[FILM REVIEW] Puss in Boots 2 : Last Wish

I was unreasonably excited to see this film. Luckily, I have kids and nephews and nieces, so I had ample excuses to see this movie "because the kids may like it". I think a lot of the reason I was so keen to see this film is that I am a cat owner and have been for my entire life. As in my first cat died at 22 when I was 14, so literally the entire time I have been alive I've lived with and loved cats.

It has always bugged me that, Hollywood especially, always casts cats in films as bad guys or mean and snobbish. It is a strange cliché in most American films as cats are a hugely popular and beloved pet. The perception of them as evil, snarky beasts is really not how most people see them, particularly cat owners. It seems so strange to me that Hollywood does not embrace the cat more as a heroic protagonist for that would appeal to literally millions and millions of people all across the globe. Also, if the internet has taught us anything, cats are really photogenic and expressive to look at. 

Anyway, this movie is a real step in the right direction for children's movies, reminding me of the glory days of Pixar. Back when Pixar films could make you cry and laugh in the same movie. Dreamworks has outdone themselves here in producing a kids film that is funny, exciting, scary and relatively deep in its themes and messages. 

The core of this film is about life. What makes life worth living? How does one live a full life? What makes someone truly happy? What is important? These type of questions are framed through the fear of death. Now these are heavy ideas, but kids are smarter and more interested in the world around them than many adults give them credit for. IMO, kids shouldn't be hidden from things. It does not protect them, it cripples them for life.

So while the ideas in this film are heavy in relation to the kind of light smultch coming from Disney recently, and it does have a genuinely terrifying villain. It is still an excellent kids' story. 

I do think this film is a little unsure of who it is made for. There is some bad language in this movie. All of it is beeped out in some way, and in literally you hear beep sounds over swearing and others instances are stopped midword.. like "Bullshit" is just "Bull..<interrupted>", stuff like that. Still, this seems like a symptom of the same thing Toy Story had "issues" with. Shrek is 21 years ago. The kids that saw that are now parents or grandparents. It is not a bad idea to cater to children, but also make sure that the Parents have fun and cater to their sensibilities as well. While I like the deeper meanings in this film and I also think it is about time kids got an actual scary villain for a change, I think the swearing was kinda out of place and makes the film unsuitable for many parents and puts the move into the range of teenagers more than kids. To be clear, this is a non-issue for me, but I can see why some parents may have an issue with the language.

Still, despite a few rocks this is a fantastic film from start to finish.  The animation is detailed and gorgeous. I'm not a huge fan of the jerky animation. I used to do 3D Animation for a living and do not be fooled. That animation style is simply done to reduce the cost of rendering as you render less frames. Which is why it is only used in the combat sequences. Even so, despite this artistic / economic choice, the film is really just fantastic looking. The expressions and details in the sets are amazing. Also, as an x-animator the power of modern lighting in these renderers is just astounding.

My only other gripe is that I would have liked Kitty Softpaws to be a more rounded character. Kitty is better at everything than anyone else in the movie, more fearless and smarter. Never makes mistakes and is basically perfect. While Puss spends most of his time doing slapstick comedy. I mean the film still works and there is a plot through line about Puss loosing confidence through fear, but even so, Kitty has no arc of any kind. Making her feel flat and uninteresting. Every other character besides Jack Horner has an arc. Jack btw, doesn't have an arc by design. This is part of the thematics of the over arch plot and metaphoric meanings of the movie. His lack of an arc is used as a counterpoint to the main villain, Wolf. So it is actually a plot point. I just think they missed a real opportunity for Kitty to experience an arc like all the other characters.

: Verdict : 

Easily one of if not the best animated film of 2022 and one of if not the best family movie of 2022. I might have changed a few things.

[TV Review] - Koala Man [Season 1] - (Hulu)

Koala Man

Adult Swim recently took a chance by give some very popular uTube cartoonists a shot to make a one off special for the network. It was so popular they made an entire series that has received nearly universal praise for being so fresh, interesting and funny. Somehow Smiling Friends retained the feeling of that random uTube kind of content you see online, appealing to the literal millions of people that consume content on social media platforms. 

So it is no surprise that Michael Cusack one of the creators of Smiling Friends and who supplies the voice of Pim, is getting offers from all over the shop. So here we have a new "adult" cartoon from someone that many feel is a fresh voice in animation right now. 

The problem is that Koala Man despite having some charm lacks all the daring innovation that made Smiling Friends stand out so. This show is just another in a long list of wacky cartoons full of jokes, violence and swearing. I am not sure what I was expecting from this show but I was not expecting it to be a by the numbers show that could have been done by anyone or been any of the many released in recent years. It really is "more of the same".

That is not to say the show does not have its upside. As an Australian myself, there is a defiant appeal in the show due to it being the kind of understated "chill" but sarcastic and, well... kinda mean, "taking the piss" humour that is so common over here. As someone that consumes so much media having Australian sensibilities in a show does feel great. So despite this show's issues, it does have a unique voice in that regard.

The problem is that this show just feels like more of the same. Wacky stories with painfully obvious "lessons" like "don't just chase popularity" or w/e that we have seen a bazillion times. It lacks the subversive edge of Smiling Friends and I couldn't help but feel that Michael Cusack is being held back by following the "Simpsons" format so closely. Basically, I thought this show would be a lot more insane.

Is this show terrible? No. It has a real charm to it and I did enjoy it, some. The issue is that I doubt this show will get a lot of traction beyond the initial curiosity from the early days of release. What I liked the most about this is that as a Australian I could relate to it. For an international show that being the only real draw is a problem.

It should be noted that Koala Man is not a new project. Michael Cusack did a really fantastic Rick and Morty parody called, Rick & Morty Down Under which got him a lot of attention. he then started work on Koala Man shortly after for his uTube chan around 2018. The splash image above is in fact taken from the old ABC pilot for the show that never eventuated. (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

: Verdict :

This show is alright. Nothing special, nothing terrible. Maybe it would grow on me as I got more comfortable with the characters, but I would have to remember it exists first.

[TTRPG] - Dragonbane (Drakar och Demoner) by Free League

Dragonbane [Free League]

(Drakar och Demoner) 

Dragonbane (Drakar och Demoner) is by  Free League a Kicker that has run its course, but is still open to late pledges!!

Free League is, imo, one of the best RPG publishers in the world right now. I am currently playing some games they make. Forbidden Lands, which is a OSR game, and Alien, which is a RPG set in the universe of the Alien Franchise. The thing is they also do the absurdly popular Twilight 2000, Mutant: Year Zero, which is the system they use in a lot of their games, Coriolis, the award winning Symbaroum and a bunch of others. Recently they released Bladerunner which I hear is also very good.

My point is these guys are basically batting 1000.

Dragonbane is a "new" RPG system from Free League. They normally use the Mutant : Year Zero system in their games, which revolve around pushing your luck via d6 drops. The interesting thing is that this is based on Drakar och Demoner, a old game from the 80s. You see back in the ancient times before the internet things didn't travel like they did now. During the late 70s when the RPG scene took off, DnD didn't really make it to Northern Europe. So, instead of DnD they had DoD (Drakar och Demoner) which I believe is Sweedish for Dragons and Demons. Basically, if you played RPGs in and around Scandinavia during the 80s and 90s. It was DoD, and not DnD that you played.

This is the classic Free League mo. Mutant : Year Zero was also a regionally known RPG that most of the world had not heard of when they repackaged it for the world market. They have a history of taking these lesser known, or unknown games (unknown to some, particularly the west) and re-releasing them as a "new" game with modern tweaks, that then blows people socks off. The thing is that DoD is kinda like Pepsi. It is an alternative "root brand" to DnD for many in Europe. It is a hugely influential RPG that has moulded many European designers, who now make more mainstream RPGs. So DoD has secretly been behind the scenes this whole time influencing many of the TTRPGs you probably play. 

So what exactly is DB? Well it is a high Fantasy RPG sandbox. While it does have an actual world and obviously that means it has its own major god and demons and stuff, the game itself is really more open than some others. In that regard it reminds me a little of Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Not.. I stress.... not in content, LoTFP is notoriously dark, but in that this version of DoD is game you can run pretty much any high fantasy setting. 

As it is a game from the 80s it lacks some of the "free form" ideas popular in some modern RPGs. I mean it is a modern rebuild of the game, but it is still like DnD itself. As this game has a lot of combat stuff in it. Make a party and go hunt some monsters! The combat rules are typically streamlined and simple in comparison to DnD, which is a total mess imo. The core mechanic is rolling a d20 and trying to get equal to or under your skill. So it's like Pendragon in that way. So attacks do damage, you track health, etc etc. Utility spells and all that stuff. The original DoD was based on Basic Roleplaying by Chaosium. One of the big updates here is changing it from a D100 test to D20 tests (dropping granularity from %1 to %5 increments).  

You can download the Quick Start PDF from the Kickstater Site.

(These rules are Beta so are subject to tweaks and stuff.)

: NOTE :

For those of you that have been paying attention to the OGL (Open Gaming Licence) and current implosion happening over at Wizards over it, might want to consider Draganbane as a OpenDnD solution to using DnD itself. #OpenDND #DNDbeGone #OpenDND 

[FILM REVIEW] - MCU 31 : Black Panther 2 : Wakanda Forever

MCU 30 : Black Panther 2 : Wakanda Forever

To my great shock, this film is actually one of the better Disney-Marvel movies to come out in years.

I hate using terms like "Woke" or "M-she-U", but it is hard to ignore, that besides the bad guy, there are only 3 males in this movie. Apart from extras or minor parts that are not much more than extras. We have a faceless "top henchmen". An Odd-Job style dude. Arthur Dent who is in the film for not much more than 2 minutes and there is the big King guy that bashes his chest a lot, who is also in the movie for almost no time at all. The movie does revolves around old female characters, or new female ones. There are jokes about white cops, jokes about "colonials in chains", an entire subplot about the Spanish invasion of South America. Black Panther is of course a gender swap and it also, bafflingly, they chose to feature Iron Heart for some reason. Iron Heart was a Iron Man race / genre swap from the comics. Her comic series btw turned out to be the worst selling Marvel Comic in history of Marvel Comics at the time of release. So why did they bring over a failed hero into the MCU? Makes no sense to me. So the thing is, if that kind of stuff really annoys you, then there is plenty of fodder in this film to fuel a rant about it all. 

The thing is, while all that can be intrusive at times, surprisingly, most of this movie is actually solid. It is much darker than the average Disney movie. Darker in tone, and even in the pallet. This is so refreshing and much more aligned to what I want to see in a soup-movie. The story feels more sophisticated as well. I mean, sure, it's a comic film, do not expect too much. Still, this is not the typical Disney film with random out of place jokes all the time and people acting like sexless, dogooder Star Trek type people. Namor has been completely reimagined in the MCU and this version is actually excellent. I dig the new history and the look of the Atlanteans. All his scenes rock, the actor nails this role, and I think the entire way his plot was handled, just worked. The subplot of new Black Panther reconnecting to her spiritual roots, which she feels are at odds with her scientific mind, is done well and interesting.  And just when they could pull out the stinky Pont l’Eveque cheese, they switch it up with a boss camo scene that steels the entire movie. Her arc was just cool.

Still, this is an MCU film and it suffers from all the normal stuff that I despise about these movies. I know I gate watch them MCU a little, but as a life time comic book reader who has never not once bought comis every week since I was a little boy... I just can't not see a comic book movie. Though I do so at home now, I have not been to the cinema for a MCU movie since Infinity Wars.

The disappearing helmets are back and it is still the most fucking stupid shit ever, and it is beyond ridiculous in this particular film. Even worse than normal. In the final fight scene the characters fighting and chatting away mid fight, already dumb, but they have their helmets appearing and disappearing every camera change and practically every sentence. Zip away. Say line. Zip on. Punch. Zip away. Say another line. Zip, punch, etc. It really is the gold standard for this disappearing helmet, magic communication bullshit that has become a staple of this series. It felt like a visual strobe. This fucking hat turning off and on again. The strobing effects being exacerbated by this all these helmet vanishes happening in near full screen close up and in tandem with full screen close ups to inside Iron Hearts helmet. It was so ridiculous. 

Also the film tries to do to much. Nothing gets the time it needs. There is just to many things pulling focus. Also, the entire Iron Heart thing was a colossal fuck up. Every scene she was in sucked and she is completely unnecessary to this film. If I was less bored, or more busy, I might have bailed on this movie in the early Iron Heart scenes. They are that bad. The character sucked, not the actress herself I think, but her lines gave her nothing to work with. They should have done some minimal tweaking to remove Iron Heart and that entire fucking buckets of cunts could have been avoided and the film would have been better off. 

As expected nothing in the film really stands up to any application of logic. I mean the events in the film do not really make sense. World Nations do not interact like that, and wars are not fought by 10 dudes on a highway. I am not some tactical genius but if I was a fish man and someone attacked me in a massive boat, I would swim down under the waves and then away. 

Also with bringing in big guns like Namor the MCU is running into the Superman problem that DC has. When a guy can take a punch from Sentry, there always needs to be some kind of "kryptonite depower" scene. These scenes are as old and cliché as Batman's Origin Story. I am just sick of seeing it, and if you spent 5 mins reading comic you can see how you can have these superpowered people battle without powering them down. It is a soup-story. Them being ubr-powerful is the point. I do not want to see them depowered, I was to see other people powered up.

Still this film really surprised me. The trailers looked beyond terrible and if I started vomiting blood during this film, it would not have been totally unexpected. The big difference for me is that I didn't have that bone chilling boredom I had with the original Black Panther and much of this phase's films and tv shows. The fights while typically ridiculous, lacked that completely boring "time-wasting" feeling that so much of the MCU has.

So what we have here, despite my initial conceptions, is a cool action film. Mostly cool characters I enjoyed watching. A awesome set of baddies. A main character with a cool and interesting arc that actually showed change and dilemmas she had to over come, both physical and spiritual. Also, it is a Disney film, and these guys know how to make a great looking blockbuster. It is a slick film in many ways.

Verdict : The darker tone, the film having actual emotional motivations and stuff that I enjoyed and a surprising lack of cheese (there is still plenty of cheese, I guess it is all relative)... This film is easily the best of the recent movies and TV Shows. It is a good MCU film, up there in the upper-middle of the stack.

[TTRPG] - Obsolete Shitty Rules (The TRUE OSR) - Kickstarter is LIVE

 

The TRUE OSR - Obsolete Shitty Rules @Kickstarter
(Beta Quickstart Rules @GoogleDocs)

Interesting looking "OSR" parody game, designed for one shots run. In an age of rpgs coming out what seems like daily, it is refreshing to see one that is trying something different vibe wise. Everything takes itself so serious nowadsy that seeing something that is just unapologetically silly just stands out.

The art is exceptional, Roberto Toderico reminds me of old 80s 2000AD stuff. I also love the heavy metal vibe it the art has as well. That mix of Horror, Scifi and Fantasy. I think it really fits the project ideals with it being so crazy.

The game has some strange ideas in it.. like you can "win". Players and the Dm both gain XP via the tables and generated content and this XP is used in the final showdown were the players and the DM go head to head vs each other. (?!) In addition to this sort of players vs DM thing going on and the book, from my understanding, is mainly a massive list of tables and other generators. The idea is that there is no prep-time. You just rock on and start playing in a very free form way creating content on the fly. Every player question (I assume within reason) forces a die roll that pushes the game into new directions. So the DM has to adjust to these new plot direction which are out of his control.

I have no idea if this is going to be good or not. All I do know is that to me, it feels different, that that ain't a bad thing.

I do think that the "one-shot" nature... claiming to be little to no prep-time and also being a "new" experience independent of the GM, so even the GM dose not know what is happening.. means this could be a great RPG for boardgame groups.

#DNDbeGone

[Comic Review] - Scooby Apocalypse

 

 

Official Blurb:

 

The Hanna-Barbera cartoon classic is re-imagined for a new generation in SCOOBY APOCALYPSE VOL. 1!

Fred. Daphne. Velma. Shaggy. Scooby-Doo. Roaming the globe in their lime-green Mystery Machine, they've solved countless crimes and debunked dozens of sketchy supernatural shenanigans.

But what if the horror was real?

Something terrible has transformed our world, turning millions of people into mindless zombie hordes. And only five people-well, four people and one mangy mutt-have the smarts, the skills and the sheer crazy courage to stare down doomsday.

Can these pesky kids and their canine companion-using every incredible contraption in their arsenal-defeat the evil that has overwhelmed planet Earth? We've got only one thing to say about that- ZOINKS!

From comics mastermind Jim Lee and the superstar creative team of Keith Giffen (JUSTICE LEAGUE 3001), J.M. DeMatteis (Justice League Dark) and Howard Porter (JLA) comes Scooby Apocalypse, a whole new spin on the most beloved paranormal investigators in history 

 

: My Take : 

So comics can be weird things, and I do not mean weird in content, but weird in the fact that like most things they are a business of complex interconnected copywrite ownership, partnerships and flagship IPs. This leads to some really great things like Aliens vs Predator (forget the films, the comics were actually awesome) and Xena Warrior Princess vs. Army of Darkness.  It is also responsible for a period in DC comics that many have forgotten and most people wrote off without reading a single book as a corporate board meeting idea dreamed up by some exec that has never read a comic in his life. Hanna Barbara Beyond.

The "brilliant" idea here was to reimaging the Hanna Barbara cartoon characters, whom DC had the rights for and were no using... aka monetizing, into modernized comic books aimed at teens and the terminally childish, like myself. The goal was to produce a DC Muntiverse Shard of Hanna IP Characters and run it almost like a imprint, though it was published under the DC brand and so technically was part of the larger DC Muntiverse.

Wow.. what a bonkers idea.

As you would expect the series didn't do so well. While my generation might love Space Ghost, The Herculoids, Top Cat and the like. Young people didn't care. They do not even know who they are, and while they might know of The Flintstones, no kid who grew up with Invader Zim or Spongebob really gives a toss about them. On the other side, the people that DID know and watch these cartoons as kids, saw the entire thing as kinda bizarre and cheesy. I mean it was cool, but in a "pick it up and have a chuckle at the cover, flick through it and put it back on the shelf" kind of way. The truth is that the entire thing was doomed to fail from inception. Despite that, and in retrospect. It actually wasn't half bad, with some decent comics getting produced among the rot.

I mean, check out Exit Stage Left, that tells the surprising sophisticated tale of a prejudiced and relationships. One that follows a brilliant but deeply flawed main character who is playwright living in New York during a time that is a thinly veiled retelling of the McCarthy Era. All that anti-gay, anti-jew and anti-commie black list type stuff. Snagglepuss, here, is basically Truman Capote or a Tennessee Williams type guy trying to work, live and love during a time of repression. It is actually really good.

Or how about, Wackey Raceland a mad max style Cannonball Run across the desert. With all the favs. From Darstadly and Mutley, to Penelope Pitstop and the Anthill Gang. A non-stop action packed, and kinetic comic. All style no substance. Yes, everyone on that cover is from the classic Wacky Races cartoon. Can you spot them all?

Ok, lets actually talk about Scooby Apocalypse.

 So in this comic the basic premise of the "team" is the same.. but that is about it. Scoob is a rescued military science experiment, alla the excellent we3 comic by Grant Morrison. This is why he can "talk". Shaggy is a hipster doofus animal trainer at the science lab. Velma is a head scientist, genius who runs the lab and Daf is a reporter with her camera man, Fred.

They meet up as Shag is breaking out Scoob and Velma is trying to whistle blow on the nefarious global plot that is using her research. One thing leads to another and the entire earth is chronenberged. It is now the apocalypse where people have been transformed into monsters form their subconscious. Vampires, Swamp Things, Werewolves.. are all in the mix. Classic Horror Icons come to life.

The thing that sets this apart from the other Hanna Barbara Beyond Comics is that while it starts silly and pretty much what you expect, over the years it insidiously turned into one of the better no-soup comics form DC had at the time. Amassing a decent following and gaining a kind of cult status among comic book readers. The only other book from this period that is as loved is Future Quest. The Jonny Quest series. It collects all the sici elements from Hanna Barbara, but even that is not as popular.

I recently read this, as in last month. I skipped it and most of the Hanna Barbara Beyond stuff when they were new. I like many thought it was just to strange and unappealing. During my read I found it more of a curiosity than something that is inherently good. Though it dose pick up. I think this book suffers from the "Look Shinny Thing" syndrome. This is a term I invented to describe corporate designed media, that kinda suck.. but after a while the corpo looks at something new and the artists are left alone to basically do what ever the hell they want, regardless of the original detectives where. They basically operate with no oversight.

One of the big things to look for is the change in the character of Daphne

So the "Look Shinny Thing" effect is clear in this series. Once the conceit of the story was done and the entire HBB idea was proving a failure, the Scoob book really kicks into another gear and becomes something unique. Something special. dare I say. Something good.

 It seemed like a good idea at the time - Shaggy

 

[Comic Review] DCeased Event (2019-20??)

 

DCeased

DCeased

1. DCeased
2. Un-Kill-Ables
3. Hope at World's End
4. Dead Planet

Official Blurb

What happens to the World’s Greatest Heroes if the world ends? Six hundred million people. That's how many fall victim when a mysterious techno-organic virus is unleashed on Earth. Six hundred million infected. Six hundred million turned into mindless, rampaging killers bent on death and destruction. And that's just the beginning. Cities. Nations. Undersea Kingdoms and Paradise Islands. One by one, they fall to the monstrous hordes. Now only Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and the rest of the Justice League stand between Earth and utter annihilation. But for how long? Nothing they've ever faced has prepared them for an onslaught of this magnitude. Nothing they've ever seen can match the scale of the tragedy and terror that have been unleashed. As heroes and villains, gods and monsters are wiped out, only one question remains: What happens to the World's Greatest Heroes if the world ends?

New York Times bestselling writer Tom Taylor (Injustice) joins artists Trevor Hairsine (Red Hood and the Outlaws) and Stefano Guadiano (The Walking Dead) to unleash an all-new vision of the DC Universe's darkest hour in DCeased. But be warned: the horror is contagious...

: My Take :

Once upon a time there was a fad that permeated all media, and comics were no more immune than the characters in those stories. Zombies were everywhere. Films, TV, Comics, Video Games, Tabletop Games... just everywhere. At the height of this fad there was a comic called Marvel Zombies that tracked an outbreak of a zombie virus in the Marvel Universe. It was insanely popular, like everything zombie was at the time, and it was not long until DC did their own take on the idea, Blackest Night.

Blackest Night was a mega cross over event that was a more DC themed take than just "zombie plague but with infected super powered people". It revolved around the a Black Lantern Core and it was really good. Not original like Marvel Zombies, I mean everyone knew it was a "lets do one of those zombie stories as well" type thing, but that didn't stop Blackest Night being extremely good.

So it was a huge surprise to many DC readers to learn that there was a brand new take on a super powered Zombie War coming from DC. I mean the Fad was over and zombies were back to their normal background level of immense popularity, and it wasn't like Blackest Night was some kind of failure. It was hugely successful. Still here we are. Sorta the same thing. Again.

The basic idea of the Zombie event has not changed much from Marvel Zombies. This is a book to see the heroes you are so used to being in control, cracking jokes and winning, instead get totally annihilated and gruesomely put down. Villains become heroes and Heroes find their morals can't hold and act like villains. Like Blackest Night though this story is deeply infused with DC Lore. Marvel Zombies was just a zombie plague (kinda), while this story is linked to one of DCs longest running villain through lines. The Anti-Life Equation.

Like the film 28 Days Later this story is not actually zombies, but something more interesting for DC fans. This gives the writers freedom to do things that would be impossible in a typical zombie story. Also, while Marvels Zombies and Blackest Night were pitch black and repressively dark, alla The Walking Dead, for this was the style at the time, this story dose not fail to forget that at the heart of every great DC Soup Tale... is Hope. Though like all good stories of hope, that hope needs to be crushed until it's just a flickering ember.

Anyone who reads big cross over events know what to expect. So many characters are in this and many have really great roles. Others die super fast for shock or story reasons and others are delegated to background drawings, that become a kind of Where's Wally? type thing which plays out on double page spreads. I am not sure these kind of events, though big and epic, are really the best place for new soup readers to jump in. The power of these cross overs is the reader knowing about all these characters, knowing them intimately, and then seeing them in alternative situations they are not normally in. Obviously these characters are very well known and this comic is not so detailed a character study as something like Kingdom Come that someone with a passing familiarity will not have footing. Still, like all cross overs, this is a story for fans.

There are some really awesome moments in this story. Some of the very coolest characters once again show you why they are the coolest and it is awesome. The entire event took 4 years and like all universe altering events that become super popular it is now a numbered Earth in the DC Multiverse were more stories are being told in that same setting. So while the entire story wraps up, aside from a few massive loose ends, you can expect a new story soon called DCeased: War of the Undead Gods an 8 part series that will end sometime in the 1st 3-5 months of '23. What I am getting at here, is that I would not post this event, if it did not have an ending. In fact I do not even read mass events like this until they are complete, as they literally take 4-6 years to come out.

I loved this event and it is probably my favourite DC event in a long time.

He spoke of improbabilities with certainty, and we just.... *believed* what he said. His true power flows from within us all. Rising us higher than what seems possible.