[randomkhmerperson]

My Batwoman/Kate Kane reading order

I've been a pretty big fan of Batwoman/Kate Kane for quite awhile and I thought I'd make a reading order for her! Kate is genuinely one of the coolest member within the Batfamily, both design wise and just as a character in general.

For me I still consider her Detective Comics stories by Rucka to be her best story followed by the first 25 issues(including the 2012 issue #0) of her New 52 run by JH Williams III and W. Haden Blackman before they left due to creative differences with DC(obligatory fuck you Dan Didio) which caused the later half of the run to take abit of a nosedive, I have mixed thoughts on the Rebirth run as I think it's quite alright although it isn't exactly at the same level as Rucka's or William's. Currently, I am quite enjoying her current run as Rucka returned back to Kate and so far(imo) he hasn't let me down yet. Anyway, I hope this reading order helps anyone who's interested in Kate as she's one of my fav DC character!

[dccomicsficrecs]

Fic rec: Orpheus Rising by ClockStrikesThree

https://archiveofourown.org/works/56098033

Summary:

When Kon died, his friends tried to bring him back. Cassie turned to a sham cult. Tim turned to science. They both failed. When Bart died, Tim and Cassie held each other back from the ledge. When Tim dies, Cassie does what she should have done the first time. She returns to her roots. She turns to the Greek gods. The Underworld. Or: Tim dies, and Cassie can’t handle it. She sets out to bring him back, Orpheus style.

Continuity: Post-Crisis Era: Modern Age (1985–now) Comic/Comic arc: Teen Titans (2003), pre-Final Crisis (2008) Main Characters: Cassie Sandsmark Main Relationships: Tim Drake & Cassie Sandsmark Comment: Canon Divergent AU. Incredible Cassie Sandsmark fic that is rich in comic references. Cassie's post-Infinite Crisis character is very interesting to me so I like how this fic is situated in that era. If you're a fan of her this is a must read fic!

[dccomicsficrecs]

Fic rec: The Haunting of Cissie King-Jones by Earthshine (@radioactive-earthshine)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/60226030

Summary:

In a last bid to try to repair her shattered relationship with her daughter Cissie, Bonnie purchases an old mansion on a hill. Cissie wants to believe that her mother has changed, she wants to believe that she can move on from being Arrowette, but it's not just houses that are haunted and sometimes the dead aren't quite what they seem. Soon after moving into the Hayes Manor, an old mansion and site of a gruesome murder that took place in 1948 Cissie finds herself befriending one of the victims and together they find something that might be more than friendship - all the while Cissie unravels the mystery of 1948 while juggling trying to be a normal teenager. Should be easy, right?

Continuity: Post-Crisis Era: Modern Age (1985–now) Comic/Comic arc: n/a Main Characters: Cissie King-Jones, Greta Hayes, Bonnie King Main Relationships: Cissie King-Jones/Greta Hayes, Cissie King-Jones & Bonnie King Comment: AU. The best Cissie-centric fic I've ever read. Excellent story and characterization. AU in that Cissie doesn't join YJ and Greta's backstory is different, but otherwise strongly rooted in canon, exploring Cissie's trauma and relationship with her mother as she strives to move away from Arrowette. Submitted by anon.

[soleminisanction]

Hey do you have an opinions on the Tim Drake victim blaming Jason Todd? I’m 50/50 I’ve always see it as a I have to hold myself to this insane standard or just a he’s a kid doing him best but I’m not sure…

I honestly roll my eyes at 90% of fandom's "Jason is being victim-blamed" claims.

Like, I agree that the comics that try to argue Jason was a "bad seed" who was destined to meet a sticky end because of his upbringing or bad attitude or whatever are wrong and also kinda mean and dumb. But that's a Doylist problem of narrative framing, not anything that can or should be placed on any of the in-world characters.

But it's not "victim-blaming" to acknowledge that Jason got himself killed, ie, that he made the pivotal choice which led to his death. Bruce ask him to wait. Jason chose not to. If he had, he wouldn't have fallen into the Joker's trap, and he wouldn't have died. Like with Steph and War Games, it's taking his agency away to claim otherwise, all in the name of making them "perfect" victims.

It's also not "victim-blaming" to acknowledge his reasons and motivations for making that choice. Jason needs to be in control of that moment, because that's the real core of the tragedy. It wasn't inevitable, he wasn't somehow "destined" for a bad end, but his circumstances and choices combined to put him on that path anyway. It's the culmination of his rocky relationship with Bruce and Jason's own trauma and hang-ups about parents, specifically mothers, coming to a dramatic end that both plays into and deconstructs the tropes of the kid superhero genre.

To paraphrase an old John Green video, the core struggle of being a teenager is that of being pulled in many directions by the world around you, while also desiring to live fully and fearlessly and maybe a little foolishly. And the occasionally tragic thing is that, as a teenager, you are just grown-up enough for those understandable, natural desires to get you killed.

If that happens, it's not "your fault," but it is the result of your choices, and it's insulting and infantalizing to pretend that it's not.

In that regard, Jason's role in Tim's story, as the ghost who hangs over his adventures reminding him of the price he can and will pay if he makes the wrong decision, makes perfect sense. What people who call it "victim-blaming" are actually mad about is that the story isn't about Jason. It's not about his tragedy, it's about how his tragedy affected the people around him, the people who were left behind to continue on and the people who came after.

There's a smart post going around stating that one of the things you really have get used to -- or better yet, learn to enjoy -- about superhero comics is that there will be times when it's just plain not about your fav. And you will have more fun if you learn to embrace that, to enjoy seeing them in different lights and from different perspectives.

But some people can't or don't or don't want to do that, and so they get mad at the stories that aren't centered on their fav's feelings and perspective. And they use loaded psychiatry language to express that.

So TL;DR -- I don't believe the "victim blaming" is real. It's the result of a Jason-centric perspective on canon turned toxic. So I do what I always do with fandom people who have a bad opinion: ignore them, or block them if they're rude about it.

[gnomewithalaptop]

(tags by @ceescedasticity)

[reaverborg]

a cover variant from elsewhere

textless and some crops under the cut

[supersteel13]

Tumblr header of #kon el

It greatly frustrates me that #kon el kent and #kon kent are so connected with #kon el, that it is prominently displayed here.

And it is displayed prominently because of certain Kon fans can’t spell his name right, due to their lack of engagement with any source material of his character, especially his comic version (which is usually what those Kon ‘fans’ are referring too).

He only has two names:

CONNER KENT

KON EL

[blujaysblooog]

Started as a quick sketch, somehow we are here!

I love the line “Two can keep a secret if one of them is dead” fits both Greta & Billy! I have so many thoughts about this !!!

Inspired by this animatic by @void-of-unparalleled-chaos & this edit by @dccomicseditsandrandom2 !!

[spicyboelives]

COMMISSION of The Question and Renee Montoya

[soleminisanction]

Woke up with scattered thoughts about Earth-3 Batgirls, which have not gone away and are very distracting.

[soleminisanction]

So they're definitely not called Batgirls, or Owlgirls, though Owlman definitely refers to them collectively as "the hens." He's a jerk like that. Currently going with Strix, like what Mary Turner used -- it's either that or Nocturne, and I'd rather not confuse them with Nocturna.

Strix I and Strix II, Bette and Babs, are both mafia princesses whose daddies raised them to fight and scheme behind the scenes while maintaining the public image of high society. They hate each other, in part because Bette, a daughter of the well-established Kane Crime Family, looks down on Babs as the mafia equivalent of nouveau rich -- the Gordons only have the prominence they do because they're direct subordinates of the dread Owlman. Babs, meanwhile, thinks Bette is full of shit, because the Kanes may have been an established crime family, but they're now equally under the owl's thumb as "allies," and everyone knows who's really in charge.

When they were both active, Thomas favored Babs, which is what set Bette off into making her own identity -- don't know what, but she's very firmly working for The Kanes, not Thomas Wayne, even if that means she still winds up doing the Owl's bidding. Some time later, Babs was caught up in one of the Jester's desperate schemes to subvert Owlman's control, and was paralyzed. She later reemerges as a powerful information broker, Delphi.

[soleminisanction]

Strix III, Cassandra, is the utterly silent living weapon that mainstream Cass is so afraid she might be, a creature of violence and murder with no room in her heart for kindness or beauty.

While Strix IV, Steph, is like I mentioned in a previous post -- the daughter of a third-rate wannabe hero who despises her father for supposedly caring more about "this piece of shit city" than he ever did about her or her mother. She created her original persona to get Owlman's attention and expose her father's do-gooder schemes.

In return, Thomas gave Steph to Barbara, who uses both of the younger Strixes as her agents, controlling their actions using bomb/shock collars a'la Suicide Squad. She treats the girls as tools, and the girls treat each other as bitter rivals for prestige, with Steph regarding Cass as little more than a violent animal, and Cass constantly imagining (and sometimes drawing, as intimidation) all the different ways she could kill Steph at any given time.

Suffice it to say, they're all pretty vicious.

[aliteralchicken]

RIP cassie you’re gonna love dragging everyone to see the odyssey

[zahri-melitor]

Thinking more about my post about the Core Four growing up (as I've now got Tynion's Detective Comics under my belt as the lead in to Young Justice 2019, and I still think the narrative that the Core Four need to move away to grow up like Dick's Titans did is flawed, because of how this narrative is shaped.

Tim spends all of Tynion's run playing with the idea of moving away, going to college outside Gotham to 'grow up' and find himself.

But he can't do it, and he realises he doesn't want to do it. And instead...he discovers he has a missing past, and 'leaves Gotham' as he goes to Zatanna to have his memories restored.

Tim's growth in finding himself is...restoring his childhood and teen years. It's in finding his old friends.

And similarly, through Young Justice 2019, there is a read on the text that for Tim and Cassie in particular, this is a period of restored memories. Their growth and change is regaining their pasts and their friends. You see this via Bart's return, where he escapes the Speed Force and then goes looking for his friends and family, and you can see some characters suddenly remember who he is by encountering him. Cassie in particular seems to literally regain her memories of Bart just by being in proximity to him at the start of Young Justice 2019. It feels like Speed Force shenanigans, in line with the ones that have variously been used on Donna and Wally in particular over the years to restore their existences, and given that as precedent, it's almost got to be a side effect of the fact the Core Four are lighting rods for Bart, even though I don't think that's ever been outright stated on panel.

And then Cassie and Tim have the same experience again while locked up by Opal in Gemworld, where they (and only they) sense something 'familiar' right before Conner appears and tears the top off the oubliettes they're trapped in. They can feel his TTK and they recognise it. By being near Conner they 'get' Conner back.

And this all happens in Gemworld, which is a setting of narrative about growing up for Amy herself. They grow up by restoring their old friendships and connections...and then returning home to their families.

And Bart manages to reintegrate by the Speed Force smoothing things out in terms of his family's memories being restored of him.

And Tim goes back to Gotham and slides back into being Robin in the aftermath of it all, as he knows who he is now.

And Conner has to rebuild all of his connections as he's once again a person without a past to all of the Supers, and his storylines are firstly about becoming part of the family again and then about pulling back away to check he still has family backing him up.

And Cassie goes back to the Wonders and has to navigate her feelings over being replaced because unlike everyone else this is the first time it's happened to her, but she's got her best friends back.

They didn't need to leave home to find themselves to grow up. They left home to find each other, and then returned, comfortable in their connections, to take their places in their communities and families as their sign of growing maturity.

[aliteralchicken]

Young justice (derogatory)

[rockscs]

if you didnt use the lasso as a belt your pants wouldnt sag!!!

[anishenanigans]

rlly fascinating phenomenon to me is when a character is extremely popular, and that popularity seems understandable enough because they've got something interesting going on, and then you look at the fandom and realize 99% of their fans don't actually care about engaging with any of the things that make them interesting and instead seem to be fans of an imaginary milquetoast version that exists solely for ship and/or angst content and is so far removed from the canon character they might as well be an unrelated OC at this point

[zahri-melitor]

Also I am completely OBSESSED with Kelly Thompson’s explanation of WHY Diana’s narrative position at DC as someone who characters fall in love with but she doesn’t necessarily reciprocate in a romantic way is written into Absolute Wonder Woman.

The way this from Aphrodite in Absolute Wonder Woman #19 engages with the fact that we cannot get a Diana appearance in a Valentine’s anthology that is about anything other than friendship and people crushing on her, that Diana has women obsessed with her in the text in ways she cannot fully return (see Barbara Minerva’s entire history and particularly Rucka’s explanations of how he sees Cheetah’s emotions towards Diana, see main universe Circe, etc etc).

It’s playing with a fundamental Doylist problem with Diana where she’s simultaneously always been an icon of women loving women (all the way back to exactly how the William Marston origins function) and yet she’s also simultaneously expected to be written as almost above the messiness of romantic attachments much of the time, particularly to women.

Diana’s been cursed/blessed to inspire and compel love from others, and like Aphrodite, because that love is induced she cannot fully tell whether it’s something she deserves or is involved in.

Now, she will never know whether someone loves her because they love her, or because they have no choice.

It’s so JUICY! So entangled in the shape of her storytelling! I adore this.

[zeroducks-2]

Ok but literally when we are begging people to read comics that is what we are doing. Begging people to read comics if they want to talk about comics.

If you say you are "a huge comics fan" and you have only ever read fanfiction, if you talk about comics with people who love comics and only mention stuff that you've seen in popular fandom spaces (bad takes, misinterpreted panels, headcanons coming from some other source material such as the YJ animated series or Batman 2022), you will be directed towards the comics by the people who love comics.

We're not saying you shouldn't like these characters if you only ever watched Alan West Batman, or only ever played the Telltale Series, or only ever seen the Tim Burton's movie. DC is a multimedia company and you can be a fan of the Arkham Knight, or of Lego DC Villains, or the Justice League Animated Series. But that doesn't make you a COMICS fan. That is ok! It's no problem! But if you want to talk about something that happens in the comics, and dynamics that exist only in the comics, then it's the comics that you should read!

(and if you're someone who has never interacted with any type of source material ever and only read fanfiction, that is also fine, you can do whatever you want forever. But a comics fan will always suggest you go read comics. Because comics are good and we love them and we will keep telling you to do that. No it is not classist or ableist or gatekeepy, it literally is just because comics are good and because we like to talk about comics with other people who love them)

[starshinequeen]