pay the debt, whatever the cost

hi. i am gumsneaker and this is where i post all of my musings about my pocket of dc space. 21, he/him, white.

[gumverse]

okay we will see how long this lasts LOL. do not have the desire to maintag anything here but it will probably happen as a result of wanting to tag stuff for my own reference. when i construct an actual pinned and some pages for this i will add those. this blog is mostly for my own benefit, any thoughts or art i post will be disjointed & odd. sorry

thanks for visiting my blogspace ✌️

[gumverse]

not drawn a lot of dc lately and this has ocs too but i feel obligated to post for harley and pam and harvey

[gumverse]

meh. nothing of note here just revisiting some designs and cass. kate i like batwoman elegy for genuinely i don't know a lot about her subsequent stories so i'll havr yo read more. i'm taking out steph ever being a batgirl idgaf i liked the robin & spoiler stuff more

[gumverse]

blehhh!

[gumverse]

oaky refined thiugh there's definitely still elements i want to vibe out/change. looks around. i wish i had some way to organize this well but my standard relationship chart will not work as well here i just want to standardize bonds through my bullshit... harvey & twoface relationship also very important to me to highlight

[gumverse]

various doodles of little importance but that i like. are you mad at me for pushing my edharv agenda

[gumverse]

oh yeah. cameron & garfield & drury lore dump for the sake of safekeeping

okay so. this is kind of hypercomplex sorry. but i liked a lot of different elements from killer moth comics over the years and i wanted to capture all of it and i have a special fondness for him so he gets a lot of attention

essentially there are two (2) killer moths, each of which pull from different mythos of that villain, neither of which feature the fucked up moth mutant they do sometimes. sorry. i'm evil and i don't care about it as a killer moth thing. kirk is already turning himself into a bat go bother him if you want that we only deal with weirdo freaks who just really like moths here

but the first is prisoner 234026, our beloved cameron van cleer! he pulls from the original killer moth appearances in batman & gotham nights #7 a beautiful beautiful issue of an otherwise unremarkable series of one-shots. crucially cameron van cleer is NOT his real name bevause i do really like what thise first appearances did; i want cameron to be mysterious and this sort of myth that even batman can't get to the bottom off bevause like... i like jt. i'm sorry. this ties into larger ideas about batman as a hero in my beloved gumverse but i like what stories like long halloween do where batman signals a change in crime in gotham and with him come all of this weirdos becauze i think it's fun, and interesting, and has some like. metanarrative weight as cliché as that may be to say. and that's what i want to get at here. cameron as killer moth appears only shortly after bruce's original batman appearances; he's a prisoner from an undefined origin of crime (on some level i want to leave this continually ambiguous. i think bruce often gets this sort of awareness where what the reader knows he knows becauze he is the main character of sorts, and i kind of want to play off of that and establish something that is really clearly in the area of knowledge he doesn't get to have, and also because i want to mirror the joker in several ways with killer moth i LOL sorry), he hears about batman, and he decides to weave this second identity of Batman For Criminals, all the while pulling off actual jobs under the name cameron van cleer without involving this stupid persona. i want him to be a really intentionally overdone inverse of batman; killer moth is a goofy ass name, and he knows it, it's supposed to be that way. meanwhile bruce is kind of thrilled to have someone countering him specifically but he would NOT let that show no sir. so here's cameron, perpetually two steps ahead with bruce gleefully chasing because it's interesting, it's a mystery, and i think a lot of what cameron does seems free from real... malice, maybe? or like. harm towards people. it's kind of a game. and from the outside especially the longer it goes on this is completely inexplicable but it's what's happening

anyway. number of years in and the events of gotham nights #7 happen; cameron tries to fake killer moth's death, bruce catches him, puts him away for realsies, and there's this sense of mystery because cameron van cleer is such a flimsy identity if you pull away a couple of layers but that's fine, bruce is going to be content with it (or make himself be content eith it) only because of a prevailing sense of respect for cameron

and a couple more years pass

and then there's an asshole college student. drury walker. i have a niche little realm of rogues in college that exists in my mind here, a lot of it was comedic in nature but i do think i want to keep some because it was charming to me to havr that levity in mind. but anyhow. asshole college student. and he's kind of bricked in the head but that's fine, and he graduates gotham state university with an engineering degree, but oops now he's several thousand bucks in the hole and hey it's gotham where weird shit happens all the time and well

(sidebar: killer moth ii is explicitly pulling from more recent killer moth comics. batgirl year one, matthew rosenberg's series, & killer moth's short in gotham city villains all come to mind. i liked the serious and intentional killer moth from earlier appearances, but i also really like the pathetic liar who lives under a million layers and never learned to tell the truth and his life sucks. i couldn't articulate why. i suppose i split them into two to reflect the sense of characters changing over time, which is something i'm more hesitant to do sith characters with what i feel is a more established backstory/identity -- rich kid penguin, know it all puzzle freak riddler, tragic two-face, you get the gist -- and easier to do with a character who has undergone massive changes in perception & depiction. so here ww go. sopping wet drury walker)

maybe he becomes a supervillain? a little bit?

except he's not very good at it. he tries to steal cameron van cleer's identity and pretend he is the original killer moth, no one buys that for very long, and then he just kind of sublimates himself in lies. i really want to capture guy who is in over his head but not in an overwhelmed sense in a "i have all of these ideas and none of the drive organization or support to put them into motion" sense. he is a very solo character and i think he fundamentally does Not Get that killer moth i was a little bit of an inside joke; he tries to be serious and make it dark and intimidating and it doesn't work. he's just kind of greasy and weird. also i think he is a little bit obsessed with batman; he didn't come from gotham, he moved thefe "for the university" and incurred many atudent loans doing so, he jjst likes the batman mythos. i think a lot of the time he's operating from a sense of disillusionment, and especially the more he does this the idea that it's kind of too late for him just grows... he's on the surface a much more depressing character than killer moth i lol. i have a lot for him in my brain but this is the crux of it, more is just details

and then firefly is kind of an important part of this. i don't have ones after garfield lined up even though they exist in the comics just because i like garfield and haven't read much or any of the others and i'm not sure if i feel i need them here but we'll see

i'm doing a little bit of story merging here. garfield worked pyrotechnics for film & television and was kind of a grimy shitheel, he got in trouble with his bosses, wanted to do a little bit of arson in return, and gets interrupted by mere coincidence in the process by killer moth i. cameron takes a shine to him, takes him under his wing, and i think garfield's early days as firefly are a sort of half-hearted imitation of that -- light-hearted costumed villain persona while the actual guy is running around destroying property at every opportunity. he's not really nearly as devoted to the game as cameron though and sort of makes his own path, merges these two; he doesn't really care about his personal life and firefly as a costume & identity is also well-suited for burning shit down. so.

he has a peaceable departure from cameron, strikes out on his own, becomes a repeat attendee of blackgate & arkham, and continues doing so as cameron turns himself in. in my mind garfield evolves from a kind of nobody young adult to a genuinely terrifying force over this time and thag perception does extend to firefly. he has a sense of recklessness with life and nonchalance to most things. he's still on good terms with cameron however & visits him whenever able, so when the news starts reporting that killer moth is active again, garfield knows that that is a copycat and is not fucking pleased! he tries to set up a plan with cameron to give the impersonator something of a talking to after he gets arrested by batman and ends up in blackgate or arkham, cameron declines because i think he's largely amused by it and also doesn't want garfield to cause more trouble for himself (something garfield loves to do and would have done anyway), and garfield says fuck it and gets himself committed again anyway

and his plan does work to a degree because killer moth ii does end up in arkham, and garfield tries to have his talking to, but drury is just so... waves hands (derealized) fhag he doesn't really seem at all intimidated by it? which garfield is into. so he 180s and decides that instead he wants to be drury's mentor and confidante when they get out, and they do team up (drury frequentlg complains about this but i think crucially comes to kind of depend on him, not to mention plans are a lot easier to set into motion when you have someone perfectlh willing & able to do just about anything) but garfield is really bad at "mentor and confidante"ing. still. they're buddies they work together they kind of become codependent. it's a funny moment of ineffectual shithead who calls himself the brains and his buddy who is the only reason people ever listen to him (part of the reason drury initially tolerates him before kind of coming to just expect him being there). for garfield's part he's charmed and vexed by drury's inability to function like a normal person and kind of likes the excuse of someone telling him to set shit on fire, casualties be damned; it's easier to handle if someone else's finger is on the trigger, too.

but yep those are my guys 👍 i think theg're neat

[gumverse]

spoiler & sirens. lore dumps for steph, a bit of edward, and some cluemaster under cut

stephanie just means a lot to me and i think she's really interestinf. specifically in my little world of dc i've had her formerly help out cluemaster pre his first arrest, and then after he's out again it follows the events of the original run she appeared in where she takes on her own vigilante persona to pose as him sending in clues to take him down lol. i just really like the dynamic of revenge vs justice bruce tries to assert with her & it's something i want to explore, plus i like her existing in relation to gotham's underworld to a certain extent

i'm making her jewish because i'm fucked in the head sorry. on her mom's side. i have a couple options here... she might be emancipated from her parents for whatever reason, arthur is more evident but i haven't settled on her mom's side of things yet. this happens after her first encounter with the bats as spoiler though because i do really like the sort of pity, maybe? that selina takes on her in war games and i want to hit that a little harder; i think stephanie projects herself & her dad on selina in a way that is more palatable specifically because of the allowance selina gets from bruce & because she is materially well-off

i also want to highlight a particular dynamic between stephanie & harley because i think harley is the other side of this projection and stephanie disdains her in a lot of ways lol. she's the less competent half of a notable partnership, goofy, all over the place, and i think crucially stephanie on some level wants to engage in a bit of unconscious victimblaming becauze she's a little mad at herself for being a complicit kid with her dad's stupid bullshit lol

she gets over this though ✌️stephanie brown very good at being normal

within internal chronology i do think cluemaster predates riddler... sorry edward. it's a huge source of frustration for arthur becauze riddler is infinitely more well-known and more likeable to an outsider and arthur detests that he can'f reallh wrap his mind around it. stephanie thinks this is really funny and is one of the first to reach out to edward during his reformation arcs because she thinks he's amusing, derives some sense of familiarity from him, and because since she's not an actual bat there's no real alliance being formed

edward is very much the sort to waver between reformation & the riddler in my mind and even when he's trying to act in the confiens of the law he's very willing to bank on the riddler persona. i also like the idea of the bats & assorted gotham vigilantes having him tag along to their little excursions because i do want to highlight that vigilante bullshit is in itself ouside of the law and i think bouncing that off of a criminal/reformed criminal helping them is fun, it just gives me in-universe justification for highlighting it and using the terminology of the criminal justice system sorry. also i just like giving edward screentime. as above stephanie is one of the first to reach out to him (and is more lenient with gotham rogues and incarceration in general, i think -- bruce has illusions about being ablr to fix the psychiatric reformation system but i think stephanie, especially with the specific group of bats & whatnot i feel she'd most get along eith, has some context to recognize that as untrue) and they get along, edward likes the implicit approval of having the cluemaster's daughter (not necessarily public knowledge; stephanie isn't the most covert with her vigilante persona because she doesn't really feel she has a personal life to worrg about but she's not open about it either -- edward in my mind is just intensely paranoid and goes out of his way to find and jeep this sort of information) favor him and her way of thinking has been shaped by that in such a way that they're able to play off of each other well

harley has did but i'll need to go bsck to her another time. pamela i need to decide more anout & tie her in better

[gumverse]

stupid stupid bugs

[gumverse]

batgirl&spoiler

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blehhh!

[gumverse]

oh man okay. bug guys. they exist really vividly in my head i'll have to break this down below a read more

tomorrow

in essence: two different killer moths, garfield (& bruce!) has pretty strong relationships with both of them in drastically different ways, daedalus is an artist who exists in their periphery because he doesn't really want to be a supervillain ans he thinks they're funny

[gumverse]

okay. miscellaneous rogue pages. i love making them interact sorry. the first & seventh images were some of my earliest efforts so they've changed a lot since then but there's still fragments i'd like to revisit (oswald, waylon...)

[gumverse]

riddler my best friend my confidante. i'm not going the batman 2022 route at all sorry. he's mentally ill & funny about it. was a journalism student who dropped out to go insane and become a supervillain (badly) (not actually but he's too neurotic in a specific direction to be consistently good at it). he hovers for a while between being the riddler and being a private investigator -- he likes the work of the latter plenty, but the pay's not great all the time, and batman seems to think it's an excuse to drag him all over gotham...

[gumverse]

unethical scientists and one (1) bestie. uhh. i'm undecided on kirk he's liable to change, the christian bale in btas is fun but i also like when he's genuinely batshit. and jonathan sucks. they're both processors at gotham state university (go gsu!) in my mind; jon teaches psychology courses and has some research and kirk is in the biology department... they do not like each ofher. this i know

[gumverse]

some minor gotham antagonists (and a couple major ones!)

[gumverse]

gotham city sirens. i need to break down selina's design somewhere & settle on a pam look/backstory, but i really like the overalls as opposed to her usual sexy plant woman approach i'm sorry... she should slay or whatever though. and harley i think changes frequently, she's cool like that. i want to articulate thwir feelings toward each other at some point but i may save that for aome soet of massive undertaking in the form of a great big relationship chart

[gumverse]

just a lot of harveys with some ofher guys idk. can you tell i really like him. i have particular thoughts re: his did but it's hard to articulate quite yet, might try to draw it out later