peppercat | Entries tagged with commentary

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peppersandcats:

Good times, and memories

Sitting down to (finally) watch the season premiere of Arrow.

Again, the green and red colour cues. I have loved that about this show since season 1.

(this show led me to The Flash, and as such is responsible for… a lot of the last few years.)

=====

Put that back. Put Thea Queen back right now.

=====

Ollie, you little fink. Carry on.

=====

Mhm. Okay, this is interesting.

(I confess I am not entirely clear on which Earth the 2040 belongs to, but I will assume Earth-Prime.)

Apparently Malcolm Merlyn keeps the Spanish announce table in his office!

(this is a very obscure joke)

I’m very glad to see Rene again, but I wish–

Whoooo, Diggle!

Double-whoooo! Diggle!

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(not loving 2040, but maybe they’ll get it to click)

=====

(The bit with the champagne cork was cute.)

Oliver Queen.

There are some habits you should have broken by now, and lone-wolfily wolfing it alone is right up there.

Twit.

=====

Oh my god, twit.

…better.

Chase is doing this weird jaw-clenching thing when he talks. I find it mildly annoying, but will forgive it for the “Suit up.” in chorus.

=====

…that was oddly uplifting.

Diggle coming down on the No Fate aspect. Much love.

=====

Well that’s a hell of a thing.

Tumblr apparently ate my liveblog of the latest Flash episode, so to summarize:

much love for Frost and Cecile

I am seeing parallels with our white-boy heroes needing reminders about the possible malleability of the future and meeting alternate-Earth versions of their dead moms

when Jay Garrick is down with you committing time travel, things are very serious

they put a 15-year-old in Iron Heights what, pardon my French, the fuck

Joe’s speech and Barry’s rallying are carefully scripted to be heartwarming and touching and that is exactly the kind of content I am here for

I am clearly meant to like Ralph better this season and it’s working

Ultraviolet’s plan to preserve her identity by attacking a police station in the Flash’s city is some season-4 Thinker-level genius and I sincerely hope we see no more of that nonsense

okay, that’s Bloodwork and his continued presence is noted; I would rather have seen Chester TBH

that scene with Barry’s ring shining and Jay watching in the background as the helmet was handed over? That was fantastic.

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Good times, and memories

Sitting down to (finally) watch the season premiere of Arrow.

Again, the green and red colour cues. I have loved that about this show since season 1.

(this show led me to The Flash, and as such is responsible for… a lot of the last few years.)

=====

Put that back. Put Thea Queen back right now.

=====

Ollie, you little fink. Carry on.

=====

Mhm. Okay, this is interesting.

(I confess I am not entirely clear on which Earth the 2040 belongs to, but I will assume Earth-Prime.)

Apparently Malcolm Merlyn keeps the Spanish announce table in his office!

(this is a very obscure joke)

I’m very glad to see Rene again, but I wish–

Whoooo, Diggle!

Double-whoooo! Diggle!

=====

(not loving 2040, but maybe they’ll get it to click)

=====

(The bit with the champagne cork was cute.)

Oliver Queen.

There are some habits you should have broken by now, and lone-wolfily wolfing it alone is right up there.

Twit.

=====

Oh my god, twit.

…better.

Chase is doing this weird jaw-clenching thing when he talks. I find it mildly annoying, but will forgive it for the “Suit up.” in chorus.

=====

…that was oddly uplifting.

Diggle coming down on the No Fate aspect. Much love.

=====

Well that’s a hell of a thing.

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windona:

peppersandcats:

windona:

“Think of all the lives Batman could save if he could kill the Joker” Please! Joker is a serial killer with a theme, prisons IRL would be able to hold him and the only reasons DC ones can’t is due to writers and the fact nobody in the DC universe wants to be a prison guard.

You just don’t want to admit that Man of Steel’s General Zod, who has a ton of super powers in a world just learning about Kryptonians and having zero way to contain or restrain him, is a better example of a villain that a hero might be justified in killing, because a) that would be to admit MoS wasn’t complete garbage and b) that the Joker is overhyped.

Before getting into who is and isn’t justified in killing people, I feel like it’s worth backing up and considering that bitching about how a goddamn civilian volunteer is not willing to commit murder is also a highly questionable tack to take.

(Hi I have opinions about how the Joker-killing argument is often presented.)

Agreed there, I made a separate post a while back about how the “Batman should be judge jury and executioner” argument sucks, with the idea being Batman should just kill him instead if arresting and allowing the justice system and (ideally) the people of Gotham to have justice and decide the Joker’s fate.

That’s part of why Batman v Joker being the argument baffles me. There’s zero justification for Batman to not bring the Joker in alive! Joker is a serial killer, can be taken down non-lethally, and if Batman is acting as a specialized detective/operative then he should bring in the Joker non-lethally. Since it’s essentially a detective versus serial killer scenario and plenty of police irl bring in serial killers alive to stand trial.

Reblogged for commentary. :)

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gorogues:

peppersandcats:

…is that actually what happened? (I mean, obvs he didn’t die, but…)

Also, is that a ray gun? That looks like a ray gun. I am weirdly less odded-out by James’s current six-shooters and holsters.

(off to get three weeks worth of comics today, whooo)

gorogues:

That time James and Digger tripped the Flash and he died.

unstable-molecules:

The Flash #209, Sept 1971. Cover by Dick Giordano.

I somewhat misrepresented it for dumb laughs, but they tripped him and some interdimensional being pulled his soul/spirit out of his body to fight an alien threat, and so from James’ and Digger’s POV he’d simply died when he hit the ground. The other being claimed it couldn’t put Barry’s soul back in his body so he was truly dead, though when Barry pressed it to try, his body returned to life and James and Digger freaked out about his apparent resurrection.

It probably was a ray gun. In the Silver Age he had various guns and at least one of them worked (Barry made he and Len shoot each other), so him having guns isn’t unprecedented. It’s possible some of the guns were fake or just gag props though, such as perhaps the handgun he used to hold up the plane in his first appearance. We never saw whether it was real or not, and it might have just been part of the Jesse James gimmick…certainly it would have been a bad idea to fire it in an airplane!

Hooray for comics and catching up! :D

…okay, “tripped him and he died” sounds like a 100% workable summary, I would not worry about that being a misrepresentation at all.

I am always amazed by the sheer number of useful images and bits of information that you have. Thank you for sharing them.

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gorogues:

Spoilers for Flash #75!

You can see the preview pages here.

So the pages I’ve posted are from the Len backup story, though of course there’s lots in the main story with the Turtle as well. I’ll talk a bit about the Turtle story and then get to the Len piece.

Barry defeats the Turtle by rediscovering his sense of hope, which gives him that extra something the Turtle can’t reach. He then creates a time paradox that sends the future Turtle and future Flash back where they came from, and leaves the present-day Turtle alone and defeated. However, in civilian garb as Barry Allen, he shows compassion to the Turtle and offers to help him rather than simply beating him up and leaving him for the authorities. That’s the Barry I love, so I’m really glad to see it, though one wonders what happens to Turtle afterwards. We know he continues to be a foe, so the kindness perhaps didn’t help as Barry thought it would – but it shows that his hope continues to shine through. The story started out with him very pessimistic about life and the future, so he has indeed grown over the course of it and demonstrates more of the traits which led to him becoming a Blue Lantern in past continuity.

Barry also meets young Wally and Wallace, giving us an updated version of the first meeting between Barry and Wally in the Silver Age. Wally’s still the president of his local Flash fan club and there are hints of the later troubled origin with his parents, so this scene melds several continuities into a cohesive whole. (There’s also an acknowledgement of the weirdness of two cousins named Wally and Wallace, but I once met a guy at a wedding who had a son named Logan – after Wolverine – and six months later the baby had a cousin born who was also named Logan after Wolverine. So the Wally and Wallace thing isn’t as unlikely as it might seem. That wedding sure was an odd experience, though.)

We also get a glimpse of the Flash Family in a representative montage, including Jenni Ognats, Johnny and Jesse Quick, and Jay Garrick! So nice to see, and it’s good to know that Jenni is still in continuity somewhere and hasn’t been erased. Maybe she’ll appear in the upcoming Legion reboot.

When the story returns to the present, Barry learns that Steadfast is the current avatar of the Still Force and wants to tell him about his past that’s been hidden and the coming threat to the Multiverse. Steadfast notes that Barry’s speed has been decreasing and he’ll need to be in peak form to face the threat, so he needs Barry to remember his past. Perhaps that knowledge will unlock his missing speed, just as tapping into his hope helped him defeat the Turtle. It’s curious that Turtle isn’t the current Still Force avatar, though I guess he’s just a baby at the moment in the Justice League book…he can still manipulate the Still Force there, however.

The final scene with Barry in the present has him rebuilding the Flash Museum and talking to Commander Cold, who reveals that the story with the Tricksters happened only the day before (Henry’s looking pretty good for a guy who was recently beaten by James). Barry says that he could use Henry’s help upgrading the museum, and then the story looks back/forward to past and future events in Rebirth continuity.

Then we get to the Len story, which shows that he’s been with Suicide Squad all this time and it’s really been tough on him. He’s defeated and fatalistic, and as is noted, has become dead inside. That’s distressing, but it’s quite interesting to see a more realistic take on what it must be like to be on the Squad for more than a mission or two. He describes himself as “a survivor” and that’s how he’s gotten by for so long while the others died, though eventually he’s had enough of the bullshit to demand that one of the guards kill him; it’s clear that realizing the similarities he’s developed with his hated father is the last straw. And then Lex Luthor offers him an escape from Belle Reve and the path to improvement. The tech that Lex uses – and Len presumably will use in his upgrade – is an evolved version of Len’s own technology, which is interesting. I like that it’s still based on Len’s own work instead of just magically granted by someone else, so this is somewhat different from the Underworld Unleashed storyline. Len agrees to the offer but only if the other Rogues get the same upgrades, because he wants to take care of his “family” (unlike his father), and that obviously sets the stage for the upcoming Year Of The Villain story arc.

So the Len story is a great lead-in to the next arc: it shows us where he’s been all this time and how it’s affected him, and indicates why he’d accept Lex’s offer. He’s been at the end of his rope for a while now. I’m honestly not sure if he would have accepted Lex’s offer had he been free and doing his own thing, because in the past Len has found that kind of stuff to be ridiculous, but we know Rebirth-era Len has been more aggressively ambitious. It seems likely that his time with the Squad might give us the more world-weary Len we know from the Johns era, as he’s certainly been through a lot of hell now and is even looking old and grizzled (I doubt the Santa beard will last, though). It’s a pretty clever use of Len’s absence from the book to develop his character further.

On a semi-related note, I wonder if Lawrence ‘Larry’ Snart is dead in Rebirth continuity, or if he’s still around somewhere. The flashbacks show the tattoo he’s always got, which is a nice bit of continued history – and Len had it too in a New 52 flashback, although it was missing during his bare-armed look. Are we ever going to find out what it means, or will it always be a mystery? Part of me likes the mystery of it.

This was a great issue, a good conclusion to the Year One arc, and I really liked seeing the separate Len story. It’d be good to see more of these features if they can’t be fit into the main story; Johns was really good at interweaving the Rogues’ adventures amidst Wally’s tale, though it can be tough to do so without seeming like it’s interrupting the main story. I hope we see more of it, because we know the Rogues can carry their own supporting story and it helps to flesh them out further. Hint hint, DC.

Some images of the tattoo behind the cut to save you from an ultra-long post.

Keep reading

*concurs on the hinting at DC*

*reblogs for generally sensible commentary*

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*cracks knuckles* For the headcanon ask…

She loves spicy food, to the point of cheerfully adding Scotch bonnets to the ingredients pile if someone else is cooking. (Roy is the only one who can eat anything she does. After years of eating whatever was most affordable, Roy’s tastebuds are slightly tougher than boot leather.)
She can charm anyone. It’s not sex appeal, although that’s an easy hook that she can use; she is just very very good at making people feel comfortable or interested or safe.
No-one gets to see Lisa Snart putting on makeup unless she wants them to know that at the current moment, they’re less important to her than getting her makeup right.
She is a lot meaner than her brother - I’m not saying her behaviour is more extreme, but she’ll show small cruelties well before he does. It’s a safety check. If she can be mean to you and you don’t push back, that means she’s still in control of the situation, even if you threw her for a loop. (This is not the best way to check, nor is it conscious; it is also the near-entirety of her motivation in Joyride.)
She’s not scared when Len’s around. Things will be as good as they can possibly be when Len’s around. Mick is almost as good.
She’s very good at letting other people make assumptions and running with them. She doesn’t usually do it, but she can totally pull off the kind of thing that Tara does in this clip from Leverage.
That said, I don’t think she likes it at all. It is much ~~safer~~ easier to not need to rely on people to decide to do the thing you need them to do, and simply make them do it. Len is not the only control freak in the Snart family, is what I mean to say.
She is also very good at picking up on people’s moods. She avoids being the den mother of the Rogues by generally not caring about their moods unless someone really needs managing, and she’s got a pretty high threshold for “that will sort itself out” before she starts to manage.
She has not lost a drinking contest since she was seventeen. Yes, sometimes she cheats. But she wins.
You know that perfectly dry possessed clarity you have when you look at the world and you aren’t mad anymore because none of it is worth you giving it the attention to actually be mad but you are completely out of fucks to give? That’s what it’s like inside Lisa’s head. The world, as I said here (links to a fantastic Twitter thread), has used up all the second chances with her a long time ago.

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fairestcat:

pvoberstein:

razzybean

commented on razzybean’s post

“ao3 fundraiser thoughts”

You’re just regurgitating what’s in the article. The incentive to use YouTube is that it has a monopoly as a video platform. There are a lot of WRITING platforms I can post to. I don’t NEED AO3, but they NEED writers. So, yes your comparison is apples to oranges. They can say they’re non-profit b/c they deny the creator the ability to earn money but they DO profit off of the backs of writers. That’s facts.

You haven’t convinced me at all it’s mutually beneficial if I can post to ff.net, LJ, wordpress… anywhere. I didn’t even post to AO3 until recently & it’s not at all my fav platform to do so. I receive no incentive from posting there. Zero. However, they benefit in being able to maintain their site b/c people want to read fanfic. But, yeah, sure tell me - a content creator - I’m getting something out of posting there, lol. I’m very much not. My readers are.

And anyway, you contradicted yourself. You can’t call it mutually beneficial and then say AO3 isn’t like YouTube, which you admitted [YT] is mutually beneficial for users b/c it makes a profit. So, is AO3 mutually beneficial or not? It can’t be, b/c as you just stated, YouTube pays its creators… and AO3 can’t b/c legal reasons yet can still raise donations off of its userbase w/o having to truly (financially) reward the content creators that keep the platform going.

Okay, first off

razzybean, this is actually important: AO3 does not profit because THE ORGANIZATION FOR TRANSFORMATIVE WORKS IS A NON-PROFIT. That’s facts. Look up the definition of profit, it does not describe what the OTW does with money. Hell, look up the OTW’s registration as a 501©3) nonprofit:

The Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) is a nonprofit organization established by fans to serve the interests of fans by providing access to and preserving the history of fanworks and fan culture in its myriad forms.

That includes things like legal aid, running Fanlore, etc., but those are besides the point here. Anyways, let’s keep going:

I don’t NEED AO3, but they NEED writers.

But that’s not exploitation! It’s like saying a blood bank NEEDS blood donors, and must somehow be unfairly exploiting them when they hold a fundraiser. Sure, blood banks wouldn’t exist without all those donors giving blood for zero compensation, but that doesn’t mean the Red Cross is somehow exploiting them like the villains of Das Kapital. It’s acting as an intermediary to advance a common goal. In the case of a blood bank - taking blood from donors and distributing it to recipients. In the case of OTW, taking fanworks from creators and distributing them to readers.

I receive no incentive from posting there. Zero. […] But, yeah, sure tell me - a content creator - I’m getting something out of posting there, lol. I’m very much not.

I mean, pretty much by definition you do get something out of posting there, otherwise you wouldn’t. This is Microeconomics 101. You receive readership and a steady content host, both of which I’m guessing you find desirable, particularly if you’re looking to post content other platforms might frown upon (i.e.: NSFW or Anne Rice fanfics). We could all go back to the 90s when everyone was hosting fanfics on sites held together with HTML and string and couldn’t be found without a webring, but nobody seems to want that. If you didn’t use AO3, you wouldn’t get all those warm-and-fuzzy kudos and hits and comments. I mean, you could get them on FFN on LJ, but the fact that you post to AO3 kind of tips your hand that you’re getting something on AO3 that you don’t get on either of those sites.

You can’t call it mutually beneficial and then say AO3 isn’t like YouTube, which you admitted [YT] is mutually beneficial for users b/c it makes a profit. So, is AO3 mutually beneficial or not?

… there are different kinds of mutual benefit? On YouTube, content creators get some of the same benefits as an author posting to AO3 (a secure platform, audience), and also some they don’t - namely a cut of the ad revenue. YouTube benefits by taking a much larger share of the ad revenue, but is also much stricter about what kind of content they can host. That’s why it’s much easier to get a copyright takedown on YouYube than on AO3. If I’m making $20K a month using Disney’s intellectual property, you’re damn right the House of Mouse is going to come after me, with DMCA and all the other tools at its disposal.

AO3 users don’t get the benefit of making a profit - but as previously established, AO3 isn’t making a profit, either. The OTW benefits by advancing the goal it was created to do - serve the interests of fans by providing access to and preserving the history of fanworks and fan culture in its myriad forms. That’s why it has hundreds of people who volunteer for zero monetary compensation.

The benefits are more intangible (nobody’s bank account is going up), but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. If authors didn’t derive any utility from posting to the Archive, they just… wouldn’t.

I will never stop being fascinated by the generational shift that happened in the last decade from “fandom is a gift economy” to “[AO3] deny the creator the ability to earn money.”

And the thing is, the OTW, by advocating so strongly for the legality of fanworks helped spur that shift. Newer, younger writers are coming into fandom and saying, “well, if fanfic is legal, why can’t I make money off of it?”

You can argue about how essential a part of fair use the “non-commercial” aspect is, but it’s pretty damn important to the big media corporations who have considerably more money than any individual author OR the OTW as a whole, and don’t take kindly to what they see as other people profiting off their property.

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hexedsupernova:

Taking a short break from archiving to be ANGRY because I, your local fool, made the mistake of reading some of the comments on that DC post I reblogged and I just. BuT tHe CoNtExT no fuck you. Fuck you, I don’t care about the context.

I’m gonna tell y’all a secret that isn’t even a secret: I don’t care for Batman. I don’t care for the culture of Batfandom, I haven’t kept up with a Batman book in well on 8 years, I’m fine and well not reading anything heavily entrenched in Batlore ever again.

But I love the Batfamily.

I owned entire runs of their books (Robin, Red Robin, Nightwing, Batgirl featuring Cass AND Batgirl featuring Steph, Batman and Robin, both Birds of Prey runs, Batwoman’s Detective run, Batgirl Year One, and more) before I had to choose between a large comic collection and being able to pay my parent’s debts and not get evicted. My favorite Robin, my first Robin, was Jason Todd. Every last one of these assorted vigilante figures became my children, and I love them. And you know what? You know who else loves each and every one of his kids? Bruce Wayne.

He’s not the best dad. He pushes his kids past their limits a lot, he’s not the most open person, and my god would he benefit from stepping back once in a while to reorganize and restructure the way he goes about fighting crime…but he’s also not Bing fucking Crosby. He tries to set a good example for the kids he mentors (depending on the writer). He loves every single one of those kids, and shows it in different ways. He’s there for them, sometimes secretly, because he knows that helicopter parenting/mentoring isn’t helpful for anyone. He had a kid show up out of goddamn nowhere and immediately went yeah okay, here’s your bedroom, please don’t play with swords in the house.

But this isn’t just a Batman problem.

I’ve been seeing it from a lot of different fans of DC books, all the same complaint, “[this book] is setting up [my favorite hero] to be alone for some reason, even though [he/she] is generally surrounded by people who love and support [them].” I’m hearing it from Batman fans, Superman fans, I’m saying it myself as a Flash fan.

And I’m tired.

A lot of people stopped reading DC books during the New 52 specifically because the levels of edgelord tomfuckery had gotten so high. Tim Drake had always been Red Robin, and his real name wasn’t even Tim Drake! Bart Allen was a criminal with amnesia from the future! Talia al Ghul raped Bruce and that’s how Damian was made! Death of the Family! Damian Wayne is murdered by his own clone! The original Batwoman murders Talia al Ghul! The entirety of Convergence! Forever Evil! It was goddamn exhausting. Rebirth was supposed to be this lighter, brighter time, but that went out the window almost immediately. No one wants fun, character-driven stories that instill joy anymore, don’t be ridiculous.

Back in 2013, when I was writing about comics as like…a semi-job, I wrote a piece about Batman. It was called DC, Please Stop Focusing On Batman.

So there’s this guy, Batman. Been around for almost 80 years. Kinda broody, parent issues out the wazoo. Maybe you’ve heard of him. Actually, I’d be surprised if you hadn’t heard of him, at this point.

Batman, for those of you who might be having delusions otherwise, is DC’s biggest character. He’s been the subject of eight animated television shows over the years, over a dozen live-action and animated movies, and in the New 52, his ‘family’ has more ongoing books than any other section, and none of them have been cancelled yet. Batman Incorporated ended, but it was always meant to do that. The Batman section of the New 52 has 12 ongoing books. That leaves 40 ongoing books for the rest of the DC Universe. Not to mention how, in the digital-first comics, we’ve got Li’l Gotham, Batman Beyond Unlimited, Legends of the Dark Knight, Batman ‘66, and Batman: Arkham Unhinged.

As further proof to Batman’s near-total domination of DC, allow me to present the crossover events so far since the reboot started: Night of the Owls, The Culling, Rise of the Third Army, Rotworld, Death of the Family, H’El on Earth, Throne of Atlantis, Wrath of the First Lantern, Batman: Zero Year, Trinity War. That’s one Batman crossover event a year, guys. Not to mention that Zero Year crosses over with non-Batman titles, like Flash and Green Lantern Corps. Why? Who cares! Batman! DC, please. And with the reality of a Batman/Superman movie in the not so distant future looming over us, it’s only bound to get worse.

So I implore you, DC. Take a look around your vast kingdom. Toy with some of your other properties, for once.

“But Batman sells!” You protest. “Kids love Batman! Adults love Batman! Everyone knows Batman!” No. Let me put it this way.

If you have hamburgers once a week throughout your childhood, you’ll have fond memories of hamburgers. You’ll also like hamburgers a lot, provided you only had them every once in awhile. And then, when you hit adulthood, suddenly, hamburgers are everywhere. There are a million variations on the same hamburger, and in order to feel like you’re getting the best hamburger experience, you decide to try them all. Eventually, it becomes too much. You’re drowning in hamburgers. And the worst part? Most of them are terrible, with wilted lettuce and moldy bread. Every now and then, you find an excellent hamburger, cooked exactly how you like it, with the freshest ingredients. However, when buying that burger, the server informs you that you’ll need to buy a whole bunch of other hamburgers, many of them rotten, in order to properly enjoy the burger you wanted. DC, you are the server. Batman is the hamburger.

I’m getting a little tired of hamburgers. Let’s get a salad, or some tomato soup, or hell, some tacos. You’ve got a big universe, DC. Capitalize on it.

In the six years since I wrote that bit, the Bat-mania has only gotten more pronounced. And now, the ouroboros has begun to devour itself, destroying everything that ever made anyone happy to see it.

Let Bruce Wayne hug his kids. It’s not going to destroy the Batman mythos to show panels of him hugging and being kind to his fucking kids. What is going to destroy the legacy of Batman, however, is this ridiculous notion that he’s a Dark Knight who has to do everything alone always and forever. Batman has had a sidekick since 1940, who are y’all trying to fool.

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gorogues:

peppersandcats:

Those toys. Where does he get those wonderful toys?

Yes, this is a post about issue 67 of The Flash. Yes, it’s about James Jesse. Yes, I’m using a Joker quote as the title. There are a bunch of pages over at @gorogues review of the issue that are definitely worth checking out.

Setting aside everything else for a moment - for just a moment, I am having so many opinions - last I checked, the technology at James Jesse’s disposal covered

ridiculously advanced guns, up for sale
para-angels, possibly hired
something that yanked a kid out from under an entire collapsing building and dropped him safely (?) in Jesse’s lair
cameras studded in a really unnerving number of places around the city
mind control of an entire city
the ability to keep Barry Allen from recognizing him (?) (but would he want this? maybe to draw out the game right now? but surely not in general)

Excuse me, but what the hell? I do not know the comics that well, even now, but this scope of effect feels like I want to forget Nekron and start asking question about “Apokolips technology, hiring out of” or “failed recruits from the Renegades who decided to go back to the 20th century and are living their best lives in ignorance of the fact that they’re actually the Reverse Trickster”. Even assuming he’s still a guy who invented his own airwalkers (which I’m really happy to read it as), this feels way out of scope.

(The Barry Allen not recognizing him thing - look, James got thrown in jail, was not shy about referring to himself as the great James Jesse, and Barry Allen was both the Flash and a CSI. I kind of have to believe that Barry would know who he is. I don’t necessarily think it goes both ways - maybe James just arranged to have the Flash not remember him without knowing the Flash’s secret identity, maybe everyone doesn’t recognize or remember him - but Barry not recognizing him is really, really weird.)

And now that the above-mentioned moment’s over:

If I’m in a hurry, I usually summarize CW!James to people as “functionally the Joker”. It is a useful shorthand. It reflects his grandiosity, his threat level, his trickery, his venom, his willingness to murder people and think it’s funny, his showmanship, his TV tricks. (In the original series, he also brainwashed people and took over Central City!)

I am not happy to be able to see parallels between comics!James and CW!James. I never had a problem with how different they were - I chalked it up to “same name, different people” rather than bad adaptation - but I liked what I read of comics!Jesse and this… this…

I never got the impression he’d be gleeful about the Flash facing the greatest horror ever. The greatest challenge, the greatest trick, the greatest foe, sure… but the greatest horror?

From James Jesse?

Ehhhhhn.

If this was a James-centric story, I’d be hoping that what he wants from Commander Cold is a way to travel back in time so he can show his parents that he’s a success and they should be proud of him.

If he didn’t have this much technology at his disposal, I’d kind of wonder if he was after gadgets from the future, but Commander Cold doesn’t seem to have much new or different, and that’s not knowledge of the future, it’s more knowledge from the future.

I’m… vaguely going with the idea that he’s convinced he’s going to win in his current endeavour - whether that’s against the Flash specifically, against Wolfe specifically, against them both as he stuffs them in a jar and shakes it to make them fight - and he’s poking for knowledge of the future so he finds out how he wins and knows what to do, but that doesn’t quite feel like it’s gelled yet.

More general stuff:

James so help me if Axel is somewhere with a goofy anxious grin on his face I’mma have so many words.

Why did James let Detective Burns go? It’s not like her and Henry being in a relationship is easy to miss, and anyway they’re a cop and a quasi-cop. I’m wondering why he didn’t try threatening her to get Henry to cave, bluntly. Unless maybe he wanted her to be findable so that the Flash could go to her as a way to pry into things and set off the Stepford Smiler splash page?

I cannot for love blood or money tell if James knows Barry is the Flash and is deliberately not inflicting happiness so as to play with him (”I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot of each other now”), or if he’s completely missed that his new girlfriend’s coworker back from vacation is the guy upon who he wishes to inflict the greatest horror (”I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot of each other now”, but said sincerely).

Hff. I do want next issue, but I confess I’m not exactly cheerfully looking forward to it.

Spoilers for Flash #67!

Well said, and these are excellent points!

It’s hard to say whether Barry should know who James is, because continuity these days is so uncertain. We know James has been in prison or laying low for years, and I don’t know how long Barry’s been back in current continuity. I presume he did still die (or maybe just disappeared) in a Crisis at some point because we’ve seen glimpses of it, but his memories of pre-Crisis are clearly spotty at best. Before Crisis Barry did recognize James in disguise sometimes, but he probably doesn’t remember it now if he barely has any recollection of his marriage to Iris. And continuity has changed a bit, as we saw last issue with James’ and Axel’s histories (ie, Axel debuted during James’ long stint in prison and after James’ stint with the FBI and faked death in Countdown). This is why I grumble about continuity being shuffled around so much over the past few years; nobody really knows what’s still intact or what the characters might know unless it’s explicitly stated.

I do hope Axel’s okay, and that James hasn’t harmed or mind-controlled him in any way :\

Just for fun, here’s Barry recognizing James in disguise many years ago. It probably wasn’t one of his better ones.

Toys Unlimited, Ltd.

It’s more the combination of face and name that had me thinking that something’s weird.

Barry thinking “wow, this tall blond guy seems oddly familiar” - okay, totally happens. Nagging familiarity works.

Barry thinking “wow, this tall blond guy who was just introduced to me as James Jeisse seems oddly familiar, but I’m not reacting to his name at all, despite the fact that I battled the Trickster repeatedly (as per last issue) and that guy isn’t shy about calling himself James Jesse” - that seems weird. I guess it’s not quite like Barry not reacting to Kristen’s boyfriend being named Leonard Snart, but it’s hinky as hell.

(My brain will now go gently play with the idea that Wolfe did something to ensure everybody forgot Jesse, that that’s why Wolfe was so shocked when Mick remembered Jesse in the issue where Mick got the Sage Force, and that that’s why Jesse wants revenge on Wolfe. Which, like most of my headcanons, is a very non-Flash-centric one and this likely won’t be true. But it’s fun to theorize.)

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sammysdewysensitiveeyes:

gorogues:

(The embedded last page can be seen at full size here if that’s easier to read.)

Spoilers for Flash #66!

You can see the first few pages here.

I was a bit disgruntled upon first reading this issue, but after re-reading it and some digesting I’ve decided I like it. I will never not be grumpy about changes to canon – such is the life of a continuity nerd – but there are enough callbacks to continuity here that I’m satisfied it hasn’t all been thrown out and wasn’t done carelessly.

As you see here, the terrible scene with his parents at the circus was all part of a trick, which is a nice surprise. His parents are clearly still awful, as I presume the scenes of them verbally abusing him in private and ignoring his attempts to connect with them are real, and of course they’re teaching their kid to steal and scam people. But they’re no longer cartoonish monsters, which is a relief. And, as we can see, the effects of their abuse are lasting into adulthood, with James still desperate to impress them/everyone. Warden Wolfe contributed to that impulse too with his own abusive behaviour and his claims that no one remembers the first Trickster, but at heart I think James still wants to prove himself to his folks and win their approval.

And yes, Wolfe is the main villain here, not Neron. Wolfe’s up to his old awful habits in a bit of inserted continuity, which now has James spending years in Iron Heights at the cruel mercies of a warden who tries to destroy his spirit, so we can see why James indicated in earlier issues that he’s getting revenge on Wolfe. No wonder he and Axel are getting along so well; they’ve got a lot of painful history in common.

But after James escaped, Wolfe was so furious that he destroyed all records of his existence, which is a) facilitating James’ current scheme, b) explains why Wolfe flipped out when Mick mentioned James, and c) presumably part of what Kristen and David Singh have been investigating. I like that there was early foreshadowing to this arc, and it sure will be satisfying if/when Wolfe experiences some consequences for his actions. As I’ve said recently, I think Wolfe is a good antagonist and would like him to be around in some fashion, but it’d be nice to have someone keep him in check so he can’t continue his abuse.

As mentioned above, there are definitely continuity changes here, but also some direct callbacks to pre-Flashpoint canon. In the ‘changed’ category, James’ parents are very different, he seems to have invented his airwalking shoes in young adulthood, and he worked with the FBI and “faked” his death in Countdown before Axel came along. He also had a years-long stint in Iron Heights. (I kind of love that Countdown just gets dismissed like that, though.) Another major change, however, is that he says “Money is everything. If you don’t have it, you’re just a waste”, which is a lesson he’s taken from his revamped parents but is very much at odds with parts of James’ history. This is the guy who gave back the money he’d stolen in the Silver Age simply because it didn’t interest him, and donated all the money he’d scammed in a major scheme to charity. So I’m uneasy about this change.

Of course, it has occurred to me that we don’t know how much of James’ words are true and how much is Trickster bullshitting. There’s a good chance his narration isn’t entirely honest, just as he fools the readers with the circus scene, so that’s something to keep in mind. We’ll have to see what his ultimate scheme is, and what exactly he gets out of it. If he’s looking for money above all, that’d be disappointing, but if he wants to take down Wolfe and show the world who’s the supreme Trickster (and maybe get some cash to support himself too), that’d be fine with me.

So as I said, I like the issue and think it works pretty well. Very curious to see what this whole arc is like and what he’s got planned; the solicits certainly hint at it, but we’ve seen them be misleading. I’m eager to see where this goes.

@tricksterrune @secondratevillain @peppersandcats @truxi-twice @katzedecimal @belphegor1982 @bloodsahdow213 @ohhicas @hesmiledlikeaweatherman @meinarch @lupintyde

Honestly, my only problem with this issue is the idea that James stole the research that he used for his air-walking shoes, instead of coming up with it himself. James actually making his gadgets was always one of the reasons why I prefer him over Axel.

That, and everything in Countdown being reduced to “I faked my own death.” James, buddy, you got shot in the head and chest, then Piper dragged your corpse across the desert and eventually cut your hand off. How do you fake that? Was it the world’s most realistic mannequin? Countdown was terrible, so I don’t mind it being written off, but that’s a hell of a trick.

If it helps, he didn’t necessarily steal the tech for the airwalkers; you can read it as while pretending to be a lab tech to steal research that he then sold, he also picked up enough from STAR Labs in general that he figured out how to make airwalkers. (I mean, unless there’s some canonical Lexcorp use of the things.)

I continue to be glad that Mick knows about him.

(I am 80% sure that in the panel where he’s sneaking towards the old theatre, the letters on the marquee are meant to suggest “Flash vs Trickster”.)

Adding my voice to the chorus of voices wishing horrible things upon Wolfe. Again. Bad man.

((please consider that to be a reference to Jerome Bixby’s very old science fiction story “It’s a Good Life”, which contains the text “Bad man,” Anthony said, and thought Dan Hollis into something like nothing anyone would have believed possible, and then he thought the thing into a grave deep, deep in the cornfield. I am down for something like that happening to Wolfe, honestly. I accept he could be a great antagonist to keep around, but oh god there would be satisfaction in something horrible happening to him.))

Overall… Hmh. I’m glad to know where the continuity is coming from, I’m glad they’ve toned down the miles-of-abs (at least this issue), and I really liked the weight–through dialogue, art, and reference–that the entire issue gave to James’ final escape from Iron Heights. The twin guns are odd, but they work with the Western outlaw theme the issue’s establishing as a backstory element.

That said, I’m not quite at home yet to the… the note of desperation under how he’s driven? I get the sense of drama, but it feels like there’s a difference between that and “I’ll do anything to show the world I’m more than what you think of me”, and the latter seems…

I don’t know. Different. Other-defined. More Syndrome than Megamind, if you will pardon going very far afield from DC.

Mind, they could do some interesting things comparing and contrasting James’ desire to impress his family with Axel’s self-sacrifice to save his family, and I am kind of hoping that that comes up a little…!

(insert standard hopes for more Detective Burns and an explanation of how the hell Jesse got Axel out from under Iron Heights here)

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gorogues:

eusouomar:

gorogues:

It’s almost as though cruelty and neglect can affect people’s mental health.

Everyone gives Batman shit over the state of Arkham but no one ever talks about Iron Heights.

There was a bit of criticism for Iron Heights within the Flash book, such as when Ashley Zolomon called the prison “the Rogue Factory” (which she said was a widespread nickname) and accused Wolfe of having no compassion for its prisoners. It seems quite likely that the mistreatment there has made some of the prisoners worse, with I think Roscoe as one of the prime examples. And as awful as Arkham is, at least they make some attempt to treat their inmates; we’ve seen that Iron Heights leaves theirs barefoot in straitjackets and isolated in filthy cells. So it’s no surprise that they end up even more mentally ill and anti-social, which is almost certainly what Ashley was alluding to.

Honestly, the sight of Axel Walker de-limbed and beaten and refusing to talk about it because Wolfe is actually scary (unlike the Flash) was a pretty scathing indictment.

(Fingers crossed for something happening to him in upcoming issues.)

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tobyaudax:

peppersandcats:

Totally counts.

So, every time I see “Rogue” written as “rouge”, my mind goes to makeup aesthetics.

There is a dearth of useful pictures for most of the guys, but I kinda scraped together something for Roy:

Working on the others.

This is “scrapped together”? It looks fantastic! I love the layout, the images you picked, but especially the muted/greyscale palette of most of them. Such a cool idea and great representation of Roy’s colorblindness!

<3 Thank you! I was trying to hit a balance between his colourblindness and the idea from @katydid3145‘s fics that sometimes Roy thinks he sees flickers of a colour when he uses his powers (which is tied to art; I am absolutely smit by their line “Manipulating the emotions of others was a relatively simple thing, any halfway decent artist could do it.”), so I wanted a largely soft/greyed effect that still had a tiny visual indicator of colours. (If I’d been on my computer instead of on my phone, I’d have faded out the parts of the top middle image that weren’t red paint, but… well, I was on my phone.)

If you haven’t read their Roy-centric Remittance series on AO3, it is absolutely fantastic.

(Also Pinterest is now convinced that I want to see nothing more than makeup artist pics. It’s kind of odd.)

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Warning: this is (1) absent-minded and rambling, (2) specific to the TV!verses, and (3) by TV!verses I mostly mean the one from the 90s.

Was Zoey Clark cosplaying Prank?

I mean, she clearly didn’t want to be Megan Lockhart, the badass private investigator who helped the police catch notorious serial killer James Jesse.

But she was just as clearly trying to match up with a previously existing persona. She didn’t try to run with the idea of “I’m not Prank, I’m something better”; it was more “I’m something better, and I’m still Prank just like you wanted.” It’s trying to fit into the role she already knows Jesse likes.

(And then there’s Axel. Talk about trying to fit into a role that you already know Jesse likes. (This is possibly related to my headcanon that Axel, who I can only imagine was an utterly starstruck teen, daydreamed or wrote RPF about Jesse.))

Back to Zoey: it feels a little like she’s recreating the original with more love and attention than the concept/identity was given the first time around. As someone who’s written tens of thousands of words about a character who–for the longest time–had less than five minutes of screentime, I feel like there’s something there worth poking at. It seems like a very fannish thing to do.

(Do I need to put in a disclaimer that I’m talking about the techniques, not the end goals? I hope not.)

It’s also interesting to me that the people that the Trickster gets interested in, the ones who we see catch his attention and who he wants to be around? They’re overwhelmingly the ones who actively dislike him. Megan, 90’s Barry, a hint of it starting around Iris… Compare that to how little attention Zoey and Axel get.

There’s something there I feel it might be worth turning over; some idea that the Trickster (I’m not sure if I could generalize to the other personas James Jesse used) is more likely to notice people who go against the grain of what he expects, and more likely to want to fix them into what he wants, because they’re obviously interesting or real.

Try that again, and I won’t make it stop. Ever.
peppersandcats:
I am just going to say that really, Hartley’s constantly expecting people to be better than they actually are and constantly being surprised by their failure to be that is probably one of the reasons I really do love the character.
cliches-and-coffee:
This is sort of random, but I wonder if he’d ever have actually followed through with that threat? If Hartley tried to escape again? I want to say no, but then, I think it shocked us all that he’d do this in the first place…
peppersandcats:
I think he would absolutely not decide to follow through. Cisco, much as I adore him, is absolutely terrible about thinking about consequences beyond “I can build something to fix this!” He built the cold gun to stop a possibly evil speedster and then didn’t take into account what might happen if it wasn’t under his control. He built the heat gun and threw it into a storage locker that other people had access too. He was going to give Belle Sans Souci a boomerang while testing her powers.
(I bring that one up a bit.)
I cannot for the life of me see him getting Hartley back in the Pipeline after a generic fight with the Flash, calmly saying “I told you this would happen,” and turning on the torture.
I can, in the worst case, see him being furious about Caitlin or Barry being badly hurt in a way that Hartley was in some way responsible for, getting into an argument that ended with something angry along the lines of “You’re not listening, you just don’t want to hear what I’m telling you, Cisco”/“Yeah, hear this”, and then turning on a screaming device and storming off and not thinking about turning it off.
(And then Caitlin or Joe would rip him a new one.)
cliches-and-coffee:
He wouldn’t do it when he was thinking rationally. Hartley does seem to bring out a bad side of him, but not like that. Anyone can go out of character when they get mad enough, though.
Yes, and he’d regret not thinking later. The damage would already be done- I don’t think there would be much of a chance of them getting along after that, no matter how sorry Cisco is. Hartley doesn’t like Cisco, but he’d have trusted that he wouldn’t do something like that. It would completely shatter everything he thought he knew about him, and since he has a hard time trusting people anyway, there’s no way they’d be anything more than civil to each other. Even that would take time.
luvtheheaven:
Yikes @peppersandcats - both of you really. This is intense to think about. (I love it.)
peppersandcats:
Cisco always makes me think of a line from Stephen King’s short story, “The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands”. There’s a bunch of guys sitting around playing cards, and one of them has made it clear that he never touches other people by earlier refusing a handshake and explaining why. And he beats one of the other guys at cards–quite badly, actually–and the guy shakes his hand. The narrator isn’t sure why:
I would give a great deal to know Davidson’s motivation for what came next. He knew of Brewer’s extreme aversion to being touched; the man had showed it in a hundred different ways that night. It may have been that Davidson simply forgot it in his desire to show Brower (and all of us) that he could cut his losses and take even such a grave reversal in a sportsmanlike way. I’ve told you that he was something of a puppy, and such a gesture would probably have been in his character. But puppies can also nip when they are provoked. They aren’t killers – a puppy won’t go for the throat; but many a man has had his fingers stitched to pay for teasing a little dog too long with a slipper or a rubber bone. That would also be a part of Davidson’s character, as I remember him.
I don’t think Cisco’s cruel, in the sense that I don’t think he ever plans something with an end goal of hurting people. I mean, we’ve seen what the cold gun can do, and I’m guessing none of us imagined he was there going “oh man, this is going to fuck that speedster up so bad if he’s evil, it’s gonna be awesome” when he was building it.
But I do think he occasionally gets wrapped up in himself and forgets to consider things from other people’s point of view (and then Caitlin reminds him she knows how to perform lobotomies), especially when he is entranced by the awesome of getting to build new things and fight bad guys and defeat really kind of frightening people, and…
And he gets thoughtless. And when the guy getting thoughtless is the guy who builds that kind of tech… being thoughtless for a minute can be a hell of a lot scarier than being thoughtless for a minute when the worst thing you can do is TV-punch someone.
Contrast this with Reverb; he shows almost (almost! one exception! very brief!) no sign of ever getting carried away, he talks at perhaps two-thirds Cisco’s speed, he’s smug, he’s pretty up on what other people think and how they’re going to react (to the point of being amused by it when Killer Frost is approaching them)… and he’s a pretty horrible person. Deliberately. And by choice. He’s Cisco’s opposite in every way except the “isn’t what I can do cool” factor (and there’s probably something to be said there about the exclusivity of meta powers versus the shareability of technology, actually, but I think I hear the person whose houseguest I am calling me for dinner).
cliches-and-coffee:
This is a very accurate description.
Being the person who creates these things- he could be dangerous if he wanted to. He could do a lot of damage- not only with his tech, but his powers.
I think, at this point, he must try to be very careful when creating things, because of what’s gone wrong in the past. He doesn’t want repeats of things such as the cold+heat guns getting stolen, doesn’t want to miss mistakes like the one that cause the Particle Accelerator to explode. There’s no room to be thoughtless, not in his line of work, and I’m sure he’s smart enough to realize it by now. So anytime it happens again? It gets added to the guilt he has over previous mistakes. Cisco doesn’t want to hurt people, but he will if he has to. He wants to be prepared for the worst-case scenario. He avoids it, hopes for better outcomes, but he’s not naïve.

It is also worth noting that Cisco’s idea of being prepared for the worst-case scenario regularly involves escalating over his opponent (or, if he can’t do that, making them think he has - let us all pause to remember the STAR Labs vacuum cleaner and its LEDs, precursor to him and Caitlin playing dress-up as their doppelgangers).

You can go fast? He will break your speed! You can hear things? He will overwhelm your hearing! You can control weather? He can control it better! You are too tough to punch? He will figure out how fast Barry needs to go to punch you!

(The closest thing to a high-powered tranq rifle he ever invented was the BOOT - and then he gave it away.)

He certainly *can* think defensively about a conflict, especially if prompted - the BOOT and the shields he made the cops are proof of that. But his reflex tendencies seem to run along the lines of “you might hurt someone OH NO YOU DON’T IMMA SMACK THAT DOWN.”

And I think this is not a bad motivation! I’m not saying Cisco is childish, and I think you’re right that he’s not naive, but I do think he’s portrayed as having a very innocent joy in many things. He thinks things are cool, are awesome, are wonderful, he builds the TOYS and let him tell you how awesome this is and now they can be HEROES and there are BAD GUYS and everyone has a cool name and…

Look, there’s a reason Cisco sees possibilities. Sees timelines that aren’t, sees worlds that are almost, sees things that are not yet. He’s always seen possibilities.

And I think this same awareness is what leads to him making such definitive, potentially devastating solutions to a threat. He’s not naive (although he’s hopeful); he doesn’t want people to be hurt. He will shut that down REAL fast.

…wow, that was a lot of talking to say I agree with you. ❤