Mod Post: Off-Topic Tuesday

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In the comments to these weekly posts (and only these posts), it's your chance to go as off topic as you like.

Talk about non-comics stuff, thread derail, and just generally chat among yourselves.

The intent of these posts is to chat and have some fun and, sure, vent a little as required. Reasoned debate is fine, as always, but if you have to ask if something is going over the line, think carefully before posting please.

Normal board rules about conduct and behaviour still apply, of course.

It's been suggested that, if discussing spoilers for recent media events, it might be advisable to consider using the rot13 method to prevent other members seeing spoilers in passing.

The world situation is the world situation. If you're following the news, you know it as much as I do, if you're not, then there are better sources than scans_daily. But please, no doomscrolling, for your own sake.

Though I am breaking that a little bit because of the sheer circus going on at the moment.

As one commentator put it, what the current administration is doing to the White House is aesthetically what a meth lab does to a regular house. They've cemented over the back garden, one entire wing has been demolished and is some sort of a "building project" that may never get finished and a cage fighting pit is being built on the front lawn.

And in terms of the concert that was being planned for the Semiquincentennial of the USA 80th birthday of a certain Mangled Apricot Hellbeast, it's like a musical version of the hoky- kokey except everyone immediately jumped out and did not jump back in again, with the possible exception of Vanilla Ice... who as the headliner of anything is just... sad.

Also, we're now in June, which in the US is Pride Month, and I think it's time we got back to more of our roots on S_D and celebrate the hell out of that, because good god almighty do we need to support our local queer communities, more on that shortly.

Comments

[iamrman]

This week’s comics ramblings:

Avengers by Kurt Busiek and George Perez. No sooner have the Avengers sorted out the new team roster after the Morgan Affair, then the Squadron Supreme come along to stink things up. Are these the same guys from the Gruenwald series that have been loitering around on Earth-616 since then?

Avengers West Coast. The fact that a miniaturised Tigra is on the loose gets forgotten during the changeover of creative teams and doesn’t get solved until an issue of Avengers Spotlight. It isn’t even collected in the Epic Collection I am reading from. Tigra suddenly turns up back to normal size without any explanation.

Batgirl. Cass likes Superboy, but nobody in the Bat-family is ever allowed to have fun and Batman shuts it down. Yes, this is Batman in his emotionally constipated era.

Batman: Knightquest: The Search. While AzBats is having a breakdown back in Gotham, Bruce Wayne is searching for his missing physiotherapist and also Jack Drake. These issues wouldn’t be collected until 2018. Apparently, even DC thought these issues were the weakest part of the storyline. I mean, they’re not wrong. You don’t miss much by skipping these issues. They only really collected these issues for completion’s sake.

Blackest Night. The thought of Barry Allen as the avatar of Hope always makes me roll my eyes.

Green Arrow. The Brightest Day tie-ins sure are laying the Robin Hood imagery pretty thick. Ollie is living in the forest and robbing from the rich and everything. I guess that makes Black Canary Maid Marian? (Or Hal Jordan if you are so inclined.)

[metadronos]

Although I agree Knightquest: The Search wasn't the best part of the whole Knightfall saga, I don't think it was the worst. That dishonour, I feel, goes to Knightquest: The Crusade, with the major exceptions of the new Trigger Twins (who weren't essential to the plot but were charming and fun) and the Joker's film arc. The rest was mostly painfully obvious filler, with poorly-realized villains (including the arc's big bad, Abattoir) and an overall lack of focus. AzBat's System-induced breakdown was easily the most fascinating part of the arc, and the only part that was truly essential to the overall Knightfall plot. So the creative team should've focused on that; it would've made for a tighter, more consistent arc.

The Search, whatever one may think of its execution, was focused and consistent. Unlike with The Crusade, I didn't find myself constantly scratching my head and asking, "Why are these characters even here?" or "Will you just get on with the main story?" I also liked the clever way Bruce avoided psychic, remote murder by Shondra's brother: you can't kill someone who never really existed in the first place!

The one serious problem with the arc, I think, was the same problem with Shondra in Knightfall as a whole: in the end, she was essentially a plot device, a living, magical "undo button" for Bruce's paralysis. Although introduced quite early in the Prelude to Knightfall, she made only sporadic appearances and neither her character nor her romance with Bruce, such as it was, received much attention. And Shondra's eventual, tragic permanent regression to childhood was, if not technically fridging (her brother didn't specifically plan that outcome at all, let alone to "get at" Batman), just as callous a treatment of a woman character. It was esentially, "Okay, she's fulfilled her function; now, how quickly can we usher her offstage?" I understand that, years later, some story or another mentioned she did recover, but come on; no on-panel appearance, no reunion with Bruce (not even a "just for tonight" thing)?

[iamrman]

I did like the two Justice League Task Force issues, even if Cynthia had precisely one line of dialogue.

[scorntx]

The Squadron are indeed the same from the Gruenwald series.
Then they get home and it turns out, whoops, leaving a bunch of easily used brainwashing tech lying around was a bad idea.
(But it's alright, the Exiles eventually help prove that the dystopian government that brainwashes people brainwashed people to get into power. And everything was fine!
Until their universe got Hickman'd and everyone died except Power Princess, whose currently location is that Big Island Upstate.)


... Blackest Night was my first big DC event so I'm probably more generous to it, but, yeah. It's pretty Geoff Johns.
Always like the ending.
Johns: "Well, now that that's all over and dead means dead, we're moving into a brighter future."
DC: "Lolwhut can't hear you, murderin' Ryan Choi!"

[tripodeca113]

sigh not long to go until they release season two of the live action Avatar The Last AIrbender show....

Doctor Who 20th anniversary rewatch: It turns out coronations are a lot less interesting than this episode indicated.
That was an alright episode, had some nice creepy moments but the climax could have used a little work ('Oh no it's only made her stronger....wait never mind we stopped her')
why did it end with Rose telling the kid to give his abusive father another chance?

I was going to comment on how it depicted 50's London as entirely white but then they had a few black people at the end. phew!

Watched The Dark Knight Rise. Stupid but a lot of fun.

Bane felt out of place in this setting, which is odd since in the first movie Ra's A ghul was an evil ninja. I think it's the mask and silly voice.

The message of the film was a bit confused. Okay so Bane is the charismatic leader who's united the poor and destitute of Gotham together to form an army. The disguise themselves as janitors to get into the stock market so they can sabotage Bruce Wayne's fortune. They talk about how the rich's day of judgment is coming.
Bruce Wayne even gets criticize a bit since in the years he's been moping around Wayne Manor he didn't realize Wayne Industries has stopped funding the program to support inner-city orphanages and this caused a guy to die homeless on the streets after he aged out of the system. But that all sort of peters out when it's revealed this was all an elaborate plan by the League of Shadows which makes the third act seem doubly conservative after it spent all that time trying to saying something about corruption and wealth inequality.
I get that Bane's lying about giving Gotham back to the people but it raises a lot of questions it doesn't answer. Like are any of the mob 'respectable' lower class people or is it just the felons Bane busted out of prison? Do all these guys enjoy lawless anarchy? What do they think about Bane's threats to blow up the city their not allowed to leave? Is working for Bane still as much fun a month later and all the foods gone?
Considering how in Batman Begins they said that Joe Chill was forced into a life of crime due to the recession, and then in The Dark Knight there was that guy on the prison ferry who refused to play the Joker's game and blow up the other ferry, portraying them as just Evil feels out of place for the trilogy as a whole and especially for this film (where they covered up the circumstances of Harvey Dent's death to introduce sweeping legislation designed to make it easier to convict and lock people up).
Maybe we should have seen the people of Gotham as a whole rise up rather than just the police.

Hmmm Alfred waited eight years to tell Bruce that Rachel actually dumped him. I'm not saying knowing that would have fixed him, but Alfred really should have realized he didn't spare him any pain.

Catwoman's more realistic outfit was probably more silly than her regular one.

[cyberghostface]

'Catwoman's more realistic outfit was probably more silly than her regular one.'

Yeah it really feels like except for Batman himself it's impossible for anyone in a Batman movie nowadays to actually look like the comic character or have a silly costume. Everything needs to be 'grounded'.

Two-Face and Joker worked fine but stuff like "We can't have Catwoman actually have a cat mask" or "Riddler needs to wear a gimp suit" is tiring.

[cygnia]

"why did it end with Rose telling the kid to give his abusive father another chance?"

-->'Cause Rusty beatified fathers and villainized mothers during his first tenure. And yeah, I noticed that too back when I first saw that episode. Stuck in my craw then and sticks in my craw now.

(of course, that was before Moffat and his motherhood fetish came about)

[cyberghostface]

Euphoria ended this week. I really loved the first season but the latter seasons were a bit of a mess. Oh well.

[bradygirl_12]

So far a judge has ruled His Orangecy can't put his name on the Kennedy Center. The dictator was squelched there. Sure, let's paper over the name of an assassinated President and the only one to earn a Purple 💜. 🙄

I hope the next President has the good sense to replant the Rose Garden, rebuild the demolished wing, and get rid of the cage (!). Also fumigate the place.

[cyberghostface]

He is the biggest narcissist I've ever seen.

[bradygirl_12]

He's textbook! And it's so glaringly obvious. 🙄

[thanekos]

Fun Batman fanfic/freeform roleplay podcast.

[scorntx]

Getting a new addition to the family this week.
A new dog.
Barely more than a year from "we're never going through that again" to "well..." to "perhaps when the cat dies" to "hey, let's go get a dog TOMORROW!"
... you might be able to notice from my attitude that I was not in favour of a new dog. Not just because it'll mean the cat, who has barely gotten over the last one (and still hasn't relearned where to properly go toilet), isn't going to like this.
Grr.


Went to see The Mandalorian & Grogu at the weekend.
Thought it was good.
Was expecting Din shooting stuff and Grogu being Grogu, and it delivered on that front.
(Having to explain Rotta to a family member, turned out that old Shortpacked is true.
You really can see when their brain pictures Hutt sex.)


Bought that Epic Collection of Hulk: The Crossroads.
Whoof, that was a downer.
Dr. Strange tries to do something nice for Hulk now that he's been turned totally 'mindless', and it keeps backfiring.
You'd think he'd remember that the next time he and a bunch of others decide to do Hulk a favour. ... oh, wait, he did. And still did it anyway.
There's a weird bit where the U-Foes are in prison, and Vector says he doesn't care about being rich if he doesn't have superpowers... and also the first time he got sent to prison the US government took his money away.

Been reading an old-ish Star Trek novel, from that interregnum period between Ent and Disco starting up (real world, not in the setting).
There's an odd moment where two characters, both human, are watching a game of rugby and one of them has to explain to the other what rugby is.
So, baseball and rugby are gone by the 23rd century, but water-polo remains?
That's messed up, yo.

Also there's a Klingon secret agent going about, which is funnier after Disco.
"Alright, we've got another surgically altered spy in a Federation project. Hopefully, this one won't fall in love with any enemy agents..."
"Err..."

The Roger Stern Spidey Epic Collection comes out this week.
... to be honest, I preferred the Hobgoblin cover the previews used to the Juggernaut one.
I get why they go for it when the collection is called "Nothing Stops the Juggernaut", but still... I just prefer Hobgoblin.

[iamrman]

Hulk: Crossroads, you say? Good stuff. I think Mantlo is an underrated Hulk writer.

[mastermahan]

When Vanilla Ice said "Stop, collaborate, and listen", he meant it.