes come too.)

This could have been done in even a more faithful sequel. Yes, the character was very specifically white in his original conception, but that's only because he was going to die right away. Since he doesn't anymore that no longer applies. And, to be frank, Morph spends 90% of the original show off-model anyway. A new version could effortless have massaged his base-form appearance to have more non-white features.

ETA:

Oh you could abso-fucking-lutely pass this character design off as a half-white POC.

Couldn't they still do this in '97? Technically yes. But now he's a snow-white blob with no hair or facial features. You can still say he's POC, but I can see that generating even more discourse.

As for the enby thing.

First off, there's been a lot of (justifiable) discourse about a tendency to hold "diverse" media to excessively high standards and I don't disagree. Even when criticisms aren't unwarranted, I think there's a definite tendency among some to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. But also, genuinely harmful representation does exist (things like the "trans serial killer" thing that is so damaging that no trans rep would arguably have been better).

Ultimately, I think there's a difference between *harmful* representation and representation that's just bad. And there's a also difference between bad representation and representation that's merely flawed. And flawed representation is still representation. It's still a step in the right direction and it's extremely possible for people to still feel seen by less-than-perfect depictions of their thing.

That said good representation is better than flawed representation. And I don't think we get from flawed to good without giving constructive feedback (not vitriol) on the more flawed attempts. We don't have to trash flawed attempts or flame people that like them. Just point out, what worked and what could be improved upon.

So what might be a problem here? Well, because of the (really, really unnecessary!) Exiles thing:

Yeah.

I just...feel like that could have been thought out better. Especially because, while it's not the same (as mutants are explicitly human), it approaches the "Non-binary Alien" trope. Which is not great.

Basically, everyone else in the main cast except for Beast looks like a normal human and all of them retain their "normal" binary genders from the OG show/comics. Morph and Morph only is simultaneously being changed from being a normal looking dude to a freaky alien-looking thing and is also changed from being a "normal" binary man to having an "unusual" gender. And I don't like it.

I don't think it was intentional, but it would be so much better to have normal-ass humans as NB rep. Since, you know, actual IRL enbies are, in fact, normal fucking human people. (Granted, they could be doing that too, but for now it seems like it's only the character they changed to be all weird looking that is going to serve as the only enby rep.)

Now, it's entirely possible that there are people this won't bother and that's certainly OK. And I don't think doing it like this bad rep, just flawed, which is still better than nothing! But it's quite valid, I think, for enbies/allies to have good faith qualms with how this comes off due to the combination of the two changes.

That said, there is also the problematic™ Non-binary Shapeshifter trope to consider.

So, while some trans/non-binary people may like the idea of shapeshifting powers (for obvious reasons) and thus may strongly identify with/project onto shapeshifter characters there has also been some discourse about it.

In brief, a shapeshifter is essentially genital-fluid, which can make people side-eye the idea of playing with gender when a shapeshifter is involved, as it can imply the idea of a connection between genitals and gender identity. Which isn't a thing that exists. Basically, to use X-Men as an example:

Gambit was born with a penis and, baring surgery or magical transformation, will only ever have a penis. This character is a man and this is never questioned.

Morph was also, presumably, born with a penis (it's possible Exiles!Morph had no genitals at birth). But he/they can change this at will; at any time he/they wants, he/they can have a penis, or a vagina, or both, or neither. But that should have fuck-all to do with gender identity.

But a lot of people have the very cis-normative view that the ability to change physical sex equates to changing gender. And will jump to making shapeshifting characters non-binary, gender-fluid especially. And this is a source of understandable discourse among trans/NB/GNC people. (As a result, you may see bigots reacting to this change with "Ugh they made the shapeshifter non-binary!", but you may also see enbies/allies going "Ugh they made the shapeshifter non-binary!". And that's very different.)

Now, because non-binary gender identities are real, it's certainly possible for a character to just happen to be both NB and a shapeshifter. But it can still rub people the wrong way......especially if there are creator comments that do indicate a mental genital/gender connection is informing the choice.

Which brings us to the trainwreck of an interview I mentioned earlier.

"For me, the word 'nonbinary' is the same as the word 'shapeshifter,'" director Larry Houston told Variety. "Every character that can change from one gender to another, or from human to animal, that’s just another word for 'shapeshifter' for me."

What. And I cannot stress this enough. The fuck?????????

Ok, so. In 2x3 of the original show Wolverine is trying to capture brainwashed, evil Morph and bring him home. Wolverine finds and successfully restrains him, so Morph uses his powers to mess with his head in order to escape. (By which I mean he turns into Wolverine's one-sided love interest and mocks him over how much she loves only Cyclops.)

In the interview this is described like this:

"He attacks Wolverine, his closest friend, in the most dramatic way by turning into Jean Grey and putting his hand on Wolverine’s neck and leaning in for a kiss," Lewald explained. "That’s as nonbinary as you can get. It’s Morph turning into a woman and coming onto Wolverine to freak him out."

How the fuck is it non-binary?! Is it the genitals? I'm really concerned it's the genitals.

At best it's maybe queer, but "non-binary"? I just...

Problematic tropes aside, I'm now worried like hell that the these people don't know what the fuck non-binary people actually are and the rep is going to be garbage as a result.

Like, he really seems to think that when Morph shapeshifts into Jean Grey in that scene, he isn't just disguising himself as a woman, but that he's literally becoming a woman gender-wise. And presumably becoming a man when he changes back. And that is what he means when he uses the word "non-binary" to refer to the character.

So yeah, opinions may be mixed on "non-binary" Morph, for reasons that are not bigotry related. And maybe don't get your hopes up for good enby rep in the show, because I'm now very skeptical that this is something we're going to get.

#marvel #xmen #xmen tas #xmen 97 #nonbinary #xmen morph

[sammysdewysensitiveeyes]

Flash 788:

Okay, I can’t resist talking about it, so spoilers under the cut:

The good:

Linda is pregnant!  Honestly, it’s so good to see Wally actually back to his old self, with Linda and the twins, after everything that DC put him through.  Let’s keep things going in a positive direction, DC!

The Rogues teaming with Mayor Wolfe to be, essentially, cops is an interesting idea, much like the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants turning into Freedom Force in Marvel.  Or, for that matter, like the original Trickster joining the FBI and leading a group of “reformed” Rogues, including Hartley, Heatwave and Magenta, against the original Rogues.  I wonder if Wolfe’s group will actually wind up clashing with some Rogues who got left out?

Wally shares a nice moment with Heatwave, and I like how he is written here.  He doesn’t necessarily love Wolfe, but he knows which side his bread is buttered on, and if the Mayor offers him a way out of prison AND a cure for his cancer, he’s gonna take it.

And of course, there’s the little surprise on the last page - HARTLEY!  HARTLEY!  Finally, my boy Pied Piper gets to do something in the comics again!  And it seems like his friendship with Wally, which was developed in the 90′s, ruined during Countdown, and then largely forgotten in the New 52, will actually be remembered.  He doesn’t get to do much other than show up at the end of the book and rescue Wally, but I’m so happy to see him.

The bad:

I have read this entire issue, and still can’t tell which Trickster is in this story.  He has Axel’s mechanical arm, but his build, face, hair and outfit all look exactly like James, specifically James in his most recent appearance.  I know I’ve been hammering on this a lot lately, but it’s honestly so annoying.  DC has established that we now have both Tricksters in play in continuity, one Trickster is significantly younger than the other and also has a prosthetic limb, and they both have different costumes.  If a story can’t make it clear which Trickster we are dealing with, there is a major problem with either the art or the writing, or both.  Especially since both James and Axel have had their own run-ins with Wolfe, and would probably react differently to working for him.  Axel was tormented in solitary for awhile, but I think he would probably go along with the group if the other Rogues accepted the deal.  James, according to his latest story, spent months or even years tormented by Wolfe in Iron Heights, and I can’t imagine Wolfe trusting him enough to work together after his big revenge heist.  But we can’t get into those details because we don’t even know which Trickster this is.

Also, I know I get tend to come at this from the perspective of a James fan, and I admit some bitterness when when I see Axel basically “stealing” James’ appearance (not the character’s fault), but this kind of thing also does a disservice to Axel’s character.  Axel was introduced as the All New All Different Trickster, and he had his own unique version of the Trickster aesthetic.  Writing and drawing him as James 2.0, or “James With a Mechanical Arm Who is Inexplicably Calling Himself Axel” is also not fair to Axel as a character.  Artists, please at least get your shit together enough to look at a character reference for both Tricksters and make sure you are drawing the right one.

[popculturebuffet]

The Three Caballeros Ride Again Review!: And Ladies (Ride of the Three Caballeros)

Saludos Amigos! I’m back with yet another comics review! And we’re back on The Ride of the Three Cablleros! Thanks again to WeirdKev27 for commissioning this retrospective. It’s going to get pricey and I greatly appreciate it.  PREVIOUSLY ON RIDE OF THE THREE CABLLEROS 

In short.. a bunch of short segments of varying quality, a very thirsty Donald hitting on ladies, the first appearance of Panchito and some very good music. A fun time was had by all. Along with a LOT OF drugs by the Disney Animators. The film wasn’t a huge success, but out of the 6 package films, it was a fan faviorite alongside the Mr. Toad and Ichabod movie, and thus was rereleased quite a bit, as well as being one of the first of this era to end up on VHS due to it’s cult popularity.  As for Panchito and Jose they’d get plenty of success overseas, with both getting solo series in their respective home countries, Jose himself having just resumed having comics again this year, and being rightfully massive characters. But despite being a hit with fans across the world.. in the US... they were pretty much shoved in the Disney Vault for a few decades. Jose would show up on the Wonderful World of Disney, in it’s various forms, three times after the Three Caballeros while Panchito just vanished aside from reuses of the Three Caballeros footage. Their careers in the US just sorta vanished for a few decades. But as suddenly as they vanished, our boys returned triumphantly. Naturally being the most used out of the duo, Jose would show up for the first time in decades during Mickey Mouseworks, a show full of new late 90′s produced Mickey Mouse shorts, all but two of which would end up being recycled for the much more popular and well loved House of Mouse, which would feature the triumphant return of the Cabs to animation after so long away. We’ll get to that next time, as just a year before the Cabs had already reunited in the pages of Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories in one of Don Rosa’s best loved tales. The Ride of The Three Caballeros was something Don Rosa had wanted to do since he got the job writing Duck Comics in the first place. As he explained in the back of the complete library edition named after this tale, Uncle Keno isn’t the biggest fan of the Donald Theatrical shorts. Having experienced the Carl Barks comics first, and having built his career around them later, he just wasn’t a fan of the goofier, angrier, less nuanced theatrical short Donald, often feeling like he was an entirely different character from the one he loved. And.. honestly he’s not wrong. Both were built for entirely different kinds of comedy: While both did slapstick, Slapstick, along with standard comedy shenanigans, was the main weapon in Shorts Donald’s comedic arsenal. Barksian Donald, while not immune to slapstick, was more like a well built sitcom character: Multi layered, sympathetic when he needs to be, but still having tons of faults to be exploited for laughs and to play off other characters. As a result while I like Donald in the shorts I do prefer Barks version of him, and the shorts Barks did are usually the best of both worlds, combining Donald’s everyman schtick with his slapstick schtick. Of course later cartoons would pick one or the other or combine both, but I do get his point and at the time he wrote this story the only cartoon show starring Donald was.. Quack Pack.. which I can only imagine his reaction to seeing that train wreck. 

But as you can probably guess there was one exception and it was The Three Caballeros. Don genuinely enjoys the beautiful music and the wonderful chemistry the three have. So after a trip to Mexico gave him the perfect setting and the fire in his belly to finally do it, he finally wrote the story. And since they weren’t Barksian characters and hadn’t had any other apperances in decade, Don also took a dive into their comics. Since Jose was more of a fancifial freeloader in his comics, Don decided to ignore this characterization and go with his own based on the film: A latin playboy and lounge singer. And i’m okay with him doing that, as unlike say with Marvel and DC when they destroy a character, Disney characters are both more fluid continuity wise and his is still rooted in a version of the character, and he’s fully accepting and apologetic that some fans hate him for this. Also for some damn reason they redesigned Jose at some point in his Brazil to look like this:

This is far from the dumbest comic book costume change i’ve seen, but it’s certainly one of the most lame, as his original outfit is dapper, stylish and fits the Brazilian version of him well. And it’s not like you CAN’T update the classic Disney characters with modern appearances. Quack Pack, which has somehow come up twice in this review, did so great with Donald and Daisy, giving them new clothes and a haircut in Daisy’s case but both still look great. Same with Goofy for Goof Troop who just wore a dad sweater and bow tie, which puts him in the small but significant club of “Bow Tie Wearing Characters who have defined my life” with Opus the Penguin and the 11th Doctor. You can update a classic character’s’s appearance without coming off like...

Which given Jose’s outfit there is horrifyingly similar, says something. Anyways, Rosa had more use for Panchito’s stories, which had him as a cowboy protecting small towns with the help of his trusty steed Senor Martinez. Rosa loved both aspects and thus used them here, with Martinez getting a makeover to fit Rosa’s style better. Rosa is also the one to popularize Panchito’s last name, having found it on a scrap of research, not realizing the character’s last name was not at all widespread and thus giving him a canon one that has stuck to this day, and sighing in relief when he finally got conformation from another fan this name was indeed something Disney had used after loosing his research scrap.  So with the two boys characters set, a plot set up and a whole sequence planned we’ll talk about on the way “The Three Caballeros Ride Again!” was born. How good is it? Well join me under the cut and i’ll tell you. 

We open in Mexico, specifically near the Barranca Del Cobre, aka The “Copper Canyon” of the Sierra Madre, a natural land formation simlar to the Grand Canyon that Don Rosa saw during his trip and thought would make a great setting. While larger than the Grand Canyon, Rosa figures in his notes it simply isn’t as popular because it’s more isolated than the Grand Canyon and that, combined with it having trees inside distracting from it’s rugged beauty, makes it much harder to build a tourist industry around. The four are headed to El Divisadero, because this comic is determined to kill me with it’s difficult to spell names apparently, where Huey, Dewey or Louie spouts off for no particular reason about the currently being built Chihuahua El Pacifico Railway. Seriously the boys might as well be the security guard from Wayne’s World in this comic, their role for most of their brief page time is just to set up stuff for later. I mean i’m fine with setting up your setting but there are better ways than just spouting off tons of exposition apropos of nothing. 

Donald has driven the boys here for a Woodchuck Jamboree. I did actually look into Jamborees, as before this it only had ever come up in one of my favorite movies of all time, Moonrise Kingdom, and mentioned occasionally in the Ducktales Reboot. Jamboree was first used for a worldwide scouting Jamboree but has gone on to mean a huge gathering of scouts, with the Boy Scouts of America having one every four years, so odds are it’s just a big yearly or quarter yearly thing for the woodchucks. Still it would be nice to see a big gathering like this in the series, especially since several of our cast are involved in them, including the possible power trio of Huey, Violet and Boyd, and Della and Launchpad could easily be slotted into the plot as seen in this season’s premiere.. as could Dewey and Louie if they really want to since according to Frank their members.. they just aren’t nearly as invested as their brother, and thus  don’t do Woodchuck stuff unless he drags them into it, as seen with “Day of the Only Child” in the series itself. It does make sense: Dewey doesn’t have the survival instinct or patience for camping, and Louie hates effort, the out doors, and doing things for anything but profit. Scouting is all of that.  So the boys have driven all this way for the Mexican Jamboree, as they’ve been carefully raising their tarantula Tara, and the Tarantula Breeding Badge is only given out in Mexico, which is plausible: Different branches of a worldwide organization would have different awards and what not in different countries. And Tarantula’s are also native to mexico so that makes sense.. and I want you to apricate that I’m afraid of spiders, not cartoony ones, for instance, this is adorable. 

Galvantula4Life. But real life ones or realistic looking ones? Yeah no fuck that. So I had to go to the Wikipedia entry and see several horrifying looking sizeable spiders for this one tiny fact. Your welcome. Tara ends up on Donald’s face with the boys assuming Donald is sad to see her go instead of you know FUCKING TERRIFIED A GIANT SPIDER IS ON HIS FACE. This gag does not work.. but probably because as I said i’m afraid of spiders and this is my nightmare, you little sociopaths. 

The boys however worry about what Donald will do for the weekend as they prepare to board the bus to the Jamboree... why it’s meeting in an out of the way town like this I have no idea, but i’d guess plot convince. They realize he has no friends, which Donald shrugs off, and they REALLY shouldn’t say to his face, but ruminate on it once he leaves to do whatever after vaguely talking about friends he had in the past. 

I like this scene even though it annoys me a bit: Ilike it because it does set up how Donald really DOSEN’T have any friends in the comics. It’s part of WHY Rosa was drawn to the Cabs: Their one of the few equal relationships donald’s ever had, people who treat him as a partner, in both sense probably, a friend, a true amigo. As the boys point out Scrooge is a monster to him in the comics, paying him 30 cents an hour which I actually put into an inflation calculator to get an accurate read on how little that was by 2020 standards.. and it’s 3 dollars an hour. Hence why I call him a monster, why that bit hasn’t aged well, and why Rosa REALLY, REALLY should’ve retired it. It dosen’t help reading that knowing Disney largely treated Rosa the same way is cringe inducing at best, if not for any fault of his own. It being cringe inducing for an employer horribly mistreating and underpaying his employees though is his fault, he’s a grown ass man, even in the 90′s this had to be a problem, be better. 

And yes i’m being hard on Don Rosa but just like with the comics thing, I simply expect better from the man given just how much respect I have for the guy. His art is gorgeous, his research is immaculate, his knowledge of old films is wonderful and his love for them so infectious i’m tempted to seek the ones he’s mentioned in notes out. He’s a truly wonderful guy and one of my faviorite comic writers.. but I have to treat him fairly like I do ANY of my idols. Just to prove that, I love Grant Morrison, especially his run on New X-Men, but a lot of it hasn’t aged well including some of the language and the entire subplot with Emma manipulating Scott into having an affair when he wasn’t in the best mental place and she knew that and was acting as his therapist, and treating that as a regular affair REALLY doesn’t play well nor should it have. I love Al Ewing, with all my heart and soul, but his run on Ultimates, while having some great worldbuilding and a spectacular cast, ultimately wasn’t very good after the first arc. Not terrible but not good. John Aliison, of Scary Go Round and Giant Days fame, while impressive has had plenty of stories I just didn’t like for various reasons and will probably get into some day and some parts of his stories haven’t aged well. It’s the hard but necessary part of being a critic: You have to be objective and see all the parts of a creator’s creation, not just the ones you like and call them out when they screw up. To me being a fan isn’t about just blindly loving something, it’s about knowing WHY you love it and being willing to call out faults while still thoroughly enjoying the work. There’s a fine line between being blindly loyal to someone, which has created Zach Snyder's awful cult of personality that I hate so much, and being an overly critical shithead and I hope I’m straddling that line. 

Back on the scene after that filibuster they point out Gladstone, who himself is a monster to me for how he doesn’t lift a finger to help his nephews or cousin, and constnatly flaunts his luck to Donald, and is a bit more than teasing especially since he tried to, you know, steal your house once boys. That’s canon.. that’s a barks story so it’s canon here. You.. You remember that right? He tried to steal your house. And we will be getting to that one next month, just you wait.  Finally the Daisy part that annoys me slightly. The boys being sexist.. was sadly the style at the time this story is set, the 1950′s, and thus plays better for me than it does in Ducktales, as their just little boys and don’t know better. Them assuming Girlfriends aren’t like having friends, while accurate though does bother me a bit, but only because the way this story treats Donald’s relationship is PRETTTTTYYYY bad and this sets that up. But we’ll get to that.  Thankfully this foreshadowing of terrors to come is quickly forgotten as we get a GENUINELY great two panels of Donald lamenting his lack of friends. It just works really well, selling his loneliness and how isolated he truly feels without any, which while I have friends I can relate to as I only really hang out with on regularly. 

This is what I was talking about. While I will point out Rosa’s flaws.. their truly outweighed but his artistic mastery. In just three panels he really has a truly emotional and heartrending scene, and just that one close up among them is all we need to get the true depths of Donald’s loneliness. I can be hard on the guy, but it’s because he’s one of the best there is, best there was, and best there ever will be and thus I hold him to a high standard.  But with that we transition to...

Or rather first his boss at the hotel, whose pissed his headliner has skipped out on him again to woo a lady, and while he plans to fire the guy, only isn’t throttling him because he figures one of his “Senorita’s” boyfriends will do that for him. And while I do like Jose as a playboy i’m not really fond of him trying to have sex with someone in a relationship, as it puts both him and the person he’s having an affair with in a really bad light. It does fit the character, I just don’t have to like it. As for this particular Senorita, it turns out her boyfriend is a notorious Bandito and is thankfully out of town. So yes, Jose is essentially acting out Come A Little Bit Closer by Jay and the Americans. 

Naturally just like the song, said Bad Man returns, Alfonso “Gold Hat” Bedoya, a machete wielding baddie who while understandably pissed about another man making time with his girlfriend, is less understandably about to murder Jose. Though unlike the song, Alfonso’s Lady, rather than help Jose, encourages her boyfriend to murder him and clearly has a fetish for cheating on her boyfriend with various men and watching as he kills him which.. Jesus. This is why while I don’t LIKE the idea of Jose hitting on women in a relationship it does work here, as he’s still not nearly as bad as either of these two, so it evens out. Jose escapes with his umbrella but crashes.. right into the back of Donald’s car. Rosa, Alfonso’s lady, encourages him to murder both of them for funsies, and being a brutal thug, Alfonso obliges and shoots at the car. And since, to quote the duck himself, Donald doesn’t like being killed “Even a little”, he books it out of there. 

Alfonso doesn’t peruse them though. He’s on the trail of a treasure hunter who has a map to the lost town of Tayopa, which contains untold silver, but before he can do that he has important buisness to get to. 

I fucking love that gag and that Rosa snuck more adult gags in there knowing plenty of Duck Fans, such as myself, are grown men, women and others who can handle this sort of thing, while still slippnig it past the kids. 

Donald, once the fear’s worn off a bit, starts to wonder WHY he’s running when he’s not the one who pissed off the guy, and ignores Jose’s good point about the fact Alfonso really dosen’t seem like a guy who sees nuance.. until Donald sees a wanted poster for Alphonoso and keeps driving. He eventually gets far enough away to feel safe.. and confront the guy who got him into this mess. 

Now kiss. While sadly, they do not, we do get a lovely warm reunion between old pals. Rosa keeps their past vauge as, correctly, he pointed out in his authors notes that the Cabs movie really had no plot, accurate, so instead just vaguely alluded to Donald having known the two in his pre-daisy and boys past and likely had similar adventures to the movie, but adapted more for Rosa’s barksian universe. Jose explains he often finds himself cash poor and thus hits the road to drum up some money, and Mexico is a great place for that as it has plenty of tourist money. 

Though as Jose talks about their past we get the most uncomfortable running gag of the story. 

While Donald’s paranoia here is played for laughs.. it just.. isn’t all that funny that Donald’s relationship with Daisy in the Rosa canon is apparently sooooo deeply unhealthy that just HEARING about him having a romantic past before him, as Rosa confirmed this was pre-daisy in his notes, causes Donald to panic and worry she actually somehow heard this. It just isn’t funny.. it speaks of MASSIVE relationship issues and some form of domestic abuse on Rosa!Daisy’s part. It’s stuff like this why there’s only a handful of Donsy relationships I like: Her treating him like shit is reduced to a punchline, instead of being used for character growth. It’s also why I’m deeply dreading covering “Legend of the Three Cablleros” at the end of this retrospective. I just don’t like when Disney media treats Daisy expecting too much of Donald or being hyper jealous of him as hilarious and while I take this more as the story not ageing well rather than barks fault, as since then Domestic Abuse against Males has become a more widely known and talked about issue, it still doesn’t’t make it plesant. It just makes this not entirely his fault. Just like it’s not Stan Lee’s fault this panel is both deeply hilarious and uses a now kinda racist term. 

I named an entire youtube channel after that.. we all have our regrets. I also bring it up since currently Harry’s become terrifying villain Kindred... and thus the current big bad of an entire Spider-Man run and the being hopefully bringing one more day into the light and hopefully leading to it’s undoing.. once had a goofy mustache he genuinely referred to a “Fu Manchu Face Fuzz” that for all we know he regrew under the mask. 

Donald fondly remembers the old days of being a badass adventuring team and decides, screw it, let’s go show that Gold Hatted Paloka whose boss.. but being Donald ends up driving them into The Copper Canyon instead. Our heroes end up lost in the canyon and , fitting for Donald get shot at. I can only imagine his thoughts right now. 

Their mysterious attacker threatens them.. before revealing himself to be Panchito, whose glad to see his friends having mistook them for Alfonso. Turns out HE’S the mysterious treasure hunter Alfonoso was after, to no one’s surprise. We get another deeply unfunny “Daisy’s only a thousand miles away gag” as the boys reminisce and get introduced to Panchito’s horse, Senior Martniez. He also tells the boy about his map.. but how he’s hit a snag as the lost town where the silver, from a silver mine.. is now buried under pounds of volcanic rock, a volcano having erupted. This is artistic license as Don Rosa admits there aren’t any known volcano’s in Mexico, but that they also still haven’t found that missing town, so this was his explanation.  All is not lost as Donald’s globetrotting with Scrooge meant he knows his history.. and thus spots an old mission which, at the time, were used by preists as cover for secret mines. Donald naturally bungles his way in and we get the much better running gag of the Cabs thinking Donald did something amazing when he really just wondered into slapstick. They end up down the shaft, with Jose deciding Donald can’t do all the work, and finding a secret entrance under a sanctum sanctorum.. a religious thing I have no idea what it ii s but is clearly where Dr. Strange got the name. Regardless they find some old kegs filled with pure silver. As Panchito puts it: 

And he did ideed. In a nice moment that shows off his character, Panchito has no hesitation for sharing the wealth: He wouldn’t of got this far without his friends, and he wont get the Silver cashed in without their help. He also fires off his guns in celebration.. forgetting their in a cave, a gag I genuinely like. 

After some off screen loading and hoisting, the boys are slowly on their way out of the canyon, with Donald’s Car and Senor Martinez pulling the cart with the silver together. With some downtime the three talk about what they’ll spend the money on. 

About what you’d expect. A big beautiful music venue

For Jose, and a nice ranch to retire at for Panchito. Both despite being wondering souls would love a simple place to call home, in their own personal styles. While they are BIG goals, their also likeable and understandable ones: Jose just wants to stop having to do all these tours and carouse and party and perform at home. Be his own boss, and live his own dreams instead of working for whoever will put up for him. Panchito just wants to retire from being a wondering hero to a peaceful life of farming, an honest reward he well earned. And Donald? 

This is easily one of my faviorite moment’s of Rosa’s, one that really cuts to comic donald’s character: Sure he can be lazy, a trickster, hot tempered, and overconfident.. it’s why we love him.. but at the end of the day he genuinely loves those boys and their his first prority and I can see why the reboot took that trait and made it his defining one. They may annoy and frustrate them and he may pull a switch on them, 50′s after all.. but he loves his boys and knows they’ll do great one day and despite his spendthrift ways when given big money.. their all he can think about. Sure Donald probably has his own personal dreams, but instead of going big and retiring he’d probably just take only a small sliver of that money to open a humble hot dog stand or something, so he could have something of his own to provide them, while still giving most of the money to their college. Scrooge is who we all want to be.. Donald is who we are at our core: Flawed people who just want to do our best. It’s why I love the guy so much.  The boys rest in the small town of El Divisadero, which like the town we started in is a real place, though both are much smaller, even as of 2000 when Rosa made his visit, so he had to embelish slightly. THey stop at a local watering hole only to find Alphonso. While Jose is naturally worried, Gold Hat has moved on to Panchito and wants to know why he’s here. However Donald thinking quickly says he’s part of their nightclub act, and we get a rousing version of the three cablleros, which when reading this I synched up to the song. I won’t put it here, as it’s too big for tumblr and it really works more as a whole, but needless to say, it’s the highlight of the comic. While Rosa did have doubts about putting a musical number in a comic, and it’s often trickey, he makes it work with the energy, vibrance and number of gags, that compensate for the music not being there. There’s tons of great gags, from Donald getting thrown out  window, to the stone faced crowd who only cheers when Alphonso ends the number by whacking the three with one of their own guitars.  Alphonso quickly realizes what’s goin on, finds the silver, and then hyjacks the train. The boys take off after him in the car, as Donald triumphantly states “The Three Cablleros Ride Again!”. The three head after Alphonzo, who finds them when trying to release the other cars to increase speed, and then shoots at them. It seems hopeless... until donald gets launched into the air, into a cactus then back into Alphonzo knocking his guns out in a great bit of slapstick. The Conductor, likely not knowing about the others or not carring, detaches the cars though, so our heroes and villian are now sent rocketing through the world’s most dangerous railway. Which, as you’d probably already figured out, is very real and what inspirited rosa to use this setting and thus indeed wind through dangerous mountainsides and over thin cliffs like a real life Donkey Kong Country level.  Eduardo still has his machete though and easily beats Jose’s umbrella, but some more Donald slapstick and him apologizing to daisy about the senioritis as he wishes her goodbye seriously GET SOME COUPLE’S COUNSELING IF THAT EXISTS IN THE 50′S. It puls his sombrero down over his head, and with jose’s umbrella top landing on it, carries him off where he ends up in a lazy asshole sheirff’s jail for a gag. The boys however continue going back.. and the railway is unfinished at this time in history and while they save the silver, their fucked. But Donald has a plan, running to the back of the cars to get his car, and while it has trouble starting, Panchito throws some chilie’s in the tank to get it moving again.  The boys find the silver.. but when one barrel spills they find out it’s not actual liquid silver.. but quicksilver, which was used for silver refinment. So while i’ts shiny, and toxic so of course Jose sticks his hand in before knowing what it is, it’s worthless. Probably. The boys.. all have a nice laugh over it. I love this moment. Sure the boys lost their dreams.. but like Scrooge, the three belivie theirs always another rainbow. What matters is the journey they had and the reunion that restored their friendship. Donald also muses the boys are smart enough to get their own scholarships anyway, so it’s no big loss.. but he does have to get back to Disvadero as the jamboree ends tonight and Jose agrees as he now needs a job again. The owner balks, understandably since Jose missed a performance to get laid and then disappeared overnight.. but the Hotel Owner is visiting so as long as he can provide a big act he’s good, and while Jose is worried as he already gave them his best, the boys naturally pitch in to be the cablleros once more. After all

So we close on Huey, Dewey and Louie returning, still worrying about donald, when they find him on stage. We then end on a truly heartwarming and great last few panels. 

Final Thoughts: What else can I say? This story is beautifully drawn, as usual for Rosa, well paced, fun and really fleshes the Cabs out from the movie. It has a warm, fun adventurous tone and it’s nice to see Donald in the lead since Rosa usually did Scrooge stories and thus Donald was the justifiably surly sidekick instead of the main man> here he’s in the spotlight and gets to show just what he’s made of, while still being the hilarious mess we all know and love. The story honors the original film well, while forging it’s own path and is beautifully built into history. My only real complaints are the nephews being annoying, Alphonso’s somewhat overwrought accent, and of course the daisy gags.. but it’s all HEAVILY outweighed by one of Rosa’s finest hours and easy enough to ignore. Check this out if you can. It’s a classic for a reason. 

If you liked this review, you can commission your own by messaging me on here or at my discord technicolormuk#655 for five dollars a comic story or animation episode. Whenever the ride resumes next, we’ll coming on down to the house of mouse to see the boys return to the screen. In the meantime keep an eye on this space for regular Ducktales reviews every Monday, including once this run ends as I intend to start playing catchup, loud house reviews whenever, my tom retrospective that’s returning soon, and my retrospective on the Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, with chapter 2 of that also coming soon. Until then, there’s always another rainbow. 

#the three caballeros #jose carioca #panchito pistoles #donald duck #don rosa #ride of the three caballeros #the three caballeros ride again #huey duck #dewey duck #louie duck #daisy duck #mexico #comics #reviews #elmo keep

[hawkbucks]

Hi! I’m Isaiah (he/him), and I do fanfic theoretically. 

This is not my main blog. My main blog is anderfels. On that blog, I post about video games and various other stuff. My other blog is 616s. On that blog, I post about Marvel and DC comics, with a little bit of MCU. This blog (hawkbucks) is very text heavy and not very aesthetically pleasing, if I’m being honest. 

I do not do commissions. Everything on here will be free, and nothing will ever be behind a paywall.

I cannot guarantee that your request will be filled the second you send it in. It’s not because I don’t like you, honest! It’s just that my motivation is fickle. It appears for all of 3 seconds and then disappears for the next 60 years. Hence the “theoretical” fic-doer. 

I don’t title 99% of the stuff I do, and for that I apologize. I’m just crap at coming up with titles. If you really want to know what I’d title something, just send me an ask with the fic and I’ll rack my brain for a response!

I mostly do MCU-based things as that is what I assume 99% of people are familiar with. If you wants a comics-specific request, don’t be afraid to say so! 

I mostly do BuckyTony or SteveTony. Other ships that are known to pop up are PepperNat and SamTony. (Please talk to me about my PepperNat agenda.)

This has also turned into a Genshin Impact blog for some godforsaken reason. Talk to me about ZhongKae and Chaeya. Everyday I wish for a Diluc and Kaeya on-screen reconciliation. 

Here is a link to all of the requests I’ve fulfilled. 

Here is a link to a page with all my AU’s. 

Here is a link to my AO3. 

If you have any questions, feel free to send them in! 

Now, here’s some more personal stuff about me: 

My favorite Marvel characters are Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes, and Natasha Romanoff. I’m sure that doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone. I also enjoy Kamala Khan, Elektra Natchios, Emma Frost, Jean Grey, Remy LeBeau, and Kurt Wagner. My first Marvel love was Johnny Storm, and for him my heart will go on. 

My favorite Iron Man writers are Kurt Busiek, the Knaufs, and Len Kaminski. 

My favorite Captain America writers are Mark Gruenwald and Ed Brubaker. 

My favorite Black Widow writer is Marjorie Liu. 

I sold my soul to Jonathan Hickman long ago. 

My favorite artists are Don Heck, David Marquez, Valerio Schiti, Pepe Larraz, Alex Maleev, Kevin Wada, and Jorge Jimenez. 

My favorite musical artists are SHINee, f(x), Red Velvet, BoA, Block B, Carly Rae Jepsen, and those “classics” from the 70′s, 80′s, 90′s, and early 00′s. 

I have an unhealthy love for boba tea. My organs are all boba. My blood is but Thai tea and Okinawa milk tea. I am also a weirdo who doesn’t like lychee, apparently. 

I’m a Gamer Boy. I like Bloodborne, Dark Souls, the Tomb Raider reboot, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Uncharted, Resident Evil, and some other games I’m neglecting to mention. And uh. Fortnite. 

I love collecting actions figures and statues of my favorite characters. I love collecting in general, honestly. 

Rod Reis liked 2 of my tweets and I consider that a crowning achievement.

Other ways to contact me:

Discord: johnny___joestar Other Tumblr Blog: @alwayshinee 

#This will be pinned.

[oosteven-universe]

Blue and Gold #3

Blue and Gold #3 DC Comics 2021 Written by Dan Jurgens Illustrated by Cully Hamner Coloured by Chris Sotomayor Lettered by Rob Leigh    The million-dollar debut of Buggles! Booster Gold and Blue Beetle go...broke?! Ted Kord’s secret is out: the heir to the Kord Industries fortune has been cut off and cut out of his family’s company! Now the duo needs all the help they can get to fight off the Omnizon’s attack and set up their new business. Who can possibly save the guys from themselves? Meet the newest member of Blue & Gold...BUGGLES!    I’m glad that this isn’t as silly as the 90’s JLI team made them out to be.  I wish Booster were more serious, like he was during the whole time travel series he did, but his aloofness and overeagerness to make money is balanced out by Beetle’s more serious and scientific approach.  These two could actually be one of the most dynamic duo’s in comics if given the right opportunity but this isn’t that this is a fun, kitschy look at the pair.  It certainly has its place as the world is a much more serious place and there’s way too much infighting going on with political parties and those who refuse to see logic.  So it is a well needed escape from reality.    I am a fan of the way that this is being told.  The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented exceptionally well.  The character development that we see through the dialogue, the character interaction as well as how we see them act and react to the situations and circumstances which they encount.  This does an absolutely marvellous job of bringing their personalities to the forefront.  The pacing is excellent and as it takes us through the pages revealing more and more of the story the more I want the issue to keep going.    I am enjoying how we see this being structured and how the layers within the story continue to emerge, grow, evolve and strengthen.  What these layers do is open up new avenues to be explored and these avenues add some wonderful depth, dimension and complexity to the story.  With the introduction of Buggles and Ted’s confession to Michael we see how these avenues and their threads open up new possibilities.  How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is immaculately done.      The interiors here are utterly marvellous to see.  The linework is fantastic and with its varying weights and techniques being utilised to create this level & quality of the detail within the work is astounding.  We see some really good, strong use of backgrounds throughout the book and this enhances and expands the moments beautifully.  It also works within the composition of the panels to bring out the depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story.  The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a remarkably talented eye for storytelling.  The various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work shows a brilliant eye for how colour works.   ​    While I am immensely enjoying the way that this is being told I would like it to be a bit more serious but then that’s really just me.  The world needs to giggle and laugh and these two gentlemen, lads/boys or whatnot, certainly are capable of getting readers’ to do just that.  Dan understands these characters pretty much better than anyone alive and it shows in how well he’s able to write the absurdity of it all and still manage to get us to care about them, empathise with them and root for them to succeed.  The writing is strong and interesting, the character development is spot on and the interiors really bring this to life with aplomb.  

#Comic Books #Comics Reviews #DC Comics

[twh-news]

What is the Multiverse? Five Must-See Alternate Timeline TV Episodes to Watch After ‘Loki’

Look, I get it — multiverse storytelling can be confusing. Marvel’s Loki streaming series is only the latest in a long line of stories that plays fast and loose with the idea of multiple or parallel timelines. Loki follows the God of Mischief (Tom Hiddleston) after he gets involved with the Time Variance Authority, or the TVA, as they try to correct problems in individual timelines. This provides us a chance to see lots of variant Lokis (including our favorite chompy green boy) and opens up opportunities for a lot of zany storytelling that doesn’t necessarily have to impact the primary timeline.

The idea of multiple universes existing at the same time isn’t anything new. Some of the earliest examples date back to Norse mythology, which divided existence into nine worlds. DC Comics first introduced the idea of the DC multiverse in its comics in All Star Comics #3 in 1940, and Marvel later followed suit, starting with their What if? series in the 1970s. While the concept of parallel universes might feel a little daunting to contemplate on your own, these five television episodes will help you understand the magic of the multiverse.

“The Parallel” — The Twilight Zone

When it comes to television that changed the way we think, Rod Serling‘s The Twilight Zone is the forebear of them all. The original series ran from 1959 to 1964 and contained stories from science fiction greats like Ray Bradbury (Farhenheit 451) and  Richard Matheson (I Am Legend). Each episode in the anthology series told a different short story, most with the intent of exploring some political or social allegory.

In 1963’s “The Parallel”, Major Robert Gaines (Steve Forrest) is orbiting earth in his space capsule when he suddenly blacks out and wakes up on Earth with no memory of how he got there. He’s uninjured, but the world he’s arrived in doesn’t quite match the one he left. His daughter suspects he’s someone else, his house suddenly has a white picket fence that his wife swears has always been there, and everyone keeps calling him Colonel, which matches his uniform but not his memories. He’s a little shaken until he comes to the conclusion that he’s in a parallel universe, and then takes steps to get back to his own timeline.

“The Parallel” marks the first instance of multiverse storytelling on TV. It doesn’t do anything particularly groundbreaking and is a middle-of-the-road The Twilight Zone episode, but it’s the first, which means it paved the way for everyone else to tell TV stories about parallel universes and doppelgangers.

“Mirror Mirror”/”Crossover” — Star Trek/Star Trek Deep Space Nine

Did I say doppelgangers? If there’s one franchise that has capitalized on the potential fun of meeting your alternate self, it’s Star Trek. In the “Mirror Mirror” episode of the original series, a teleporter mishap sends Kirk, McCoy, Scotty, and Uhura to a parallel dimension where everything is reversed. The Federation has become an evil Empire, Kirk is a tyrant, and Spock has a goatee (that’s how you know he’s evil). The episode started several tropes about doppelgangers (including the whole goatee thing), and paved the way for future Star Trek iterations to really go wild with the Mirror Universe.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine explored the Mirror Universe more than any other Star Trek series, with stories taking place there over five different episodes. The first of these, “Crossover,” is the most important and sets the stage for the later mirror episodes. In “Crossover,” Major Kira (Nana Visitor) and Doctor Bashir (Alexander Siddig) have an accident inside of the wormhole near the planet Bajor, sending them to the Mirror Universe. It’s been decades since Kirk and co. crossed over, but things are still pretty backwards in the Mirrorverse. Instead of the Federation, there’s a coalition between the Klingons, Cardassians, and Bajorans. Terrans (a fancy word for Earthlings) have been enslaved. The space station Deep Space Nine is instead a mining operation, run by the alternate Kira, the Intendant.

There are few things in the world as enjoyable as watching Visitor play her double role. The entire cast really gets to go for it with their Mirrorverse personas, and you can tell they’re having a blast. The Mirror Universe in Deep Space Nine gave the actors a chance to explore their characters in new ways, and it provided more insight into their individual pathos. Sure, the Mirrorverse versions were the “evil” versions of themselves, but there were still versions of themselves. Kira is a strong leader with a dry sense of humor, regardless of whether she’s the former Bajoran freedom fighter or the Intendant. “Crossover” set up the following four Deep Space Nine Mirror episodes, including episodes where Captain Sisko (Avery Brooks) must pretend to be his doppelganger and deal with the fact that his dead wife is still very alive in the parallel universe. Some of the episodes are silly fun, and some are a bit more heady, but they all get to explore sides of these characters that we’ve never seen before.

“Remedial Chaos Theory” — Community

The NBC sitcom Community frequently made its own riffs on popular tropes, and it had an utter field day with parallel universes. In the season 3 episode, “Remedial Chaos Theory,” viewers are treated to seeing six different ways the same evening could have played out. The friends, who met in a Spanish study group at their community college, are all celebrating Troy (Donald Glover) and Abed (Danny Pudi) moving into a new apartment. When the pizza arrives, group leader Jeff (Joel McHale) suggests they roll dice to see who has to go get the pizza. Abed, who is sensitive to tropes, points out that Jeff is creating new timelines by introducing chance, and then we get to see each of them play out.

What “Remedial Chaos Theory” does is brilliant. It’s a bottle episode, all set in one location with no visible impact on the overall plot. However, by seeing how the situations change each time a single character is removed from the group dynamic, we’re able to learn so much more about the group as a whole. The episode gives us insight into the characters and their relationships by changing up the formula just a pinch and removing one element. In the Darkest Timeline, which leaves Pierce (Chevy Chase) dead and severely maims the rest of the group, it’s revealed that things fall apart without Troy in the mix. At the end of the episode, the prime timeline continues and it’s Jeff who has to go get the pizza. This ends up being the most positive of the timelines, which means maybe the group is better off without Jeff at all. It’s a great piece of character storytelling and even ends with the Darkest Timeline versions of Troy and Abed making felt goatees for themselves before declaring they are Evil Troy and Evil Abed.

“Rixty Minutes” – Rick and Morty

Community showrunner Dan Harmon clearly has a love for stories involving parallel timelines, so it’s no surprise that he expanded on those ideas in Rick and Morty, the adult animated series he developed with Justin Roiland. Rick and Morty is a kind of Back to the Future for twisted adults; it follows the adventures of alcoholic mad scientist Rick Sanchez (Roiland) and his hapless grandson Morty Smith (also Roiland) as they travel through space and time. In the first season episode “Rixty Minutes,” Rick introduces the entire Smith family to the many parallel timelines that exist. He and Morty watch Interdimensional Cable in the A plot, which gives Roiland a chance for lots of fun improvisational gags, but the B plot is more interesting. In order to enjoy his cable watching, Rick gives Morty’s parents and sister a helmet that will let them see through the eyes of some of their alternate selves.

Jerry (Chris Parnell) finds a version of himself that’s a huge Hollywood player who parties with Johnny Depp. Beth (Sarah Chalke) finds a reality where she’s not a horse surgeon, but a human surgeon, like she always wanted. Their teenage daughter Summer (Spencer Grammar) discovers that she was an unplanned pregnancy and that her parents argued about whether or not to get an abortion. In the parallel universes, she either doesn’t exist or her life is hopelessly boring. This leads to a pretty massive existential crisis, but she’s stopped by Morty, who has already had his fair share of timey-wimey weirdness.

Morty takes Summer upstairs and shows her two dirt mounds in the backyard. He explains that he’s not the Morty from this timeline, and that he and Rick had to come here after things in their timeline got too bad. The Rick and Morty in this timeline had just died, so they slipped in unnoticed. Then, Morty gives Summer a bit of advice that shows he’s beginning to grow up a bit on his madcap adventures.

“Nobody exists on purpose. Nobody belongs anywhere. Everybody’s gonna die. Come watch TV?” he pleads.

The episode ends with the entire Smith family realizing that dwelling on possible alternate realities will only ever cause problems. It’s a testament to living in the here and now, and is one of the series’ most emotionally resounding moments.

There are dozens of shows with multiverse stories out there, from ’90s sci-fi staple Sliders to the later seasons of Supernatural. These five, however, helped expand upon the trope as a whole, and are worth checking out to improve your pop culture savvy. That, and they’re just a lot of fun.

#loki #loki series #multiverse #article #slashfilm

[bitofthisandthat]

// Question for your Toontown AU: If characters are friends/allies in their shows, or are related, do they sometimes choose to maintain these relationships off-set? Ex. Ponyhead being friends with Star, Darkwing and Negaduck being dads, etc. I suppose in some cases it would be more likelier than others, depending on how the characters' personalities on-set matches how they are off-set and how easy it is to keep in touch with each other, especially if they've still got roles together.

{ I don’t know if any of this answers your question....so, my bad. 😬

I think it depends on the toon and WHY they were created for their media. I feel like Star and Pony may be friends after their show wrapped for awhile, but I can see them growing apart now that their show is over and contracts are done. Mostly because Star was written very differently in the last season ( THE SEASON WE DO NOT SPEAK OF ) and was shown to be annoyed/growing apart from Ponyhead in that last bullshit-everyone’s OOC season. Which to me, was one of the most OOC re-works of Star’s character, because her whole persona was: “never giving up on her friends, even when they had glaring faults.” It was both her strength AND weakness throughout the series. But anyway. My point is, I could see because Star was “reworked” in her last season to basically only like Marco and Eclipsa, and turn away from everyone else, she’d end up doing the same fade out with Pony a couple years after the show’s end. ( Right about now ) And since Pony’s writing NEVER changed, for her as toon to lose her other half, she could go through a toon-break down for not being still attached to her co-star. Because Ponyhead’s whole reason into creation was to be the Paris Hilton/Mona Lisa Saperstein best friend forever to Star, and that’s really all she was designed for.  PS: I kinda touched on “toon break downs” in one of my Toon Town AU metas for my verse; IE: Lily and her fellow cast mates ( Cow Boys of Moo Mesa ) went through it, because they were cancelled out of nowhere when promised a third season, then erased from all media. Another example: I wager Bushroot may be wary of hanging out with the Drakes ( nega or DWD ) after work, because his role was to be beaten around by both. Even if “off the clock,” my Negs is STILL a reckless dick, he’s not going to kill you or go full villain out of his “contract.” The villain aspect in Toon Town AU is tricky because I state in my TT meta that they need healthy outlets for their villainy off the set, or they DO go bad on the general TT populous. I do think OFF-set Negs and Drake are civil and don’t hate each other on the same level they do in the show/comics, it’s probably more like an annoyance for each other’s differences, but they do “dad-talk” about their daughters, and even work on their fight choreography together. They also have 100% input on their shared stunts together, so you HAVE to be able to be civil and get along for that.

I maintain all the toons know each other or of each other, despite what show or genres they belong to. Some have cross contracts like my Darlene, who has worked for everyone from Hannah Barbara to Disney, as she’s always contracted as a resident “monsta’ lady.” So a Shaggy or Space Ghost may know Darlene from the old days when she did monster roles as spooks or aliens. Does she positively mingle with Stan & the kids still? Probably??? I also think they can all work on cross-studio projects together IF their owners/studio people give them “free range” rights. Like Kim’s trying desperately to be more than a stunt coordinator/double for Marvel and DC, but everyone still typecasts her as a high school hero-girl for an all-ages comedy.

As for the other types of toons? There’s an Anime borough, an Adult (humor/action) toon borough--( Seth McF.arl.and toons, Futurama, KotH, SP, BB, R&M etc. etc. ). So interaction between EVERYONE can happen after a show wraps or is on hiatus, etc.

EVERYONE can date, befriend, or otherwise be neighbors to ex-co stars or toons from other lots. No big deal. For my Toon Town verse, 50 years ago a Warner Brothers toon and Disney toon would NEVER date or be best friends with each other, because of the notorious “rivalry” between their studios. Now? It’s not a big deal. The old timer toons may be irked by it, but everyone’s chilled out a lot since the 90′s.

I headcanon that in my Toon Town verse, the Anima/Manga types are not as accepting as other toon types, but that doesn’t mean they WON’T interact. It has to do with their “owners” and studios being very differently operated and written. So interaction with an anime/manga toon with anyone else is gonna take some coaxing/effort. They’re basically cautious snobs.

As for the Adult/Older toons, they are wary of interacting with toons that come from more innocent franchises. Francine may be dying to meet a Disney or Nick toon, but maybe a fellow America Dad or Futurama toon makes fun of her for it.

IT’S A LOT OF META. 

#hey nony nonny #asks #V: HAMMERSPACE & DESIGNER COFFEE || TOON TOWN AU

[thecomicsnexus]

TOP 10 INK AND COLOR ARTISTS OF 2019′S REVIEWS

This year I felt the need to also do this list. Why? Well, when I was going through the most prominent artists with a 10 score, I noticed that some names were in almost all of them, but they weren’t the main artists. These artists are mostly inkers and colorists, and they are industry professionals, that usually worked for the publisher directly. This is the main reason they were involved in most of the art teams. Some of these were working for hire though. But you will also notice that unlike the writers and pencillers lists, this one is a lot more diverse.

NUMBER TEN JOHN HIGGINS (1949 - PRESENT)

John Higgins (born 1949) is an English comic book artist and writer. He did significant work for 2000 AD, and he has frequently worked with writer Alan Moore, most notably as colorist for Watchmen.

John Higgins was born in Walton, Liverpool. After leaving school when he was 15, he joined the army and, on leaving, spent some time in a commune in Wiltshire. He returned to Liverpool and, in 1971, resumed his studies at Wallasey College of Art. There, in 1974 he qualified in technical illustration, which allowed him to get a job as a medical illustrator at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust.

After getting his first comic book art published in Brainstorm in 1975, he drew the cover for 2000 AD No. 43 in 1977 and decided to go freelance in 1978, with an eye on becoming a comic artist. In 1981 he started getting regular work at 2000 AD, one of his early projects being the art for a Tharg's Future Shocks by Alan Moore, as well as doing covers for Marvel UK.

After this he worked steadily at 2000 AD and joined the British Invasion in the mid-eighties—notably doing the colouring on Moore's Watchmen and Batman: The Killing Joke, a job he got through colouring Steve Dillon's art on Moore's ABC Warriors story. This led to more work in the American market, although he has kept working on British titles too especially with Judge Dredd over 20 years.

He provided the art for Greysuit with Pat Mills, as well as working with Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti on The Hills Have Eyes: The Beginning and Jonah Hex No. 28.

Higgins is also a writer. He wrote and drew his first Future Shock at 2000 AD and did the same for Razorjack, a comic book mini-series from Com.x, which was reprinted in 2009.

Higgins has worked in a number of different areas providing artwork for animation, film and book covers like The Cabinet of Light and The Morgaine Stories. In 2012, Higgins worked on the Before Watchmen project, drawing the serialised feature "Curse of the Crimson Corsair" which was initially written by Len Wein. Higgins later became the writer of the feature as well.

In 2016 he provided the art for six stamps commemorating the Great Fire of London, illustrating them in the style of a comic strip.

In 2017 a collection of his artwork was exhibited at the Victoria Gallery & Museum in Liverpool, in an exhibition called Beyond Dredd & Watchmen: The Art of John Higgins.

Higgins made it into the list thanks to his work on “Batman: The Killing Joke” and “Watchmen”.

NUMBER NINE ROMEO TANGHAL (1943 - PRESENT)

Romeo Tanghal (born 1943) is a Filipino comics artist who has worked primarily as an inker. He became well known in the industry in the 1980s for his work on DC Comics' The New Teen Titans.

Romeo Tanghal was born and raised in the Philippines. A self–taught artist, he started doing comics illustrations after graduating high school. He briefly worked with various local publications before emigrating to the United States in 1976. His first published work in the U.S. was "If There Were No Batman... I Would Have to Invent Him" in Batman #284 (Feb. 1977) for DC Comics. He then drew short stories for House of Mystery, House of Secrets, and Weird War Tales. He later became the inker on such features as Super Friends, "Scalphunter" in Weird Western Tales, and "Gravedigger" in Men of War. In 1980, Tanghal became the inker of George Pérez's penciled artwork on The New Teen Titans. Tanghal drew two origin stories for DC's digest line during this time, a ten-page short story in DC Special Blue Ribbon Digest #5 (Nov.–Dec. 1980) featuring Zatara and Zatanna and the origin of the Penguin in The Best of DC #10 (March 1981). Tanghal began working for Marvel Comics as well in 1986. He inked the comics adaptations of such films as Labyrinth, Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, and Willow. Tanghal did character design and storyboards for Sunbow Entertainment from 1985 to 1987.

Tanghal received an Inkpot Award in 2013.

I usually think of Romeo when I think about the team of Wolfman and Pérez. Their work on New Teen Titans is the main reason he made it into this list.

NUMBER EIGHT LYNN VARLEY (1958 - PRESENT)

Lynn Varley is an award-winning American comic book colorist, notable for her collaborations with her then-husband, comic book writer/artist Frank Miller.

Varley grew up in Livonia, Michigan. Moving to New York City, she found work at Neal Adams' Continuity Associates. She debuted as a comic book colorist on Batman Annual # 8 (1982), written by Mike W. Barr and penciled by her then partner Trevor Von Eeden. Around the same time, she became professionally involved with Upstart Associates, a shared studio space on West 29th Street formed by Walter Simonson, Howard Chaykin, Val Mayerik, and Jim Starlin. Varley colored the first two issues of Chaykin's American Flagg! Frank Miller later became part of Upstart.

Varley provided the coloring for Miller's Ronin (1984), an experimental six-issue series from DC Comics that proved that comics in unusual formats could be commercially successful; and The Dark Knight Returns (1986), a four issue mini-series that went on to become an outstanding commercial and critical success. Miller also noted that Varley helped create the futuristic slang that Carrie Kelley and other characters use.

Subsequently, Varley colored other Miller books, including The Dark Knight Strikes Again, 300, Elektra Lives Again, Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot (with Geoff Darrow), as well as a number of covers for the U.S. editions of the Lone Wolf and Cub series. She also colored the backgrounds for the 300 movie (2007), produced by Miller.

Varley has only worked sporadically in the comics industry since 2005.

Varley and Miller were married from 1986 to 2005. They moved from New York City to Los Angeles in the late 1980s and moved back to New York shortly before the September 11 attacks.

Because of her collaborations with Miller, Lynn made it into this list thanks to her work on “Ronin”, “The Dark Knight Returns” and “Wolverine”.

NUMBER SEVEN GLYNIS “WEIN” OLIVER (1949 - PRESENT)

Glynis Oliver, also credited as Glynis Wein is an artist who has worked as a colorist in the comics industry. For several years, she was married to Len Wein. She returned to her maiden name in 1985. She was born in England.

She has been recognized for her work in the industry with a Shazam Award for Best Colorist in 1973.

Glynis has an extensive career in comics, but the reason she made it into this list was her work on “Uncanny X-Men”, more specifically “the Dark Pheonix Saga” and the “Wolverine” mini-series.

NUMBER SIX BRAD ANDERSON

Not to mistake with the creator of Marmaduke.

Brad Anderson is a cartoonist and comic book colourist. He began his career in 1998 working for DC Comics in 1998 on the title Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight. Ever since he has worked on countless comics for different publishers including Dark Horse Comics and Marvel Comics

Most recently, he has been working on titles like Batman Eternal, Green Lantern, Justice League and Convergence.

Little is known about Brad’s life (odd considering the popularity of the material he is part of). He made it into this list thanks to his work on the “Witching Hour” crossover and also on the Shazam Origin that run on the Justice League book.

NUMBER FIVE ANTHONY TOLLIN (1952 - PRESENT)

Anthony Tollin is a professional comic book colourist. Tollin started working for DC Comics in the early 70s as an assistant to Tatjana Wood in the coloring department. In the early 80s, he became the main colourist for DC, doing almost all of the covers of the publications of the company at the time. Tollin worked for DC until the early 90s, when he started working for other publishers.

He is in this list thanks to his work on “Vigilante”, “Ambush Bug” and “Crisis on Infinite Earths”.

NUMBER FOUR ADRIENNE ROY (1953 - 2010)

Adrienne Roy (June 28, 1953 – December 14, 2010) was a comic book color artist who worked mostly for DC Comics. She was largely responsible for coloring the Batman line (Batman and Detective Comics) throughout the 1980s and early 1990s.

Roy attended an art school in Wayne, New Jersey, where she studied painting techniques. Her first contact with comics was through collecting Marvel Comics' Tomb of Dracula, The Sub-Mariner and Conan the Barbarian. Roy's first work as a comics colorist was assisting her husband Anthony Tollin, who worked for DC Comics at the times. But it was long-time colorist Jack Adler who would give her the first job at DC: the cover of DC Special Series #8 (featuring the Batman, Deadman and Sgt. Rock team-up). Adler and Sol Harrison (who was also a colorist) were considered by Roy herself as her mentors and both trained her on coloring during her first years at DC.

Roy was also responsible for the coloring on many other titles during that time period: The New Teen Titans, The Warlord, Weird War Tales and Madame Xanadu. Nevertheless, she is predominantly known for her work on the Batman books: Batman, Detective Comics, Batman: Shadow of the Bat, Batman: Gotham Knights, and Robin.

When computerized colors arrived to comics, the assignments to classic colorists decreased a lot. By 2000 Roy was largely out of work, despite training herself on the computer. Roy spent her last days battling cancer and died in Austin, Texas, at age 57 on December 14, 2010.

Adrienne Roy illustrated most of the comics of my childhood, and her “fuchsia” skies are pretty much her trademark on many Batman comics. She made it into this list thanks to her work on “New Teen Titans”, “Batman and the Outsiders”, Tales of the Teen Titans”, “The Judas Contract”, “Batman” and “Detective Comics”.

NUMBER THREE TERRY AUSTIN (1952 - PRESENT)

Terry Kevin Austin (born August 23, 1952) is an American comics artist, working primarily as an inker. He is best known for his work embellishing John Byrne's pencils on Uncanny X-Men from 1977 to 1981.

Austin grew up in Detroit, Michigan, and attended Wayne State University. He started inking comics as an assistant to Dick Giordano and Neal Adams, doing "Crusty Bunker" work for Adams' Continuity Associates. Austin came to prominence in 1976–1977, inking Marshall Rogers' pencils on a celebrated run of Batman stories for DC Comics' Detective Comics collaborating with writer Steve Englehart. During this same period, Austin inked Michael Netzer (Nasser) on DC's Martian Manhunter in Adventure Comics and Green Arrow/Black Canary in World's Finest Comics, as well as Al Milgrom on Marvel Comics' Captain Marvel. He later teamed with Rogers again on Marvel's Doctor Strange.

In 1977, Austin and penciler John Byrne became the new art team on Uncanny X-Men. With writer Chris Claremont they produced a series of stories — particularly "The Dark Phoenix Saga" — which elevated the title into the top-selling American comic book.

Austin resides near Poughkeepsie, New York, where he plays volleyball and gets together often with fellow comics veteran Fred Hembeck.

Terry is a very popular inker that has almost no presence online (only through Fred Hembeck). He made it into this list mostly for his work on “Camelot 3000″ and “Uncanny X-Men”, most specifically, “The Dark Phoenix” saga.

NUMBER TWO DICK GIORDANO (1932 - 2010)

Richard Joseph "Dick" Giordano (July 20, 1932 – March 27, 2010) was an American comics artist and editor whose career included introducing Charlton Comics' "Action Heroes" stable of superheroes and serving as executive editor of DC Comics.

Dick Giordano, an only child, was born in New York City on July 20, 1932, in the borough of Manhattan to Josephine Labruzzi and Graziano "Jack" Giordano. He attended the School of Industrial Art.

Beginning as a freelance artist at Charlton Comics in 1952, Giordano contributed artwork to dozens of the company's comics, including such Western titles as Annie Oakley, Billy the Kid, and Wyatt Earp, the war comic Fightin' Army, and scores of covers.

Giordano's artwork from Charlton's Strange Suspense Stories was used as inspiration for artist Roy Lichtenstein's 1965/1966 Brushstroke series, including Brushstroke, Big Painting No. 6, Little Big Painting and Yellow and Green Brushstrokes.

By the mid-1960s a Charlton veteran, Giordano rose to executive editor, succeeding Pat Masulli, by 1965. As an editor, he made his first mark in the industry, overseeing Charlton's revamping of its few existing superheroes and having his artists and writers create new such characters for what he called the company's "Action Hero" line. Many of these artists included new talent Giordano brought on board, including Jim Aparo, Dennis O'Neil, and Steve Skeates.

DC Comics vice president Irwin Donenfeld hired Giordano as an editor in April 1968, at the suggestion of Steve Ditko, with Giordano bringing over to DC some of the creators he had nurtured at Charlton. Giordano was given several titles such as Teen Titans, Aquaman and Young Love, but none of DC's major series. He launched the horror comics series The Witching Hour in March 1969, and the Western series All-Star Western vol. 2 in September 1970.

He continued to freelance for DC as a penciler and inker. As an artist, Giordano was best known as an inker. His inking was particularly associated with the pencils of Neal Adams, for their run in the early 1970s on the titles Batman and Green Lantern/Green Arrow. Comics historian Les Daniels observed that "The influential Adams style moved comics closer to illustration than cartooning, and he brought a menacing mood to Batman's adventures that was augmented by Dick Giordano's dark, brooding inks."

By 1971, frustrated by what he felt was a lack of editorial opportunities, Giordano had left DC to partner with fellow artist Neal Adams for their Continuity Associates studios, which served as an art packager for comic book publishers, including such companies as Giordano's former employer Charlton Comics, Marvel Comics, and the one-shot Big Apple Comix. Several comics artists began their careers at Continuity and many were mentored by Giordano during their time there.

He had a brief run as penciler of the Wonder Woman series which included a two-issue story in issues #202–203 (October and December 1972) written by science-fiction author Samuel R. Delany. Giordano drew several backup stories in Action Comics featuring the Human Target character as well as the martial arts feature "Sons of the Tiger" in Marvel's black-and-white comics magazine The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu. He was a frequent artist on Batman and Detective Comics and he and writer Denny O'Neil created the Batman supporting character Leslie Thompkins in the story "There Is No Hope in Crime Alley" in Detective Comics #457 (March 1976). Giordano inked the large-format, first DC/Marvel intercompany crossover, Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man (1976), over the pencils of Ross Andru. Giordano inked Adams on the one-shot Superman vs. Muhammad Ali in 1978. Throughout the late 1970s and the early 1980s, Ross Andru and Giordano were DC's primary cover artists, providing cover artwork for the Superman titles as well as covers for many of the other comics in the DC line at that time.

In 1980, DC publisher Jenette Kahn brought Giordano back to DC. Initially the editor of the Batman titles, Giordano was named the company's new managing editor in 1981, and promoted to vice president/executive editor in 1983, a position he held until 1993. DC Comics writer and executive Paul Levitz observed in 2010 that "Giordano held the respect of talent as one of their own, and kept their affection with his reassuring calm and warmth."

Giordano provided art for several anniversary issues of key DC titles. He and television writer Alan Brennert crafted the story "To Kill a Legend" in Detective Comics #500 (March 1981). Giordano was one of the artists on the double-sized Justice League of America #200 (March 1982) as well as Wonder Woman #300 (Feb. 1983) He was promoted to Vice-President/Executive Editor in 1984, and with Kahn and Levitz, oversaw the relaunch of all of DC's major characters with the Crisis on Infinite Earths limited series in 1985. This was followed by Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen in 1986. Giordano inked several major projects during this time such as George Pérez's pencils on Crisis on Infinite Earths and John Byrne's pencils on The Man of Steel and Action Comics, though during this period he always employed assistants for inking backgrounds, filling in large black areas, and making final erasures.

From 1983 to 1987, Giordano wrote a monthly column published in DC titles called "Meanwhile..." which much like Marvel's "Bullpen Bulletins" featured news and information about the company and its creators. Unlike "Bullpen Bulletins," which was characterized by an ironic, over-hyped tone, Giordano's columns ". . . were written in a relatively sober, absolutely friendly voice, like a friend of your father's you particularly liked and didn't mind sitting down to listen to." Giordano closed each "Meanwhile..." column with the characteristic words, "Thank you and good afternoon."

The Vertigo imprint was launched in early 1993 built upon the success several titles edited by Karen Berger including Swamp Thing, Hellblazer, Sandman, Doom Patrol, Animal Man, and Shade, the Changing Man. Giordano inked six issues of The Sandman in 1991-1993.

Beginning in 1987, Giordano was in the middle of an industry-wide debate about the comics industry, ratings systems, and creators' rights. Veteran writers Mike Friedrich, Steven Grant, and Roger Slifer all cited Giordano in particular for his hard-line stance on behalf of DC. This debate led in part to the 1988 drafting of the Creator's Bill of Rights.

Giordano left DC in 1993, and still did the occasional inking job, but later returned to freelancing full-time. In 1994 Giordano illustrated a graphic novel adaptation of the novel Modesty Blaise released by DC Comics, with creator/writer Peter O'Donnell. He was one of the many artists who contributed to the Superman: The Wedding Album one-shot in 1996 wherein the title character married Lois Lane.

In 2002, Giordano launched the short-lived Future Comics with writer David Michelinie and artist Bob Layton. Since 2002, Giordano had drawn several issues of The Phantom published in Europe and Australia. In 2004, Giordano and writer Roy Thomas completed an adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula novel. They had begun the project in 1974 but the cancellation of many of Marvel's black and white magazines put it into limbo. The finished story was collected into a hardcover edition in 2005 and a colorized hardcover edition in 2010. In 2005, F+W Publications Inc. published the instructional art book Drawing Comics with Dick Giordano, which he wrote and illustrated. His last mainstream work appeared in Jonah Hex vol. 2, #51 (March 2010) for which he drew the interior art and the cover. His last comics work was pencilling and editing Baron Five, published by Hound Comics.

Giordano married the former Marie Trapani, sister of fellow comics artist Sal Trapani, on April 17, 1955. She died from complications of her second stomach cancer surgery in February 1993. They had three children together; Lisa, Dawn, and Richard Jr. Marie's death, combined with Giordano's increasing hearing loss, hastened his decision to retire from DC. Following the death of his wife, Giordano split time between homes in Florida and Connecticut. In 1995, he moved to Palm Coast, Florida, where he continued to work full-time freelancing, until his death. Giordano had suffered from lymphoma and later from leukemia, secondary to the chemotherapy. He died on March 27, 2010 due to complications of pneumonia.

Giordano served as mentor or inspiration to a generation of inkers, including Terry Austin, Mike DeCarlo, and Bob Layton.

Shortly after Giordano's death in 2010, The Hero Initiative created "The Dick Giordano Humanitarian of the Year Award", which debuted at the 2010 Harvey Awards ceremony held at the Baltimore Comic-Con. The award recognizes one person in comics each year who demonstrates particular generosity and integrity in support of the overall comic book community.

Giordano received recognition in the industry for his work, including the Alley Award for Best Editor in 1969. He won the Shazam Award for Best Inker (Dramatic Division) in 1970 (for Green Lantern), 1971, 1973 (for Justice League of America), and 1974. He won the 1971 Goethe Award for "Favorite Pro Editor." Giordano received an Inkpot Award in 1981. In 2009 he was awarded the Inkwell Awards Joe Sinnott Hall of Fame Award.

My favorite anecdote of Dick Giordano, is from Karen Berger (from the book “The British Invasion: Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison”) about Grant Morrison’s thick Glaswegian accent.

“When I first met Grant, I was with Dick Giordano and Jenette Khan. I had set up appointments pretty much every hour with different writers and artists in this suite that we had rented to meet people, and Grant was the last person we saw on one of the days. And Dick Giordano was very hard of hearing... he wore two hearing aids and when Grant came in, Grant started talking and [Giordano] just took off his hearing aids and left the room. He couldn’t even read his lips.”

Dick Giordano is a legend, but he is in this list because of his work on “Camelot 3000″, “Tales of the Teen Titans”, “Vigilante” and “Crisis on Infinite Earths”.

NUMBER ONE TATJANA WOOD (1926 - PRESENT)

Tatjana Wood (née Tatjana Weintraub, in Darmstadt, Germany) is an American artist and comic book colorist.

Tatjana's father was Jewish, and her mother was Christian. During World War II, she and her brother, Karl Joachim Weintraub, were sent to an international Quaker boarding school in the Netherlands. Gaining Dutch citizenship was not easy, so after World War II, the Quakers arranged for the two to travel to New York City in 1947. Karl went on to the University of Chicago, while Tatjana stayed in New York, attending the Traphagen School of Fashion. In 1949, she met Wally Wood, and they married August 28, 1950.

During the 1950s and 1960s, she sometimes made uncredited contributions to Wood's artwork. One of the stories she worked on was "Carl Akeley" in EC Comics' Two-Fisted Tales #41 (February–March 1955). She did a number of animal drawings for that story.

Later, beginning in 1969, she did extensive work for DC Comics as a comic book colorist. She was the main colorist for DC's covers from 1973 through the mid-1980s. Wood did coloring work on the interiors of comics as well, including Grant Morrison's acclaimed run on Animal Man, Alan Moore's issues of Swamp Thing, and Camelot 3000. She won the Shazam Award for Best Colorist in 1971 and 1974. Tatjana has had no significant credits in the comics industry since 2003.

She is also a skilled dressmaker and weaver, who has crafted theatrical costumes and pictorial loom tapestries.

Tatjana's brother Karl died March 25, 2004. He was a distinguished scholar at the University of Chicago and the author of two books, Visions of Culture: Voltaire-Guizot-Burckhardt-Lamprecht-Huizinga-Ortega y Gassett (1966) and The Value of the Individual: Self and Circumstance in Autobiography (1978).

Tatjana Wood has been mostly uncredited for most of her career. It is only thanks to interviews and reprints that we know of her work on many essential books, like the original Swamp Thing volume.

She made it into this list because of her work on “Swamp Thing” and “Camelot 3000″.

There were more artists that didn’t make it to the top 10, but were considered: Bob Oksner, Bruce D. Patterson, Tom Ziuko, Tom McCraw, Alfredo Alcala, Mike DeCarlo, Joe Rubinstein, Klaus Janson, Malcolm Jones III, Norm Breyfogle (for both lists) and Steve Oliff.

Being an inker or a colorist in comics can be an ungrateful job. But they mean a lot to certain artists. It is not the same to be inked by Romeo Tanghal or by Mike Royer. And because most of these artists had permanent contracts with their publishers, they ended up growing up in the industry. To all of them, thanks for the comics!

#2019 #artists #inker #colorist #comics #review #tatjana wood #dick giordano #terry austin #adrienne roy #anthony tollin #brad anderson #glynis wein #glynis oliver #lynn varley #romeo tanghal #john higgins

[morebedsidebooks]

LGBTQ+ Characters in Comics from the 20th century I like

It’s June, Pride is here and rainbow colours are everywhere. So, I figured I’d be a little retrospective and share a short list of LGBTQ+ characters in comics from the 20th century I have a soft spot for. I’ve organized these by date of the characters first appearing but, happily most are still having stories written about them today.

Let’s start with three ladies from DC: 

Catwoman

Catwoman, specifically Selina Kyle has been around comics for a long time, nearly as long as the turbulence of her relationship with Batman. Though, Bruce isn’t they only character she has involved herself with over the years. I’ve got my share of comics featuring this fierce lady of many lives and antiheroine, including part of the New 52 run by Genevieve Valentine a few years back where her bisexuality was acknowledged as canon. Though, it was the film adaptation Batman Returns in 1992 with Michelle Pfieffer that blew me away when I was young. And remains, I think the most iconic Catwoman costume, which you can see in 4K now. Hear her roar.

Wonder Woman

Wonder Woman is another longstanding character and probably the most popular female superhero. I had comics as a child with Diana along with watching the sometimes campy 1970s TV series with Lynda Carter. Perhaps even more interesting than the Amazonian warrior herself is the passions of one of her creators William Marston and the themes of those earliest comics. (I’d suggest the book Wonder Woman: Bondage and Feminism in the Marston/Peters Comics 1941-1948.) And of course, also the controversy over a strong heroine standing on her own sparked by Fredic Wertham in Seduction of the Innocent.

Poison Ivy

Poison Ivy, or Pamela Isely with her sexual agency and connection to the Green, who admittedly may go about fighting for the environment as well as for women or children in the wrong way sometimes, is my top female character from American comics period. After again some rough treatment in comics recently, I wrote this year about her origins since 1966. Most people these days probably can’t think of Ivy without Harley, since it’s been 20 years since their first meeting in comics (longer for other mediums) but, these gals have a relationship that isn’t monogamous and has had it’s on again off again points too. (And note to DC maybe get it together on just how you define it since you waffle a bit hmm?)

 Taku and Venomm

Black Panther was one of the few Marvel comics characters whose stories I’ve wound up reading. (My mum had this thing against some comics and one of my older brothers mainly passed on DC issues to me.) The Jungle Action installments written by Don McGregor are to this day still memorable. And part of that should be due also to Taku and Venomm (Horatio Walters), the latter first appearing in the “Panther’s Rage” arc. Though, it would take time for the open acknowledgement of this example of early gay characters in comics. Sexuality outside the heterosexual among other topics was taboo in the 1970s yet, McGregor managed with a collection of artists to bring a vision of Wakanda focusing largely on its black inhabitants and difficult social issues in the world to publication.

 Juli Bauernfeind

I read The Heart of Thomas by Moto Hagio about boys at a German boarding school when I was 21. Juli was a character I connected to and the story had a profound effect on me. And I bawled my eyes out. It still makes me cry and is still one of the best comics I’ve ever come across. I reviewed the English edition a few years back. As well as wrote a post on the French bisexual author Roger Peyrefitte whose novel was adapted into a film which inspired Hagio.

 John Constantine

Full of politics, call it dark with a dose of nihilism but, Hellblazer with John Constantine is just damn good. Sometimes the world is awful, people are awful, you’re awful and well yeah everything is going to hell. Constantine is pretty much dreadful for the women he’s often involved with, or well anybody really. It was in the early 90s readers were first clued into the history of his love life made up of girlfriends and boyfriends. And can we fail to recall the later S. W. Manor from Ashes & Dust: In the City of Angels, one of the most visceral takes thru a character that is basically a stand in for Bruce Wayne, and his twisted relationship with John? I’m not. It’s been a strange trip over the years some adaptations really glossing over his sexuality. Though of late handling this aspect of his character appears to have gotten better.

 Stormer and Kimber 

The madcap Jem and the Holograms was one of my favourite cartoons as a child in the 80s. I even had some of the dolls and cassette tapes. Stormer aka Mary Phillips part of the Misfits was the rock star I loved the most. Dedicated to music and actually quite sweet with the optimum blue hair. I had to try the colour myself. The episode where she teams up with Kimber after both have differences with their respective bandmates is a classic. So, it was truly outrageous when the series was revived in 2015 in comic book form by Kelly Thompson and Sophie Campbell, and the Stormer and Kimber relationship that had been brewing came fully out for fans. (Btw the comic also added a new character, Blaze who is a trans woman and girlfriend of Misfit’s fan Clash.)

  Ash Lynx and Eiji Okamura

It’s been interesting to experience Banana Fish by Akimi Yoshida in different ways from first encountering the comic when I was a teenager, picking it up again in my twenties, and yet again the animated TV series last year. I wrote about the comic and first few episodes of the 2018 adaptation when it was airing. Though, I haven’t posted much more on it because there’s a tiny percentage of its fandom I want to avoid, as well as 30+ years on the series is still— pain. This one is a tragedy folks. However, it also has a beautiful healing love story and touched on a variety of hot button issues that are sadly still relevant today. My love for these two teen characters in a gritty USA will live forever.

  Chihaya and Kagetsuya

I’ve written before how the sci-fi title Earthian was what introduced and endeared respect for m/m comics from Japan for me. The art style of Yun Kouga has changed a bit over the years, nevertheless still stands out from the crowd. And Earthian with a taboo love between androgynous male angels remains my favourite of her work.

Michiru Kaiô and Haruka Tennô

Sailor Moon has become a multimedia sensation and is beloved around the world. Many kids and even adults of all sorts in the 90s will remember it in one form or another and cite it as an influence for pursuing careers in all sorts of creative fields. Along with countless fans recognizing or discovering something of themselves in the characters. There are several different characters for rep in the series. But particularly for me Michiru and Haruka were an opportunity in a very anti-LGBTQ+ climate (their relationship was even refashioned as being cousins when brought out in English for the first time) to nevertheless see such a loving, positive relationship.

Tomoyo Daidôji

Love is a theme the creative team CLAMP revisits and revisits and Cardcaptor Sakura is the magical girl comic series with a theme on all different forms. It is one of the first all ages titles from Japan that I will recommend to people. (Despite fyi containing a whopping four student-teacher relationships. Not the purpose of this post to go into right now though.) The best friend to Sakura, Tomoyo is one of my favourite characters. Always supportive, maybe a bit alarming popping out of bushes or other spots with her camera at the ready to catch either Sakura’s everyday life or battles, and possessing boundless fashion sense. (Btw, there are other characters in the series that are or could be interpreted as examples for my list as well. Sakura among them.)

  Isabella Yamamoto

Paradise Kiss by Ai Yazawa, a sequel of sorts to one of the huge girls’ comics titles of the 1990s Gokinjo Monogatari, introduced a group of teenagers on the verge of graduating, some with an idea of what to do with their lives and others questioning the path they’ve so far taken. Isabella from an affluent background but, who struggled for acceptance from her family or nearly anyone until she was gifted a handmade dress by her childhood friend George (who is Bi btw), studies pattern drafting at the same art school as Gokinjo Monogatari. The most mature of the main cast, refined, always listening and offering a cup of tea, she achieves her dream career and self-actualization in fashion. Since I have a degree in fashion design, I have to agree that clothes are so much more than just something we wear.

#lgbtq characters #comics #catwoman #wonder woman #poison ivy #taku #venomm #juli bauernfeind #john constantine #stormer #kimber benton #ash lynx #eiji okumura #chihaya #kagetsuya #michiru kaiô #haruka tennô #tomoyo daidôji #isabella yamamoto

[fyrapartnersearch]

Let's Save the World

Greetings from Earth! First time poster to this blog and stoked to meet some new partners. My name is Chris and I’m a male nurse (Yo, you’re going to get some medically accurate roleplay) in his late twenties. I have a lovely wife and two stupidly handsome animals (Pictures of the animals available on request) but manage to maintain a pretty active roleplay life due to the fact that I work nights. The Basics: I tell everyone that I’m a professional. I try to reply 1-3 times a week and the length of posts depends on amount of characters in play. If I’m going to take longer, I always try to let you know. I’m willing to write male and female characters and focus on M/F as the male and F/F. M/M just isn’t my thing, sorry y'all. My limits include pedophilia, rape, and animal abuse. Anything else can be discussed. I prefer e-mail for writing ([email protected]) but have Discord for plotting (NurseBatman#3674). If we get along really well, you can convince me into discord roleplay. The text limit just drives me nuts. I do use faceclaims pretty aggressively. Is there anything else? Central time zone?

Onto the roleplay stuff. I’ll start with originals and then dive into fandoms. I put extra *s by the lines that I will literally lose my mind if you approach me about. Searching hard! -The Social Media Age****** A m/f line that I’ve given a little thought to, looking for someone to write a young woman that is pretty much making her living being an instagram model/fitness person, etc. I think the proper term is *Influencer*. Meets and starts dating a successful guy with no presence online, the two falling for each other but at odds over their differing attitudes towards the world. -This American Life Something set in the 1970s, focusing on a roadtrip. A group of teenagers leave their small town behind to head out west. I love this time period. Can be supernatural, supernatural lite (think Twin Peaks weirdness) or totally natural. -Stranger Things inspired A group of four to six friends enjoy their last summer together in a remote town as strangeness begins to unfurl. I’d be willing to set this in the present but think it would be way more fun in the 70s or 80s. I have an idea for one of the kids having lost a sibling in a strange way when they were young and possibly some sort of cult in town.

Fandoms!

-Star Wars**

I'd really love to write Obi-Wan during the interim between the prequels and the OG trilogy. Hit me with some sort of love interest that he can go off and be adventuring with while Luke is super young.

-Preacher Seriously. Love this show, love this comic. Would happily write Jesse or Cassidy against Tulip. Just definitely looking for a Tulip

-Harry Potterverse

I'd love to write a pair of aurors, something original. I'm think, basically, magic buddy cop thrillride? That's literally all my brain has and it sounds awesome.

-The Boys Would love to write Hughie against Starlight! Currently working my way through the season that just dropped. -Marvel -I will love you forever if you write an Elektra against my Daredevil. They are toxic and in love and I love it. Whether it be the comics or the Netflix series, I don’t care. Someone please write me an Elektra. Netflix did a good job of portraying this one -Alternatively, I’d also be happy to write against a Black Widow, either with Daredevil. They were a mainstay OTP in the comics in the 90s and I’d love to write against Scarlet’s Black Widow. -Has anyone seen the trailer for the neverendingly delayed New Mutants movie? I would love to write something based on that horror aspect of the mutant universe.* -I’d love to write an older MCU Peter Parker (like college) running across a MCU version of Black Cat. Or just a Spiderman roleplay in general. I’ve always wanted to write Peter but have never gotten the chance! I have a ton of ideas for this, plus faceclaims for a few of the villains. Would also be willing to play him against Zendaya’s MJ, Spidergwen, or Silk (Deepcut)**************************** (I so badly want to write Peter) -One of the pairings that was done for a time in the comics was Star Lord against Kitty Pryde and it was actually a lot of fun. If anyone would want to do a MCU version of this, I would so *DOWN* to play Quill, Xmen hijinks a plenty in space -If you write Jessica Jones, I’d be willing to write almost anyone against her (NOT KILGRAVE). Just let me know. I’d be super down to write Luke Cage or maybe Matt Murdock. I do a mean John Constantine, which, let’s face it, is a cross company illustration of the two most terrible people together -Hawkguys! I would love to either write Clint against Kate Bishop (This would be a slightly skewed MCU vibe) or Kate against America Chavez. I would really love to do either of these lines. Or a poly version if someone is willing! -I’d love to write Logan as an active member of the MCU Avengers, possibly as a partner in crime/wetworks/murder with Black Widow. Those two could cause some mayhem. -Honestly, any X-men relationship could be sold to me. Just try it. I would love to find a Kitty for Piotr, a Rogue for Remy, or almost anyone for Kurt.

-DC I’d love to write Batman against Catwoman, please. Or John Constantine against literally almost anyone

-Hannibal I’ve been dying to do a sort of season 4 for a while now, focused on Clarice Starlings interaction with Will Graham and later Hannibal Lecter. Just need to find someone willing to create an original style Clarice. -Resident Evil I’d like to write Leon against Claire Redfield or Jill Valentine in an original outbreak or a new one. I know this is an old school fandom but I’m a diehard fan. -Star Trek Okay, so first up, I am not the most well versed Trekkie in the world. Never watched any of the TV shows but am a massive fan of the trio of rebooted films and would love to give Kirk or Bones a try against Uhura, Dr. Eve, or maybe a female Vulcan OC? Hit me with ideas! -The Matrix Another obscure fandom. Maybe just an original crew, set during the movies, after, or an AU where they’re the only survivors of Zion? Im not sure but I could plot something out!

-Uncharted I’d love to write Chloe Frazier against Nadine Ross, continuing their adventures. I’m pretty wide open on what we can do with this one. RANDOM CRACK SHIPS! Caught in a Web: I would love to write an iteration (Daniel Craig or an original) of James Bond/007 against a non superhero version of Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow. Spy vs spy shenanigans as two people working for different governments. Totally impossibly but putting it just in case: Did anyone see all that Wonder Woman/Lara Croft art that was floating around the internet earlier this year? I would love to dive into that. I’d prefer to write Lara but I’m definitely not picky. If you made it this far, you’re a hero and I owe you a beer. Hope to hear from some great writers! Let’s create something *EPIC*

#oc rp #multiple paragraph #long term #email #marvel rp #avengers rp #submission

[tzigone]

Favorite characterization of Dick Grayson

What's your favorite era or writer for Dick Grayson?  What characterizations do you like or dislike?

Here are my opinions.  I may ramble a bit. Sorry about that. 

You can skip this paragraph if you don't care how I ended up here and which comics I’ve read  - it's not particularly important, I just wanted to share.  First, while previously having seen on-screen versions of Dick Grayson, and read a bit of DickBabs fanfic (Batman: TAS sold me on them before the show went directions I loathe), I never actually read any issues of DC until 2015ish.  Had been a Marvel girl because they didn't do reboots, but then they destroyed Peter Parker's marriage and rebooted the universe, so I abandoned comics for a while.  But then I saw some reruns of Young Justice cartoon.  So I read some fic.  Many fics incorporated comic characters.  There I discovered Spoiler, who I really liked the idea of as Spoiler (someone who works against Batman's wishes and doesn't obey his orders and refused to back down, but isn’t a killer).  So I read the Robin series for the first 100+ issues (quitting when I knew War Games was near because the storyline sounded bad).  But that made me decide to read the Nightwing comic that stared in that era.  Really liked that, and really liked Dick Grayson (on-screen portrayals had already lead me to favor him).  Then Birds of Prey, Dixon-era, too.  Then, because I liked Dick, the Original and New Teen Titans. Original was too Silver Age for me, but really enjoyed 1980-1986ish New Teen Titans (thought it went downhill after that, and abandoned when I reached 1990 issues).  Also read assorted Golden, Silver, and Bronze Age comics.  So I have relatively broad, but very shallow knowledge of most Bat-eras, with more in-depth knowledge of the '90s and much less of post-2000 (mostly fic, which isn't always representative of the comic).

While I have opinions on various Bat and non-Bat characters and storylines, I'm starting with Dick here. He was my favorite. It's so dependent on writing (as is ever character), and right now he’s Ric, and that is something I’m not interested in. 

While I absolutely like aspects from other eras, and I dislike some aspects from these eras, my favorite time periods for Dick are probably 1980-1986ish and 1996-2000.  There’s some good 70s stuff and I like certain dynamics of him as guardian/mentor to Damian (and some stuff with other family), but as whole, these two eras in his titles (Teen Titans and Nightwing) are my favorites.  For his characterization as stand-alone (rather than his relationships with other characters).

Golden and silver age Dick merit a bit less discussion. Characters weren’t as distinct from each other back then.  Nor, really, as consistent.  But Dick was sometimes regarded as quite a mature young man in the golden age.  Responsible, good grades, intelligent, etc.  But so was Speedy - like I said, not much distinction.  Despite some impressions, in the stories I read I did not notice Robin to make lots of puns or be unusually cheery and smiley.

Come to the mid-60s and Dick was so much a teenager. I mean the original Teen Titans fairly scream with it early on (so much slang, really folks). One writer I didn’t like had him behave like an idiot (I’m not the only one who thought so, judging by the letters pages, though opinions were split).  Really, though, in the early original Teen Titans it felt like writer(s) were trying to push the “teen” thing too much, and they sometimes came off like caricatures.  But it was a time in comics when stories and characterizations were shifting and there were, IMO, both failures and successes in trying to embrace new and different.

The ‘70s were okay. Some bits I liked, and some I didn‘t. Dick is usually responsible in Detective Comics stories. He did a little bit of playing the play-boy (with Silver), which isn’t my speed, since I like the idea that Dick, unlike Bruce, doesn’t put on a facade in day-to-day life.  Had a few girlfriends - very normal and not either stunningly celibate or shockingly promiscuous. Though the entire 70s was one year of college for Dick.

I am not at all fond of the "goofy" Dick that seems to have popped up fairly often in the past 20 years.  They often seemed to have seriously dampened his brainpower and detective skills (because Tim is the smart one and the detective and for some reason they can’t both be that).  I’m not a fan of separate out all Batman’s skills and assigning one to each Robin. It makes the Robins all less than Batman and inferior to him and sets that they will never be his equals and that I do not agree with. Now this is by no means a *consistent* thing, but it does happen, and it does irritate me.  I don’t like seeing characters diminished.

I really love old-school Dick.  Back when he was young (late '70s to mid '80s), they showed us how mature he was (probably to contrast his youth and make him a viable peer to older heroes).  Both Wally and Roy commented on it. Roy said how he always felt so much younger (issue where he got custody of Lian).  Wally though Dick was always on top of things (Kory and Donna knew better).  Heck, Terry's (Donna's ex) bachelor party was another fine example how much more of an adult he was than some men twice his age.  He was pretty cerebral, a fantastic detective, a good fighter, etc.  He could hang out and have fun, too, of course. He wasn't a stick-in-the-mud.  He was too closed off and unwilling to talk sometimes (moreso with his team, and perhaps because he thought he needed to project confidence as a leader?).  He was, in a reverse, quite willing to talk about other people's emotional issues.   Sometimes as a friend, and sometimes as a leader.  He behaved most immaturely when dealing with Batman, particularly as their relationship became more difficult - there were times when they brought out the worst in each other. Though it wasn't steady, of course.

We really got to see Dick as a leader in this era. Someone people respected and looked up to.  Not that his team always agreed with him or that he was always right, but that but that he was a person that people did have trust in. And that he usually did a good job of deserving it.  It’s not just other teenagers, though, but the older heroes respect him as well.  It’s also the first time we a real, substantive romance - with Kory.  Saw where he floundered and how he loved, and such.  Which I thought worked well until it reached a point where I thought it needed to end, and it didn’t (or rather it did end, but didn’t stay ended).  Readers who like the ship, though, will likely have a different perspective, if they are like me (I just blame the writing when this sort of thing happens with ships I prefer).

Batman: Year Three - not the best story.  I don't remember most of it, to be honest.  But one thing I really liked was the highlighted difference between Bruce and Dick.  It hits that Dick is more emotionally healthy than Bruce. That Dick had the emotional support Bruce lacked as a child (I don't think continuity had yet settled on the idea of Alfred as a father-figure to Bruce).  That could segue me into changes in Bruce's backstory and characterization, but I'll refrain.  I will say that I preferred Dick with the nice-nuns orphanage to Dick-in-juvenile-facility (though I really, really like Dixon's run on Nightwing).  It makes Bruce less of a "rescuer" of Dick, which I prefer. I do not like the idea that Dick was doomed to end up dead on street (or a criminal) if not for Bruce.  Though I admit to preferring old-school Dick-goes-directly-to-Bruce's-home, no matter how unrealistic.  I dislike the entire Talon thing even more. I hate the back-projecting of more angst and more terrible things, like his parents being murdered wasn't bad enough.

Now we come to Nightwing series. I  really liked Dixon's run.  I'm a DickBabs fan, so seeing them get together was great.  I did read he wanted Dick/Donna, and I'm glad that didn't happen.  Partially because I'm a DickBabs fan, but also because I really, really liked the platonic friendship between Dick and Donna during the New Titans.  And I liked that it was platonic and that a friendship - rather than romance - could be so very important.  I don't think friendships get near the credit they should as important relationships in fiction, and so often fans want them to be romantic.  And the older I get, the more I value good fictional friendships and sibling relationships and so on.  For the record, I also really liked the Vic/Gar friendship. And I still tend to think of Donna, rather than Wally as Dick's BFF. Though he has many friends.

Anyway, I really liked seeing Dick working on his own and having his own city.   He was finding his own path and his rogues were being developed. I liked the idea of him as a cop, and I enjoyed Amy. I liked a lot of his banter with Barbara. But not just the banter, the serious stuff. Dick was looking for a real, long-term, serious relationship.  And Barbara was the hesitant one - for understandable reasons.   It's an everyday reminder of the things they used to do together.  Things he can do that she no longer can.  And she really wants to.

Of course, in this era, he was totally a big brother to Tim, a relationship he never really had with Jason (post-crisis).  Now, Bruce's character was becoming worse and worse in this era, so that provided some conflict for Dick.  Early in the series, Bruce wasn't that bad yet, and he and Dick had some nice bonding/reconciling moments.  And so some of the issues were just on Dick's side.  He has, since at least the Titans days, had a persistent need to prove himself Batman's equal.  To others and to Batman. I was kinda peeved with Donna when she said he'd never be as good. He thinks Bruce thinks less of him on occasions when Bruce doesn't. But Bruce still treats him like an underling a good portion of the time.  He expects Dick to take orders with no questions and doesn't give him full details of plans and doesn't listen to his opinions or consider Dick's needs.  Way too often, Bruce just puts his goal ahead of everyone else.  That's an issue with Bruce.  But Dick feels like it's Bruce not seeing him as equal.  Which it is, IMO, but mostly in the sense that Bruce tends to put himself/his goal above all others in terms of importance (a problem that has only gotten worse with time).

I wasn't real fond back-projection/retconning of the Dick/Babs relationship over the years. Or her de-aging.  I like her at least 4 years older than Dick.  With no involvement when he was in highschool.  Flirtation when he was in college (1970s Batman family issues), sure, but nothing really happening until he's in Bludhaven and in his mid 20s and the 5-7 year age gap doesn't matter because they're both adults.  I much prefer her pre-crisis background with Batman to the post-crisis one, but that's a topic for my post on her.

Then the Devin Grayson era - I don't agree with all the positions of the author, but I do agree about Devin Grayson: http://theflyingwonder.tumblr.com/post/107703923021/you-made-me-curious-and-i-couldnt-resist-it-tell and I think way too many of her aspects stuck with the character.  Which I guess makes her a success, but doesn't work for me at all, because I don't like the character she describes at all and he is not Dick to me. I've read her interview on Dick Grayson and her perception of the character was just nothing like mine. She acts like he's not a thinker (even though got called too cerebral in the old days).  She acts like Dick either "fights or fucks" everyone he meets, and totally disregards so many other types of relationships. Now, the Mirage-rape had already happened (and was horribly handled), plus the Raven-mind-controllish thing (also didn't work for me), but Grayson made Dick the sleeps-around type.  That was specifically contradictory to earlier characterizations where Dick was the committed-relationship type - something he actually discussed with Roy at one point.  I liked Dick being a relationship-only guy, it was a big contrast with Bruce (particularly post-Crisis Bruce).  I don't like Dick being Batman-lite at all.  

Not Devin Grayson, but Nightwing Annual #2 - ghastly. So incredibly out of character for who Dick was back then.   Another not-my-review at http://theflyingwonder.tumblr.com/post/93534635531/can-you-explain-the-nightwing-annual-2-thing. Though I would go further in that it's  reason I don't like post-Kory’s-political-wedding Dick/Kory.  It felt like a lot of build up to "love isn't enough" and then he basically chunked his beliefs to stay with her, which makes the relationship a bad thing to me. Here's my less-well-worded thoughts when I read the wedding. http://tzigone.tumblr.com/post/170389768364/nightwing-and-starfire

So, Dick's life in Bludhaven was destroyed.  His life as independent hero was destroyed.  I enjoyed Dick with the Titans, but him in Gotham is a no-go to me.  Because he goes back to being an appendage of Bruce.  He's working in someone else's city, he's a subordinate (at least with Bruce is actually there).

I haven't read as much of the Dick/Damian relationship as I maybe should have.  While interested in their dynamic, I'm not keen on Dick's wider characterization.  I do not like lothario-Dick.  And I do not like Batman-lite Dick.  So I deeply disliked him taking Robin from Tim and giving it away without discussing it, just like Bruce did to him.   Yeah.  To top that off, I unlike many, did not like the first 12 issues of Red Robin, so there wasn't even pay-off.  And then later we'd get Dick faking his death and hurting his family for the sake of the mission (Batman's mission).  Too Batman-like. I do get incredibly frustrated with that no matter how badly he treats them, Bruce's "kids" keep coming back and following his orders.  I didn't like his non-masked storyline, in N52, either. Sadly, at least Barbara (who I don’t like being a student of Bruce’s), Dick, and Tim have all adopted some of Bruce’s worse traits in regards to secrets and manipulation at one point or another.

But my biggest thing is that Dick all to often (not always, but even once is too often) gets treated like a joke. He's the lovable brother, and that part is okay. But he's all cuddles and cartoons and Disney and most of his maturity is just gone.  This is heavy in fic, but it's present in the comics, too.  At 19 he was man, and now he's a man-child. Not when he's working, I mean, but in personal life.  Lex Luthor says he's not a big thinker and some people agree. And that is just totally wrong to me.  For me Dick, while far from perfect, is a person that has earned and has respect not only from his peers, but from the first-generation heroes.  And it just gets worse later.  Late Pre-Crisis they de-age him and he's 21 in N52 (when it starts anyway). And I hated his de-aging, and Barbara's.  It feels like they're being drug backwards and not allowed to grow up. Even though Barbara *started* grown up and Dick had pretty much been a man even during his endless year at Hudson.  I don't like the idea of Dick as someone people don't take seriously. Bart or Booster, maybe is someone villains don't take seriously, but should. But Dick, at least as he reaches his adult years, should be someone that people (villains and colleagues) do take seriously and respect.  Thought without the intimidation Batman has, at least with criminals.  I will say I do think it was done partially to keep Batman from getting too old to do the job, but I still don’t care for it.

Don’t get me started on Dick and what he thought was Bruce’s body and the Lazarus pit.

I thought the entire issue with Dick and Bruce after Bruce’s failed wedding was bad.  Dick tries to be the goofball. They try to redeem it at the end, but it falls flat because he was stupid enough to think it would help in the first place.

Some people seem to think it's the sweetest thing ever if Dick moves back to Gotham and lives in the manor and Bruce takes care of him, and that's just a no-go to me.  It's infantilizing. He's grown up and should be allowed to grow up.  I see a lot of infantilizing of Dick, Jason, Tim and Damian.  I get why it's done (to see Bruce the dad), but dislike it intensely.  It's demeaning to me. I like Bruce the dad, too. But he can be a dad to adult children and treat them like adults (well, the grown ones). And yes, like equals, but that it what I think the relationship between adult parents and children should be.  Though it’ll be a long time before Bruce gets to a point where he’ll consistently do that.

Side note: the comments on Dick's body get a little old.  I totally get that he's stunning.  I'm cool with Kory or Barbara or his current girlfriend enjoying his body or complimenting him on it.  But sometimes it seems like various characters (usually female) are discussing him like a piece of meat. Particularly frustrating when his hero colleagues do so.  I know a good bit of this comes with me binge-reading, making it seem more often than when issues are read a month apart.

#Richard Grayson #Nightwing #Batman #Bruce Wayne #Barbara Gordon #koriandr #koriand'r

[sebeth]

Titans: Episode One

Warning, Spoilers Ahead….

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 The Titans, the first original DC Universe Online content, debuts.

Nice stylized opening detailing the death of the Flying Graysons.  Poor Raven – she starts with a nice night at the circus and it ends in murder.

Raven is very standard horror movie in the first half of the episode.  I’m not familiar with New 52 Raven but I’m assuming this is similar to her modern appearances.  I wonder if we will ever see Arella or Azarath?  Trigon, even a more scaled-down version, is almost guaranteed.

Poor Raven’s mom.  Was she part of this conspiracy or just an innocent woman who adopted the wrong baby?  Did she enforce the religious praying because she knew the true origin of Raven or did she truly think that would save her daughter?

Dick doesn’t want a partner! He could have been nicer to poor Amy – where’s the Grayson charm?  Amy was a regular in the 90s/2000s Nightwing series.  

Bruce probably has been gassed by the Joker.

Interviews suggest that Dick and Bruce split due to Dick’s objections over Batman’s brutality as opposed to the standard “injured by the Joker” set-up.  Perhaps Dick felt that bat-branding was a bit too extreme.

Detroit, Michigan is an interesting choice.  It’s rarely used in the DC Universe – the main exception is when the JLA briefly operated out of the city.  This is one of the big differences between DC and Marvel – 98% of the heroes aren’t located in New York City.

Wow, Dick!  So violent and angry!  Did you forget that you are not post-death Jason?  Or fresh out of the League Damian?  People will make a lot of the violence in the gang scene but while Dick is known for being the “happy” Robin he can also be angry, violent, and broody.  He learned from the best in those departments!

Love Tim’s eternal influence on the Robin design! Full body outfit, R-shaped shurikens, and staff? Check, check, and check!

Dick goes retro with the record player.  His apartment/loft is rather bare bones with the exception of the Flying Graysons poster.

Love that Dick has a “thing for helping kids”.  Underneath the anger is a very kind-hearted man who will always have a soft spot for traumatized kids.

Starfire!  The Titan who received the most hate before the show even debuted.  Let’s be honest – Starfire’s comic book appearance was never going to translate well into live action – the height, the impossible body, the orange skin, and extremely long hair simply isn’t practical, add in the classic 80’s costume and it simply wasn’t going to happen.

As for the character itself…it seems as if the car crash has made Kori amnesiac so we are left with a blank slate for both Kori and the audience.  Why is Kori tracking down Raven?  Is it similar to the connection between the two ladies that was portrayed in the Titans: Earth One books?

Kori’s easy sexuality and willingness to use deadly force are definitely aspects of Starfire’s character.

Loved the total devastation Kori’s starbolts.  Now I understand why the Titans were all “No, Kori, no!” in early Titan issues.

I’m not loving the fur coat but I do like the purple outift.

Could the organization pursuing Raven be the Church of Blood?  The Church originated in Europe and Brother Blood has been obsessed with Raven at various times.

Dick makes nice with Amy. I wonder if the writers will head straight into the expected Dick – Kori romance or sidestep with a Dick-Amy relationship.  Please no dreaded triangle.  Pick one or the other.

The actress portraying Raven is very reminiscent of animated Raven in her physical appearance.  I like it.

Dick saves Raven!  Actually, Raven saves herself.  Rachel’s soul-self is extremely violent in this series.

The duo is heading to a safe place – in a Porsche!  It’s easy to see why Dick keeps the car hidden – it would be rather hard to explain that car on a cops’ salary.  It should be common knowledge that Dick is Bruce Wayne’s ward but Dick may have hidden that fact when he transferred to Detroit.  How long has Dick been in Detroit?  Robin hasn’t been seen in Gotham in the past year – so almost a year?

How badly did the man from earlier in the episode hurt his child?  It had to be severe for Dick to break his self-imposed Robin ban.

We end with Beast Boy in Covington, Ohio.  Gar uses his shape-changing abilities to steal video games.  He needs to learn there are stealthier animals than tigers. The scene was brief but cute.

We know the Doom Patrol will be in an upcoming episode.  Did Gar run away from the Doom Patrol?  If so, why? How many heroes have made public debuts in the Titans-verse?

Up next:  Hawk & Dove!

I enjoyed the episode. I love Dick, Raven needs many hugs, and Beast Boy was adorable.  Starfire didn’t fully click with me but her amnesia/blank slate status gives her a pass for a few more episodes.

#Titans #Dick Grayson #Robin #Raven #Rachel Roth #Starfire #Beast Boy #Garfield Logan

[judedeluca]

Legion of Super-Heroes In The 52 Multiverse

My idea of what the different Legion counterparts look like based on DC’s current 52 Multiverse, making assumptions based on Earths which already exist and the blank Earths I’ve created ideas for.

Earth-0: The Retroboot Legion, which is currently missing because the 31st Century has been cut off from the rest of the universe as if someone or something shielded it from Flashpoint and Dr. Manhattan’s assault. A version of Saturn Girl is in the 21st Century, but she is NOT from this Legion.

Earth-1: There is no Legion, because this Earth still doesn’t have a 31st Century. There seems to be something really wrong with this universe, because it shouldn’t be taking this long to finish developing.

Earth-2: The New 52 Legion, yet it’s still unclear if this Legion came into existence before or after the previous Earth-2 was destroyed during “World’s End.” However, a few hundred years prior a Legion-esque group called Infinity Inc. existed, and they were made up of the descendants of the Justice Society.

Earth-3: The Cartel of Super-Criminals, which no longer exists because Earth-3 was destroyed by the Anti-Monitor. For more info, see their Antimatter Universe version.

Earth-4: Has no Legion.

Earth-5: Has no Legion, but a version of Thunder exists.

Earth-6: Has no Legion, unless someone gets back to Stan Lee about a “Just Imagine... The Legion” comic.

Earth-7: The Essential Comics Universe version of Earth-8′s “Galactic Gladiators.” They were destroyed along with the rest of Earth-7 by the Gentry.

Earth-8: The Galactic Gladiators, an homage to Marvel’s Imperial Guard. Are currently dealing with the Firebird’s latest rebirth and are not on good terms with the G-Men.

Earth-9: Legion of Super-Heroes, which is not a group but the name of an online dating game but with superheroes. Since this is the Tangent Comics universe, the name’s been taken into a totally unexpected tangent.

Earth-10: A Legion made up completely of non-humanoid aliens, inspired by the efforts of an aged Overman attempting to redeem himself for the sins he performed under Adolf Hitler’s direction. The Legion fights to create a galactic utopia for all races, sexes, and religions.

Earth-11: The League of Super-Heroes, a version of the Legion featuring male versions of the lady Legionnaires, and female versions of the guy Legionnaires. Genderqueer and gender neutral members like Chameleon and Quislet retain their gender. ALL the guys have sexy outfits.

Earth-12: The DC Animated Universe version of the Legion.

Earth-13: The House of Gems, a Legion inspired from Gemworld in order to play up the connection between Amethyst and the White Witch.

Earth-14: The Legends of the Dead Earth Legion, led by Wildfire, which has been trying to reform the United Planets and is reaching out to the multitude of planets that have been separated for far too long.

Earth-15: Has no Legion because it was destroyed by Superboy-Prime in the 21st Century.

Earth-16: A sort of mash-up of the FYL Legion and the Reboot Legion since this is a world primarily based on 90s DC characters. Features the Reboot original Legionnaires as members of the SW6 Legion. Basically if the FYL Legion had been thought out in advanced and Mon-El was the inspiration from the beginning.

Earth-17: From the future of an Earth ravaged by Atomic War, this Legion is a blistering parody of space war films like Starship Troopers in its battle against the supposedly evil Spider Guild.

Earth-18: A Western Legion befitting a Western Earth. Based off that one pin-up from Legion #100.

Earth-19: A Jules Verne inspired Legion to match the Victorian/Edwardian aesthetic of this gaslight Earth.

Earth-20: Has no Legion.

Earth-21: A stylized Silver Age inspired Legion to match the New Frontier. If Darwyn Cooke drew a Legion pin-up, they live on this Earth.

Earth-22: The Kingdom Come Legion.

Earth-23: An afrofuturist Legion including the two daughters of President Superman, Supergirl Red and Supergirl Blue.

Earth-24: The Logjam of Super-Heroes, which spends more time trying to finish its role call than it does fight evil. Their greatest enemy is No-Brainiac 5. (See New Year’s Evil: Mr. Mxyzptlk)

Earth-25: A version of the Legion in what used to be the Wildstorm Universe, they were originally slaughtered by the bastard knockoff Authority, but the Worldstorm revived them. Given this Earth was ravaged during “Number of the Beast” and then lost its numbering when Dr. Manhattan stole most of its heroes and villains, it’s unknown if they’re still alive.

Earth-26: A Lotta Supa Animals, a bunch of cartoon animal versions of the Legion that exist in the sub-universe Earth-C. Includes Cosmic Colt, Saturn Snake, and Lightning Labrador.

Earth-27: In Universe-27A, there is the Legion led by Cosmic King, Saturn Queen, and Lightning Lord, and they are heroic individuals. In Universe-27B, there is the Vanguard of Tomorrow inspired by the many folktales and legends of Earth. In Universe 27C there is no Legion, but many Legionnaires whose parents were villains, are among those in the “Super Brats” community.

Earth-28: The Legion Academy is a school for superheroes. Every one of the teachers is one of the main Legionnaires, while the students are every hero and heroine who ever applied to the Legion in other continuities.

Earth-29: The Bizarro Legion.

Earth-30: The Legion of Luthors, a group made up of different descendants of Lex Luthor on other planets. They’ve tried going back in time to fight the communist leader, Superman, in the name of their great grandfather.

Earth-31: When piracy took to the stars after humanity gained a semblance of space travel following the tsunamis and earthquakes which ravaged Earth, there are now battles aboard great space ships and schooners. The Legionnaires are pirates of tomorrow, sailing on great vessels across the ocean of time.

Earth-32: An amalgamated Legion where the members equal at least two Legionnaires combined into one.

Earth-33: The Threeboot Legion on Earth-Prime.

Earth-34: Has no Legion.

Earth-35: The Eternity League, an awesome collection of famous teen figures from across time led by Infinity Girl. They include the likes of Tituba, Medusa, Arachne, Joan of Arc, Maid Marian, Atlanta, and Young John Henry. They’ve also invited Kid Supremo and his little sister, Supremia, to join. Their enemies include Johnny Reb and Supremia’s archfoe, Adolfina Hitler, from an alternotime where Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun had a daughter. An homage to Awesome Comics’ League of Infinity.

Earth-36: The Tomorrow Platoon, based off Big Bang Comics’ Legion homage the Pantheon of Heroes. Includes the likes of Optigirl, Jovian Kid, Comedy King, Warpette, Nega Boy, Sister Spectre, Clownfish, and Wintermoon.

Earth-37: Has no Legion.

Earth-38: The Superman & Batman: Generations Legion.

Earth-39: Has no Legion.

Earth-40: Has no Legion.

Earth-41: A Legion inspired from the cast of Robert Kirkman’s “Invincible,” led by Kid Incredible and his girlfriend Atomic Lass.

Earth-42: The Li’l Legion.

Earth-43: The Legion of Blood in a world where vampires became the dominant species and spread throughout the galaxy. The Legion has been split down its ranks by those who still drink blood and those who converted to caffeine, which led to the infamous “Coffee Crisis of Colu.”

Earth-44: The Periodic Legion, where there is at least one robotic Legionnaire for every element in the Periodic Table.

Earth-45: Legion Corps., a subsidiary of Overcorp.

Earth-46: Has no Legion.

Earth-47: The Love-In Legion of the psychedelic Earth-47 where the sixties never ended.

Earth-48: Has no Legion.

Earth-49: The League of Super-Teens, a comic read by Static in the Milestone. In this Meta Earth where all fictional characters in the DCU exist, they are the Legion analog. Yet despite coming from comics in the 1950s its odd they would feature a 90s frat boy and a mall rat type.

Earth-50: Currently home to the Justice Lords, this universe has a future split in half by two Legions, one that followed the Justice Lords’ example and one that rebelled against it.

Earth-51: Has no Legion.

#dc comics #multiversity #dc multiverse #earth-2 #justice league #justice society #crime syndicate #legion of super heroes #legion of superheroes #legion of super-heroes #legion #losh #legionnaires #kingdom come #new frontier #big bang comics #awesome comics #wildstorm comics #imperial guard #x-men #new 52 #flashpoint #retroboot #threeboot legion #threeboot #retroboot legion #johnsboot #johnsboot legion #fyl legion #reboot

[popculturebuffet]

The Legion of Super Heroes Reviews: The Legion of Substitute Heroes or Unsung Heroes

Happy 29th Birthday to Me! Yes it’s my birthday which means it’s time for reflection, griping about getting older and cake. And after an exausting weekend of grappling with a growth, i’m not going to go into anymore detail, I can finally, relax celebrate and get back to reviewing. And since i’ts my big day, that means I decided to dedicate today’s reviews to things that mean a hell of a lot to me and in one way or another shaped me as a person. A self indulgant way to reflect on my past, look to the future and show y’all some stuff I really like. So with that out of the way let’s talk about the Legion of Super Heroes.. and their oddball sub team I love dearly. 

This is also my first chance to talk about DC Comics on my blog. I’m honestly shocked that in the year i’ve been reviewing stuff regularly, the other half of the big two superhero comic publishers hasn’t come up. While I do tend to lean towards marvel, in part because Marvel is simply better at collecting their stuff and putting it on sale more often, it’s still the home of some of my faviorite properties: Justice League International, The Green Lanterns (Minus Hal), Teen Titans, Wonder Woman, Oracle, Batgirl (All of them, particularly Steph and Cass), Young Justice, Supergirl, my personal boy The Martian Manhunter.. the list dosen’t go on by much but it indeed goes on. I”ve been reading dc comics since I was in middle school, and I haven’t stopped since and don’t intend to stop now and maybe in the next year I can get around to tackling some of their awesome cartoons and comics more eh? But yeah among these titans, including the actual titans, are the Legion, one of the most unique and awesome super team concepts in my humble opinon and , even for DC, one of the teams with the most tangled up histories. 

First created in the Silver Age by writer Otto Binder and Artist Al Plastino, The Legion of Superheroes is DC”s first successful teen superhero team, predating the titans by a few years, though I dearly love both wildly diffrent teams. The Legion is defined by their high concept: A thousand years into the future, three super teens from diffrent worlds who happened to be on the same ship with billionare RJ Brande, saved Brande from some goons hired by his crooked buisness partner. 

And exposed him. Inspirired by their courage, heart and skill, Brande latter called the three together to form them into a super team, one inspiried by the legends of teen hero Superboy. 

No not Conner though it was nice to get to show off my poster of him. While he was part of the second continuities legion, we’ll get to that, he’s not the superboy we’re looking for. He is damn great though and it’s good to have you back bud. 

Not Jon either, though I do miss this kid’s pre-bendis version and he was the inspiration.. for another version of the legion. (SIGH). Try. AGAIN IMAGE SEARCH. 

...... 

No not the cool bad boy turned troubled good boy, not the child who was inexpciably aged up by that bald smeghead, and not the great idea turned into a editiorial mouthpiece. I”m talking about THIS superboy. 

This is where the name came from: From the silver age till crisis on infinite earths, Clark Kent was active as a kid in smallville, and thus was Superboy, superman when he was a boy. He dealt with similar stories just with Lana replacing Lois, and Luthor as a ginger teenager. And it was these deeds as a teen hero on his own, one of the first honestly, that inspiried the legion and brande and forged the team. 

And it was naturally a super boy story where they were first introduced as the legion’s founders went back to recruit Superboy after putting him through some trials, and were intended as just one of many silver age one off concepts.. but caught on with the readers so much they were brought back, and had their ranks expanded and eventually not only added supergirl, yes the one your thinking of this time, to their ranks, and yes sometimes she and superboy were in the same place at the same time, Clark willingly had founding member and telepath Saturn Girl put a mental block in his head for any info he’s not supposed to know yet so it’s cool . But yeah not only that but they eventually became their own feature in Adventure Comics, where Superboy’s stories were published, but overtook him in popularity with time.  Over time a number of distinct aspects were established: The roster eventually got as large as 20 plus legionarres, almost all from diffrent worlds, and they eventually set up bilaws. Some are silly and dated such as “Legionarres marrying means they retire” which was eventually done away with in the 70′s, but others were simple logic: each member must have a unique power, no using weapons and such which rather than be super power snobbery is so said tech dosen’t fail and the legion later fully allowed Karate Kid, a martial artist, to join, no killing.. just common sense stuff that adds to it. And one of those is the centerpiece to today’s story, which we’ll get to in a moment.  Obviously given they’ve been around since 1958, there is a LOT more to the Legion’s history I will dig into at a later date: The short version is that Crisis on Infinite Earths, Dc’s first big reboot, fucked the team up badly by retconning superboy out of existance and dc editorial made it worse by shooting down EVERY solution the team came up with to fix the issue. So eventually things got so messy they nuked the whole thing during the event Zero Hour and rebooted fresh with Mark Waid taking the helm and updating the concept for the 90′s and being a more lighthearted, if still not without weight, comic in the sea of 90′s edge. Waid would reboot the team again due to sagging sales, a far weaker reason this time, with a more rebllion slant, the original team would be reinstated, and then ended for a while before recently being rebooted by Brian Micheal Bendis... who sadly is long past his creative prime from books like Ultimate Spider-man and alias and is instead stewing in his own toilet dinner these days and thus it’s not pretty.. well okay art wise i’ts VERY pretty, it’s just story wise it sucks dirty ass in thunder storms. There was also an awesome cartoon that sadly lasted only two seasons that I will DEFINTELY be digging into, especially since unlike x-men evolution, it’s not you know 50 some episodes and me biting off way more than I can chew but a slim 26 that still has fans to this day. I”ll get into ALL OF THIS, some ohter time hopefullly and I mostly outlined it since some of you might be familiar with another version or “Sigh” the reboot and this helps clear things up.  So yeah with all that out of the way we’re going back to the silver age and the first story I ever read of hte team, how I met them with “The Legion of Substitute Heroes” and a later subs story I genuinely love. I first read this story in one dc’s old expensive archives collections I got from the library. Oh how I miss the library. Your probably wondering who the legion of susbstite heroes are.. but since the first story covers that we can jump right in after the break!

So we open with a teen in a parka uniform disembarking from a spaceship from another planet, which a passerby notes is just like the airplanes people used to ride from country to country. 

But we meet our hero, Polar Boy, whose in a winter themed outfit and has come to try out. This is the tradition I was saving for now: The Legion Tryouts. Like a club or sports team would, but I like it because it makes sense: The Legion NEEDS to be as big as it is because while their headquartered on earth, their mission scope is anywhere in the united planets which spans GALAXIES. They could be called on any time and need their full force or need to have severa l members on a smaller mission and frequently having members away on a mission was cleverly used to reduce the cast to whoever was needed for the story. 

So it only makes sense to frequently look for new membbers to help strengthen their ranks... but given their teens and are recurting teens they need to be careful and need a logical way to reduce crowd flow. I mean you saw how many people used to line up for american idol before that died a justified death, people will do anything to be famous and they need to weed out those whose powers and skill just aren’t up to snuff yet, or those who are just dicks as, unsuprisingly, several stories have been built on assholes who applied and were rejected turning evil and attacking.. even though the Legion wasn’t even paticuarlly harsh. They also are more than fair as applicants CAN try again or if they prove themselves in other ways can be let in, as Bouncing Boy, my favoirite legionarre, was intially rejected for his power of .. well...

Yeah.. on paper inflating like a ball and bouncing around is kind of silly. In practice he can ricochet off enemies, walls, and obstacles and is fairly durable in that state. It’s why I don’t really brook mocking the guys power: yes it’s goofy.. but say that again when he hands you his ass. It’s the same with matter eater lad who yes is an actual character: While being able to eat anything is gloriously goofy.. it means he can chew through ANY substance and digest ANYTHING. Hell in the cartoon episode intorducing the subs they used both of these guys to great efffect: Bouncing Boy, who in the cartoon had to try out multiple times in his backstory, encouraged the future subs while Matter Eater Lad got in by EATING A FUCKING BOMB. He also had shades which I dind’t know he was missing but now I do. My point is the process is fair and well thought out and leads to some really fun scenes. 

But yeah joining the legion is naturally Polar Boy’s dream, as he walks down the avenue of heroes, basically a series of statues honoring the legion and hopes all his hard work paid off. We then cut to the auditions, where he apparently waited all night. What I like about this story is that unusually for the silver age legion where it was mostly a sea of powers attached to a bunch of cardboard, really the dc silver age in a nutshell and why marvel broke out so much for having more dynamic and realistic characters, Polar Boy has more of a personality. It’s not MUCH but he’s a dedicated, hard working kid who just wants to join his heroes and seems really in awe of htem, a feeling we can all relate to. We’ve all had people we’ve looked up to, admired, and we’ve all had groups we wanted to join as kids, teens or what have you. And of course.. we all know what it’s like to be rejected by someone or something you badly wanted to be a part of.  And that’s what happens to poor polar boy, who comes from a world with an intense sun thus his people developed super cold powers.. but he can’t control them well so while their impressive, they also freeze the legion. HIs powers are good... but due to their strength and radius he’s also a liablility. They give him an consolation anti-gravity belt.. they had these before eventually compressing them into the much cooler flight rings.. which I still desperatly want one of. I have the flash’s costume ring and a green lantern corps ring, but still no legion ring. 

Naturally this devistates the poor boy and he wonders around dispondent till nightfall, convinced he’ll never be one of them. He soon meets Night Girl, a fellow reject with super strength given to her by her dad’s formula.. but only in darkness as she’s from a world without sunlight. She also faces a “hopeless future” but it’s then Polar Boy’s true strength reveals itself: he decides screw giving up on their dream and if they can’t be in the legion they’ll start their own Legion. 

Though not to compete but to serve as a subtistute, in case the legion is ever incapacitated. So Night Girl gathers the other rejects the next morning. Cleverly one of them, Chlorophyll Kid was seen with Night Girl herslef at the tryouts behind Polar Boy. We soon learn about them and each of their origins: Stone Boy can turn himself into an immobile stone statue, as his world has half a year long nights and thus his people hybernate, Fire Lad who can spit hot fire literally and set anything combustable on fire and Chlorphyll Kid who can make plants grow rapidly. Each were rejected for resonable powers: Stone Boys powers too static, Fire Lad’s is too dangerous and Chorlpyl Kids toos pecific. But upon seeing all of this Polar Boy says they STILL have fantastic powers and still can help people and the legion. 

Thus the Legion of Substittue Heroes is born. And I love them as much as the originals. As a bit of a misfit myself I relate to these guys: They have strange specific powers, got rejected by the big team.. while that trope is nothing new at the time it was unique and even now it’s a nice and inspiring message. Instead of giving up they form their OWN team to do what htey can anyway. They might not be the best like the legion but they can still help and still do what’s right even if not on their scale. It’s a great concept and really makes them endearing. Again I have a thing for the underdogs but I still really like these guys. It’s why it annoys me they got kind of spat on with time: While I love Keith Giffen and Paul Levitz run on the legion, and feel it’s the best of that contnuinty it’s not without fault and the two basically spent a full issue mocking the team and split polar boy off from them before making their own subs with only ONE of the originals. It just felt.. disrspectful. And so far no continuity has used them again until the recent bendis run, which has them announced for the Future Slate special. It took BENDIS, who dosen’t get how to use the team properly and is up his own ass, to bring them back in a new continuity and I find that obnoxious. The subs are a great concept and deserve to be honored as such and as such are one of my favorite superhero teams. 

But their careers don’t start well as they doubt themslves, except for Polar Boy who boisters them along, and constnatly just end up going to missions the legion already has covered and when the legion go to fight some robot ships, they refuse the subs help.. which is fair though, as Brainy puts it they can’t risk putting untrained volunteers in harms way. Their about to just quit, in a really sad moment.. when CK, because I can’t spell cholophill and hate having to use spell check notices some odd seeds spread about.. and when he grows one a horrifying tree man shows up. They struggle with it till the setting son finishes it’s job, meaning Night Girl is at full power and whollops it and the subs spend the night destroying the seeds.  They  find out the next day the seeds came from the same planet as the robot ships, meaning the ships are a distraction for whoevers doing this and since they can’t just call earth, as the full force of the legion is needed with the robots and all it’d do is cause a panic, it’s down to them. Night Girl however is scared.. and I like that. It shows that while their regaining their confidence.. it’s sitll risky. Their a bunch of barely trained fanboys, and girl, going up against an alien invasion, with it down to them. They CAN save the world but it’s alright to be entirely terrified when your thrust into it this fast. 

They make their way to the planet, having built a ship earlier and lie low, finding out what’s going on: The plant men are fully intellegent, and grow themselves..though how they know to attack and go to the bathrom and what not out of the seed I don’t know but I assume it’s a genetic thing or they might be some form of hive mind. point is the seed plan is to grow troops all over the world via rockets for an invasion, and it’s a brilliant concept for one too. Aliens who simply GROW the troops right into battle, born with the knowledge to do so, and right where they can ambush them. It’s down to our heroes and Stone Boy, whose been the most pesemistic, valiantly dives in to provide a distraction so they can destroy the factory and the seeds. Turns out he is useful as the most the treeple have is a space lead pipe.. yes really. I love the silver age. But they’ll bring ray guns soon, so Stone BOy knows it’s a suicide mission and now our heroes have a timer. But luckily.. our heroes are stronger than they think. Night Girl punches a way in till Night passes, while Polar Boy and Flame Lad use their powers in concert to make an opneing.. but with time running out Polar Boy finishes things by having CK grow all the seeds now they have acess.. thus exploding the planets population, destroying several cities from the number of bodies, and thu discourguing the treeple from trying again. Stone boy is able to flee with the rest of our heroes and the day is saved. 

The heroes opt not to tell the public, as to take away glory for the Legion. It’s a noble gesture.. they do DESERVE credit, but they choose not to take it, preferring to let the legion get theres for stil lsaving the world from the robots. They stand firm, now confident they may someday make it to the big leagues.And it’s this that really makes me love them: Thier not the strongest or best, but they try anyway for the reasons a hero should: to help people, and not for the glory. THey remain unsung heroes and are fine with that.  Eventually the Legion WOULD find out about them, but naturally instead of being dickheads about it, fully accepted them, even offering them some contests for membership, but that’s a story for another day. THey’d remain stalwart allies and valuable backup in crisis situations for years to come until the bollocks outlined above. But they’d never leave my heart and thanks to them.. the legion never left either. 

Final Thoughts:  While I do love the story for it’s personal signifigance to me, It’s stilll a really good story for the time. A bit stilted as was the style, but still good, well paced and with an endaring cast of underdogs who prove themselves in the end. It’s something diffrent from the usual clean cut ahead in life wasps these stories usually followed at the time. While the team’s still all white and all that, their outcasts and misfits who just want to help and have trouble beliving in themselves. Their a good standard to live up to.. and a good inspiration for me and my constnatly self hating self doutbing self. And I hope you enjoyed htem too.  If you’d like to comission your own review, just dm me. It’s 5 bucks for individual issues. Later days. 

#the legion of super heroes #the legion of substitute heroes #polar boy #fire lad #night girl #chorophyil kid #stone boy #silver age #comics #comics reviews #birthday

[aion-rsa]

The Real Ghostbusters: The Rise And Fall of The Coolest Cartoon Of the 1980s

https://ift.tt/3Aktlu4

The 1980s was a golden era for animation on TV. It was the decade of Thundercats, Inspector Gadget, Transformers, Ducktales, The Smurfs, He-Man and The Masters of the Universe, Care Bears, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Yet arguably the era’s greatest cartoon came in the form of The Real Ghostbusters. 

The show arrived at a time when animated spin-offs based on popular blockbuster movie properties were everywhere in the world of television with companies eager to translate box office gold into something palatable to younger audiences. It didn’t always quite go to plan, of course, as short-lived and ill-advised animated incarnations of everything from Rambo to The Karate Kid can attest. 

But The Real Ghostbusters was different, running for 140 episodes across seven seasons.

It was a little different from the film. For one thing, the title had to be tweaked due to a dispute with Filmation who were making an animated version of the 1970s series The Ghost Busters at the same time.

The Ghostbusters themselves looked a little different too: Egon Spengler inexplicably sported a blonde pompadour, Ray Stantz was a little tubbier (and ginger), Winston Zeddemore seemed younger, while Peter Venkman suddenly became very chiseled. They sounded slightly different too with Ernie Hudson the only member of the original cast to try out for a voice role on the show. The fact he ended up losing out to Arsenio Hall for the role is, well, awkward to say the least. 

The only other noticeable departures came in making Slimer, the glutinous green ghost from the first movie, a sidekick character and the presence of a synth-laden soundtrack by Tonya Townsend and Tyren Perry performing under the stage name Tahiti.

Cosmetic changes aside, however, this DIC Entertainment and Columbia Pictures television production retained much of what made the original movie so special with episodes blending intelligent and occasional slapstick comedy with effective supernatural scares and strikingly surreal imagery. 

A lot of that had to do with executive producers Joe Medjuck and Michael C. Gross. Both had served as executive producers on the original film (Gross is even credited with creating the iconic Ghostbusters logo), and both appeared eager to carry the ethos of the movie through to the cartoon.

“The most brilliant thing they did was to not change a thing from the movie,” The Real Ghostbusters writer Dennys McCoy tells Den of Geek. “When you mess with that formula, you inevitably fail. Ghostbusters has a very tight structure of four friends or five if you count Janine. You have to base everything out of their relationship, no matter what you do. To me, that’s what happened when they did Extreme Ghostbusters [the short-lived late 90s reboot of the series.] The Real Ghostbusters stuck to the tenets of the movie, and continued to tell that story” 

McCoy’s writing partner and wife, Pamela Hickey, also recalls how much importance was placed on authenticity right down to the series bible – a set of notes commonplace in writing of this kind which was established to ensure continuity. 

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“When you wrote for someone like Venkman, for example, he had to say things in a certain  way. That was the focus when we were working on it,” she says. “The rule with Slimer was to imagine him as a seven year old boy. That was how you wrote for him. They made him their pet and he’s domesticated now like a feral cat….You had to really track those characters. That faithfulness was crucial to its success.”

McCoy and Hickey recall the biggest compliment ever paid them by Medjuck and Gross was when they said they could pick up one of their scripts, remove all of the character names and still know exactly which Ghostbuster was saying what line.

“That was the challenge,” Hickey says. “But that was also how much we all loved these characters. They got stuck in your head.”

Hickey and McCoy have enjoyed a prolific writing partnership that includes over 50 different credits. It was their agent who first floated the idea of them writing for animation. As jobbing creatives at the time, the idea appealed because as Hickey puts it they “needed some money for an air conditioner and changing table for a baby.”

Their first script was for the 1980s series Heathcliff, a cartoon based on the comic strip of the same name which featured the legendary voice of Mel Blanc. McCoy recalls submitting a script that was “sight gag after sight gag.” It went over well and the pair quickly warmed to the idea of writing for animation. 

“The thing we found we loved about it was that we could direct the episodes in the script,” McCoy explains. “It gave us so much control. We could call the backgrounds, the sound effects, the camera angles, we could do all of that.” 

Fast forward a couple of years and, after seeing Ghostbusters at the movie theater, McCoy learned that an old acquaintance, J. Michael Straczynski, had just been hired as story editor for a cartoon series based on the film.

Straczynski would go on to create Babylon 5, wrote comics for Marvel and DC and penned scripts for Thor, Changeling, and World War Z and many more. He had been hired to join original writers Len Janson and Chuck Menville after ABC’s initial order of 13 episodes was suddenly bolstered by a further 65 which would be used for broadcast syndication.

The huge jump in demand for episodes ultimately required multiple writers on The Real Ghostbusters. While Straczynski, Janson, and Menville wrote many, they were joined by a host of talented writers from the world of sci-fi and animation past and present.

There was Michael Reaves, who would go on to earn acclaim for his work on Disney’s Gargoyles and Batman: The Animated Series and future Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine scribe Marc Scott Zicree. John Shirley, a fantasy and horror writer who penned the 1994 movie The Crow, contributed episodes as did David Gerrold, a writer on the original Star Trek series. 

Mark Edward Edens, who would go on to develop the iconic X-Men animated series, worked on the show, as did Richard Mueller, Kathryn Drennan, Steve Perry, and Linda Wolverton to name but a few. Wolverton would later make history as the first woman to write an animated feature with 1991’s Beauty and the Beast.

McCoy was working at Saban Productions as supervising producer on a series called Kidd Video when he learned Straczynski, who he had previously helped get a job writing for a magazine over at Time-Life publications, was doing The Real Ghostbusters. 

Calling Straczynski up, he asked if he and Hickey could pitch for the show. Looking back, McCoy says he later realized Straczynski was “doing me a favor” by saying yes and didn’t necessarily think anything would come of it. That was until he read the resulting script, which was one of the first to make Winston the main focus.

“We looked at the thing and realised the way we’re going to get a story out of this is to make it about Winston,” McCoy explains. 

“Nobody was going to pitch a Winston story. They were all going to pitch stuff around Venkman,” Hickey adds.”But we remembered that amazing scene in the film where Ernie Hudson and Dan Aykroyd are driving across the Brooklyn Bridge.”

The scene, in which Winston talks about the Bible and theorizes that the recent spate of spiritual activity could be linked to the potential onset of Judgement Day, proved to be a major inspiration.

“Winston cracks the case right there,” Hickey says. “We saw that and right away there was more to him than meets the eye. He’s a very literate guy.”

The result was “Boo-Dunit,” an inventive episode that saw Winston take center stage after the Ghostbusters are called out to the estate of recently deceased Agatha Grizzly where occupants are being terrorized by the ghosts of several characters from her final unfinished novel. 

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“We made Winston a big fan of murder mysteries. So there was then this whole thing where he had to solve this mystery involving ghosts in order to stop people getting killed in the real world,” McCoy explains. 

Straczynski loved the script and Hickey and McCoy went on to produce nine more during the show’s run, putting them among the most prolific writers on the series. 

“Every time they wanted a weird story, they’d come to us,” McCoy says. “It was a very interesting environment because the syndicated shows were run by [Straczynski] where we had a lot of freedom. But the episodes for ABC, which were run by Len [Jensen] and Chuck [Manville] were under network protocols which were very strict.”

It was the syndicated episodes that gave the team more freedom.

“On the syndicated episodes of The Real Ghostbusters it was no holds barred,” McCoy says. “You could get away with a lot more as long as you stayed faithful to the characters. The sky was the limit.”

This environment gave birth to arguably the most famous of the couple’s episodes and one that ranks among the very best from The Real Ghostbusters’ run: “The Devil to Pay.” It sees the gang sign up to take part in a gameshow, with the prize of a trip to Tahiti up for grabs. However, they soon discover it’s being run by the Devil himself and if they lose he gets to claim their eternal souls as his prize.

“It started with us asking ‘What would they do if they were on a game show with the Devil?’ And just went from there,” Hickey says. “We figured the Ghostbusters might want to go on a vacation so would sign up for this game show.. To be honest a lot of the writing was us just sitting there for a couple of days trying to crack each other up. ‘What kind of game would you play with the Devil?’ Dennys would ask and I would be like Wheel of Fortune.’”

The end of the episode sees the Ghostbusters strapped to a giant spinning wheel where they must confess a past misdeed to escape the Devil’s clutches.McCoy ranks it as his personal favorite. Not everyone was quite so enamored with them summoning Satan for a kids TV show though.

“What’s scary about it is that we got it broadcast,” McCoy laughs. “Oh my God, we got so much shit. We had every evangelical right wing religious nut in the world complaining about it. Even my own brother, who was born again, gave me shit about it.”

Not that they were the only writers to push the envelope when it came to blending laughter and scares on a kids show. Straczynski delivered some of the most striking episodes in this regard, including “Knock Knock” in which subway workers unwittingly unleash evil creatures from hell into the underground system and “The Thing in Mrs. Faversham’s Attic” a spookfest about an old lady with spirits lurking in the roof of her home.

Others like the Reaves-penned “The Boogieman Cometh” where Egon is forced to confront his own very real fear of the bogeyman and the Brennan-written effort “Night Game” where the gang must deal with a haunting at the New York Jaguars’ baseball stadium are regularly cited among the best and most unsettling.

Hickey and McCoy took inspiration from a variety of sources both contemporary and otherwise when it came to coming up with ideas.

“I have a background in folklore, so we were also looking into stuff like that we could use,” McCoy says, recalling the episode “Banshee Bake A Cherry Pie” in which an Irish chart-topping singer is revealed to be a Banshee intent on wreaking havoc on the world.

Elsewhere, episodes like “The Long, Long, Long etc. Goodbye” served as an ode of sorts to Philip Marlowe stories –  not something you would see in many children’s cartoons -while “Dont Forget The Motor City” saw the guys head to Detroit to deal with some pesky gremlins, where they met a character who looked a lot like Aretha Franklin, even if she was rather carefully referred to as “the Queen of Soul.”

Not that that quite went to plan. “We were supposed to avoid saying Aretha Franklin,” Hickey recalls. “But at the end of the episode, I don’t know how it happened, they had the Ghostbusters singing Respect. I don’t know how they got away with it because it was the whole R-E-S-P-E-C-T.”

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McCoy says the fact that the series was animated in South Korea to save money also led to similarly bizarre moments, where hair color would change or continuity would be slightly off.

“I remember this one scene where the Ghostbusters were supposed to be eating a pizza,” McCoy says. “But pizza wasn’t really a big thing in South Korea at the time, so they ended up drawing it looking like a seven layer cake. It was deep. Anyway, they didn’t what to pay to redo it so the show just ended up having the weirdest deep dish pizza you’ve ever seen in your life.”

But while the cartoon may have lacked the polish of the film, it did end up having some influence on the franchise and plans for the sequel.

“If you notice in Ghostbusters II, they have all these little incidental scenes where Slimer appears,” McCoy says. “Well, the thing is they did the entire movie without Slimer. It was only when Gross and Medjuck told them that was the most popular character in the cartoon that they put him in.”

The influence worked both ways though, as Hickey explains.

“We knew that Bill Murray watched the show with his kid, because he called him up and Ivan Reitman and said ‘What’s Garfield doing Venkman’s voice for?’”

Lorenzo Music, who also voiced the character of Garfield on the animated series, played Peter in the early series. Oddly enough, Murray voiced Garfield in two big screen outings made after he passed away.

In the case of The Real Ghostbusters, however, for whatever reason Music vacated the role of Venkman from the third season onwards with comedian Dave Coullier taking his place.

The crossover almost manifested itself in one other way too.

“So we had a story we wanted to do and we knew it was good,” McCoy says. “We pitched it to Straczynski for the syndicated shows. He loved it but when we sent the script through it was rejected. So we went to Gross and Medjuck for the network. Again, they loved it. We sent the script in and it was rejected.”

It was only when they went to see Ghostbusters II that the truth emerged. “The crux of our story had been that the Statue of Liberty comes to life. So when we saw the film it suddenly made sense.” 

Hickey believes The Real Ghostbusters had the potential to run much longer as a series – but it didn’t. Instead, the network, ABC, made the cardinal sin of tinkering a little too much with the original formula.

Eager to improve ratings for its Saturday Morning lineup of shows, they drafted in a consultancy firm called Q5 who from the third season onwards began making changes that altered the makeup of the show entirely.

There was less satire and less of the subtle, sophisticated verbal humor that had made the cartoon such a fine sparring partner for the film. 

Janine’s character was rewritten, moving away from the sharp-edged wise-cracker who had more in common with Annie Potts’ version of Janine from the film, and becoming simplified and, to their way of thinking, warmer and more appealing to young female viewers. It could have been even worse with the consultants suggesting at one point that Ray Stantz be written out entirely. 

The likes of Strazynski and Reaves objected to the changes with the former stating that the changes were “diminishing” the show while the latter lamented that the show was “not as much fun” as it used to be.  

“Janine was a strong, vibrant character. They wanted her to be more feminine, more maternal, more nurturing, like every other female on television,” Straczynski told the LA Times. “I think they [the consultants] reinforce stereotypes–sexist and racist. I think they are not helping television, they are diminishing it…I sat there in dumbstruck shock at what they were saying…

“We [Straczynski and Reaves] just looked at each other and started laughing. We couldn’t deal with it anymore; it had gone so far into the realm of the absurd.”

McCoy and Hickey shared much of the same criticism of the changes, highlighting one other noticeable shift in focus that hindered proceedings.

“They brought in The Junior Ghostbusters and changed things,” McCoy says. 

A team of three children drafted in to help out the team on several episodes, while McCoy and Hickey were able to integrate the characters, the new additions coupled with a move, later in the series’ run, to make the increasingly popular Slimer the main focus, hindered the show.

“Sometimes people try to refresh things that don’t need to be refreshed,” Hickey says. “So you get things like all of a sudden the network would add something like the junior Ghostbusters. We made those work. It was cute.”

“There was always this idea that children have to have somebody their own age in their cartoons,” McCoy notes. “But how do you explain watching Bugs Bunny? He was obviously a 25-year-old guy.”

“It’s a fallacy because if you look at the most successful cartoon in the world today and it’s something like One Piece where there are no children and yet everyone watches it,” Hickey says. ”Kids appreciate a good story as much as anybody, and they’re they don’t care if it comes out of an adult space or a kid’s one.”

Had the show continued, then they would have loved to explore other areas of the Ghostbusters universe.

“We always wanted to do a spin off with Louis and Jeanine,” McCoy says. “They’re Ghostbusters, but they’re not Ghostbusters. It would be interesting to have them as a team.”

Having recently celebrated 50 years working together – Hickey and McCoy first met in a creative writing class in high school – the pair are showing no signs of slowing down writing multiple scripts during lockdown, including one feature. 

“Pam and I are so in sync,” McCoy says. “We know each other so well,” Hickey agrees. “It’s been long enough that we know whether what the other person is right almost immediately when they start typing.” 

Specialist writers in their field, the duo describe how a few years back they developed an entire 52-episode series called Pander and Rooster in the space of a five-day trip to Beijing. They say it’s an exciting time for animation, which has evolved a lot since the days of The Real Ghostbusters.

“The most interesting animation being done right now is in Europe and Asia,” McCoy says.  

“Anime is thriving,” Hickey agrees. “Because there is that element of a continuing storyline to a lot of these shows. It’s no longer about doing episodic TV, it’s about creating something that is like a very long movie.” 

The pair have high hopes for the new Ghostbusters: Afterlife movie too.“It’s a Ghostbusters movie that pays homage and uses what they have done before,” Hickey says. “No gimmicks.” 

Should the film prove a hit, then they would be against firing up some more animated proton packs for a new set of cartoon adventure. “If they came to us and said ‘Can you do an animated series?’ Sure, we would probably say yes,” McCoy says. “We could do that.” 

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The days of animated spinoffs of big screen properties may be long gone, but we’ll hold out a little hope for The Real Ghostbusters: Afterlife.

The post The Real Ghostbusters: The Rise And Fall of The Coolest Cartoon Of the 1980s appeared first on Den of Geek.

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