Not Even 50% Of My TRUE Power

Comics guy, writer guy, Superman guy. They/he/she, bi.

[davidmann95]

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Hey folks, I've gotten a couple messages recently that reminded me I should probably be more public on here about it: for a buck a month on Patreon, you can DM me questions on there like the old days, and I'll answer them on my newsletter! I figure this'd weed out some of the more aggressive messages I got at the tail end of that 'era', and I know there are some folks who'd like the chance to lob a few my way.

[davidmann95]

I’m as guilty of this as anyone but I think the function of the Superman speech in Kill Bill is generally misread in critical circles because we, the kind of audience that remembers the Superman speech in Kill Bill offhand, know that Quentin Tarantino is definitely a guy who has himself read a clutch of Superman comics. But even selecting for an audience that would go to a Tarantino movie, there are going to be plenty of people interested in the movie about Uma Thurman in a jumpsuit swordfighting a bunch of other cool actors who don’t really care about superheroes, and he’s a quite good filmmaker who knows that.

“Take my favorite superhero, Superman. Not a great comic book, not particularly well-drawn, but the mythology. The mythology is not only great, it’s unique…” do you think Quentin Tarantino thinks only one guy has ever drawn Superman? Sure, from a Watsonian perspective we can probably intuit given his age that Bill is a loathsome philistine who thinks he’s sooooooooooo cool, way too cool to appreciate Curt Swan’s impeccable, subtly naturalistic command of the form. To a general viewership that doesn’t know about any of that, that shorthand lines up with Superman being culturally significant but also kind of boring as superheroes go (as delivered with a touch of pretentious snobbery regarding his trash culture to his paralyzed captive, because he’s the bad guy) so that when he discusses the characters’ hidden depths in a sec it lands as a surprise. Simple stuff!

I dunno Quentin Tarantino’s actual thoughts on Superman; maybe he largely agrees with the sentiment! But as a scene, it is not playing off a deep understanding of Superman’s characterization and storytelling mechanics in any given era for you to either rework your understanding of the character or righteously rebuke it; it’s playing off the two or three things most people know about the guy to make them go ‘gee, I never thought about it like that’ - though through the lens of a self-described murdering bastard, so you can assume some cynicism is in play rather than that Superman is secretly a sadistic egomaniac, especially given Beatrix has the chance to rebuke the central point by the end - before comparing that to the situation at hand.

It’s neat there’s a big thoghtful Superman characterization speech in a cool movie about cool swordfights! Not a scene about Superman.

[viewtiful-kim-deactivated202105]

Hamlet adaptation where Hamlet is a vlogger and all his soliloquies are breakdowns he uploads to YouTube

[animatedamerican]

… I am unironically here for this

[oldfilmsflicker]

this is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen in my life

[kabesattic]

This is - legitimately - my favourite delivery of Shakespeare I have EVER seen (and I have seen some good-ass productions yo, in the Globe Theatre itself even). Like seriously, even though the words are unchanged, he’s stripped away ALL of the archaic pretense and assumed grandeur of ~presenting the bard~ that makes even the most wildly talented of actors and innovative of productions inherently inaccessible to a modern audience. Like, they’re still great, they can still communicate the message and (some) of the nuance, but they’re still always a step removed from being identifiable to any viewer’s lived experience. They’re still always reciting 15th century poetry. But this guy? This guy is like, screw iambic pentameter, to hell with being precious about the material, HOW WOULD AN ACTUAL PERSON SAY THIS SHIT?

Like this. And it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful to hear a soliloquy I loved so much already, and have it come to life in a way it never, ever, did before. I feel like I grasp his motivations, his twists and turns, no longer on an academic level but on a visceral, instinctive one. Because he’s presenting his mental and emotional journey in a way that speaks honestly, like a real person.

So yeah, this shit post? I love it. Deeply and sincerely.

[spicedtealeaves]

A post about this went round recently, and I’m delighted to announce she’s since come out as trans and goes by Jasmine 🏳️‍⚧️

Jasmine Brimsmayd

Actor and Writer

There’s a whole series of the Hamlet videos on her YouTube, as well as a bunch of other films she’s made

[kunaigirl]

Me: "Damn people are REALLY BAD at knowing when to tag their eyestrain art/images...either that or they just don't care about photosenitive epileptic people like me. I feel really sad now." Person: "But Allison, what if they just don't know or understand what qualifies as eyestrain and what doesn't?" Me: "You know what? That could be a factor...While it is always better to be safe rather than sorry (so YES people should always tag eyestrain even if they're unsure if it "counts" or not) maybe you've got a point?"

Anyways! HERE'S YOUR HANDY GUIDE TO WHAT CAN COUNT AS EYESTRAIN! I'm pulling this straight from the Artfight rules page about what needs to be labeled and filtered as eyestrain because it's VERY helpful and VERY accurate! I also know not everybody has an AF account and might not always have access to this handy guide, and this is an important resource; That's why I'm sharing it here! (under the cut)

PLEASE TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY!!! THIS IS ABOUT THE HEALTH AND SAFETY OF OTHERS!!!

Full eyestrain AF page link

"But Allison! How were you able to screenshot that example if you're so sensitive to eyestrain?"

I dimmed the HELL out of my computer screen and looked away while taking the screenshot and did the same when putting it into this post, that's how lol. BUT YEAH ANYWAYS!!! Once again:

PLEASE TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY!!! THIS IS ABOUT THE HEALTH AND SAFETY OF OTHERS!!!

[rightdownright]

by the way this is medical. this could save somebody from a migraine all the way to a seizure. this has always been serious. treat this seriously.

[davidmann95]

why does God keep doing this to me, the only Jon Kent enjoyer of pure heart

[davidmann95]

friend once said "I mean it’s the son of The First Superhero and the company treats him worse than like the fourteenth member of the Flash family, you have to laugh" and I have been known to think about this quote several times a day

[davidmann95]

I hope the monkey and that little Leave It to Beaver fuck kill each other. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

[davidmann95]

Would Lois ever use invulnerable baby Jon as an improvised weapon? Like if she needed to clock a guy on the head or crack a window to break into somewhere. Like sure she would know it LOOKS bad but I feel like she's the exact kind of crazy to be like "well JON is ok so what's the big deal with being resourceful".

1000000000000%. To normal people this would be a matter of squeamish hand-wringing and debate, she would consider anyone who even thinks this is a question stupid.

[davidmann95]

Don't judge Lois too harshly, Ma also did this with Clark a few times.

[davidmann95]

you have raved about to be hero-x, did you see any of the previous seasons (also have you seen any other kamen riders besides build)?

Nope, they're on the record that there's no real connection and they were just leveraging what name value it had to offer; Link Click is the major previous project by Li Haoling I'm likliest to check out.

[davidmann95]

Forgot about the second half of the question! I fell off Build a long time ago and perennially intend to get back to it, but I did also watch Shin Kamen Rider; apparently this is a hot take, but I preferred it to Shin Ultraman.

[davidmann95]

By the great indifferent galaxies! What's happening? This blog looks like a double-exposed photograph!

(Closing the 'ol askbox back up. Thanks everyone!)

[davidmann95]

Really happy to see you talk about Superman and silly cape stuff again. You seemed super burnt out and depressed when you left, so I hope the time and space has been good for you. Always loved this blog a lot!

Thank you so much! I'm doing alright, it's just by the time I left there were, frankly, a bunch of weirdoes who seemed kinda fixated on getting me to admit to one take of mine or another being heresy, and the whole thing felt increasingly pointless when this platform seemed less and less a vehicle for the kinds of discussions about genre fiction I felt like having anyway. I've written stuff here and there, I had the whole newsletter project that was fun while it lasted, and I've got a good circle of friends with whom among other things I have exactly the conversations I was hoping for. Opening this back up for the one night was fun though! I'll still post stuff from time to time, and I still have very concrete comics plans.

[davidmann95]

No preamble, no sugar-coating, just straightforwardly: what's wrong with Absolute Superman? I dropped it after the first arc, but aside from kind of a dogshit aesthetic direction (not necessarily bad art) and the Lois choices, I can't necessarily put my thoughts on why I don't like it into exact words. And is there anything good or salvageable about it so far?

I was an early proponent of the 'what if Superman was a 2000s Linkin Park AMV' approach and I still think that could've been a fine aesthetic, felt like it was truly going for it in a way other reimaginings of its kind lacked the fortitude to truly admit they wanted to be. I was also pretty certain the last several years of Jason Aaron at Marvel had been him running out the clock on his contract and now we were gonna see the Wolverine Goes To Hell/PunisherMAX/Godbutcher writer back. Instead it's...I can conceive how almost every individual component of this might've seemed good in a vacuum. How it made it past explaining it to another human being once put together is beyond me. If nothing else, you'd think this being the cool slick Ultimate take opposite 400 pound shonen protag Batman would've prompted them that absurd overwrought arch-pulp corniness wouldn't be the way to go here. I could go on and on and on, anyone who knows me personally or by reputation knows I could go on and on and on, but the ideas suck and even if they didn't the delivery still would and that's all it really comes down to. Best I can say is there are individual moments cool enough to throw the whole thing into even sharper relief, genuinely think the existence of this thing substantially shortens the lifespan of Absolute as a larger project. Every artist involved innocent though.

ok but seriously it's so fucked up it straight up tried to steal the whole Parasite fight from MAWS. he says the line!!!!!!!

[davidmann95]

Top 3 Superman moments to happen while your askbox was closed

Objectively My Adventures With Superman, Absolute Superman, and Superman (2025). If we're going for MY top three, two of those would already be in there, so for three others:

Jon Kent being utterly savaged and discarded and actively turned by DC editorial into a punchline, and in the process accidentally becoming the only character in mainline DC Comics - besides somehow Superboy Prime - still holding down anything remotely resembling an ongoing character arc. Everyone say thank you Nicole Maines.

Superman: The Kryptonite Spectrum. Plenty of other stabs in the last 4-5 years of varying quality - PKJ's whole epic finally concluding now in Book of El, Space Age, poor Lost, vs. Meshi, Last Days of Lex Luthor - but Kryptonite Spectrum was easily the big winner of the additions to the Superman perennial canon. You need to give the sickos the wheel.

To Be Hero X, no I'm not shutting up about it. The Superman component is only a fraction of what it's doing (a substantial one, but still only a fraction), but the ways it fragments and explores and twists the swirl of archetypes in that mix and promises to further do so in its second half are endlessly fascinating to me, I'm still semi-regularly having realizations the better part of a year later. Easily the strongest Superman analogue work of the decade among its many other accomplishments. If anyone's interested in checking it out, I put together pregame and postgame playlists of all the additional material they've released outside the 24 episodes proper.

[davidmann95]

What makes MAWS Brainiac and Supergirl work the way they do?

Short version: Brainiac forges all the scattershot conceptual threads across 60+ years of takes into a cooing missile aimed at everything Krypton as a concept has ever represented such that he not only finally earns Final Boss status, but manages to hit the surface-level 'yawn, c'mon, gimmie something better than that' twist they attach to him in the 11th hour out of the park. Supergirl meanwhile takes the absolute most basic nature of the premise - The Supergirl From Krypton! Is She Friend or Foe? - and twists it around in horrible, beautiful ways to make her a much, much more pointed contrast and player on the other side to Superman than 'somebody from Krypton made it out who remembers it, also they're his cousin' that gives her an arc to work through, and a much more defined personality and open field of charged narrative possibilities on the other side. Took them from 'Brainiac's fine, sure, but how often has he really been on a level such that people still think putting him in a movie is the magic bullet' and 'ok I think I'm finally ready to admit I straight up don't like Supergirl' and made them both feel utterly indispensable.

[davidmann95]

Anonymous asked:

I do find it eminently amusing how MAWS chose to flex on you with taking characters whose usual depictions you're pretty lukewarm on (Parasite and Brainiac) and decided to make indispensable, once-in-a-century definitive takes, and now they're going after Cyborg Superman. Who's next in Season 4? Mongul or Ultraman Being Good??? 😂

(Also, did you check out the creative team's take on Amazo?)

They've made a fool of me anon. A fool!!! I actually am pro-MAWS-Mongul though because they mentioned in a Reddit AMA that they'd like to adapt him for entirely prurient reasons in shamelessly objectifying Clark in the Warworld Saga getup, which I approve of. And yes, the spinoff comic was great - the 'But you're forgetting something' speech in the final issue was Morrison-tier Superman stuff - and I thought Pablo M. Collar did great and really vivid work on what could've easily been an indistinct work for hire gig, I'd love to see him on further projects.

[davidmann95]

What makes MAWS Brainiac and Supergirl work the way they do?

Short version: Brainiac forges all the scattershot conceptual threads across 60+ years of takes into a cooing missile aimed at everything Krypton as a concept has ever represented such that he not only finally earns Final Boss status, but manages to hit the surface-level 'yawn, c'mon, gimmie something better than that' twist they attach to him in the 11th hour out of the park. Supergirl meanwhile takes the absolute most basic nature of the premise - The Supergirl From Krypton! Is She Friend or Foe? - and twists it around in horrible, beautiful ways to make her a much, much more pointed contrast and player on the other side to Superman than 'somebody from Krypton made it out who remembers it, also they're his cousin' that gives her an arc to work through, and a much more defined personality and open field of charged narrative possibilities on the other side. Took them from 'Brainiac's fine, sure, but how often has he really been on a level such that people still think putting him in a movie is the magic bullet' and 'ok I think I'm finally ready to admit I straight up don't like Supergirl' and made them both feel utterly indispensable.

[davidmann95]

How're we anticipating MAWS Season 3?

We ready for a world where Cyborg Superman is Good™️?

Absolute Superman and The Reign of the Supermen going for the two-on-one against My Adventures With Superman, the former thinking it can beat-for-beat rip off the Parasite climax and come off looking good in the equation, the latter readying to defend its status as the good version of that story:

Sorry fellas but The Great 21st Century Superman Reimagining is continuing its forward march and you are standing in the wrong spot: in the way.

[davidmann95]

us there any your previous posts you had in your big ole' masterwork that you have changed your opinions on?

Oh I'm sure plenty, but most of those granular character thoughts whether I still agree with them or not generally succumb these days to the iron law of It's Fine If The Story Is Good. For instance, I still think Superboy (the adventures of Superman...when he was a boy!) is basically a dumb idea, but I also think that current Action run by Waid and Patridge and co. is fine! Easily the best ongoing Superman (albeit when he was a boy) comic on the stands right now even if I don't consider that a high bar at the moment.

[davidmann95]

How much does (and should) Lois being a workaholic affect her relationship with Clark? Like, that drive is definitely part of why he loves her, but it definitely gets to a point when she's shotgunning pots of coffee at 4am, right?

This is one of those things where it absolutely should be explored, but in the meantime I'm ok with it being placed on the narrative backburner because they're both very busy people and them each being with someone who fully gets it is a must. I liked the 'stolen moments' vibe Cooke and Bendis applied to their relationship.

[davidmann95]

you have raved about to be hero-x, did you see any of the previous seasons (also have you seen any other kamen riders besides build)?

Nope, they're on the record that there's no real connection and they were just leveraging what name value it had to offer; Link Click is the major previous project by Li Haoling I'm likliest to check out.