Byrd Man

CLOSED - Ultimate One Universe: Season One

<Snipped quote by Master Bruce>

You died the moment you listed Grant Morrison as number 2 on your list.

@Bounce

I feel like you would be little mixed on Grant Morrison because of Damian Wayne.

CLOSED - Ultimate One Universe: Season One

@Bounce, @Byrd Man, and @Sep are all dead to me.

They don't realize what I bring to eye-bleedingly long paragraphs is nothing short of an art form.

@Master Bruce

If there were a degree in Batmanology, you know you would be the first doctoral candidate.

CLOSED - Ultimate One Universe: Season One

Forgive me for not being you when someone asks you literally anything about history, you bastard!

@Master Bruce

History, film noir, literature, something other than Batman. Take your pick.

CLOSED - Ultimate One Universe: Season One

<Snipped quote by Nightrunner>

Buncha Shit About Batman

Oh, wow. My favorite kind of question!

I'll start with Snyder, since he's my favorite of the three when it comes to Batman. Snyder's Batman arcs, particularly The Black Mirror, The Court Of Owls, Death Of The Family, and Zero Year, are among some of my favorite arcs in the entirety of Batmandom. He blends the larger-than-life conceptual stuff that I only wish I could pull off with the psychological study of Bruce Wayne type of storytelling that, again, I'm very goddamn envious of. It's taking the best of both worlds in terms of my preferred method of telling Bruce's story and mixing it in a blender. Snyder's work had such an impact on me that for a couple of years, I've been wanting to write my own fan-scripts for entire 13 episode seasons of a live action Batman television show that re-arranges his work so that it starts with a Zero Year inspired origin season, delves into the Court of Owls in the second, and has The Joker wreak havoc in the third. He's one of my favorite Batman writers ever, honestly, for his ideas alone. The only criticism I have is of his dialogue, which can be too wordy at best and too repetitious at worst (never try to play a drinking game where a Snyder-written character ends a sentence with "Dammit!"), and that his run ran out of steam a bit whenever he had Gordon take up the mantle. I appreciate trying new things, but he went a little far with Robo Bat-Cop.

Grant Morrison, meanwhile, I have an immense love-hate relationship as far as Batman goes. His storytelling is absolutely incredible and he taught me so many things about the character's mythos that I never knew just by re-introducing them to the canon, such as the Zur-En-Arrh thing and the importance of the "Robin Dies At Midnight!" story from the Silver Age. There are quite a number of issues of his that I absolutely adore and cite as some of my favorites for the character, specifically "Joe Chill In Hell", which has Bruce remembering one of his earliest cases while in a coma that plays out like an episode of Twin Peaks. However, the hate part comes in whenever it comes to his actual characterization of Batman. He can be a little too out there and all over the place, at once playing Batman as the no-nonsense serious detective that he's been portrayed as for the majority of the modern era, but also really leaning heavily into the sillier aspects of the canon to create a more "rounded" portrayal that just comes off as inconsistent. His swan song with Batman, Incorporated honestly just read as Bruce doing his best Tony Stark impression, and I didn't really like that at all. Also, while I love a majority of what he did with the supporting cast, and I do really like Damian Wayne when written correctly, I never really liked how he made Talia a full-fledged villainess. She went too far down the rabbit hole and became too irredeemable, when the point of her character was always the conflict between her father and her love for Bruce. And lastly, the tone that he established with the stories that he told, even though they are meant to be way different from the Batman stories told since the 80's, got way too tiresome to keep up with near the end. I was so relieved when the book got relaunched with Snyder and that immediate feeling of tone from something like Batman: The Animated Series came back, because Morrison had made it a different, nigh incomprehensible animal for a long time.

Tom King... Christ. This is where things get alot murkier, because King is probably one of the most celebrated Batman writers of recent memory that I just absolutely loathe for some parts. I was down with his run at first, but immediately noticed something was off whenever he started sprinkling in his own little affectations (My Bruce is never going to call Selina "Cat" because I find it so goddamn annoying) into the story and started trying to make it a bit too much of his own thing. I honestly gave up on the book after the second arc because I wasn't feeling it, and felt like he didn't really have a good voice for Bruce at all. Then the book turned around for me after his supremely dumb "War Of Jokes And Riddles" arc, which I despised. Once that was over, he started focusing more on Bruce's relationship with Catwoman, bringing the engagement thing to the forefront. Now, while I was resistant to Bruce and Selina ever settling down at first, eventually I started to really love the idea as King wrote it. He writes an amazing Selina Kyle, way moreso than Bruce, and she easily became the best character of his run whenever she had to tackle the realities of potentially being Batman's wife. For a long time, I've been of the opinion that Bruce would always put his work before everything and never fall in love, but I always had that spark of something that wanted him and Selina to just say "fuck it" and marry for the sake of throwing aside the tedious love affairs Bruce always gets into. Selina is his true love, and I wholeheartedly believe that Batman's gotten to a point where he can reconcile that and still be who he is. They've done the dance for too long not to be soulmates. But, King's handling of Bruce's character just still reads as a little too off-script for my liking, and his dialogue is insanely pretentious. Reading an issue of his Batman really kicks off my Writer's OCD, if that makes any sense. He just gets too far up his own ass sometimes, which was basically the entirety of the War Of Jokes And Riddles arc.

But yeah. Snyder, Morrison, King. I wouldn't say those are my top three of the entirety of writers that have tackled the character. Paul Dini and Dennis O'Neil vastly outrank all three of them, for my money, and I have favorites like Chuck Dixon, Mark Waid, Jeph Loeb, and a few others that would probably round out my ideal list. But Snyder's up there, and Morrison's not too many notches behind him. King I'm alot more iffy on.

@Master Bruce

That's too long... dammit!

CLOSED - Ultimate One Universe: Season One

There is a large percentage of people, specifically Americans, who for some reason believe Malibu is a Florida city. They just associate the beach culture with Florida's coast, I guess. So it's not all that unusual of a mistake.

@Retired

I used to have trouble remembering that Palm Springs was in California and not Florida. Why I needed to know where Palm Springs was located, I can't remember.

The Crew – "The Long Good Friday" (A British Noir RP)

Peckham
4:24 PM

“You just can’t barge through the door like that.”

Etan Ben-David sized up the half-naked woman, topless and wearing transparent knickers.

“Yet, here I am,” he said. “Apparently I can just barge through the door like this. Where is your boss?”

Realizing that she was naked, the woman quickly covered her breasts and scowled.

“Piss off before I--”

Etan silenced her by wrapping his hand around her mouth. Her eyes bugged out at the act and she started to claw at his hand. He flicked his wrist and tossed her to the side. Tottering on heels that were already too tall, she stumbled to the floor as Etan walked down the hallway towards the door.

“What the fuck?”

Sidney Greenstein was starting to stand up behind his desk when he froze, the eyes behind his thick glasses focusing on the gun in Etan’s hand.

“Isaac sends his regards, Sidney.”

“Oh, fuck,” Greenstein said with a sigh. “I didn’t do a goddamn thing, you Israeli fuck. I don’t know why you’re here.”

Etan crossed the distance of the small office until he stood best Sidney, the barrel of the pistol pressed against his temple. Etan could tell that it was taking every bit of Greenstein’s self-control to not make his knees knock together.

“Then why the reaction?”

“Let a fucking super-commando Jew shove a gun in your face and see how brave you are.”

“It has happened before,” said Etan. “With Jews, Palestinians, and Egyptians. When a man holds a gun to your head, his nationality and religion suddenly mean very little. Mr. Zinkman’s son confesses to giving some drug dealers the information on his father’s store and how to rob it, I wanted to walk into their office and demand answers, but I did not.”

“Well, why the fuck didn’t you?!”

“Because I am informed that they are too powerful, too many of them. I am a soldier, but I am just one man against many. But you, Sidney, you are just one man. A man that Mr. Zinkman knows cannot be truly trusted, a man who collects dirty secrets and knows many bad people.”

He tucked the gun back into his shoulder holster and walked to the other side of the desk. Etan sat in one of the two chairs there, looking up at Sidney. The old man still stood, his hands frozen in the air.

“Mr. Zinkman knows you would never be so stupid as to take from him. But, he also knows that you know people who would. People who are stupid and reckless. Tell us who they are and no harm will come to you. Refuse or lie, and I will do everything in my power to make your death as uncomfortable as possible. ”

“Fucking hell,” Greenstein said softly. “I’m sorry, kid… okay, here’s what I know...”

----

Mitcham
6:31 PM

Charlie sat upright in the driver’s seat of the car. The light of the pawnshop across the street had just gone out. About bloody time he thought. He’d been sitting on the place for hours. Seeing as how it was Good Friday, the place was dead. No sign of Freddy at all, and no other customers had come in after Charlie left earlier. There was really no reason to be open today, but Charlie supposed greed and opportunism never took a holiday.

Out from the door came the short, fat little man in a leather jacket. He locked up the shop and started on foot towards a parked car halfway down the street. Charlie checked his watch. Bobby had never came back after leaving for the meeting with Coach. Maybe that was a good sign that Coach’s lead was panning out. It made Charlie feel better about following this one.

The pawnbroker’s car started, backfiring as he accelerated down the street. Charlie started his own car and waited twenty or so seconds before pulling out onto the street to follow. The two cars formed a convoy of sorts down the Mitcham street. Charlie smiled to himself as he followed the oblivious little fucker. He really had no idea he was being followed. How stupid must he be to not even check for such a thing?

Thirty seconds after Charlie started off down the road, a third car pulled into the street and the two-car convoy became three. Keeping his distance, Etan Ben-David followed Charlie’s car north out of Mitcham and towards Balham, Battersea, and the city of London proper.

CLOSED - Ultimate One Universe: Season One

L.A. River
2:24 AM

“We have our last item for sale.”

The masked woman pulled from her cloak a 1950’s era camera. She held the bulky device in her gloved hands, high enough for the gathered auction buyers to expect it. Everyone there, Constantine and Ray included, could feel the power of the thing. It was a black energy that spread through the air like the tendrils of a vine.

“Between 1957 and ‘58, Harvey Glatman lured would-be L.A. models to his apartment under the auspices of being a professional photographer. Once there, he would the pull a gun on the women, tie them down, rape them, and murder them. He used this camera to take photos of his victims in their last moments alive, horrible shots of young women begging for their lives. Glatman was arrested in the fall of ‘58, died in the gas chamber the next year, and his soul condemned to an eternity of torment. But this camera was left behind. It still carries the emotional weight and trauma of Glatman’s deeds. Bidding for this will open at major favors, gestures, and life altering choices.”

“I bid my left ring finger,” came a voice from the group.

“A night of uninhibited sexual pleasure,” a sultry voice said. A few eyes turned and saw a comely woman in a stained wedding dress making eyes at the crowd.

“A week of my best luck,” said another voice.

“My last good tooth.”

The masked woman nodded at the last bid. It wasn’t that someone’s last good tooth was of any value to her, but the sacrifice it represented was the currency. These people were willing to part with these irreplaceable things, things that created mental ties and psychic bonds when they were willingly given. That's what the masked woman hoarded more than anything.

“A year of suicidal depression,” said another voice.

All fell quiet at the last bid. Whatever the camera was worth, no one else was prepared to pay a cost equal to or greater than that. The masked woman pointed towards the woman who made the bid.

“Going once, going twice, three times… sold.”

With the camera cradled in one hand, she made hand signals with the other, a curling motion with her gloved fingers. The woman who had won the bid began to totter on her feet, her look of triumph gone, replaced by pain and sadness.

“Your purchase” the masked woman said, handing it off to the woman. “A year from today, your depression will lift.”

“Whatever,” she dully said as she shuffled off.

“That’s it for tonight,” the masked woman said. “Based on our lunar charts, we will see you next year at the auction. Rest assured, we will have an entire year’s worth of product for sale there. Until then.”

As the Good People began to filter away from the river, back towards the stairs where they had entered, John and Ray approached the masked woman.

“E,” said Ray.

“Long time no see,” said John.

“Maybe that was by design,” the woman said coolly. “With one of you becoming a sellout and the other… well… the less I say about you, Conjob, the better.”

She removed her mask, revealing a dazzling pair of blues eyes and matching hair. Epiphany, mistress of the arcane auctions and ex-girlfriend of John Constantine. If Ray was an encyclopedia of occult knowledge, then Epiphany was Wikipedia. Her information was more vast, ever-changing and adapting, and at times highly suspect.

“I need your help tracking down a mage,” said John. “A really bad guy, working for bad people.”

“We think he goes by the name Jimmy the Saint,” said Ray. “E., Conjob isn’t lying. This guy is killing the laity.”

“...Fuck,” Epiphany said with a sigh. “Okay. Let me finish up here and we can talk.”

CLOSED - Ultimate One Universe: Season One

But... Clark Kent wears glasses and Superman doesn't. Only nerds wear glasses, and Superman isn't a nerd.

CLOSED - Ultimate One Universe: Season One

I remember him doing Martian Manhunter one time, like eight years ago.

CLOSED - Ultimate One Universe: Season One

<Snipped quote by HenryJonesJr>

this is why I always claim a bunch of C-listers. they're just as good as the top villains, but no one cares that you're taking them :P

@The Angry Goat

That's the Byrd Doctrine.