JuJuBitten!

 Okay, I am very much not a fan of what is currently being called "AI".

My standards for what can legitimately be called "artificial intelligence" are not low.

I saw a video that compared it to polyester, which was also introduced as a new Modern Miracle, then overused in applications for which it was not suited, thus gaining a reputation as crap, until it was eventually used in a more limited fashion or combined with more natural products.  

And of course there are all the not-minor insalubrious effects on the environment, the economy, and society.

That said...

I have fallen under the spell of JuJuBit, a AI-driven website that allows you to create 3D tabletop game pieces better than any other method I've used.  For example:

The camera on my elderly iPhone really doesn't do these figures  (The Penny Plunderer, The Red Bee, Bull's-Eye, Wild Dog 2.0 and 1.0, and Dollman) justice.

All of these were generated by JuJuBit by a combination of image and textual input.  For example, the AI didn't really detect the pennies in the Penny Plunder image, so I added the prompt "holding pennies", and lo, there were pennies.

Anything that produces anything this good, specialized, and reasonably costed must SURELY be deeply evil.

Or perhaps just deeply misunderstood.

You may judge that for yourself.  I know only that I have been pleasantly surprised at this new means of creating Heroclix sculpts that would be otherwise impossible  In forthcoming posts, I'm going to focus on each figure, tell you why I made it, and what dial I'll be using for it.  In the meantime, you may want to experiment with using the site itself.

Before Winslow destroys it.

Why "Supergirl" Failed.

The new film "Supergirl" has not performed well at the box office.  

Pictured: the public's response to "Supergirl".

The on-line punditry on exactly why this is so is nearly limitless.  It's Superhero Fatigue. It's Fear of Female-Leads.  It's James Gunn.  It's the budget being too large.  It's mistaking a secondary character for a primary one.  It was "Creative Differences". It was studio interference.  It was the writing (or the editing or the filming or the action or the lack of action or the muddiness of the action).  It was too feminist. It wasn't feminist enough.  It used feminism as a ploy.  Literally the only aspect I have NOT heard blamed for the film's failure was Alcock (the actor playing Supergirl), who seems to have acquitted herself well.

I don't want to dismiss any of these possible factors; but, in fact, I don't want to talk about them at all. Instead I want to point out the one problem that seems obvious to me. The one that let me know from the very beginning of the project that it would fail.  And that the reason it was obvious to me wasn't some special insight on my part.  I just happened to be... a comic book reader.  And that reason is:

it's based on Tom King's Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow. 

I have seen this miniseries described in the comic book press as a "fan favorite", and the only time the comic book press uses that description is for something that is exactly NOT a "fan favorite", but rather "something only diehard fans even know about". In it, Tom King has Kara (Supergirl) drunk at her bar at a birthday, which is already, you know, merely a modern "counter-intuitively edgy" interpretation of the characters that fits poorly.  Then she goes on a Hero's Journey, blah blah blah, but the damage to the character is already done.

This approach is at the heart of Gunn's version of Supergirl (even though no one likes Edgy Supergirl, no matter how many times writers time to go that route as a cheap way of distinguishing her from her famous cousin).  No one liked her that in the Superman film and, unsurprisingly, no one wanted to see a whole film based on that.  

And trust me; as I have made clear before, I am not someone who believes that Supergirl needs to boundlessly optimistic. 

That fact alone was going to doom the film, regardless of any other factors.  I knew this; so did most Super-fans.  

Or even anyone who watched more than one episode of the Supergirl show.

How come this is the one decision that was never questioned (or is credited for the film's failure)?

The Aquaman Revenge Squad

Well.

Isn't THIS interesting?

From Emperor Aquaman #19

As previously discussed, writer Jeremy Adams is doing some strong stuff in "Emperor Aquaman", first with putting Aquaman's powers on a new level and now with putting a wide selection of Aquaman villains "back on the board" and in collaboration.  

Sure, we have seen "all the hero's villains gang up on the hero" before.

"Their minimum objective MUST BE...
the entire world."

But this is different.  For one thing, I can't recall this ever having been done for Aquaman before.  

Well, there was that time The Brain teamed up with Black Manta and Queen Vassa in January 1968.

But this is not 3 or 4 villains; it's 13 (the Crimson Queen and Black Manta are not labelled and Scavenger is off-panel).  It's not just the quantity of villains, it's their qualities.

For example, even in their short appearance here, an effort is made to help distinguish them from one another.  Lolanna, the Crimson Queen, is the Planner/Organization.  She's a ruler and is accustomed to leading a large group of disparate people.  The heavily armed Scavenger is a Bruiser who stays on the move.  The Sea Witch, as an occult, automatically knows the limits of the powers of Vivienne, the Lady of the Lake.  Kordax is eager; Ocean Master is polite but wary.  Siren is impulsive; Black Manta is calculating.  This is not an assemblage of interchangeable characters differentiated only by their powers; it's a collection of individuals with their own motivations and personalities.

The real outstanding feature of this coterie of aqua-villains is just how diversely SOURCED they are.  Black Manta, Ocean Master, the Fisherman, and the Scavenger are "classic" villains from Aquaman's late Silver Age (1960s). These are arguably Aquaman's Iconic Foes; they are always fair game and often in play.

The Underwater Underworld, as it were.

Siren is also from that time period, but her mother Lolanna is a fresh addition to the seascape of evil.  

Trok is one of the "Deep Six", a Jack Kirby creation from 1971.  

Kordax is an "anti-Aquaman", who was created by Peter David in 1990, as was Tiamat, who comes from an alien reptilian race.

Kind of like the Rampaging Reptile-Man, but less original.

The "Sea Witch"is, I believe, Gememnae from the crazy JLA Obsidian Age arc (2002).

The Eel is, of course, from the (in)famous Sub Diego arc of 2004. I adore The Eel.

Legend, the haunted suit of armor, is from 2014's Aquaman and The Others miniseries (and is not to be confused with The Dress Suit). 

Corum Rath is, like Ocean Master, a (rather colorless) throne-usurper and comes from Aquaman Rebirth in 2016.  

It's not merely that these characters are from different eras. It's that, except for the Classic Four, they come from storylines that have been largely BURIED by currently continuity.  For the most part, they could safely have been presumed to "no longer exist".  But Jeremy Adams knows that, although crappy storylines are forgotten, good villains should not go to waste because of it.

Honestly, I'm not saying I think all these are "good villains" by any means.  Trok and Tiamat are mostly just sea monsters, Kordax is goofy and heavy-handed (like much of David's work), and Corum Rath painfully bland.  

Kordax is just the kind of dumb-ass who says things like "I, Kordax" and "long have I dreamed" of "laying someone low".

I would have replaced them with, say, Chimera the Creature King, original anti-Aquaman Pomoxis, the amusingly eloquent robot The Torpedo, and, unquestionably, the awesome Human Flying Fish, who god knows is game for ANYTHING.

Okay, maybe not Chimera. He's not really what you'd call a team player.

But Adams has clearly picked some villains who need not merely salvaged but some revamping, which he's doing in process of advancing the plot.

In this small excerpt from one panel, he revamps The Fisherman's look while reaffirming the theory that the Fisherman has some sort of symbiotic relationship with his headgear.

I supposed this should come as no surprise since it's pretty much what he's being doing with the AquaHEROES.  He's de-emphasized Aquaman's traditional coterie (Mera, the Aqualads, and the Atlanteans) and reorganized a group of secondary water-related characters (Zan, the Lady of the Lake, Nemo, Lori Lemaris, et al.) around Aquaman to expand his mythos.  

It seems to be working.  I have a feeling that, regardless of the outcomes of any particular plots, his legacy will be a grand and "permanent" expansion of the Aquaman mythos, of the kind that previous writers have tried and failed at some frequently. I wish him luck!