Jason Cantoro.

love-and-radiation:

I am having far more thoughts about Arnold Drake’s approach with Elasti-Girl and Mento.

Mento is, essentially, a mash-up of Superman and Batman. He’s a billionaire playboy brilliant enough to build himself a telekinesis machine. He’s trim and good-looking, looks a little like Reed Richards. He’s everything that the Doom Patrol are not and cannot be. If this were any other comic book of the time, he’d be the lead character. He runs through the weird courtship-by-humiliation that Superman and Lois Lane had going on, but it is always presented as genuinely grotesque, even as Rita inexplicably (hence Giffen’s mind control retcon) falls for him. He’s this weird perfect billionaire who swoops in and takes a liking to the “beautiful, tragic accident victim” stuck with those freaks in the Doom Patrol.

And Rita, who craves normalcy, gives in eventually. She retains her independence and is fully willing to swat him for being an asshole, but she’s driven by a desire to have something which looks normal. It doesn’t have to be normal—she’s still Elasti-Girl, she’s still with the Doom Patrol as “therapy”—but it has to look as normal as possible. Because she’s a movie actress (who marries her stalker), who doesn’t want to get type-cast (as the walking special effect!) into a life of B-movies. Her life is enough of a B-Movie as it is. She was also suffering, I suspect, a little of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? syndrome, locked up in a mouldering house with a bunch of lunatics except when let out for special day trips to defeat super-villains.

And so they do this thing. He captures her into marriage and she forces him to adopt Beast Boy, another of the Doom Patrol’s freaks that Mento doesn’t like, so that she can live out a game of House (map that onto that story I mentioned a few days ago where the Chief fires the Doom Patrol and they move out, only to build an exact duplicate of their headquarters). She gets to play at keeping up appearances while still attending her group therapy sessions.

Rita spent a long time in limbo after the original Doom Patrol were killed at the end of Drake’s run (I will get there when I get the final Archives book, by the way). Kupperberg’s revival just left her dead because Kupperberg was busy filling out the team with newbies so he could turn it into a knock-off of the X-Men (there is a difference between the two). Morrison left her dead because he didn’t think she was sufficiently weird enough for his version (and ended up replacing her with Crazy Jane, another character whose problems were largely psychological). Arcudi left her for dead. John Byrne rebooted the whole team from the ground up, threw out all the old continuity to tell rather joyless stories—meaning Rita was there, but Byrne didn’t do much with her.

I don’t like event comics, but one thing that Infinite Crisis did was revive all old Doom Patrol continuity, even the contradictory bits, and that’s when things started to get interesting again. Rita was a case of unstable resurrection, traumatized by her death and rebirth. She was cloned from a piece of skull. Furthermore, Keith Giffen made her basically protoplasmic—a retired movie star who has to revel in her own vanity—constantly staring at pictures of herself, reminding herself of her face’s every detail—in order to maintain a coherent shape. It’s probably the best thing to come out of the most recent revival.

love-and-radiation:

deantrippe:

mooncalfe:

Katniss & Peeta from the Hunger Games series (click to make big!).

i drew this to purge the HG movie from my mind! screw that thing!! >:|

Full-on radness.

I’ve blogged this before, but wanted to reblog Ross Campbell’s rendition of Peeta and Katniss now that I’ve seen the movie. I’d love Campbell to do a comix adaptation? His Katniss is definitely my preferred rendition.

thedisgruntledgradstudent:

The president is going to be back jamming up the entire Westside on Wednesday, 2/15. Please plan accordingly.

Reblogging as a reminder for the LA crowd that this is today, and that unless you’ve got absolutely no other choice but to be in the vicinity of West LA/Westwood/Brentwood/West Beverly Hills and Bel Air, between 2pm and whenever it is tomorrow that the president is leaving, STAY THE FUCK AWAY or you will regret it.

Origin: Love-and-Radiation.

Definition: The act of a member of a given fandom correcting someone who is not as well-versed on some particular point, typically a name or detail which may not be common knowledge for those outside the fandom. Typically described as compulsive. [Derived from the ‘splain super-group]

Example: “Look, I know you think Green Lantern’s lame because his power ring doesn’t work on the colour yellow, but they got rid of that weakness a while ago.”

Origin: Multiple fora and ladyblogs, etc. [Submitted by Kelsium]

Definition: Used to preface sarcastic imitations of people who feel the need to make incredibly condescending but ultimately blandly obvious statements. Basically, just because you had a thought doesn’t mean you get to be a man/dad/momsplainer. Asshole.

Example: “I’m new to critical theory, but it seems to me that rape culture and raunch culture are two sides of the same oppressive coin.”

Origin: Ms. Avigon.

Definition: A default facial expression which is not pulsating with delight and ecstatic bliss at all times, which often offends people. Typically associated with the phrase, “I’m not mad, this is just what my face looks like,” and is often linked to people on the street (ie, harassing dickheads and people who think they know your life) telling you to smile more, you should by happy, why aren’t you happy, hey baby…

Example: “Look, I’m sorry your yelling nice tits at me doesn’t immediately make me break into orgasmic laughter and wonderment, but (1) I guess I just have a resting bitchface and (2) you need to go die in a fire now.”

dictionaryofobscuresorrows:

n. the satisfaction of lists, a series of bullet points being fired into the air as if to celebrate victory against the complexity of a universe that bombards us with five exabytes of data that would paralyze us if we didn’t connect random dots into constellations of dippers, hunters, and sexy ways to please your man.

(picture & example courtesy inthefade)

SAD KEANU (noun)

Origin: Keanu Reeves being open about his struggles with depression.

Definition: The sum total of the internet’s despair and loneliness, funneled down into one perfect manifestation.

Example: “Sad Keanu is sadder than Sad Keanu.”