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maxwell-grant · 1 year

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Soooooooooooooo, Lavender Jack Season 3, and overall thoughts on the series proper?

Anonymous asked: So... end of Lavender Jack... what did you think of it and more generally of the season 3 ?

(spoilers)

Gonna do this by bullet points to cover Season 3 specifically, because if you follow me I really do not have to tell you that Lavender Jack is an all-timer comic that fulfills everything it set out to do and then so much more and that it's one of my favorite things ever and an endless source of joy and inspiration to me, and that I am being perfectly normal right now about the fact that it's ended for good. I think Season 3 is as much of a seismic jump in quality from Season 2 as Season 2 was to Season 1, and I was singing this thing’s praises to high heaven off Season 1 alone.

So here goes:

Of all characters that I expected to come back I actually did not think Lord Hawthorne would be one of them, I really did think he was gone completely. Instead, he jumped from Tarzan to Frankenstein-Bane to achieve his final form as Lavender Jack’s twisted opposite and the ultimate brick wall for Mimley to crash against, the fighter that Mimley cannot defeat but needs to try anyway, and all of this is framed as an unspeakable violation of what little personhood he even had left by church, state and capitalism combined, a physical embodiment of institutional violence that co-opts heroic imagery and nobility and turns lonely and broken men into robotic instruments of slaughter.

Hawthorne is the story’s Ultimate Monster once again, more terrifying and violent and destructive than ever, and he once again he winds up being one of it’s biggest victims too. From one of my favorite takes on Tarzan, he became one of my favorite takes on Frankenstein’s Monster, which is a MUCH higher competition.

I truly adored that he was allowed a redemptive finale, and that the bulk of his and Mimley’s end conflict hinged not on Mimley being finally able to defeat him, but Mimley’s attempts to save him, to make up to him for his death, to be the only man in all of existence who looked at this horrible wild man with kindness and the insistence that someone should try to save him, finally reaching out to him in some form, and that leading to Hawthorne finally, at long last, using all of his potential for something more than just “another laborious climb to a locked-room murder” at the orders of someone else.

I loved that his finale was him adorned with that classic Frankenstein imagery of the lonely Creature in a cloak atop the alps, but here, the sun shines warmly in the background as Hawthorne at last is given a moment of peace. I’m gonna be thinking about Hawthorne quite a while.

Worst Face 2022

I KNEW IT I KNEW THAT THE BLACK NOTE WAS ALIVE SOMEHOW, I was very glad to have him come back for the finale and especially as an ally, he’s such a delightfully weird creature

“I took many other names in the course of my duties...and many more during my tutelage under the Five-Shadowed Man” YesHaHaYesSicko.png

I was definitely not expecting Cragen to make out of this alive but, a second death would have been reduntant. His final fate is one I find incredibly interesting, delightfully twisted in a way that only fits him too well. The bulk of his arc this season was inspired by him escaping from death only to realize that all of his efforts as a masked villain did nothing but embolden his father’s tyranny and the growing rot within Gallery he strove so hard to destroy, and so he assisted his once mortal enemies in finishing off said threat once for all and, given another chance at life and a final mask to put on, he will be using said chance to effect lasting political change as Gallery’s mayor, not as himself but pretending to be the monstrous tyrant he threw his life away to destroy.

I find it such an interesting note to leave out the character on, a supervillain vigilante realizing that all of his incredible talents and efforts put into masked terrorism only ever emboldened the systems he wished to destroy, finding out his explosive revolutionary anarchy only filled in craters and vacuums to be filled and exploited by fascist war dogs and capitalist puppetmasters, and in response he does the one thing you never expect supervillain vigilantes to do: He changes, he makes amends with the heroes, and he reshapes himself to affect change through the “boring” systemic route, putting his supervillain persona behind him to prove that he’s actually serious about his desire for political change.

It’s a change that you just wouldn’t see in a long-form superhero comic book that would inevitably require the character to be brought back again, but it being placed here at the end of the story means The Black Note gets to actually put his money where his mouth is and do what none of the Magnetos and Ra’s al Ghuls and Doctors Doom can do without that being inevitably averted.

I dearly, dearly adored all the additions to the supporting cast and they are a major factor why I’ve adored this season so much, easily the saddest thing about Lavender Jack ending is that I would have liked to see all of these characters and more show up more often. Sister Rex was a delightfully excessive cartoon with some really wonderful expressions, I loved seeing how the Princess of Pilaf concept set up way back in Season 1 played out. I really liked Uncle Salazar and his chapters, loved his dynamic with Ducky and what an excellent wild card he turned out to be in the finale. And GOD the Captain Berrada chapters, I could have read those forever, truly wonderful.

You can’t just make up all these interesting and wonderful new characters and make this world so much more vibrant and lively when we’re hitting the home stretch of never seeing them again, that shouldn’t be legal.

Johnny Summer is the coolest character and I really wish he’d appeared more, the chapters he shared with Mimley were some of my favorites and I was rooting for them so much, I really don’t wanna say goodbye to him.

“Mine’s for cutting the checks, I suppose” I DID NOT THINK THAT WAS GONNA HAVE THE PAYOFF IT DID

I loved the progression of how things escalated, with Mimley and the League escalating in members and tactics as the villains and exes all join forces. I loved the inclusion of new members like Sergeant Bethke and Miss Crow and Vassar as one-off agents as everyone, all the characters, all come back or debut as the fate of everyone hangs in the balance. It’s the kind of thing you really have to reserve for a no-holds-barred finale

I really do wanna dedicate a post specifically to Honoria Crabb, I was waiting for the series to end to talk about her arc in full but I will say: I utterly loved her growing role and particularly that moment where Ducky tells her that she is the reason why there is a Lavender League in the first place, that she turned this mutually-shared mask of revenge into a mission statement and force of good.

So much of the plan the villains had for the finale hinged on the war, a thing that so many pulp-inspired heroes inevitably deal with in some form or capacity, but that it all came down specifically to a scheme for money, Lady Hawthorne puppeteering war mongers and capitalists alike in a scheme to bleed Gallery dry to start over elsewhere, that the looming war was only part of the greater problem at hand. That Lady Hawthorne’s final plan was merely a long-winded and petty ploy at weaponizing bloodsucking capitalism for the sake of her all-consuming revenge, one that ends with her fleeing without putting up a fight and simply letting others to take the fall

Honestly, if anyone was gonna get shanked to death in this comic, it had to be Giddy and Marco.

Lady Hawthorne’s plan foiled by the Lavender League coming together stronger than ever and turning her own tactics against her, really there was no way this could end but with a pointed statement of Lavender Jack as the titular “Villains”, who win by being better villains than everyone else.

Whether it was Ducky at last cracking Lady Hawthorne’s cool (As your sister in kind, you...you embarass me), Cragen cracking open Endo Gall’s mask to reveal the sheer animal viciousness he hid until his dying breath, only to then steal it, Ferrier solving mankind’s ultimate crimes by turning the tables on those who control the systems allowing for said crimes to go unchecked, and Mimley saving the day by extending softness and understanding to his personal boogeyman and giving his life for a chance to save the Ultimate Monster, and have that favor repaid in turn, every character had the perfect ending. It works very hard to make it’s overally happy ending feel incredibly earned.

The ending does leave open the possibility of these characters returning in some form, but it really is a farewell and it’s the best farewell it could have gotten.

I still stand by an earlier assertion that Lavender Jack is a seismic cracking of the code in regards not just to adapting or approaching pulp heroes, but superhero fiction as well. It breaks them down and rebuilds them in the most wonderfully fascinating ways, it remains one of the most enjoyable and fascinating things I’ve ever read and will be reading again very soon.

#replies tag #lavender jack #dan schkade #webtoon #pulp heroes #superheroes #comics

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