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New for Patrons: Guide to Infinity Inc.

September 5, 2022 by krisis

I’m back with a third and final foray (for now) into my initial exploration of the JSA after my Guide to Doctor Fate and Guide to Justice Society of America launches over the past week for Pledgeonaut Patrons of CK. For this third guide, I realized that a title I was trying to mash into the JSA guide deserved its own space – just as its cast broke away from the JSA in 1984 to form their own superhero that withstood the transition from Earth Two to Earth One. Of course, I’m referring to JSA’s original next generation, now covered in my Guide to Infinity Inc!

This guide will remain exclusive to Patrons even after the public debut of the JSA Guide in October.

Infinity Inc. occupies a unique and often-forgotten corner of the DC Universe as a book that had as many Pre-Crisis issues set on Earth Two as it had Post-Crisis issues set in DC’s main continuity.

If you’re not familiar with any Crisis other than me, allow me to explain that to you!

In 1984, the Teen Titans were a wildly popular title for DC – effectively, their X-Men and New Mutants rolled into one! If the Teen Titans were the next generation of the Justice League, then it made sense to introduce Infinity Inc. as the next generation of the Justice Society of America (JSA) of Earth Two. The JSA were DC’s Golden Age heroes who kept on living and aging on a parallel Earth to the main Silver Age and Bronze Age Earth where they introduced the Justice League.

At the time, the JSA didn’t even have a present-day title of their own, so the launch arc for their junior team had to be a time travel story set in 1942 in the pages of the JSA’s retcon title, All-Star Squadron! The original team a number of JSA legacy heroes like Alan Scott’s children Jade and Obsidian, The Atom’s godson Nuklon, Hawkman and Hawkgirl’s son Silver Scarab, Wonder Woman & Steve Trevor’s daughter Fury, Batman and Catwoman’s daughter Huntress, Superman’s relative Powergirl, and more.

Infinity Inc. became the home to Earth Two adventures in DC’s Universe in 1984 and 1985, where the team battled the evil Helix – including a character modern readers would come to know as the D.E.O.’s Director Bones! Then, Crisis on Infinite Earths happened. This was DC’s way of simplifying their complex, multi-Earth history – including merging Earth Two into Earth One! [Read more…] about New for Patrons: Guide to Infinity Inc.

Infinity Inc. – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under Season 2, Episode 6 – Hometown Hunnies: Review & Power Ranking

September 4, 2022 by krisis

Kia ora and welcome to my review and power rankings for the sixth episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under Season 2 – Hometown Hunnies, where queens were challenged to create a spoof tourism ad for their hometowns.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen another episode of Drag Race where RuPaul seemed so incredibly over it, both in the workroom and on the runway.

Maybe that comes down to how the queens took the direction to create their spoof ads. All of them understood the challenge in an incredibly literal way and were initially planning straight-forward homages to their hometowns with little bits of humor. Ru sets them straight one-by-one in the workroom, telling each one of them to go back to the drawing board with limited time before their shoot begins.

We all know Ru loves to keep the queens second-guessing themselves, but the fact that she needed to correct everyone in the cast tells me there was some form of missed communication from production to the queens. Maybe that was intentional, or maybe Ru and the production team simply assumed the “spoof” aspect of the ads was implied right up until Ru’s walk-around.

I think there’s a little bit of a cultural aspect mixed in with that. I feel like if the US franchise asked a queen to talk about her home town, she would be more likely to assume it was mean to be a silly version and script it as such.

For Australia and New Zealand, I feel like there’s a lot more pride in wanting to make your town look good – especially on an international stage. Even though almost all of them do take an initially negative view of their hometowns (Beverly, especially), at first they all seemed mor- focused on explaining their places rather than telling a story about themselves.

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen this many awkward moments in a Drag Race judges’ critique that didn’t end in RuPaul screaming about H&M. It feels like the editors could barely piece together enough comments from the three judges to fill the time. Maybe that’s down to Ru’s openly hostile reception to most of the ads (again, stemming from poor direction). Or, it could’ve been the super-basic “Swimsuit Edition” runway prompt, which feels like it was originally intended for a mini-challenge or third ball look. To their credit, all of the queens took things in a conceptual direction with their swimsuits, but the prompt definitely failed to produce a gag-worthy moment – and, it gave the judges very little to discuss.

That leaves us with a fairly obvious Final Four, as predicted in last week’s “Bosom Buddies” Power Rankings (and the week before that in Snatch Game, and the week before that in Drag Brunch). The real question is who will graduate to the Top 3 in the finale after next week’s episode. Two of the choices seem very obvious, while the other one is still hotly contested.

If you want to watch RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under Season 2 outside of Australia, New Zealand, and Canada you can sign up for WowPresentsPlus to watch the many worldwide Drag Race franchises for $4.99 a month or $50 a year. (Note that if you’re in the home country of a franchise you will need to use a VPN to “visit” another country to see that content.)

Readers, start your engines… and may the best Down Under drag queen win!

Justice Society of America – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

New for Patrons: Guide to Justice Society of America

September 3, 2022 by krisis

After working on the Guide to Doctor Fate launch earlier this week for Pledgeonaut Patrons of CK, I realized it was time for me to finally dive into one of the few corners of DC Universe continuity that I still find intimidating. That’s because this team has been repeatedly in and out of continuity, they’ve been residents of multiple Earths (and at the center of several crises), and their membership spans multiple generations of heroes. I am talking about the original comic super-team that first debuted back in 1940, now completely explained in my Guide to Justice Society of America!

This guide will debut to the public the week that the Black Adam movie releases to theatres!

This is one of those times where I always hoped someone else on the internet would have explained things by now, but they didn’t so I had to take things into my own hands. Yes, I read Wikipedia and Fandom. Yes, I checked out some sites dedicated to the Justice Society. All of them explained the timeline of the JSA either with needless complexity or with the assumption of the reader being a DC Insider.

That’s not good enough for me. I want my guides to be able to explain things to someone who decided to read a comic for the very first time and just happened to pick the title covered by that guide. Many of my older guides are way too complex for that – I have a lot of work to do! But, my newer style of coverage strives for completeness but also clarity.

As it turns out, creating a Guide to Justice Society of America doesn’t have to be all that complicated. If you’ve ever wanted the cliff notes on the team, here’s the simplest way I can explain it: [Read more…] about New for Patrons: Guide to Justice Society of America