RWBY!

Alright! RWBY! It's an american anime web series made by Roosterteeth, the people who brought us Red vs Blue. If I had a year I couldn't describe why I like Roosterteeth so much, though it's much simpler to describe why I like RWBY so much. Great characters well done, it mixes and matches genres, and it has fun while not shying away from darker territories. Oh, and the always incredible fight scenes from Monty Oum and friends.

If you have not watched it yet go watch it. If you're not hooked by episode 8 there's something wrong with you.

Wonder Woman!

Alright! This one's been in the wild for a week or so, playin' catch-up on the blogger front. Wonder Woman! My mother asked me to draw this for her a couple months ago, and I actually drew one up a couple months ago... then I started finding tutorials and that old picture, which I wasn't particularly happy with when I made it, suddenly looked like amateur hour. It's starting to happen again, so expect another coloured version of this soon.

So here's Wonder Woman. I can honestly say I don't know much about her, but I've had a couple days of conversation to voice my opinion of her character on the Deviantart picture. Something I love about Wonder Woman is the fact that she is a character trained for war, a Greek Soldier playing a Super Hero. She is the Justice League-er most comfortable with murder, and most capable of telling when that step needs to be taken. Superman respects all life, Batman fights death itself, Wonder Woman uses death as a tool.

Journey Into Mystery Journeys into History

Sif's adventures (in this particular book) come to an end. I'll miss it. Between Valerio Schiti's artwork and Kathryn Immonen's take on the warrior goddess the book was pretty much perfect. Any book that can make me want to watch the adventures of one of Volstagg's children and Heimdal's pet Helhound deserves a special kind of attention. That was a single issue between adventures, by the way. A filler issue. And I would have bought a whole series based on it.

Sif in particular was fantastic. I love the righteous fury characters, but Sif had something else going for her. She wasn't some brooding antihero. She enjoyed the testing of her skills through combat. She enjoyed fighting for her land. And she was social. Between monster fights she would have dinner with friends, or snowball fights with the Mortal kids in town.

X-23 Target Terminated

This was a thing. I was simply testing something out, something small that dictated everything I was doing wrong for years and so simple I've been beating myself up over it for a week now for not seeing it sooner, and it quickly evolved into my desktop background. This is one of the more annoying parts of being an artist, you tend to learn something that makes you regret releasing the previously-good pieces of hog shite that you were so proud of...

I don't need to explain X-23 to you, I've got plenty of pictures and explanations in the archive. What I will do is ramble on about her in Avengers Arena. Let me say I'm loving the book so far. They haven't backed down from the deathmatch aspects of the story in the slightest, which makes me worry for Laura up there. She's the obvious win, which everyone in the book seems to know, and her powers make her indestructible so... a writer might need to get rid of her to make things interesting.

Or the trigger scent can come back.

I'm not sure how I feel about Laura's treatment in the book so far. She seems much more... mentally stable than she's ever seemed. I know the whole "Every time I enter a room I list off how to kill everyone there" but it hasn't seeped into her speech. There hasn't really been any social awkwardness when it comes to her character interactions. It's a minor thing, but I notice it because I'm a massive fan.

Now to go into spoilers for the issue that came out today. You have been warned. Assuming that whatsherface would even notice before Laura slipped a claw between two ribs and into her heart there's simply no way that Laura couldn't take that bitch of a mech suit. It was barely held together, whatsherface (Apex) mentioned how it wasn't nearly as good as the old Sentinel it came from, and I've seen Laura get a great shot in on a Nimrod (Sentinel from the future), and destroy one of the modern ONE Sentinels in Messiah Complex.

Like I said above, love the book. It's murdered some of my favourite characters and I still love it. But Laura, even in the context of the book itself, with everyone so awed by her, knowing to stay the furk away from her, seems to be being handled oddly. Not even poorly, just different. But she is my favourite character, so I notice, and I ponder.

Making Magik! Sorry...

My attempts to learn physical inking (as opposed to a tablet) are going well. An issue here and there, but I'll get it pretty soon. The big difference I'm noticing is that it looks a little messier than on the tablet, but I'm liking it.

Magik Magik Magik. What do I know about her? I know that she's older than she should be, having grown up in the time-distorting dimension known as Limbo, tortured by one of many Marvel Satans going by the name of Belasco. The first story I read with her in it was near the end of my first ongoing series, New X-men. In order to escape Limbo and save her friends, Pixie got Magik, at the time Darkchilde, to teach her her now signature teleportation spell. Darkchilde, being a soulless monstrosity at the time, tortured her and took pieces of her soul to kill her old master and took control of Limbo. Now she's queen of one of the many Marvel Hells.

After that she went through a long stint with the New Mutants, where she risked all of reality to destroy the old gods and regain her soul. Honestly, you know as much as I do after reading that. As much as I loved New Mutants, it's mostly a haze to me. She spent some time in jail, for selfishly risking all of reality for revenge, before Cyclops started taking her out into the field as part of his extinction team, where she proved herself as a useful part of his team, and where she ultimately showed her brother that she wasn't deserving of his love. So thoroughly that he now wants to murder her.

During Avengers VS X-men she was one of five mutants to take on the fractured Phoenix Force. She was also the one that didn't hide her corrupt nature so well, making a prison for the Avengers in Limbo, subjecting them to the horrors that one would expect from Hell. Ultimately, she lost her powers to her and her brother's enhanced greed (this was before her brother hated her). Spider-Man convinced them to go at each other to get the other's part of the Phoenix Force and make themselves more powerful.

Nowadays she follows Cyclops in All New X-men, working almost exclusively as a taxi so far, though they've hinted at her being used for greater deeds. I highly recommend picking it up, if just for the fact that Bendis is FINALLY writing Kitty Pryde again, even if it's not the Ultimate Universe one, he's got a good history with her.

One Final Tribute to Batgirl

It was announced that Gail Simone was being fired from Batgirl. Once I picked my jaw up off the floor and the anger subsided I decided to draw Barbara as a final tribute to Simone's  run.

I'm not in a mindset to do Gail Simone's affect on me justice at the moment, so I'm just going to past what I wrote on Tumblr, the day I'd heard.

I started reading Batgirl expecting some weird cop-out, to see the next big issue everyone was yelling about on the forums as it happened, because of both Barbara’s past in the wheelchair and because of the other Batgirls that had risen in the interim. I didn't count on Gail Simone, mostly because I hadn’t read her work before.

Batgirl is one of the few books DC has put out that I’ve been able to get in to. It’s had some of my favourite moments and a drive behind it that was pretty damn original. I’ve seen heroes crippled. I’ve seen heroes beaten, bloody, with social disorders, out of their league, go through some incredibly traumatic experiences… but rarely have I seen them pick themselves up from something quite like what Barbara went through. The flashbacks, the anger, the fear, all of it spoke to me as someone who’s worked through depression, and seeing Barbara not just get past it, but leave it broken and bleeding on the floor in such a spectacular fashion… I loved it. I ate it up, and gladly so. Batgirl was one of those books I’d go homeless to keep reading.

Gail, whatever you’re doing next, know that you have my support, and know that Barbara has had an impact on what I do.

Clones! CLONES!

My two favourite murderous clones, Laura Kinney and Kaine, X-23 and the Scarlet Spider!

Kaine is a clone of Spider-man, made back when Spidey was going through this clone phase. Kaine was an imperfect clone and was dying pretty much from birth... Y'know, faster than usual. He was in constant pain, scarred, and constantly aware of his fate. He was rightfully angry. The anger turned him violent, and somewhere down the line he started killing for money.

Move forward to something I know about, Kraven's family wanted to bring Kraven the Hunter back to life, after her swallowed one of those ridiculously long hunting rifles (I assume, the image is funny to me) after screwing with Spider-man in fantastic ways, but to do so they needed to sacrifice Spider-Man. Kaine put on his shiniest tights and went out to either beat them or take Peter's place, and he succeeded at the latter, being killed for Kraven to come back as an undead, unfeeling, psychopath.

Skip forward a few months and Kaine was dug up and brought back to life. It was a very short death, even by comic book standards. He was turned into a spider monster, then turned back, and helped Peter beat another villain, and we have Spider Island. Kaine immediately starts running, because he's a wanted man (the previously mentioned "killing for money"), and took Spider-Man's stealth suit (he has one of those) with him to Houston, where he takes a shitton of money from some criminals, saves a girl's life, and decides to stick around for a day or two. It's around here that we learn that Kaine isn't dying anymore, by his word and the fact that his scars are gone. A whole whack of stuff happens in Houston that ends with him being responsible for an illegal immigrant that would be murdered the second she appeared in Mexico, and the police asking him to stay as their super hero. Kaine set up shop, and is begrudgingly saving lives.

X-23  is the character that got me into comics, I've explained her story before.