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daydreamerdrew · 2 years

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When reading Shazam! (2019) I think the part of the portrayal of Billy Batson that made him most unbelievable to me as a version of Billy because it was just so incongruous with my understanding of his character was the framing of him as incompetent as a hero due to his age and the idea that he required mentorship and was notably inefficient as a hero specifically because he lacked mentorship.

For the original Pre-Crisis version of Billy Batson, him being a remarkably competent child was very much, like, the point. He was chosen because he was his pure heart made him worthy, yes, but he was also chosen because, as this introduction to Whiz Comics (1940) #13-15 puts it:

Golden Age Captain Marvel stories were a mix of boy reporter and adventures stories with each issue highlighting both Billy Batson and Captain Marvel. Billy often engaged in dangerous situations in his profession as an investigative reporter, only turning into Captain Marvel when absolutely necessary. And Billy didn’t get suddenly get his job after becoming Captain Marvel, but earned it with his own ingenuity.

And Captain Marvel, who was at this time portrayed as a distinct different entity than Billy Batson, was also a competent hero whose standing within the world of the Fawcett Comics heroes could be compared to the standing of Superman within the DC universe.

The Wizard Shazam is considered their mentor, though his prominence in stories was limited because they didn’t often need his guidance. Instead, Captain Marvel would act as a mentor to Billy when necessary, giving him advice while appearing as an astral projection beside him. But when they did need the Wizard he was available to them at the Rock of Eternity, and there were sometimes references to his mentorship in the past tense with Captain Marvel saying that he knew something because the Wizard had taught him.

For the Post-Crisis version of Billy Batson, he and Captain Marvel were now portrayed as the same person, and particularly with his portrayal throughout the 90s Billy being a teenager and so having conflicts with adults was emphasized, but immaturity and childishness weren’t. His character took on the framing of, while not being different people, Captain Marvel being an inherently ‘more evolved’ person due to him having the Wisdom of Solomon.

And Billy was still very much a remarkable child, having survived homeless on the streets of Fawcett City and then managing to get work and pay for an apartment himself and supported himself for years while keeping the fact that he had no adults taking care of him a secret.

His mentorship relationship with the Wizard Shazam was now also emphasized, but not in the sense that he needed a lot of guidance. Their tenuous relationship was a source of conflict in The Power of Shazam! (1995) ongoing series, when it had previously been amicable in The Power of Shazam! (1994) graphic novel, as the two struggled to understand and sympathize with each other, ultimately culminating with them rediscovering their respect for one another towards the end of the ongoing series.

But Billy as Captain Marvel, very reasonably as he is the protagonist and is experienced as a superhero, is the hero of his stories. The driving force behind his plots is that there is some evil in the world that he specifically has to intervene in and by the end of his adventures it is specifically him that has successfully stopped the villain from endangering people.

I’ll also note here that this Billy would more accurately be classified as an adult hero rather than a teen hero as it was adult heroes who were portrayed as his peers and that when he did team-up with other adult heroes that they were not fitted into a mentor role for him.

Whereas in the Shazam! (2019) ongoing series, despite him being the protagonist and being experienced as a superhero, it’s repeatedly emphasized that Billy doesn’t know what he’s doing because he was dropped into the role of Shazam with no mentorship and that he’s creating problems because he doesn’t know what he’s doing. And then when the Wizard does reappear he doesn’t provide guidance for Billy and instead is another source of conflict largely due to how little faith he has in Billy.

Also bothersome for me was issue #12 which was a team-up between Billy and Batman in which Billy as Shazam is no help at all and needs to be saved by Batman and then ends with Bruce giving Billy a speech about how, essentially, Billy may not know what he’s doing but he’s young and has time to figure things out.

This degradation of Billy as a hero is frustrating not just because it is such a drastic change from his previous portrayals specifically but also on the broader principle that it comes across as insulting to adapt a superhero character and make a new cornerstone of their characterization that they’re incompetent as a hero.

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thevindicativevordan · 2 years

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PKJ's Work on Mongul

God damn has it been a good year or two for Mongul. For the first time since either Exile or Alan Moore, he's gotten a story that reminded us why he's endured as one of Superman's foes.

In an Ask Me Anything on reddit during the middle of the Warworld Saga PKJ also laid out what he sees as the thematic contrast between Superman and Mongul.

I think we're actually exploring Superman's core MOST directly on Warworld, and my new take on Mongul is meant to be the exact antithesis of Superman, diametrically opposed to "Truth and Justice," or his original tagline of "Champion of the Oppressed." Mongul is the OPPRESSOR, first and foremost, and he rules an entire world that represents "Lies and Oppression." His slaves are controlled not just by the chains they've been taught to value and cherish, but by the flood of lies and propaganda that they're bombarded with everyday. To the kids in the story, Mongul is their Superman, and there are millions like them. How do you fight an enemy like that? It's a question that's super relevant right now in my opinion, and we need to see how the human ideal that is Superman deals with it.

He sure as hell delivered in my estimation, the Warworld Saga elevated Mongul by finally making him a foil for Superman in a way that goes beyond his previous status as just being strong enough to trade punches with Superman. Mongul under PKJ is a perversion of Superman's status as a hero. Just as Superman embodies the best of humanity and the culture he was raised in, Mongul embodies the "best" of Warzoon culture. He's cruel, ruthless, and strong not because he was born such, the 2022 Annual shows he was something of a runt amongst his age group, but because those are the only traits the Warzoons valued, so those are the traits within himself that were nurtured. "Superman" is an identity created by Clark that doubles as a way for him to be himself without sacrificing his "normal" life, and also a way for him to implement the lessons his parents taught him as only someone with his gifts can. Likewise for Mongul, being "Mongul" is how the nameless Warzoon he was can be the ultimate warrior, the ultimate tyrant, the ultimate slaver that Warzoon culture glorifies. Lessons he learned from his mother and father are just as crucial to how he conducts himself as what Clark learned from Ma and Pa. Mongul is a dark reflection of the nurture factor in what makes Superman, Superman.

Additionally Mongul and Superman both occupy similar positions for the Warzoons and Phaelosians respectively. Both of them are seen as legendary role models whose deeds are commemorated in stories, both acquired their position in life because of feats they accomplished, both gathered followers to their side, and both follow a philosophical code that each seeks to spread to those who follow them. Mongul sought to indoctrinate all of Warworld’s slaves into accepting their lot in life, to replace their old values with those of the Warzoon beliefs. Superman fought to liberate both Phaelosian and Warzoon from that indoctrination, to get them to realize the sacrality of life, that there was more to living than killing and looting.

One thing that struck me in terms of how PKJ crafted Warworld that really did a good job of contrasting with Superman: Warworld is an evil version of the Fortress of Solitude. Warworld has become a preserve for all the races Mongul has enslaved and destroyed, many of whom are the last of their kind because he committed genocide upon them. Remember Superman's Intergalactic Zoo where he cares for the last members of dying species? Doesn't PKJ's take on Warworld sound like an utterly fucked up version of that? Mongul "cares" for the last members of species on Warworld in a twisted perversion of what Clark does! The Fortress even acts as a "trophy room", with statues of all the Rogues Superman has defeated, and hosting gear that he's locked away out of safety concerns. Mongul twists that aspect of Superman into something heinous. Instead of statues, he turns his defeated opponents into slaves, instead of locking away dangerous weapons, he loots and pillages entire worlds of their resources.

Anonymous asked:

Is it naive to hope that once Warworld Saga ends, they won't have Mongul in charge of it at least till another reboot or something? Like, for all the egrerious returns to status quo in the past, it feels harder to ignore this time, having 20 issues all about it, and if they really wanted to, there's nothing stopping them from just having him get a new one somehow, and he didn't actually have it for 20 years, but man, you just know somebody who never read it is gonna be like "hey, Imma use Mongul, he's the gladiator planet guy, right" and boom.

Long as Superman gets to keep a permanent win by leading the Phaelosians and the Warzoons who want a better life to a new home, I'm fine about Mongul inevitably returning to his throne on Warworld. Let him have the Warzoons who refuse to change or give up their imperialist ways. He's dead at the end of the Warworld Saga, but Kryl-Ux says that's just "for now". My hope is that Kryl resurrects him as a slave and forces Mongul to endure the same hell that Superman was put through during the Warworld Saga. Toss him into the slave pits with the Warzoons who won't bow to Kryl's will, have Mongul drag himself up from nothing again and lead his own rebellion to unseat Kryl as ruler, the same way Superman led a rebellion that ended Mongul's rule. Really hammer home how Mongul is a dark reflection of Superman, how he is a "hero" of sorts to the Warzoons despite caring nothing for them, how he too can inspire and lead in his own diabolical manner.

Otherwise PKJ set up a war between Kryl's Warzoons and the United Planets. I could see Kryl resurrecting Mongul as a conscript in that coming fight, and that too could be a good showing for Mongul. Give us Mongul the warrior slaughtering his way through the United Planets ranks, all the while plotting a way to liberate himself and get his vengeance on Kryl. Seeing Mongul cut loose and leave a trail of corpses in his wake would also help keep his reputation on the up and up, even after his recent defeat. Even better if it ends with him killing Kryl and having to reclaim his throne on Warworld the old-fashioned way: crushing the skulls of every would be challenger.

#superman #mongul #rogues gallery #phillip kennedy johnson

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romancomicsnews · 8 months

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Who should be the main villain of Superman: Legacy?

The Man of Steel has faced countless enemies since his earliest appearance in the late 1930s. However, in live action he tends to face only a handful of his enemies, usually being Lex Luthor or General Zod.

With James Gunn's new DCU comes a new Superman in David Corenswet, and an opportunity to see Superman face one of the more unique enemies he possesses. I'd like to pitch a couple of ideas for enemies we can see him face in his newest film.

I will be pitching 5 villains I can potentially see as the main antagonist for this movie. I will only be pitching villains we have yet to see in live action film, so no Zod, Doomsday, or Luthor.

I also want to build on the fact that he is a younger hero. This should not be a gigantic threat like Darkseid, he's just starting out, so he needs someone who is a challenge for him to start but isn't overly powerful.

There are also other heroes in this movie, namely Green Lantern, Metamorpho, Hawkgirl, and Mister Terrific, all heavy hitters. So our villain needs to be the right level of formidable to other heroes, a challenge for a young Superman, but ultimately a win for Clark.

5. The Toyman

Winslow Schott is an inventor and toymaker who uses his inventions to commit crimes and often tangle with the Man of Steel. His inventions always lean on the silly side, robot teddy bears, giant robot Nutcrackers, you get the gist.

While he is often a nuisance and less of a threat in the comics, I think done right he can be a very creepy villain.

I can see him as a disgruntled LexCorp employee whose designs are being stolen, or perhaps a crazed hero fan who is mad he was not asked to be on the prototype Guy Gardner led by the Justice League.

If we wanted to go older and sillier, I can see a comedian like Jack Black having a lot of fun with a role like this.

While the character is fun, he may be too much of a layup for the Man of Steel. Perhaps as intro to the movie, we can see Superman taking him on, but not as the main villain of the movie.

4. Lobo

The main man himself is due for his time in the spotlight.

Lobo is an intergalactic bounty hunter who is often butting heads with the Man of Steel. Lobo is an arrogant, intense, and powerful warrior whose only law is the agreement he made for his bounty.

Originally meant to be a parody of grim and gritty superhero stories in the 90s, the character was enthusiastically loved by fans, and has been a big DC character ever since.

Having Lobo be this force that comes to Earth to kill the final Kryptonian from an unknown greater evil could make for an interesting movie. He is a villain who could put up a good fight against our Justice League, and give Superman a run for his money.

Because he is a bounty hunter, he is not necessarily evil, and if he can be reasoned with, we could see him back in future movies, maybe even as an uneasy ally to Superman.

Most people want Mamoa, and I understand why, but I think this would be a fun place to put an actor like Rob McElhenney. Have him play a dirtbag badass from across the galaxy can be fun.

While I like this story, I think we can save Lobo for a better place than an origin movie.

3. Metallo

Metallo is a Kryptonite powered cyborg named John Corben, who was experimented on by Professor Vale to become a weapon against what he believes to be an oncoming Alien Invasion in Superman.

Metallo is strong, tragic, and powered by Supermans greatest weakness. He is not only a match for our Justice League, but fatal to Superman.

I can see a version where Lex Luthor "saves" this John from a near fatal accident and turns him into Metallo to test and hopefully kill Superman. (My Luthor is Sterling K Brown by the way).

While Luthor would be the main villain in the shadows, Metallo would be the main threat of the movie.

This puts Superman directly in the path of someone he can't fight or save with his powers. He'll have to stop him with his heart and kindness. I like that idea.

I'd like a younger actor who can be menacing but can display great pain. A Dacre Montgomery type would be ideal for me.

I think Metallo is an excellent starter villain that can determine what kind of hero Clark is going to be.

2. Parasite

Rudy Jones was a janitor at STAR Labs. After being exposed to a waste container, Jones was granted the ability to steal energy from people, leaving them dead or ill. From super powered individuals however, Parasite can absorb and all abilities, leaving heroes incapacitated.

The idea of a meta who can steal abilities away from a team like the Justice League would make for an excellent challenge for Superman. While I don't love his origin, I think you can fix that by making him a test subject at STAR Labs or a metahuman who has to take his entire life to survive. Someone Superman would have to talk to to me seems like a good end to the movie.

I kind of want angry troubled energy, so I'm imagining Aaron Paul here. I could see him crying talking to Superman at the end of the movie, hurt.

1. Bizzaro

Bizzaro is sometimes a duplication of the Man of Steel, often created by Lex Luthor, who is sometimes a villain, sometimes an antihero. While he is a physical match for Superman, he isn't exactly his cerebral match. Often times he is similar to a child, with the opposite abilities of Superman. (Fire breath, and Ice Vision)

What is fun about Bizzaro is he often tries to emulate Superman instead of destroy him, causing more trouble trying to be good then evil. The first bit of the movie Clark can fight him, try to turn him good, fail, and have to try a new method.

I am a fan of villains who are troubled or are trying to do good but can't seem to get it right due to pain or trauma. With a character like Bizzaro, we can have someone who is a match to Clark, but isn't trying to hurt anyone. Just trying to exist, and he needs guidance.

Bizzaro can than be a fun side character for Superman to bounce off. A weird cousin who shows up from time to time to help Clark in big fights, maybe even die at the hands of one his major enemies like Zod, Darkseid or Luthor. There are a lot of fun avenues to take Bizzaro than just meathead villain.

I also don't want Corenswet to play Bizzaro. What's fun about him is he isn't exactly Superman, he's off. We can have an actor who looks similar to a Superman type, like Reid Scott.

If you really wanna have some fun. Give it Cavill or Routh. Give them a chance to dawn the tights in a different way.

I hope they do Metallo, Parasite or Bizzaro, and have Clark have to level with them at a human level. That is the most Superman thing to me, and would be an excellent start to Superman's story.

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sillymovietrailer · 1 year

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Puppet Master III: Toulon's Revenge

This is a bit of a turning point, as in this one, we start getting the puppets being the good guys, and it's pretty unambiguous about that given they're up against the Nazis in a prequel. Here we learn how Andre Toulon (now portrayed by Guy Rolfe, the fourth actor playing him, if we count the young version in a flashback last time) came to the attention of the Nazis, who in trying to get his secrets killed his wife. Said wife, Elsa, is played by Sarah Douglas, so no wonder he's furious about this, they just killed Ursa from Superman II! We also learn here that each puppet is partially animated by the souls of those killed by the Nazis, including Elsa giving life to Leech Woman (Was there a pre-nup agreeing to that?). Given what I mentioned about Part 2, beginning to see why that causes a few continuity headaches, shouldn't he have been way more concerned with her fate there? Also, I was about originally going to ask in here "Whose soul is in Torch, the one he made in Part 2?", however, I forgot there's a Puppet Master comic series after this, and that does end up a big plot point.

Rescuing myself from this path of nitpicking and nerdery, this is another fun one, seeing members of the Third Reich getting picked off by pint-sized terrors is wonderfully cathartic. This one introduces perhaps my favourite of the Puppets, Six-Shooter. He's a very fun design, the gimmick of the tiny guns is great, and I love his laugh (which I'm pretty sure is based off Dwight Frye from Dracula). He's probably the one that shows the most personality in enjoying what he does. Many hold this up as the high water mark of the series, and I think I'll do so too; again, none of these films are exactly high art, or even conventionally good, but you have to love the idea of sentient marionettes taking down the Fuhrer's finest! Mind, where do you from there? Taking down an even more pure evil of course...

#Puppet Master #Guy Rolfe #Andre Toulon #Blade #Six-shooter #Pinhead #Leech Woman #Tunneler #Jester #Sarah Douglas #Richard Lynch

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sheehanmaurer00 · 1 year

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Terminator 2 Arcade Machine

Parker and Watson reconcile in (vol. 2) #50 (#491, April 2003), and in #512 (Nov. 2004)—the authentic problem numbering having returned with #500—Parker learns his late girlfriend Gwen Stacy had had two children with Norman Osborn. In anticipation, Midway developed T2 the arcade recreation simultaneously with the film’s production and release. Utilizing glossy light guns for one or two gamers to play the roles of T-800 cyborgs, the sport featured Arnold Schwarzenegger, Robert Patrick, and Eddie Furlong reprising their respective roles in digitized footage.

Personality And Themes

The symbiote merged with Eddie and gave him the same powers as Spider-Man, in addition to making him resistant to the web-slinger's "spider-sense". Venom's main goal is normally to ruin Peter Parker's life and mess with his head in any means he can. Despite this, Venom isn't a conventional felony, as he is solely thinking about hurting Spider-Man and doesn't have interaction in legal acts, lacking the standard supervillain desires for wealth and energy. When Spider-Man first appeared within the early Nineteen Sixties, youngsters in superhero comic books had been usually relegated to the position of sidekick to the protagonist. The Spider-Man series broke floor by featuring Peter Parker, a high school student from Queens, New York, as Spider-Man's secret identity, whose "self-obsessions with rejection, inadequacy, and loneliness" had been issues to which young readers may relate. The Eddie Brock incarnation of Venom is usually thought to be Spider-Man's deadliest foe, and has been described as an evil mirror version of Spider-Man in many ways. Originally a reporter who grew to despise Spider-Man, Eddie later got here into contact with the Venom symbiote, which had been rejected by Spider-Man. A tokusatsu collection featuring Spider-Man was produced by Toei and aired in Japan. Spider-Man also appeared in different print forms in addition to the comics, including novels, youngsters's books, and the day by day newspaper cartoon The Amazing Spider-Man, which debuted in January 1977, with the earliest installments written by Stan Lee and drawn by John Romita Sr. Spider-Man has been adapted to different media together with games, toys, collectibles, and miscellaneous memorabilia, and has appeared as the main character in numerous laptop and video video games on over 15 gaming platforms. In 2008, Marvel introduced plans to launch a collection of academic comics the following year in partnership with the United Nations, depicting Spider-Man alongside the UN Peacekeeping Forces to spotlight UN peacekeeping missions. Spider-Man has had a broad variety of supporting characters launched in the comics that are important in the points and storylines that star him. After his mother and father died, Peter Parker was raised by his loving aunt, May Parker, and his uncle and father determine, Ben Parker. After Uncle Ben is murdered by a burglar, Aunt May is just about Peter's solely family, and she and Peter are very shut. Peter Parker has superhuman spider-powers and talents derived from mutations resulting from the chunk of a radioactive spider. He additionally decided to insert a hyphen within the name, as he felt it appeared too just like Superman, one other superhero with a red and blue costume that begins with an "S" and ends with "man" . At that point Lee had to get only the consent of Marvel publisher Martin Goodman for the character's approval. In a 1986 interview, Lee described intimately his arguments to beat Goodman's objections. In particular, Lee acknowledged that the reality that it had already been decided that Amazing Fantasy would be canceled after issue #15 was the one purpose Goodman allowed him to make use of Spider-Man. While this was indeed the final problem, its editorial page anticipated the comedian persevering with and that "The Spiderman ... will seem every month in Amazing." The insecurity and anxieties in Marvel's early Sixties comic books, corresponding to The Amazing Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk, The Fantastic Four, and The X-Men ushered in a new kind of superhero, very different from the certain and omnipotent superheroes earlier than them, and adjusted the public's notion of them. A BusinessWeek article listed Spider-Man as one of many prime 10 most clever fictional characters in American comics. The Norman Osborn model of the Green Goblin is most commonly thought to be Spider-Man's archenemy. While Norman is usually portrayed as an amoral industrialist and the head of the Oscorp scientific company, the Goblin is a psychopathic alternate personality, born after Norman's exposore to some unstable chemical substances that also elevated his power and agility.

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Spider-Man has turn into one of the most recognizable fictional characters in the world, and has been used to promote toys, video games, cereal, sweet, cleaning soap, and many other products. Marvel has featured Spider-Man in a quantity of comic book collection, the primary and longest-lasting of which is The Amazing Spider-Man. Over the years, the Peter Parker character developed from a shy, nerdy New York City high school scholar to a troubled but outgoing college student, to a married highschool trainer to, within the late 2000s, a single freelance photographer. Doctor Octopus also took on the id for a narrative arc spanning 2012–2014, following a body swap plot during which Peter appears to die. Miles later grew to become a popular superhero in his own proper and was introduced into the mainstream continuity, the place he generally works alongside Peter.

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Sometime after Siege, MJ invitations Peter over so the 2 of them might achieve closure over the marriage that did not happen and the breakup. Later, an enormous warfare ensued between Doctor Octopus and Spider-Man to get Lily Hollister's and Osborn's son, by which Spider-Man discovered that the kid was actually Harry's, who later leaves city to boost him. Spider-Man assisted the Avengers in defeating Doctor Octopus' military of Macro-Octobots. He then faced a brand new Hobgoblin and the Kingpin, but days later, he lamentably misplaced Marla Jameson in a battle between Alistair Alphonso Smythe's Spider-Slayers. At Loki's suggestion, Norman Osborn creates a rationale to invade Asgard, claiming the world poses a national safety threat. Doctor Octopus (a.k.a. Doc Ock) is a extremely smart mad scientist who makes use of 4 mechanical appendages for both motion and combat. He has been described as Spider-Man's best enemy, and the person Peter Parker might have turn out to be if he had not been raised with a sense of accountability. Doc Ock is infamous for defeating him the first time in battle and for almost marrying Peter's Aunt May. He can additionally be the core chief of the Sinister Six, and at one point adopted the "Master Planner" alias. ("If This Be My Destiny...!") Later depictions revealed him in Peter Parker's body the place he was the titular character for some time. A harsh critic of Spider-Man, he continually options unfavorable articles in regards to the superhero in his newspaper. Since the unique Lee-Ditko stories, Spider-Man has had the flexibility to cling to wall surfaces and ceilings. The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe speculated that this was based mostly on a distance-dependent interplay between his physique and surfaces, known as the van der Waals force, although in the 2002's Spider-Man film, his hands and feet are lined with tiny clinging cilia within the manner of a real spider's ft. Spider-Man's different powers embody superhuman energy, pace, agility, stamina, reflexes, durability, coordination and stability, and a precognitive sixth sense referred to as his "spider-sense," which alerts him to hazard. Eugene "Flash" Thompson is usually depicted as Parker's high school tormentor and bully, however in later comic issues he turns into a pal to Peter and adopts his own superhero identification, Agent Venom, after merging with the Venom symbiote. Meanwhile, Harry Osborn, son of Norman Osborn, is mostly recognized as Peter's finest pal, though some versions depicted him as his rival. Thomas Fireheart's scientists, among the best on the planet, are unable to duplicate the fluid Parker created while in high school. After the occasions of "Go Down Swinging," Peter's life was plagued with problems on either side. As Spider-Man, Mayor Fisk publicly supported him, condemning all different vigilantes to have the ability to isolate him from his superhero peers. As Peter Parker, his educational credentials were revoked after being accused of plagiarizing his doctoral dissertation from Octavius, leading terminator 2 pinball machine value to his firing from the Daily Bugle. For a short time, Peter Parker and Spider-Man were break up into separate beings due to an accident involving the reverse-engineered Isotope Genome Accelerator. After their respective homes are destroyed by a deranged, superpowered former high-school classmate, Parker, Watson, and May move into Stark Tower, and Parker begins working as Tony Stark's assistant while again freelancing for The Daily Bugle and continuing his educating. Spider-Man also cautions Harry that killing Norman will trigger Harry to "turn into the son Norman at all times wanted". Ditko claimed in a rare interview with Jonathan Ross that the costume was initially envisioned with an orange and purple color scheme quite than the more famous red and blue. You can play Wolfenstein 3D on this web site so that you need not download and install the sport on your pc. The recreation was a blockbuster hit 1991, and now 30 years later, Arcade1Up is thrilled to provide this title in a home arcade form factor. 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oimoi-op · 3 years

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I have seen so much shit online about how “John Walker is a Homelander ripoff” or “fake Cap gives me Homelander vibes” like ????? Nah dude, U.S. Agent’s been around since the fucking 80s, Homelander’s comic version showed up in the early 00s and even then the show’s version is very different from him. Being a villainous deconstruction of a popular superhero who embodies a heroic archetype is not new or unique.

#also walker has not been shown to be anything like homelander yet #and if anything homelander's a ripoff of miracleman lmao #who's already a villain-ish superman #well honestly kind of a villain-ish hyperion #whose original version was also an evil superman #you get what i mean lol #fandom #the boys #marvel #mcu #the falcon and the winter soldier #tfatws #homelander #john walker #u.s. agent #oimoi rants about pointless fandom bullshit #same vibes as that one post that's like ''people saying x story rips off y story and then start describing the hero's journey'' smh

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davidmann95 · 3 years

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How about those JL storyboards?

In case you haven’t heard, Zack Snyder is putting on display the ‘storyboards’ - i.e. a rough plot summary accompanied by some Jim Lee sketches - for what would have been Justice League 2 and 3, or as this puts it 2 and ‘2A’. You can see them here (I imagine better-quality versions will soon be released), and read a transcript here. This is evidently a very early version: this was apparently pitched prior to the release of BvS and Justice League being rewritten in the wake of it, with numerous plot details that now don’t line up with what we know about the Snyder Cut, plus it outright mentions it builds on the originally planned versions of the Batman and Flash movies. But it’s a broad outline of what was gonna go down, and while I initially thought it was Snyder throwing in the towel, the timing - paired with the ambiguity left by the necessity for changes, including that this doesn’t factor whatever that “massive cliffhanger” at the end of the Cut is - says to me he’s hoping this’ll be a force multiplier behind efforts to will sequel/s into existence. He’s probably right.

I’ll be discussing spoilers below, but in short: with this Zack Snyder has finally lived up to Alan Moore, in that like Twilight of the Superheroes I wouldn’t believe this was real as opposed to a shockingly on-point parody if not for direct, irrefutable evidence.

Doing some rapid-fire bullet points for this baby to kick us off:

* Folks who know the subject say a lot of this is a yet further continuation of Snyder doing Arthuriana fanfic with the League reskinned over those major players, and I’ll take their word for it.

* I don’t know whether I love or hate that in Justice League 2 the Justice League are only an extant thing for the first scene, and then it’s Snyder giving everybody their own mini-movies. It’s compressing the entire MCU “loosely interconnected solo stories leading to a single big movie later” strategy into a single movie!

* Funniest line in the whole thing: "Even Lantern has heard of the Kryptonian, worried that he's under the control of Darkseid. He heard his spirit was unbreakable." Hal what fuckin' Superman movie did YOU watch? Second funniest being “IT WILL GIVE HIM POWER OVER ALL LIVING LIFE”

* 90% of the plot I have nothing to say about, it’s generic stage-setting crap. That to be clear is the ‘shocked it’s Snyder’ element, it feels so crassly commercial in a way I can’t believe is coming from the BvS guy.

* Most of what I have to say is unsurprisingly gonna be about a handful of characters but Cyborg’s happy ending being “he isn’t visibly disabled anymore!” is not great!

* The Goddess of War battle with Superman...never pays off? No clue why it’s there.

* What I’d originally heard was that the Codex in Superman’s blood was the last key to the Anti-Life Equation and that’s why Darkseid was coming to Earth. It’s not like all of this wouldn’t have already been averted by Kal-El’s pod smacking into an asteroid on the way to Earth so it’s not as if this makes it any more Superman’s fault, and it would have at least tied all this back to the beginning of the movies, but I suppose that was either fake or from a later draft.

* I have NO idea how this was reimagined without the ‘love triangle’, it’s the central character thing and the entire climax flows directly out of it!

* Darkseid’s kinda a chump in this, huh

Anonymous said: So: Does Zack Snyder hate Superman?

Look: the hilarity of this when Cuck Kent has been a go-to Snyder cult insult towards ‘inferior’ takes on Superman for years cannot be understated, yet at the same time I can almost wrap my brain around where Snyder’s coming from with that as the end for his take on the character. He talked in that Variety piece on how his interest in Superman is informed by having adopted children himself, and Deborah Snyder is the stepmother to his kids by previous relationships, so I can see where he’d be coming from, and I can even imagine how he’d see this as ‘rhyming’ in the sense of “the series begins with Kal-El being adopted by Earth, it ends with him adopting a child of Earth!” In the same way as MARTHA, I can envision how he would put these pieces together in his head thematically without registering or caring what the end result would actually look like. In this case, Superman raising the kid of the man who beat the shit out of him who Batman had with Clark’s wife, who earlier told Bruce she was staying with Clark because he ‘needed her’, suggesting if inadvertently that this really honest to god was a “she’s only staying with Superman out of pity, she really loved Batman more” thing.

But Clark is nothing in this. He’s sad and existential because of coming back from the dead I guess, then he’s corrupted, then time’s undone and he woo-rah rallies the collective armies of the world (interesting angle for the ‘anti-military/anti-establishment’ Superman he’s talked up as) as his big heroic moment in the finale, and then he stops being sad because he’s adopting a kid. So his big much-ballyhooed, extremely necessary five-movie character arc towards truly becoming Superman was:

Sad weird kid -> sad weird kid learns he’s an alien, is still weird and sad, maybe he shouldn’t save people because things could go really wrong? -> his dad is so convinced it could go wrong he lets himself die -> ????? -> Clark is saving people anyway -> learns his origin, gets an inspiring speech about being a bridge between worlds and a costume -> becomes superman (not Superman, that’s later) to save the world, albeit a very property-damagey version, rejects his heritage he just learned about and space dad’s bridge idea -> folks hate him being superman and that sucks though at least he’s got a girlfriend now -> things go so wrong he considers not being superman but his ghost dad reminds him shit always goes wrong so he should be good anyway, which sorta feels like it contradicts his previous advice -> immediate renewed goodness is out the window as he’s blackmailed into having to try and kill a dude but the dude happens to coincidentally have some things in common so they don’t kill each other after all -> big monster now but superman keeps supermaning at it because he loves his girlfriend and he dies -> he’s brought back, wears black which apparently means now he likes Krypton again? -> he has work friends now but he’s still sad because he was dead -> evil now! -> wait nevermind time travel -> rallies the troops -> his wife’s having a kid so he’s not sad anymore -> Superman! Who gives way to more Batman.

Do I think Zack Snyder is lying when he says he likes Superman? No. I think he sincerely finds much of the basic conceits and imagery engaging. But I don’t think he meaningfully gives shit about Clark as a character, just a vessel for Big Iconic Beats he wants to hit. Whereas while for instance he’s critical of Batman as an idea (at least up to a point), he’s much more passionately, directly enamored with him as a presence and personality. So while Superman may be the character whose ostensible myth cycle or arc or however it’s spun might be propelling a lot of events here, it’s a distant appreciation - of course the other guy takes over and subsumes him into his own narrative. Of course Batman is the savior, the past and the future (though if he’s supposed to be Batman’s kid raised by Superman there’s no excuse for him not to be Nightwing), the tragic martyr to our potential. Admittedly the implication here is also that Batman can apparently only REALLY with his whole heart be willing to sacrifice his life to save an innocent, for that matter apparently his great love, once said innocent is a receptacle for his Bat-brood, but he and Clark are both already irredeemable pieces of shit by the end of BvS so it’s not like this even registers by comparison.

Anonymous said: That “plan” Snyder had was utter dogshit. Picture proof that DC & WB hate Superman. Also I love how you’re like Jor-El: Every single idealistic take you had about Snyder, his fandom, and BvS was wrong. Snyder’s an edgy hack, his fanbase just wants to jerk off to their edgy self-insert Batgod as he screams FUCK while mowing people down with machine guns, and the idea that BvS said Superman was better than Bats was completely wrong. You know what comes next SuperMann: Either you die or I do.

In the final analysis, beyond that mother of god is there sure no conceivable excuse for the treatment of Lois in this? The temptation is to join that anon and say as I originally tweeted that these were “built entirely to disabuse every single redemptive reading of the previous work and any notion of these movies as nuanced, artistic, self-reflective, or meaningful”.

...

...yeah, okay, that’s mostly right. Zack Snyder’s vision really was the vision of an edgelord idiot with bad ideas who was never going to build up to anything that would reframe it all as a sensible whole. He’s a sincere edgelord genuinely trying really hard with his bad ideas who put some of them together quite cleverly! But they’re fucking bad and the endgame was never anything more than ramping up into smashing the action figures together as big as he could, the political overtones and moral sketchiness of BvS while trying to say something in that movie reverberated through the grand scheme of his pentalogy in no way beyond giving his boys a big sad pit to rise out of so when they kicked ass later it’d rule harder, and all the gods among men questions and horror and trappings were only that: trappings. Apparently he’s really pleasant and well-meaning in person, but at his core his art as embodied in a couple weeks in his 4-hour R-rated Justice League movie meant to be seen in black-and-white all comes down to that time he yelled at someone on Twitter that he couldn’t appreciate Snyder’s work because it’s for grown-ups. He made half-clever, occasionally exciting shit cape movies for a bunch of corny pseudo-intellectual douchebags, folks latching onto and justifying blockbusters that at least acknowledge how horrifying the world is right now even if the superheroes are basically useless in the face of it if not outright part of the problem until a convenient alien invasion shows up to justify them, and a handful of non-asshole smart people who vibe with it but...well. ‘Suckered’ is a harsh word, and definitely doesn’t apply to all of them re: what they’ve gotten out of it up to this point and would (somehow) get out of this. But it doesn’t apply to none of them, either.

#Justice League #Zack Snyder #Superman #Batman #DCEU #Opinion

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forevercloudnine · 3 years

Text

pre-new 52 scarebat ship meme

(I actually have no idea what to call this period of comics. The dc wiki calls this the “New Earth” universe... it’s like, everything after Jason Todd was retconned out of being a circus acrobat up to Flashpoint. Anyway like a month ago I asked @heroes-etc to send me questions for this version of scarebat from this ship meme but then forgot that I did it because I got distracted by other ships. Sorry Jonathan...)

4. Who can’t keep their hands to themselves?

Bruce does DO physical affection — I mean, how many comic panels do we even have of him making out with Catwoman on rooftops — but he’s not especially forthcoming with it. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that his love interests are more likely to instigate contact than he is, especially when that love interest is a villain like Selina or Talia (can you even IMAGINE him trying to take them off guard in a fight by grabbing their face for a kiss? Because I cannot).

He does occasionally instigate affection with his children/proteges, though usually it’s in instances where they obviously need comfort. Bruce isn’t always great at handling complicated emotional situations, but grief and trauma is something he understands very intimately, and he never hesitates to physically reassure people who are in that kind of pain.

In situations where someone isn’t in the active process of being traumatized, he’s less forward with physical affection. That doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll reject it if it’s instigated — depending on who you are, of course. I’m guessing he wouldn’t put up with hugs from random members of the Justice League. Superman is his best friend and he would probably try to wiggle out of 90% of Kal hugs if doing so was physically possible. Most of his loved ones don’t really spring physical affection on him unless they need it or it’s an especially emotional moment, however. It’s not really Bruce’s primary love language.

Jonathan seems even less physically affectionate than Bruce, though obviously doesn’t have a lot of opportunity to demonstrate how he feels either way. Master of Fear offers the only example of him expressing explicitly romantic affection that I know of (unless you count his terrorizing Becky Albright in New Year’s Evil as physical affection, which... might be how he’s thinking of it...?), and it’s entirely instigated by Sherry Squire. He does ask her to the Halloween party, but she’s the one who takes him down to the furnace room for some “one-on-one” time and tells him to kiss her.

He also notably does not actually get a chance to kiss her, mainly because the whole thing was a prank meant to humiliate him. This might be why he doesn’t try to instigate anything similar with his next crush, Dr. Linda Friitawa (again, unless you count Becky Albright, but I can’t find New Year’s Evil to read anywhere so my only knowledge of his interaction with her comes from Tumblr. I’m like 80% sure he was supposed to be interested in her romantically, but asking someone to do supervillainy with you isn’t the most direct way to express attraction, so I’m taking that as more obliqueness from Jonathan).

He never expresses any direct romantic interest in Linda, but at the very least he clearly cares about her more than he cares for most people, since he, like. Defends her in conversation and apologizes to her for things that aren’t even his fault. Which means a lot, coming from a sociopath with no regard for human life. They do hold hands at one point, but Linda reaches out to him first, and he waits to see if she’s going to back away from his reciprocated touch before he reaches for her other hand.

He never instigates anything further with her, possibly out of fear of rejection. Unfortunately, it turns out that this was a good call, because Linda was only pretending to be nice to him while Penguin was paying her to experiment on Jonathan without his knowledge. When Batman figures out what they’re doing, she immediately fucks off and starts dating Black Mask.

Even more unfortunately, his 45 seconds of hand holding with Backstabby McMad Scientist is probably the only mutual physical affection Jonathan has ever experienced in his entire life, so honestly I have no idea if he would be more into it as a concept if it was offered to him more often. He’s clearly willing to return physical contact when it’s initiated by someone else, so maybe it is something he would seek out in an actual relationship? He DOES get handsy with Bruce when he has Batman tied up sometimes.

9. What is the most embarrassing thing they have done in front of each other?

Trip out on fear toxin, both of them, hands down. There are few things more embarrassing than, as Jonathan aptly describes it, being “reduced to whimpering quivers” in front of your enemy. Especially an enemy who’s presumably jotting down notes on your worst fears, since Batman/Scarecrow fights tend to just be competitions in who’s more frightening.

11. What do they hide from one another?

I mean, obligatory mention of the fact that Bruce hides things from absolutely everyone (with the possible exception of Alfred, because Bruce trusts him as completely as he is capable of trusting anyone, and also because it’s really hard to hide things from a parent whose involved in every aspect of your life and already knew you before you developed your pathological need to obfuscate your feelings and intentions).

As Wonder Woman pretty aptly describes during the Tower of Babel arc, even Bruce’s closest allies are never going to hear the full story from him. So it’s deeply unlikely he’d ever be 100% truthful with a supervillain, even if they got close AND Jonathan reformed.

But it’s notable that Jonathan’s fear toxin has actually given him a more honest look into Bruce’s psyche than he would ever purposefully give to people who aren’t close family members. And by “close family members” I again pretty much just mean Alfred. Unfortunately for Bruce, nothing forces emotional transparency like mind altering drugs. Fortunately for Jonathan, nothing forces emotional transparency like mind altering drugs! Not that I’m recommending that anyone drug a romantic partner into being honest with them. But Jonathan is a trained psychiatrist, so I assume his psychological know-how combined with insights gleaned from the dozens of “sessions” he’s had with Batman in the past would leave him more prepared than most to decipher the mystery that is Bruce Wayne. (@heroes-etc: riddler is SEETHING.)

Jonathan meanwhile is more than capable of putting together a clandestine scheme, but in respect to himself he’s actually pretty straightforward. Though his driving motivation in this continuity gets more and more complicated over time, from the early 90’s “I just like fear” to the early 2000’s “my Granny tortured me with birds when I was a child and now I’m obsessed with inspiring the same fear and submission she forced on me onto others,” what doesn’t change is his willingness to monologue about it to anyone who’s listening.

Also, anything that Jonathan is unable or unwilling to go into detail on, Bruce is more than capable of puzzling out himself. In Scarecrow: Year One he successfully tracks down Jonathan’s old home to recover and read through Granny Keeney’s diary, and after Scarecrow’s Master of Fear origin was published, it’s clear that Bruce has done his research on Jonathan’s childhood. There’s even a (presumably unintentionally) hilarious scene where Bruce pauses mid-rescue of a man that Jonathan has kidnapped and traumatized with fear toxin to lecture him on having bullied Jon in high school.

Is this really the time, Bruce???

(@heroes-etc: oh 100% he nailed that timing.)

13. When do they realise they should get together?

Well, circling back to Tower of Babel, it’s revealed when Ra’s al Ghul has Talia steal Bruce’s contingency plans for defeating the Justice League that Bruce has “borrowed” Scarecrow’s fear toxin in case he has to take down Aquaman.

This was back when Scarecrow had a number of different toxins that induced different phobias, or made people hallucinate hyper-specific nightmare scenarios (such as “being eaten alive by roaches from the inside,” for some terrible reason). Batman notes in his contingency files that Scarecrow has already done the work for him; presumably Jonathan had already designed a formula to induce hydrophobia, so all Bruce had to do was steal a vial of it from a crime scene.

(The sentence “Why not make him incapacitate himself... perhaps through fear?” alone is like 90% of why I think these men would get along like burlap on fire if they ever actually cooperated on something. Also, unrelated, but the polaroid of Jonathan he has in the Aquaman file is weirdly adorable.)

Bruce’s plan for Arthur is incredibly effective, and notably also Bruce’s only contingency that isn’t either inherently lethal or a ruthlessly sociopathic betrayal of emotional vulnerabilities that had been revealed to him in trust and friendship (RIP Kyle Rayner).

(Notably, Bruce’s plans for Kyle and several other leaguers directly involve using their worst fears against them, even without a fear toxin conveniently tailored for this purpose. Bruce just really likes using fear as a weapon against people.)

After Tower of Babel, Bruce obviously needed to create new contingencies, since the whole point is that they were secret plans that no one could see coming. In canon, Bruce goes on to create the A.I. satellite Brother Eye for this purpose (which backfires even worse than his first set of contingency plans, because of course it does). But I think an interesting alternative could have been Bruce tapping Jonathan for more toxin strands tailored to taking down the Justice League. If Bruce Wayne offered to pay Scarecrow’s way out of Arkham in order to develop formulas that could neutralize the world’s most powerful superheroes, is there any way that Jonathan would turn him down? I mean, obviously he would plan on betraying Wayne at some point, and Bruce would similarly be working against Jonathan’s best interests. But maybe if they set aside their “who’s scarier” dick measuring contest to work together for once, they could come to recognize their shared passion: scaring the shit of people.

Also, the Jonathan in this continuity really likes books. And you know what’s a reliably sustainable source of books that can’t be confiscated by the authorities? Dating Bruce Wayne. The manor alone probably has an insane amount of rare books that have been hoarded by his family over the years. It’s like a weird reversal of the Beauty and the Beast, where the rude rich guy who gives a library to the love interest he may or may not have technically kidnapped is the pretty one.

21. Where do they get nervous about going with one another?

If they were dating, I’m guessing Jonathan wouldn’t want to go anywhere in public with Bruce at all. Bruce Wayne is a celebrity bachelor, and celebrity bachelors get a lot of attention, and people who take celebrity bachelors off the market get a lot of NEGATIVE attention. The public reaction to Bruce settling into a committed relationship with anyone would be the kind of weirdly resentful gossipy judgement that the girlfriends of famous princes or actors or musicians always get from tabloids and entertainment television, but in Jonathan’s case it would be a million times worse. Not just because he’s a supervillain, because if there’s any town that would expect its most eligible bachelor to eventually date a supervillain, it’s Gotham. But more specifically because “ugly social outcast” is one of Scarecrow’s most enduring character traits. Not exactly the traditional trophy wife. And though Jonathan’s Scarecrow identity seems to distance him from a lot of the shame he suffered growing up, I’m guessing that the kind of spiteful vitriol that would follow him anywhere he accompanied Bruce would at the least bring back some very unwanted memories.

Bruce probably doesn’t have the same discomfort Jonathan would with being seen together in public. He doesn’t care if people think Bruce Wayne is insane or lacking in judgement as long as they don’t think he’s Batman, and I’m sure he’d find a way to spin “dating a man who prefers to dress exclusively in burlap” into something appropriately characteristic of playboy idiocy. But while he'd definitely respect Jonathan's wishes to stay out of the public sphere, he would probably enjoy any opportunity to bring Scarecrow into Gotham high society, since his presence would definitely shake up a party, and Bruce is generally extremely bored at any social event where he doesn’t have anyone to snark with. And with Jonathan’s scathing wit as entertainment, Bruce might one day fulfill Alfred’s wish and actually make it through an intermission sometime.

I’d say that Bruce would be nervous about taking Jonathan out for “field research,” but I’m sure it would be one of Scarecrow’s requirements for any long term collaboration, so it’s something that he would have to get used to pretty quickly. He would probably endeavor to keep Jonathan away from anything that could retrigger his less healthy behaviors. On the other hand, it’s not like Bruce does that for himself, so it stands to reason that he probably wouldn’t be able to successfully control Jonathan in that regard either.

It doesn’t help that one of Jonathan’s primary motivations in villainy is his childhood, which is... exactly the same thing that Bruce is fixated on. A significant portion of Scarecrow: Year One is the two of them waxing poetic about how similar they are in this regard.

Relating to this, even though it might be a terrible idea, I don’t think Bruce would be able to resist encouraging Jonathan to reconnect with his mom. Bruce would never recommend for someone like Cassandra to seek out a relationship with her father, but if someone he cares about has a LIVING parent who WASN’T abusive to them? It seems unlikely that Bruce wouldn’t advocate for reconciliation. Jonathan’s dad obviously never cared about the teenage girl he knocked up or their bastard child, but Karen Keeney is a different story. DC Holiday Special ‘09 makes it clear that Jonathan was taken away from her against her will, and she’s spent a significant portion of her life wracked by guilt imagining what the woman who abused her was doing to her son.

Ultimately she attempts to commit suicide because she feels personally responsible for every terrible thing her son has ever done, which is tragic because really she’s the only member of the Keeney family completely blameless in the creation of the Scarecrow. In Scarecrow: Year One Jonathan clearly resents her for leaving him and moving on to have another baby that she actually did keep, which I would call a really paranoid case of jumping to conclusions if it didn’t seem extremely likely that Granny Keeney told him his mother didn’t want him and left him to be tortured on purpose.

(Side note, it is REALLY weird how young Karen Keeney is depicted in Scarecrow: Year One. At times her son looks older than she is, and it doesn’t help that her second born child is an infant for some reason. Even if Jonathan is only thirty years old here, then unless she had him at younger than fourteen, she should already be in her mid-forties. Why did she only have a second child so late in life? The implication with her abusive husband is that she ended up getting trapped in a bad relationship for survival when her family kicked her out as a teenager for disgracing the family by having Jonathan. It would make way more sense for her child with him to be at least in elementary school. Also the scene would have been way more interesting if Scarecrow’s sister was old enough to talk.)

Thankfully Deadman manages to convince Karen to hold on to life long enough for someone to call 911, and she ends up surviving the suicide attempt. But were Jonathan ever to reform, it seems like reconciliation would be really healthy for both of them, since miraculously Karen still seems to care about Jonathan despite everything he’s put her through, and they’re both clearly still suffering from the after effects of Mary Keeney’s abuse.

Bruce would be enthusiastic about this prospect for obvious reasons, although he would presumably still be nervous about the possibility of everything going terribly wrong. And even if everything went perfectly right, he would STILL be nervous, because everytime Jonathan goes to see his mother there’s a chance that she will mention the time that she kissed Batman full on the mouth. And that is not information you would ever want your psychologist boyfriend to know, unless you want to be mocked with Freudian buzzwords for the rest of your natural life.

(...This would also count as a thing that Bruce hides from Jonathan.)

#scarebat #jonathan crane #scarecrow #bruce wayne #batman #i just they're neat #it's all about those shared interests #and by shared interests i mean subjugating your enemies through fear #ship meme

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maxwell-grant · 3 years

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The apparition of impostor!Lavender Jack make me wonder : do you know if the "I'm like you but evil" villain archetype was popular in pulp fiction or is it more a super-hero thing ?

It's very much more of a superhero thing. Not that it didn't exist before, obviously the idea of villains designed to resemble and contrast their heroes is as old as villainy itself, but the idea of a supervillain who's specifically meant to be an evil version of the superhero, the "Inverted-Superhero Supervillain" as Peter Coogan calls it, was defined in comics.

If you wanna get specific, technically the first supervillain to be specifically defined as an evil opposite to the hero (as opposed to just being an evil take on a general heroic concept) was Moriarty, who's is very strongly defined as almost an evil twin of Holmes. This, I'd argue, is Moriarty's greatest contribution to the history of the supervillain, because he was neither the first, nor the one who popularized the idea of a supervillain or arch-enemy (those would be Dr Jack Quartz of the Nick Carter magazines as well as the grand criminals from the feuilletons that inspired Holmes).

What the pulps had, in turn, was supervillains who were meant to evoke popular heroes, like Fantomas who evokes the gentleman thief and John Sunlight in his original form who greatly resembles Holmes, and supervillains who were protagonists, but not specifically inverted takes on superheroes, because those as we define them weren't around. The Shadow fought several criminals who were intended to evoke him, and as far as I can find Gibson was the first person to specifically coin the term "super-crook/criminal/villain" to describe villains (which does not mean he created the concept).

The grand criminals of the dime novels and feuilletons led to the pulp supervillains, which grew bigger and badder and more outlandish and laid down much of the foundations of what we currently used to define supervillains. And throughout this history, the idea of costume-wearing supervillains gradually starts to show up, first of these being the Wolf Devil from Queen of the Northwoods (1929), likely the first superpowered costumed supervillain in Anglo media, followed by the Klan robe-wearing pulp villains, and then odd costumed supervillains like Bill Everett's Great Question and The Lightning from The Fighting Devil Dogs, until at last we get to the comic book supervillains proper. And with them, the Inverted-Superhero Supervillain, as Peter Coogan describes it:

The inverted-superhero supervillain is limited to the superhero genre, primarily because they have superpowers, codenames, and costumes. Although there are earlier costumed supervillains in comics—such as the vampiric Monk, whose schemes Batman ruins in Detective Comics #31—the Joker and Catwoman are probably the best, early examples of inverted-superhero supervillains.

Prior villains like the Monk draw on masked and robed pulp predecessors and mad scientists like Lex Luthor or the Hugo Strange have a long lineage outside of comics. But the Joker and Catwoman mark an innovation in villainy because they are such direct responses to the superhero by creators looking to expand the superhero genre.

It's a bit trickier to say which exactly would be the first Inverted-Superhero Supervillain, along the lines of what you describe. Coogan claims it's the Joker and I disagree, because while the Joker's contrast with Batman was definitely important to his popularity and he represented a clear break away from the more pulp-esque Monk and Hugo Strange, he was hardly intended as an evil version of Batman (that would be Killer Moth in the 50s), nor was he that different from the common Dick Tracy villains or other villainous clowns in fiction like The Whisperer's Grim Joker or The Shadow's Number One to really merit that kind of distinction. You can point to other Golden Age supervillains who specifically take the superhero image of "caped man with a chest logo and/or cape & mask" like Fawcett's Captain Nazi or MLJ's Captain Swastika. I'm fairly sure there's earlier examples still, probably in the funny animal superhero comics that influenced Fawcett's output, but I'd have to go digging further for those.

Although I will point out that The Grey Claw, who I discovered more recently actually debuted almost a year ahead of Superman (in 1937), was a comic supervillain very much dressed in what nowadays we'd consider a superhero outfit, and also predating the Lightning's own costume. He was modeled quite a bit on The Shadow, not just in costume but also in laugh and mannerisms and radio boogeyman persona, but he was armed with weird sci-fi weaponry at odds with the gritty crime story he's in, and he was dressed in a costume that included not just a cape and slouch hat, but also a mask, a waistband sash, and a chest logo, and even did the classic Superman pose as seen above. Is he the true first Inverted-Superhero Supervillain? Probably not, despite his international publishing, history has not been kind to him. But so far, I'd say he's as good as any candidate.

I'm totally not biased on this regard, though. No, sir.

#replies tag #pulp supervillains #comic books #moriarty #john sunlight #fighting devil dogs #the grey claw #o garra cinzenta #the joker

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batmannotes · 4 years

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DC SHOWCASE

BATMAN: DEATH IN THE FAMILY

WARNER BROS. HOME ENTERTAINMENT AND DC PRESENT COMPILATION OF 2019-2020 ANIMATED SHORTS

COMING OCTOBER 13, 2020 TO BLU-RAY™ & DIGITAL

NEW COLLECTION INCLUDES ACCLAIMED TITLES SGT. ROCK, ADAM STRANGE, DEATH AND THE PHANTOM STRANGER

BURBANK, CA (July 30, 2020) – Five fascinating tales from the iconic DC canon, including the first interactive film presentation in Warner Bros. Home Entertainment (WBHE) history, come to animated life in DC Showcase – Batman: Death in the Family. Produced by Warner Bros. Animation and DC, the anthology of 2019-2020 animated shorts arrives from WBHE on Blu-ray and Digital starting October 13, 2020.

Anchoring the compilation of shorts is Batman: Death in the Family, WBHE’s first-ever venture into interactive storytelling that allows fans to choose where the story goes through an innovative navigation guided by the viewer’s remote control. Central to the extended-length short is an adaptation of “Batman: A Death in the Family,” the 1988 landmark DC event where fans voted by telephone to determine the story’s ending.

Inspired by characters and stories from DC’s robust portfolio, the 2019-2020 series of shorts – which have been individually included on DC Universe Movies releases since Summer 2019 – include; Sgt. Rock, Adam Strange, Death and The Phantom Stranger.

DC Showcase – Batman: Death in the Family will be available on Blu-ray (USA $24.98 SRP) and Digital (19.99 SRP). The Blu-ray features a Blu-ray disc with all of the shorts in hi-definition, including the fully-interactive, extended-length Batman: Death in the Family, plus a digital version of the four other 2019-2020 DC Showcase shorts. The Digital distribution features the Batman: Death in the Family extended-length short in a non-interactive format (pre-assembled version of the story, entitled Under the Red Hood: Reloaded), along with the other four 2019-2020 DC Showcase shorts, and three other non-interactive versions of the Batman: Death in the Family (entitled Jason Todd’s Rebellion, Robin’s Revenge and Red Hood’s Reckoning) as bonus features (Note: not all Digital retailers offer bonus features with purchase). The Blu-ray also offers approximately five minutes of additional content within the Batman: Death in the Family story that is not included in the Digital version.

Produced, directed and written by Brandon Vietti, Batman: Death in the Family offers an inventive take on the long-demanded story. In the new animated presentation, the infamous murder of Batman protégé Jason Todd will be undone, and the destinies of Batman, Robin and The Joker will play out in shocking new ways as viewers make multiple choices to control the story. And while Batman: Under the Red Hood provides a baseline, the story also branches in new directions and features several characters previously unseen in the original film. Bruce Greenwood (The Resident, Star Trek, iRobot), Vincent Martella (Phineas and Ferb) and John DiMaggio (Futurama, Adventure Time) reprise their Batman: Under The Red Hood roles of Batman, young Jason Todd and The Joker, respectively. Other featured voices are Zehra Fazal (Young Justice) as Talia al Ghul and Gary Cole (Veep) as Two-Face and James Gordon.

“Batman: Death in the Family is essentially a comic book come to life,” says Vietti, whose DC Universe Movies directing credits include Batman: Under the Red Hood and Superman: Doomsday, and he is co-creator and co-executive producer of the popular Young Justice animated television series. “We’ve paid homage to the 1988 interactive experience of DC’s ‘A Death in the Family’ comics release by giving fans a unique opportunity to craft their own story through a branching tool that can lead in multiple directions. The viewer gets to choose these characters’ paths, and each choice paves an alternate future for all of the characters and, ultimately, the story.”

The interactive Blu-ray presentation offers many different ways for viewers to tell the Batman: Death in the Family story, with numerous twists and turns in the middle, and several possible endings. The choices along the way put greater weight on the viewers’ decisions and result in even stronger stories. Viewers can also choose to allow the story to tell itself, as there is an option to let the Blu-ray decide its own path.

Packed with Easter Eggs, the centerpiece short’s story – with its foundation grounded in the original “Batman: A Death in the Family” comic run, and the acclaimed Batman: Under the Red Hood animated film – balances a number of integral themes within its entertainment, including fatherhood, mental health, death, rebirth, revenge and redemption. Along the route, viewers encounter new, surprising looks at some classic DC characters.

“From the very first navigation card, we wanted to give the audience an impression of what they’re getting into, but then also give them something unexpected – maybe even something they’ll regret, so they have to think twice about every future choice they make,” Vietti explains. “Branched storytelling has to be stronger than just the gimmick of the choices – it has to be rewarding and offer new and worthwhile insights into the characters. It needs to involve you, and keep you searching for the next twist. So we sought to subvert expectations and do something very different.”

Beyond Batman: Death in the Family, the additional four shorts on Blu-ray & Digital are:

Originally attached to Batman: Hush, Sgt. Rock is executive produced and directed by Bruce Timm (Batman: The Animated Series) from a script by award-winning comics writers Louise Simonson & Walter Simonson and Tim Sheridan (Superman: Man of Tomorrow, Reign of the Supermen). The original tale finds battle-weary Sgt. Rock thinking he has seen everything that World War II can dish out. But he is in for the surprise of his life when he is assigned to lead a company consisting of legendary monsters into battle against an unstoppable platoon of Nazi zombies. Karl Urban (Star Trek & Lord of the Rings film franchises) provides the voice of Sgt. Rock. Also voicing characters in Sgt. Rock are Keith Ferguson, William Salyers and Audrey Wasilewski.

Inspired by Neil Gaiman’s “The Sandman,” Death is produced & directed by Sam Liu (Superman: Red Son, The Death of Superman) and written by J.M. DeMatteis (Batman: Bad Blood). In the story, Vincent, an artist with unresolved inner demons, meets a mysterious girl who helps him come to terms with his creative legacy … and eventual death. Leonard Nam (Westworld) provides the voice of Vincent, and Jamie Chung (The Gifted, Big Hero 6) is the voice of Death. The cast includes Darin De Paul, Keith Szarabajka and Kari Wahlgren. Death was originally included with Wonder Woman: Bloodlines.

Attached as a bonus feature on the release of Superman: Red Son, The Phantom Stranger has Bruce Timm (Batman: The Killing Joke) at the helm as executive producer & director, and the short is written by Ernie Altbacker (Justice League Dark: Apokolips War, Batman: Hush). Set in the 1970s, the short find the enigmatic DC mystery man simultaneously playing both omniscient narrator and active character in a story of supernatural comeuppance for evil doers. Peter Serafinowicz (The Tick) gives voice to The Phantom Stranger, and Michael Rosenbaum (Smallville, Impastor) provides the voice of Seth. The Phantom Stranger also features the voices of Natalie Lander, Grey Griffin and Roger Craig Smith.

Adam Strange is produced and directed by Butch Lukic (Superman: Man of Tomorrow), who also conceived the original story – which is written by J.M. DeMatteis (Deathstroke: Knights & Dragons, Constantine: City of Demons). The short was initially attached to Justice League Dark: Apokolips War. On a rugged asteroid mining colony, few of the toiling workers are aware that their town drunk was ever anything but an interplanetary derelict. But when the miners open a fissure into the home of a horde of deadly alien insects, his true identity is exposed. He is space adventurer Adam Strange, whose heroic backstory is played out in flashbacks as he struggles to save the very people who have scorned him for so long. Charlie Weber (How To Get Away with Murder) provides the voice of Adam Strange, alongside with Roger R. Cross, Kimberly Brooks, Ray Chase and Fred Tatasciore.

All five new DC Showcase shorts credits include Jim Krieg (Batman: Gotham by Gaslight) as co-producer and Amy McKenna (Wonder Woman: Bloodlines) as producer. Sam Register is executive producer.

Initially launched in 2010, DC Showcase was originally comprised of four animated shorts produced by Bruce Timm and directed by Joaquim Dos Santos: The Spectre (released on 2/23/2010), Jonah Hex (7/27/2010), Green Arrow (9/28/2010) and Superman/Shazam: The Return of Black Adam (11/9/2010). An additional short, Catwoman (10/18/2011), was attached the following year to the release of Batman: Year One, and was directed by Lauren Montgomery (Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths) and executive produced by Bruce Timm. Screenwriters on the initial quintet were Steve Niles (The Spectre), Joe Lansdale (Jonah Hex), Greg Weisman (Green Arrow), Michael Jelenic (Superman/Shazam: The Return of Black Adam) and Paul Dini (Catwoman).

“Interactive storytelling offers an entirely new dimension of entertainment for DC animated movie fans, and an exciting look into potential titles for the future,” said Mary Ellen Thomas, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Senior Vice President, Originals, Animation and Family Marketing. “Brandon Vietti has crafted a uniquely involving, multi-tiered approach to captivating the audience with both popular story devices and some very unexpected plot twists.”

DC Showcase – Batman: Death in the Family Special Features – Blu-ray

Audio Commentaries – Commentary tracks on Sgt. Rock, Adam Strange, Death and The Phantom Stranger, plus one of the linear “Death in the Family” shorts (Under the Red Hood: Reloaded), by DC Daily hosts Amy Dallen and Hector Navarro.

DC Showcase – Batman: Death in the Family Special Features – Digital

Three non-interactive versions of the Batman: Death in the Family – entitled Jason Todd’s Rebellion, Robin’s Revenge and Red Hood’s Reckoning. (Note: not all Digital retailers offer bonus features with purchase).

youtube

Running Time: 96 minutes (151 minutes for interactive storylines)

Preorder now at Amazon.

#batman #news #notes

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thevindicativevordan · 3 years

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Metallo

I wanted to talk about one of my favorite DC villains, a guy who I’ve always thought was incredibly cool. A guy who I’ve thought makes a really awesome contrast for Superman. A guy who has never been in stories that have utilized his potential in my eyes:

Let’s talk about Metallo.

Metallo’s Background

He’s one of Superman’s oldest Rogues, and also one of the Rogues who has gone through the most revamps. The Golden Age Superman fought a guy called Metalo aka George Grant who created a suit of armor made out of the strongest metal on Earth (something that would resurface in the Grant Morrison revamp during the New 52) and a super strength serum that made him Superman’s physical equal. In an odd way he was an evil proto-Iron Man/Post Crisis Lex Luthor:

The John Corben take wouldn’t show up until the 1950s, created by Robert Bernstein and Al Plastino. This was the foundation for the modern conception of Metallo:

Right off the bat Corben was positioned as an Anti-Superman, predating Bizarro who wouldn’t show up until later. Corben worked as a journalist to cover up his real activities as a murderer and thief. An accident that nearly killed him and crippled his human body, forced him to accept a deal with a scientist to transfer his mind to a new artificial body. The scientist transferred his mind into an android body covered in synthetic bulletproof skin, gifting Corben with super strength. The synthetic skin idea would be used in Byrne’s revamp and the DCAU incarnation. He was initially powered by uranium, but was told he would need Kryptonite to fuel himself permanently. Corben would also act as a romantic rival for Clark via wooing Lois with his pretense of being Superman’s secret identity.

Ultimately John Corben would die in his debut issue, after mistaking a museum prop for the actual Kryptonite he needed to power himself. I often wonder if the character might have been better off if he had not been killed off in his debut, similarly to how the Joker was saved from dying in his debut by editorial. There were many intriguing ideas present in Corben’s creation: He was a romantic rival for Clark Kent, he used his journalism in a similar if villainous way as Superman did, and he was powered by the very thing that could kill Superman while still possessing enough raw strength to stand on equal terms with the Man of Steel. If they had kept him around, fleshed him out more, might Metallo have enjoyed more long term respect?

Regardless, Corben’s death paved the way for the third Metallo: His brother Roger Corben.

Roger likewise had a lot of interesting ideas that would eventually get folded into the modern Metallo. He was not a petty thief, but had a personal vendetta with Superman over the death of his brother. Superman accidentally caused the very accident that crippled Roger, adding to the man’s feud. Roger was also a leader within the Skull organization, rather than the small time criminal his brother was. This Metallo’s design would form the basis for the Geoff Johns/Gary Frank revamp during Secret Origin, and I suspect the Johns conception of Metallo as a member of a wider organization and whose transformation was caused by Superman has it’s roots here.

Sadly the take on a more fleshed out Metallo would not last. The Roger Corben version of Metallo would meet his end with the rest of the Pre-Crisis Superman Rogues Gallery in the seminal Alan Moore story Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?

Enter John Byrne:

During his Post-Crisis revamp of the Supermythos, Byrne returned to the John Corben take of a petty thief injured in an accident, who is rebuilt by a mad scientist Professor Vale. Byrne added his own twist though, with the scientist believing Superman to be the first scout in a full blown Kryptonian takeover of Earth, and specifically crafted Metallo to be an Anti-Superman weapon powered by Kryptonite. Metallo was to be humanity’s defense against the threat of Superman, an idea that would be revisited in Johns’ and Morrison’s revamps. Unfortunately petty thieves don’t make for great heroes, and Metallo killed Vale, ultimately coming into conflict with Superman not over any desire to protect humanity, but to simply eliminate a thorn in his side.

This incarnation of Metallo has basically served as the basis for his appearance in outside media, with a design that blatantly draws on the popular Terminator films.

This version of Metallo would also acquire a variety of powers thanks to making a deal with Neron that included the ability to transform parts of his body into weapons, transfer his consciousness into any technological or mechanical device, and manipulate his size:

Personally I’ve always loved that powerset upgrade, and think it’s crucial it sticks. It let him kick the shit out of Superman AND Batman in Loeb Superman/Batman, which basically solidified for me that this dude was a badass you didn’t want to mess with. Shame he’s never come close to matching that initial impression since.

The DCAU mostly used the Byrne revamp’s take, but they did change a few aspects which would end up carrying over to the mainline version. Most important was the replacing of Vale with Lex Luthor as the mind behind Metallo’s creation, something that would be incorporated in both Johns and Morrison’s later revamps.

One aspect that they introduced that didn’t carry over, that was still utilized to great effectiveness in the show, was that Corbyn’s transformation had robbed him of most physical sensation. He couldn’t taste, smell, touch, all the little things that made us human, and that drove him nuts. Ultimately he would learn that Lex was responsible for what happened to him, and he would swear a grudge against both Lex and Superman. Malcom McDowell was a fantastic choice to play Metallo, and is still the guy I “hear” when I read Metallo’s dialogue.

Now we come to the guy who crafted the next big revamp of Metallo: Geoff Johns.

This version of Metallo incorporated a ton of aspects from the multiple revamps that had preceded it, in much the same way Secret Origin did to Superman as a whole, while also adding a few new twists that I consider essential to the character now.

Like the DCAU, Luthor was the one who transformed Corben into Metallo. Like the Roger Corben take, this John Corben was accidentally crippled in a fight with Superman that gave him a personal vendetta against the Man of Steel. Similar to Byrne, this Metallo was created to be an Anti-Superman weapon. Corben and Lois had had a brief romantic relationship, similar to the original debut of Corben. Johns even incorporated some of the Golden Age Metallo by having Corben suit up in a mech suit made of “Metallo”, the strongest metal on Earth to fight Superman before the accident. Johns also added a key bit of lore that I love, that Corben served as a soldier under General Sam Lane, and became the man’s surrogate son, the child he always wanted as opposed to Lois and Lucy. Here Corben is motivated to fight Kal-El by a mix of xenophobia, need to impress his father figure, desire to impress Lois, and a simple dose of blood lust.

The last major revamp came from Grant Morrison during the New 52:

Morrison kept a lot of the Johns revamp: Corben was a soldier serving under Sam Lane, he had a brief romantic relationship with Lois, he was distrustful of Superman’s heroics, and his transformation into Metallo was connected to Lex. However Corben was a much more sympathetic figure under Morrison than under Johns, genuinely believing Superman to be a threat, he volunteered to be merged with the Metal-0 superweapon (another callback to the original Metalo) to defend humanity, but Brainiac hijacked his cybernetics and turned him into a weapon.

While Metallo would get another visual revamp for Rebirth, posted in the first image, Corben has more or less stayed within the confines that Byrne/Johns/Morrison established.

How I would use Metallo

I said earlier that Metallo is a guy I loved that I’ve never thought has lived up to his potential. He’s a villain with a lot of cool ideas, he’s a villain who has been continuously used by a lot of my favorite writers, but he’s never lived up to the Anti-Superman characterization that’s baked into him. Too often he’s just been a glorified henchman, or a petty thug, rarely if ever challenging Superman except in the most basic physical sense. I think that’s a great disservice to the ability of the character to be a much more important Rogue. That writers so often refuse to focus on him or any of the Rogues beyond Lex also hasn’t done him any favors. Instead of creating countless new OCs that are tossed aside by the next writer, someone needs to come on board with a passion for revamping the classics.

A lot of Superman’s Rogues suck not because they aren’t cool or don’t bring any interesting ideas, but because the ideas don’t do a good job in contrasting with Superman’s attributes. Metallo is a great example of this, look at all the interesting ideas creators have crafted around him, yet none of them have really been able to push those ideas as a way to explore and contrast Superman, so we get basic “Metallo tries to kill Superman, fails, Superman sends him back to jail” stories. That’s a failure of creativity in my eyes. I think that by choosing from some of the revamps listed above, a better, cooler, more interesting Metallo can be crafted.

The basics as established by Byrne/Johns/Morrison are great! The essential ideas that should be incorporated from all of the revamps listed above are:

1. Corben needs to have a military background as in Johns/Morrison. The petty thief origin is too dull, there’s nothing really to be mined there from a characterization standpoint. As a soldier Corben can serve as an interesting critique and contrast of Superman as an icon of America. The “American Way” has always been a dicey add-on to the original “Truth and Justice” motto. Often it’s been used to cast Superman as an obedient stooge of the government, as he was in The Dark Knight Returns, a characterization that has dogged him ever since. I think Corben can serve as an interesting character to explore Superman’s relationship with the American military-industrial complex. I would have Corben be what said complex wants Superman to be, at least in the beginning: A human WMD they can aim and fire, who will always follow orders no matter how reprehensible they are, who has a firm “America First” mindset. That way you can contrast the mainline Superman, and show that Superman is not that while also establishing what “The American Way” means in his eyes. Or you can have Superman drop that aspect of his motto in-universe, out of disgust for how his government perverts it. Either option is fine with me, I didn’t mind when Superman renounced his American citizenship.

2. If Lois often has to end up working with Clark’s exes, whether it’s Lana, Diana, or whoever, I think it’s only fair that Clark has to end up facing down an ex from Lois’ past. It’s important to show that Lois had a life before Clark showed up, and I think Corben is a good way to explore some of that. He’s the possessive ex-boyfriend who doesn’t respect Lois’ personal space and is convinced he can “win her back” via sheer determination. You can also compare and contrast the way Clark courted Lois, did Clark occasionally make the same pigheaded assumptions as Corben did? Corben debuted as a romantic rival for Superman, and I think that aspect still has merit. I also like his status as Sam’s surrogate son, it adds for some nice tension with Clark’s father-in-law that the guy he actually wanted to marry Lois was transformed into a weapon to kill the guy who ended up being his son-in-law.

3. Corben is a true believer in the threat Superman poses, and is willing to take on the transformation into Metallo to protect humanity. It’s xenophobia yes, but with all the Evil Superman stories going around, it’s hard not to sympathize at least a little bit with Corben’s viewpoint, which tie into a deeper attribute of Corben’s I think needs to be brought up: Corben should be a sympathetic villain. I wouldn’t make him a bloodthirsty psycho, Superman has plenty of those. Corben should have villainous valor, willing to tackle on whatever threats to humanity are out there, whether Superman or others. I would make Corben instead someone who has the genuine desire to protect humanity, but lacks Superman’s concern for collateral damage. In that way you could contrast the two’s brand of “heroics”, Superman’s loyalty to humanity as a whole over one nation, and concern with protecting lives first and foremost, Corben’s desire to protect humanity’s future for the “greater good” even if it costs a few lives in the here and now and loyalty to America above all else.

4. I like the idea of Superman being inadvertently responsible for the accident that cripples Corben and mandates his transformation. It adds to his sympathy, helps justify why Superman might continue to believe Corben could find redemption (he wants Corben to change and also wants to find a way to earn Corben’s forgiveness one day), and provides a good personal reason for why Corben would hate Superman, blaming Supes for his current state. I would also have him blame Sam and Lex as well, but he would subdue those resentments for as long as he remained working for the military. Only after he finally snaps would he target those two.

5. Finally I would keep the ability to shapeshift his body into weapons, and to manipulate technology. I would have Corben emulating Adam Jensen from Deus Ex, able to “hack” tech around him for his own purpose, armed with a variety of weapons that make him a huge threat not just to Superman but to everyone. Finally I would get rid of the Kryptonite heart. I’m tired of every battle with Metallo going the same way: He shows up, blasts Superman with kryptonite radiation, Superman lies on the ground gasping in pain, Metallo stands around gloating like a moron instead of finishing Supes off, Supes beats him by tricking him or by someone else intervening. I want to see Metallo as an Anti-Superman weapon realized beyond jus the Kryptonite. How about incorporating the DCAU version’s lack of feeling, so that Metallo doesn’t feel pain from Superman’s blows or his powers? How about giving him an internal temperature controller, so he can’t be melted by heat vision or frozen by arctic breath? How about an invisibility cloak that hides him from Superman’s vision, sound mufflers that let him sneak up on Supes even with his hearing, basically go WILD with his Anti-Superman status, let us see a real fight between someone who can counter each of Superman’s powers! You have Kryptonite Man and Lex for the villains who mainly make use of Kryptonite against Superman, I think Metallo should go in a different direction. Morrison making it so that “Metal-0″ was already powerful enough to hurt Superman is all the justification you need as to why he still poses a threat in my opinion.

I’ll go over the basic arc I’d want to see him undergo and the kinds of stories I think he’s positioned to tell in another post.

#superman #metallo #Lois Lane #sam lane #lex luthor #kryptonite #revamp

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gideongrace · 4 years

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The Pandemic Survival Guide

The world feels like it's going to hell, so here is a list of cute, dumb, happy, fun things to cheer people up so we can try and survive this disaster.

Youtube:

-Jenna Marbles - Cute craft projects, weirdness and dogs.

-Julian Solomita - Jenna's boyfriend Julien has a cooking show and it's adorable.

-Wood Hawker/beat em ups - Wood is the cutest goober of all time, he has two channels, one is beat em ups, where he talks about nintendo switch and one is Wood Hawker where he just does goofy, fun stuff.

-Monster Factory - So these guys, the mcelroy brothers, make monsters in games like Fallout and WWE Wrestling and name them stuff like Snack Braff. It's hilarious.

-MEF (Movies Explained For) - This guy named Jeb does comedy reviews of movies with titles like "Back to the Future part 2 explained for realists!" and "Overboard explained for rich folks!"

-the try guys - Four guys try out all different sorts of stuff, from lie detectors to wearing corsets to baking cakes without recipes.

- unraveled - One of the greatest dorks ever BDG (Brian David Gilbert) does videos like "every sonic game is blasphemous" and "which dark souls boss is the best manager?"

-Satisfying slime video

-Hot knife cuts through stuff

-The lockpicking lawyer - This guy teaches you how to break any lock. It's oddly calming.

-kinda funny's internet explorerz - Basically the best of the dumb stuff on the internet packed into an hour long show every week.

-Markiplier doing a clickhole quiz about fucking rl stine.

-That time on murder she wrote - A comedy review show of the show murder she wrote.

my favorite asmr channels:

-raphytaffy - Lots of noises and whispering.

-shadowywhispers - Soooo many rps from overwatch to batman to captain america sam falcon to stuff like werewolf boyfriend, demon knight boyfriend and the android chronicles: syndicate.

-gibiasmr - Lots of sounds and whispering and clicking noises.

-jojoasmr - Really visual asmr.

-heatherfeather asmr - She does lots of roleplays and has a very soft voice.

-asmrdarling - Lots of different sounds and roleplays.

-dr. t asmr - This one is weird in the best way. He does like sci-fi asmr and calls viewers "the tingledroid army".

TV Shows:

-Lois and Clark - A cheesy 90s version of Superman that focuses more on the relationship between Lois Lane and Clark Kent as reporters while also having goofy villains every week.

-Golden Girls - Do people exist who don't know what Golden Girls is? Sophia Petrillo is the best, fiestiest little old lady ever.

-Brooklyn Nine-Nine - This show is the funniest, nicest, best, most diverse show on tv.

-Schitt's Creek - This show is just so gay.

-Yuri on Ice! - Gay ice skating boys fall in love! That's it. That's the show! Really, though.

-Jane the Virgin - A virgin gets accidentally inceminated, the girl (who is engaged to somebody else) falls in love with the guy whose kid it is, the kid gets kidnapped... this is an english language telenovella.(With voiceovers!)

Movies:

-Evolution - David Duchovny, Sean William Scott and Orlando Jones fight aliens with head & shoulders shampoo. No, really.

-Clueless - 90s LA retelling of Jane Austen's Emma.

-Blockers - Three girls try to get laid on prom night. (And one of them is queer!)

-Street Fighter - Um, this movie has this scene in it.

-Knives Out - The best modern whodunit about rich people getting what they deserve ever.

-In & Out - 90s gay film that's about an adorable gay english teacher coming out.

-Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil - Two backwoods dorks rent a cabin in the woods and a bunch of teens mistake them for serial killers.

To All The Boys I've Loved Before - This movie is one of the cutest rom-coms I've ever seen. A teenage girl's sister sends out all her sister's unsent love letters.

-French Kiss - So a french thief (Kevin Kline with an accent) hides a necklace he's stolen in the bag of this American girl (Meg Ryan) and has to follow after her as she tries to get her boyfriend back and of course the thief and the girl fall in love.

-You Should Meet My Son! - A super cute movie about a mom realizing her son is gay and trying to find him a boyfriend.

Short, Sweet (Harringrove) Fic:

-rockisdead by flippyspoon

Billy is an instathot and Steve is into it.

-boldly go by tracy7307

Star trek but harringrove and Billy is a betazoid.

-homemade by lazybaker

So basically this one is like a Miyazaki movie, but Harringrove.

-starry night, portrait hung by lucdarling

Billy is a painter and he wants to paint Steve.

-I'm Falling Again (But This Time It's In Love With You) by greyspilot

The boys are just really sweet in this canon fic.

Stand-up comedians:

-John Mulaney

-Jim Gaffigan

-Trevor Noah

-Gabriel Iglesias

Music:

-chilledcow lo-fi - youtube

-chilledcow lo-fi spotify

-notice my lo-fi, senpai playlist by be_honest on spotify

-night runner - magnum bullets music video

-dance music - playlist by bree_cheese

-exciteable music - playlist by bree_cheese

-pretty - pretty songs playlist by bree_cheese

podfics/audiobooks

-audiobooks for the damned - A whole bunch of people did audiobook recordings of movie novelizations.

-the art of running by pprfaith, read by reena jenkins - The fast and the furious if Brian was a girl and gets together with Dom.

-dilf by twentysomething - teenwolf podfic read by rhea314 - Scott and Jackson are Derek's sons and Stiles is Scott's kindergarten teacher.

-drop dead gorgeous written by maya, read by heatherifics - The harry potter fanfic where Harry and Draco are Aurors and Harry is part Veela.

other stuff:

-The original script to the movie The Room.

-i write like - A website that allows you to put in bits of your writing to see what famous author you write like.

-squishables - Giant, spherical plushes.

-Not without you: a big, massive, hardcover stucky anthology.

I'll also be making other lists and tagging them #thepandemicsurvivalguide.

If you have anything to add to this list (fics, art, comics, shows, books, whatever) please reblog this and add it!

#pandemicsurvivalguide #and this list was made my a transgender asexual disabled gay dude #so i think i did a pretty good job of picking stuff that's free of transphobia and homophobia #pandemic survival

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popculturebuffet · 4 years

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Darkwing Duck Reviews: Tiff of the Titans

Uh-Oh, Gizmoduck Comes to town! In the first of a series of reviews building up to Just Us Justice Ducks, the dopey, arrogant, anti-charasmatic, national embarrassment heads to St. Canard to guard a super weapon from F.O.W.L. Naturally, he ends up being more of a problem for our hero than the actual bad guys. Also a look at Tad Stone’s claims the series isn’t in the same universe as Ducktales. Full review and recap commissioned by @weirdkev27 under the cut

This review, much like Death, Taxes and Thanos, was inevitable. I’d been planning to watch and review the first appearances of each of the justice ducks and fearsome five as my next step in watching Darkwing duck anyway, and while I’ve already got one member’s appearance in the wings anyway, I’ll get to that tomorrow or Saturday just in time for Halloween, hint hint, Kev pushed this one into the queue with a commission and I was happy to take the side trip to see just what the Darkwing version of Gizmoduck and Steelbeak, two of my favorites in the reboot, were like originally. So welcome folks to the build to the greatest superhero team made up of ducks of all time, let’s get quackin.

We open, here in Duckburg, where the Eggmen are breaking in. Sadly they do not have the master plan, but they are here to steel the Comarant, a super powerful land, sea and air device the military is storing there. They instead find Gizmoduck! Who makes a good first impression, being a hoaky superman parody in iron man’s costume in this continuity, but it’s a nice way to contrast to Darkwing’s batman parody with a touch of Sandman.. the pulp one not the neil gaiman one. Sadly he doesn’t have a cool gas mask but the Darkwing Duck costume is iconic without it.

Point is the eggmen are easily repelled, though they do get away by blasting Gizmo with a tank. The General in charge is thankful for Gizmoduck’s help, but notes the Comarant will be heading to St. Canard soon for a demonstration at the big air show, and asks that Giz go over and protect it, maybe even work with Darkwing to protect it. Though Gizmo shoots that down, and not only insults Darkwing but says he’s not sure if he’s good or bad. While the latter comment did sour me on the guy.. research bears out Darkwing has been framed once or twice, and my own experience with the pilot saw him you know breaking out of jail and basically clamming superheroes are above the law, so I COULD get why someone wouldn’t trust him, even if Giz’s attitude about it still isn’t great. So fenton quick changes behind a sign and heads off to see his old buddy Launchpad. A quick aside before we get going this episode doesn’t so much torch Tad Stone’s retroactive claim this isn’t the same universe as Ducktales, as burn it to ashes, take a whiz on those ashes and send each separate ash on a seperate probe to the farthest reaches of space. This episode not only has a cameo by Scrooge on a billboard.. but it’s one for DUCKBURG. Where Gizmoduck is said to be from. He also knows launchpad well, and vice versa, and outright mentions McDuck Manor. the episode couldn’t be saying “this is the same universe as ducktales’ harder if Scrooge himself showed up and started ranting about a Sea Monster eating his ice cream. I do like and respect Tad Stones, but I will never like or respect this claim of his and even if HE had that idea in his head during production of the show, it’s very clear everyone else including Disney who greenlit the Darkwing Duck comics explicitly connecting the two universes, felt it was a shared universe, and there’s really no reason they can’t coexist.

If it’s because “Well launchpad wouldn’t leave scrooge”.. besides the fact Scrooge tried to fire him MULTIPLE times, it’s not farfetched Scrooge would put him in charge of a hangar both because he trusts him.. and to get rid of him since he doesn’t like Launchpad very much. Plus Donald has to come back from his tour of duty sometime and likely could easily do Launchpad’s job as pilot, as he did in the source material. My point is there’s tons of ways to write the man out easily, and he could just as easily be doing both jobs like in the reboot. This feels like a weird, unnecessary retcon no one wanted and everyone just politely ignores, like the creators of Doug saying he and Patti didn’t end up together after High School. Which even then makes more sense than this claim, since at least there I get the creators not thinking a high school romance would last forever. That’s fair.. it’s just not something fans really wanted to hear after spending two separate series and a movie getting them together. It would be like if Girl Meets World had revealed Cory and Topanga had divorced. Yes it’d be possible since they’d broken up twice over the course of the series, but no one wanted that, why would you do that. I’m getting off topic, the point is a few breakups aside Doug and Patti clearly married eventually, and Darkwing Duck and Ducktales are in the same universe. Sometimes you just have to ignore Word of God for your own sanity.

Back at the actual episode we cut to Steelbeak’s Bowling Alley Hideout... and I do love a job that allows me to say things like that. But in a really fantastic bit Steelbeak is bowling his minions over as punishment for failure.. even though they have a valid reason but eh he’s the bad guy and he has to get his bowling average up for FOWL’s bowling team somehow. Their insurance covers evil punishment related accidents anyways, they’ll be fine.

But yeah let’s talk about Steelbeak for a second. I honestly hadn’t seen any of the original version so I was curious.. and he’s really damn awesome. Rob Paulsen always does a great job though and is always a pleasure, but he really does a good job here and with the contrast in him: He’d seem like a dumb thug, what with his gangster accent and general cockiness and swagger.. but he backs it up with great combat and even greater planning. He’s a schemer, a fighter and damn if he isn’t fun to watch. It also makes me love the reboot version even more. While I already loved him for being played by Jason Mantzokus, being enjoyably dim, while also still enough of a threat to be freaking cool, it’s even cooler knowing he’s still fundamentally the same character. Much like Drake he’s simply been tweaked a bit. For drake it was softening the edges since Ducktales isn’t as broad a show, and neither will the darkwing reboot i’m betting, so his ego and selfishness is sanded down considerably. For Steelbeak it’s giving him an actual origin: Instead of starting at the top of FOWL, he’s starting as a very competent but very wet behind the ears and full of himself agent, working his way up to becoming justifably full of himself like the original show. He has the same swagger and badassery, he’s just not a master planner yet and he’ll get there. Like many of the reboot characters, he’s simply an already great character given some extra depth and rounding out. I love both and can’t wait to see him again next ep and hopefully he’ll show up in the Darkwing reboot so they can go for round 2.

So with that out of the way, Darkwing naturally interrupts, and cleans house with his gas gun, forcing Steelbeak and his crew to literally go underground into the sewers. This successfully fools drake, and Steelbeak bemoans how both Darkwing and Gizmoduck have been thwarting his plans.. until he gets a great idea; pit them against each other so he can pilfer the comerant while their too busy fighting. It’s a classic supervillain tactic, and one that works perfectly because one of them’s an egotist and a dick and the other is also that but with more style and likeability. Back at Drake’s place, Gosalyn and Honker are watching a horror movie they clearly aren’t supposed to till Drake and launchpad come back in via their easy chairs flipping them in from Darkwing Tower which is just.. really cool. I like it. I also like that much like the Shakespeare bust in Wayne Manor, Darkwing has his own neat statue to provide acess to his lair... a tiny bronze statue of Basil from the Great Mouse Detective.. I REALLY need to fucking watch that film but it’s a nice nod. But yeah Launchpad brought them back because he feels drake could use a break while Drake refuses to stop because crime never stops and he doesn’t have time for it and your usual self destructive bollocks. It’s interrupted by a knock at the door?

It’s Fenton! Whose stopped in to see his old buddy launchpad, who is happy to see his old friend and the two catch up, though Drake dosen’t like the interuption because Classic Drake is kind of a grumpus. Fenton naturally is here because Gizmoduck is but says he’s doing a job for the military.. which makes no sense but given Drake doesn’t know what he does and Launchpad dares to be stupid, if not nearly as stupid as his reboot version, no one questions it. When Fenton says he needs to find a hotel Launchpad, being Launchpad, invites him to stay and while Fenton watches the movie with the kids, Drake wants him gone because you know he has a secret identity to keep and a case to work on and they don’t know if they can trust him with it. It’s fair.. but since this is Drake he almost handles it with the subtly of a howitzer. But before he can try to literally throw Fenton out on his ass, a news report comes on about an attack at a local theater and both head off to take care of it.. we also get a nice moment where both react to it with the same words at the same time. Fenton.. is actually really likeable. He’s a bit awkward, more in that he sort of barges in and makes himself comfy.. but it’s very easy to see from this and the one Ducktales episode of his i’ve seen where the utterly marvelous reboot version gets some traits from: his nervousness, his pluckness, his lack of thinking things through ocasionally when he’s not overthinking them. Fenton is charming. The issue is once he switches on the costume he goes from utterly charming to punchable REALLL quick. I’ll explain my problems with his alter ego in a sec.

At the theater Steelbeak fakes it to look like Darkwing’s doing the bombing, if half haphazardly and leaves Darkwing with the bomb so when Gizmo shows up he thinks he’s responsible. Darkwing naturally says it wasn’t him, but Gizmo dosen’t buy it and asks if he’s so good how come he wears a mask... says the guy in a helmeted visor’s whose only defense when that’s pointed out is it came with the suit. Which yes is a joke.. but it fails to land and instead of being funny just makes Gizmo look like a hypocritical dick whose assuming someone is evil based on flimsy evidence, and what’s very obviously a setup. it makes him come off as the biggest dumbass alive instead of this world’s superman and that is annoying. More ranting about him in a minute. We do end up getting an incredibly funny bit where the two end up arguing over who gets to defuse a bomb, with both wrestling over it till Gizmoduck takes care of it and both fall into the theater. Gizmoduck tries to arrest Darkwing who ignores him and runs off. The next day the Mallard family, including Honker naturally, watches Gizmoduck get a parade, a key to the city and other good stuff on the news while Drake sulks before turning it off. And yeah i’ve waited long enough let’s talk about this version of Gizmoduck and why he does not work. I get in theory he’s supposed to be “The Cape”, minus the cape: The big cheese that everyone looks up to and loves to Darkwing’s dark avenger of the night, a parody of that whose also really dumb. The issue is two fold. The first is .. the classic archtypical cape type chracter has been parodied to hell and back by 2020. He’s been a monster, an asshole and as with here an idiot. And even for then a superman parody, if not in apperance or powers but in treatment, whose really dumb wasn’t very new.

And you CAN parody a big silver age type hero: Justice League International did so well without being too overt, having most of the team either annoyed or actively hostile to Shazam/Captain Marvel. But it was done well there because well.. billy’s a very corny very earnest and likeable kid in an adult’s body. To us he’s charming and loveable. But to a bunch of actual adults he’d be offputting at best and annoying at worst. While some have been annoyed at how he was handled, I a fan of both JLI and Shazam liked it and thought it was an interesting take. Another REALLY good and REALLY hilarious take on this is from fellow superhero action comedy Danny Phantom, one of my favorites and one I need to revisit. One episode had Danny split himself in two so he could crimefight and have fun with his friends resulting in one self whose a burnt out slacker, and another whose an over the top crimefighter who says things like “you Felonious fiend!” And “This looks like a job for the vacuum cleaner!”. It’s a damn good episode. My point is it’s been better done before and since.

What doesn’t help is the episode tries to paint it as equal, since Darkwing’s problem in part is Gizmoduck stealing his thunder.. but it doesn’t work. Darkwing is a fully fleshed out character we know and love who despite his huge ego and rampant jackassery, is a decent person whose fought hard for St. Canard, loves his daughter and most damingly... is entertainingly sickish. Gizmoduck’s dickery just makes him come off less likeable and incredibly dense, while Darkwing’s is part of his charm and, along with his ego, has backfired enough to balance it out. Gizmo just doesn’t get comeuppance for his behavior, and instead gets rewarded with a parade, a key to the city, cheerleaders and Gosalyn looking up to him just for having powers in his gadgets. And really his methods aren’t that different from dark wing: While Darkwing is secretive, a loner and uses gadgets.. Gizmoduck’s suit is basically one BIG gadget, and he refuses to see. And I get that’s probably the joke but it just. doesn’t. LAND. It just makes him insufferable. And as far as I can tell in the original show he wasn’t: he was an awkward dork we root for like in the reboot, not a gloryhogging jackass whose squandered his good will long before he gets Darkwing isn’t evil and tries working with him to the point I don’t care by the time that happens: He’s already been so obnoxious it dosen’t make up for it. Maybe later appearances are better but he’s just a chore to watch in costume here. And that’s WITHOUT comparing him to the 2017 version, one of my favorites there, one of the best animated superheroes i’ve seen in a long time, and a toughly likeable character who struggles due to his superhero identity but took it up for exactly the right reasons and wants to help people. Darkwing Gizmoduck thinks he’s the cape and an inspiration when a good guy when he’s worse than the guy he hates at times. Reboot Gizmo is an honest, decent guy who simply wants to help people and use the gizmotech as a way to do that, to help change the world for the better and save the helpless, and only clashes with Darkwing due to his ego and lack of understanding that Gizmoduck and him really aren’t that different. Finally if THIS is why Tad Stones wants them to be different universes, because this Fenton is different from the Ducktales one in personality.. then that’s on HIM. That’s on him for writing this version poorly or letting him get written so poorly and not on the fans who had no reason not to connect a dot. God this character was disappointing and hopefully when I watch more of him at work in Ducktales, he isn’t this obnoxious, nor will he hopefully be in his sequel episodes. Thankfully moving on Darkwing gets to work, because you know he has experience, and finds Steelbeak trying to pilfer the cormorant but Captain Clueless interrupts and tries to arrest him. The two then finally fight and while it’s sadly short, it’s a fun clash and I genuinely hope the reboot has it’s own fight with them, as given how damn good they are at fight scenes, it’s bound to be even more awesome. But Steelbeak gets away, and uses the comarant’s secret weapon.. a giant fake egg that drops a giant pile of yolk to drown them. Gizmo finally realizes he’s been fighting the wrong guy but our hero's are now running out of time. Darkwing , being the actually capable one here, has Gizmo uses his propeller to beat the eggs and the two head off.. though after a funny bit where Gizmo breaks the Ratcatcher’s sidecar Darkwing lets him use his spare tier, which is huge and likely intended for the main vehicle. Good stuff. The two get after Steelbeak and while Gizmo makes me pray for death but death won’t come we get a fun battle with Steelbeak including Steelbeak using his beak to bite down and destroy the gas gun. It’s a damn fun bit I must say. But eventually the good guys win, disable the comarant and Darkwing beats Steelbeak. The day is save, FOWL is foiled, our heroes are on shaky but better terms, and Drake and Fenton depart on good if equally shaky terms, before arguing about which of them is better. And we’re out. Final Thoughts: This.. was a disappointingly mixed bag. Gizmoduck REALLY drug down what was otherwise a good episode with a great concept: Bringing in a hero whose stronger and more popular than Darkwing.. but mostly uses it to make Darkwing look good, which he didn’t need, and make Gizmoduck look REALLY bad, intentionally or otherwise. Steelbeak is a delight and his plan, and the egg trap, are really good, and as mentioned there are enough good set pieces to prevent this from being a terrible episode.. but as an old friend says for me time and time again...

youtube

#darkwing duck #drake mallard #gizmoduck #fenton crackshell #fenton crackshell cabrera #launchpad mcquack #steelbeak #gosalyn mallard #honker #tiff of the titans #tad stone

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knifeonmars · 4 years

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“I let them in and they broke me” The Worldview of Batman: Last Knight on Earth

Batman: Last Knight on Earth, from DC Comics' "mature readers" imprint Black Label, is supposedly the final word on Batman from the team of writer Scott Snyder and artist Greg Capullo, who have worked together on the character in some capacity since 2011's New 52 relaunch. This claim to finality isn't entirely convincing given that Snyder and Capullo's current Death Metal event series is also about a Batman and his friends fighting a bunch of evil Batmen, but for the sake of this examination, I take Last Knight on Earth at its word. As an experience, as a comic, Last Knight on Earth (hereafter LKoE) is really good. Snyder and Capullo are both heavily invested in the character and they're firing on all cylinders here, throwing out off the wall ideas which would never fly in the mainstream DC Universe and giving us lovingly rendered, absolutely beautiful pages of devastation and violence. It's a feast and a thrill ride, but it's also not going to be for everyone because it is deeply, deeply misanthropic in its politics. LKoE, more than anything else, is about disappointment in humanity, but where it goes with that disappointment is fundamentally conservative and nostalgic.

To understand this, it's important to know that Snyder's take on Batman has always been grounded in post-9/11, post-War on Terror urban fears. Batman had long been rooted in the urban fears of the 1980's; crime run amok, overwhelmed and inadequate police, etc, thanks to the influence of Frank Miller, a man who was famously mugged multiple times after moving to New York City and wasn't shy about reflecting that feeling of helplessness and anger in his work. Snyder's Batman, by contrast, was not a terrifying spirit of vengeance, but a shining beacon, a folk hero and aspirational figure, Snyder's Batman is heavily informed by the Obama era. LKoE is about this Obama era optimism, naivete if you like, crashing against the reality of the 2016 election of Donald Trump. It's not subtle in its allegory; the apocalypse of LKoE is set off by Lex Luthor and Superman having a debate about good versus evil and the people of Earth democratically "voting" in favor of evil, then rising up and destroying the world. They even come into the halls of power, or rather JLA HQ, the Hall of Justice, and destroy the very people who tried to protect them. The horror at the heart of the book isn't Trump, it's the idea that people are horrible, stupid, and selfish.

It's unrepentant in this misanthropy, but also noncommittal. For a book about how bad ordinary people can be, there are shockingly few of them in this book. There's no Carrie Kelly, no Harper Row (Snyder's own creation, who even he has evidently forgotten about) in this book, no one to push back against the idea that people in general are bad. There is no mention, no glimpse of those who didn't want this, who "voted" for goodness, the election condemns them all, renders humanity as a whole into a monolith of ravenous, mindless evil. The closest we get to confronting this monolith is the Slingers, ordinary humans who tried to use Green Lantern rings, and because they lacked the will to control them properly, have become giant, mindless, evil, energy babies. It's an evocative and amusing image, but the politics of it are distasteful: "This is you." says LKoE, a big baby, totally unprepared for a power which should only be placed in the hands of the chosen elite. One (1) single ordinary person gets to speak in this book; a toe-headed little boy who talks to Batman for just over a page, little more than a cardboard cutout, that's it. For a book that's about humanity's evil, LKoE is completely unwilling to look that evil in the eye.

The final enemy that Batman must confront isn't a Trump analog, it's not even humanity's selfishness as a whole, it's Omega, and who is Omega? Batman, but broken. Omega is the original Bruce Wayne, tortured and mutilated in the aftermath of the "election" as humanity descended into an orgy of self-destruction and violence, now having pieced himself back together as a totalitarian, mind-controlling villain who wants to protect humanity from itself. He could, charitably, read as the rise of fascism in light of chaos, the fear of the guy who comes after Trump, the cleaner, more articulate monster who can really get things done (though such a fear already seems outdated given Trump's efficacy in perpetrating horrors), but I think that misses that mark. Omega is Batman as a blackpilled doomer, someone who has looked into the face of what humanity is capable of and given form to his misanthropy. Our Batman, the hero of the story, is a clone of this fallen Batman, with matching memories that stop just short of the "election" and his fall from grace. He's the same guy in every way that matters, the only difference is that he was never traumatized, he never really reckoned with what humanity was capable of: he was never a victim. Our Batman is a hero because of his ignorance, because he's been allowed to forget, and in doing so his underlying assumptions about the world have never been challenged. LKoE is a book in which even the Joker can earn redemption and a place in the extended Bat-family, but Omega has to die by the hand of our shiny, unblemished Batman so that the future can live. And what is that future? It's more of the same.

LKoE ends with an almost sickly sweet scene that looks a lot like hope: the heroes all hug each other and strike a group pose looking hopefully at nothing in particular, Batman holds a baby version of Superman and resolves to raise him and bring hope back into the world, but none of it really means anything. It's more of the same, the same people doing the same things, led by a man whose defining virtue is his ignorance of the past, a group of insular elites watching over a people they both hate and fear, doing nothing to make people better beyond hoping, vaguely, that they won't make the same mistakes again. There is no passing of the torch, no new Batman for a new era, it is pointedly, specifically, the same old Batman. LKoE is a comic that's ultimately about staying the course, doing the same thing despite knowing that it means nothing, acknowledging a fundamental contempt for the unwashed masses but not actually doing anything about it because hey, it's not like you got hurt. The bad guy is the one who won't let go of the past, who points at what people are capable of and demands change, and he can't be allowed to exist if we're to get back to doing things the old-fashioned way.

Last Knight on Earth is motivated by the birth of the Trump era, and arrives as it nears a potential finish, but it doesn't point towards anything new, it just wants to go back to the way things were, even in the face of an unshakable hatred of people and a certainty that they are not to be trusted, that they need their betters to guide them. I don't want to be so thuddingly simplistic as to label what these means politically, but laid out like this it's clear. The ideology of Snyder and Capullo's Batman is born of the Obama era, warts and all, and cannot survive the Trump era, but the solution Last Knight on Earth offers is not to change and evolve once more, but to forget, to fall back. That doesn't work, it can't work, whether it's a comic book or the real world, history only ever goes one way.

#words #last knight on earth #batman #scott snyder #greg capullo #giving it away for free

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