disco-troy
Disco-Troy
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Character Profile: Koryak
And so we come to the last (but never least, not in my heart) Lost Titans profile: Koryak! My terrible, damp boy.
Look at him pout! How I love him.
Koryak debuted in the 1994 Aquaman series. (Note: I'm not sure what his last name is - his mother's is never mentioned, and even though I sometimes tag him as "Koryak Curry," I don't think he would use Arthur's last name, especially since even Arthur didn't use that name very much at the time.)
As I've mentioned before, Arthur has had a lot of different origins, but in the post-Crisis era, which the only era Koryak appeared in, Arthur's mother was the queen of Atlantis, and his father was Atlan, an ancient Atlantean sorcerer who impregnated her in a dream. Arthur was abandoned at birth because of the infidelity/his blond hair, was raised by dolphins (yes), and briefly lived with a human man named Arthur Curry who taught him English and gave him a human name to borrow.
Then Arthur - still a teenager at this point - went to Alaska, where he immediately rescued a teenage girl named Kako from a polar bear. Kako and her family took Arthur in in gratitude, and he and Kako fell in love. (Kako's family is sometimes said to be Inuit, sometimes Inupiat.)
Anyway, Arthur and Kako lose their virginities to each other. IN THE SNOW, FOR SOME REASON:
This is such an infuriating racist, sexist trope (the WOC with the broken English throws herself at the white hero, logic be damned - why isn't she wearing anything under her coat??? - but of course she will never be his wife, or anything more than a footnote in his story).
Immediately after this, tragedy strikes Kako's family, Arthur is blamed (it's not his fault), and he's thrown out. He returns to the ocean, and eventually goes on to become Aquaman, king of Atlantis, etc.
Years later, he returns to Alaska for plot reasons not worth going into, and that's when he meets Koryak, THE MOST NINETIES BOY OF ALL:
The shirtlessness, the swords, the hair! Truly a man of his era. (Boy? I always assumed he was about 18 here, but a Secret Files issue claims he was 16.)
Koryak is not Arthur's biggest fan, but after Kako turns into a fire elemental because this is the DCU and these things happen, Koryak decides to go to Atlantis with Arthur. Or, well, technically the city was called Poseidonis at the time, which will be important later.
Anyway, the Poseidonians are a little wary of a stranger at first, until Koryak saves a child's life and suddenly they love him. Koryak, who didn't really fit in in Alaska, is basking under the attention, but it doesn't go over well with the current king, Thesily (Arthur had stepped down a while back for Reasons), who is wildly jealous of Arthur, and fears Arthur is looking to take his throne back and now comes complete with heir.
So Thesily leads Koryak into a side room and tries to stab him to death. Luckily, a sudden earthquake causes a pillar to topple over and trap Thesily. Koryak gloats and leaves him to die. What a brat! I adore him!
The earthquakes aren't stopping, and the people of Poseidonis want to flee. Arthur tells them not to because a prophecy said they should stay, but Koryak leads the Poseidonians out of the city and to their sister city, Tritonis, which is where the merpeople live. There, the Poseidonians immediately proceed to be huge assholes to the Tritonians, using up their resources and being racist to them. (Introducing Koryak, an indigenous man and literally the only character of color underwater at this point in time, and having him lead a bunch of racist colonizers was...maybe not Peter David's best choice.)
Anyway, Koryak decides to open up some forbidden tunnels because he feels like it, and they turn out to be forbidden because they were imprisoning Kordax, Arthur and Koryak's evil immortal blond lizard man ancestor. Naturally.
Arthur rolls up with his crew (his girlfriend, his dad, and Garth) and Koryak and Garth throw down. It doesn't go well for Koryak:
I LAUGH EVERY TIME.
Anyway, Arthur's side wins, Kordax is killed, the Tritonians are freed, and Arthur decides that to make it up to them, the Poseidonians are going to serve them as slaves indefinitely. That...seems like compounding human rights violations on top of human rights violations, but okay. Anyway Koryak volunteers to stay and serve the Tritonians as well, because he feels guilty about what he's done.
...for a little while. Then he gets bored and decides they should leave. The king of Tritonis is like "Says who?" and Garth shows up out of nowhere and is like "Says me" and the king's like "Oh shit, okay" and lets them go, leaving Koryak both grateful and resentful towards Garth. I am eating this up with a SPOON btw.
Koryak returns to Tritonis, where he immediately falls back into old habits of resenting his father. Vulko, an advisor of Arthur's who is currently mad at him, sees this and decides to use it as an opportunity to overthrow Arthur:
(The scar across his nose is from Kordax. Later artists forgot it and I wish they hadn't.)
Vulko and Koryak plot for like...a really long time without anything coming of it. Arthur knows perfectly well that it's happening but doesn't do anything about it, even though he could put a stop to it by simply, like...showing Koryak five minutes of positive attention, ever, in his life. Because it's really, really obvious that Koryak just needs positive reinforcement, and would be fully Team Arthur if Arthur would just give him a reason - at one point when Arthur briefly dies (he gets better), Koryak is willing to die to try to avenge him and save Garth and Dolphin from torture. He's not all bad! He's just drawn that way!
Anyway, Arthur comes back to life and Poseidonis decides to make him king again. Just as he's about to be crowned, GARTH tries to overthrow him and steal the throne - but that's just because Garth has been holding Arthur's magic trident and was possessed by him. Arthur overpowers him, and then tells him that he's not mad and in fact, he's proud of Garth for holding out as long as he did.
Then Koryak tries his hand:
And like...yes, Garth only tried to steal the throne because he was possessed and Koryak did it willingly, but Koryak also tried to help Arthur when Garth went rogue. Again, it is so, so clear that Koryak's loyalty was Arthur's for the asking, but Arthur never asked. Instead, he praised Garth for trying to overthrow him and then told Koryak to his face how much he sucked.
Arthur is at least merciful enough to commute the normal sentence for treason from death to banishment, and Koryak is kicked out of Atlantis. Arthur then literally never thinks about him for the next SEVEN YEARS. (Okay, Koryak shows up very briefly for three issues in 1999 and Arthur thinks about him while he's looking directly at him, and then forgets he exists again. But then, Arthur also repeatedly forgets about his own wife. Arthur is terrible.)
Anyway, seven years later, Arthur has also been banished from Atlantis, and is now living in Sub Diego, which is what happens when half of San Diego inexplicably falls into the ocean and a small percentage of the traumatized people discover they can breathe underwater. Koryak, meanwhile, has returned to Atlantis to fight with Garth some more:
Love this for them!
Koryak, btw, is arguing that the survivors of Sub Diego should be allowed to move to Atlantis, and Garth's like "Uhhh they wouldn't fit in" and Koryak's like "Wow, racist." Ahem. In general, Koryak during this period is a lot calmer and more mature than he used to be, and also a lot more willing to forgive Arthur for All the Bullshit:
Also, there's a joke that implies Koryak might be queer?
Literally that's the joke here: Koryak is talking about a guy named Malrey (half-shark, half-cop, and no I am not kidding), and Lorena, who has a crush on Koryak, is clocking that she may not have a chance. I don't know if this was just a throwaway gay joke, which happened all the time in 2005, or if it was going somewhere, but we'll never know. (For the record, even though Garth says Koryak has a crush on Lorena, that doesn't appear to be true, especially since Lorena is underage and Koryak is definitely an adult by now. I don't think we should take Garth's line there as anything but dismissive of Koryak's outreach to the Sub Diegoans. Also, back in the 90s, Koryak definitely had a crush on a minor character called Deep Blue, a.k.a. Debbie Perkins, but that never went anywhere, which is good because SHE WAS ARTHUR'S HALF-SISTER. (She and Arthur made out a bunch before they knew, because Arthur loves kissing girls his sons have crushes on. YIKES ALL AROUND.) (Also just kidding, Arthur doesn't pay enough attention to any of his kids to know who they have crushes on.))
Anyway. Back to the plot. Mera is very sick because of Evil Magic, and Garth decides to perform a massive spell to save her, and Koryak agrees to help. This spell attracts the attention of the Spectre, who was evil at the time, and he, uh...destroys Atlantis, killing Koryak, Garth, and almost everyone else. Arthur finally acknowledges that he was a shitty dad:
Immediately after this issue, the book's title changed from Aquaman to Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis. The main character is not the Arthur we know, but a new, younger Arthur, Arthur Joseph Curry, who turns out to be a cousin of our Arthur. His mentor is a guy called the Dweller in the Depths, who has a tentacle face like Davey Jones from the Pirates movies. It is eventually revealed that the Dweller is actually Regular Arthur, with traumatic amnesia. Why? Why does he have a tentacle face now? NEVER EXPLAINED.
Anyway, we also meet this guy:
Narwhal's character design is...suggestive, let's say? Also suggestive: Garth has also turned up alive, and like "Narwhal," he now has albinism and partial amnesia. And Narwhal knows the name "Orin," though he can't place it. (It's Arthur's Atlantean name.)
Anyway, Narwhal is sent to kill this "Orin":
Narwhal kills Arthur/Orin/the Dweller, but it doesn't bring him peace, because he still doesn't know who he is - and Orin did, at the last minute. He goes to Atlantis for answers, and Mera confirms it, at least for the reader:
...and that's the last issue of Sword of Atlantis. WOMP WOMP. All of the Aquaman characters disappeared until Blackest Night (when Arthur returned). Koryak never appeared again, and was retconned out with the New 52. Oh well, at least the narwhal tusk spear is pretty dope.
As of Infinite Frontier, the pre-52 universe has been pretty much restored, which should mean that Koryak is back in continuity...but DC is still keeping Arthur's New 52/Rebirth origin intact, which means he did not spend any of his teenage years in Alaska, which means Koryak was never conceived. So things could go either way - any writer who feels like bringing him back could do so easily, but they don't have to.
I call Koryak "my terrible boy" a lot, and he's undeniably pretty obnoxious: immature, bratty, petty, unforgiving, and, uh...awfully on board with murder, let's say? He is also extremely young when we first meet him, and is instantly slammed with trauma: his mother essentially dies, someone tries to murder him, he's physically and mentally violated by Kordax. I'll say again that the slightest bit of positive attention from Arthur probably could have changed his entire life, but he never got it. SO HE'S GONNA GET IT FROM ME INSTEAD.
Anyway, I love Koryak very, very much, and have already written fic about him. And I have another Koryak fic in the works for after The Lost Titans is published. And I will never stop whining at DC to bring him back. If Koryak has one fan (he does), it's me. But maybe now it's you, too?
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"your stupid ass BETTER NOT be ponyfying roy harper when i get back THERE"
my stupid ass :
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average friend group of ppl in their mid to late 20s consists of someone who just got married and bought a house, someone’s who’s already a divorcee with a kid, and someone who still hasn’t recovered from that one thing that happened when they were 12
#LMAO#the titans are THE friend group in their 20s#still recovering from no longer living In the same place and having access to each other 24/7 (college) and coming to terms with no longe#having access to each other at all times
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discourse about batman's no-kill rule is so funny. imagine if a dude was like "i personally will not commit any murders and if any of my kids do i will be unhappy" and everyone booed him
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Genuinely curious about your take on Dick’s relationship with being both a natural performer and a private person at heart.
bruce wayne and dick grayson are very similar in many ways, but i'd say one of the most profound is their shared grief - experiencing immense personal loss at eight years old, in a spotlight on a stage that they can never truly leave. in the same way that the waynes murder cast bruce as a tragic figure in gotham, who can never escape the shadow of his parents passing. he was alone in the alley, but he will never stand alone without that weight of an audience again.
but the graysons literally died onstage, during a performance, before a horrified crowd. there is no part of dick's loss that is private. there is no part of this loss that is his alone. he is a born performer who loses everything, then transforms that grief into a literal symbol of light, which is taken from him again. how would u not want to fiercely protect what u have left? why would u ever want to share urself with a world that has already seen everything u are, and still wants more?
someone like that would bury themselves so deep that it becomes a non-story. nothing escapes the tight grip he holds over himself, the trickle of personal information he lets escape at a time. he wants eyes to pass over him, utterly disinterested. the less remarkable he is, the better. the easier he is to ignore, the more he can breathe.
brucie wayne is a performance for a goal, to hide in plain sight, but the art of pretending to be dick grayson is an act of self preservation. his body is not his own, nor were his parents. his name has created a legacy he has no control over. every kind smile is an effort to detract further questions. every barb, every cruel word means people might refuse to dig deeper. if he is nice, he is trusted. if he is mean, he is reviled. there is nothing more terrifying than being truly seen and still found wanting. people only get to witness what he wants them to. he controls the light, and the stage. the art of the performance is only showing the audience what u want them to see. never reveal ur hand. never show the other side of the box. and always keep the curtains drawn.
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Selina Kyle and Helena Bertinelli have done everything the fandom wants Jason to do, except on-panel and in heels.
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my piece for @starfirecentral ! I had a lot of fun working on this 💖
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Kory is speaking directly to every writer to write her since 1996 btw
#ofc there a bunch of exceptions but it’s hilarious how this is a canon moment way before decades of dc not allowing her to move on.#while dick gets to#Kory#starfire
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I think Titans #10 actually exemplifies a lot of what has weakened about Raven's character over the years. Take this panel:
This would be shocking if NTT Raven said it! Her pacifism is so well established that this would be an immediate glaring red flag that something is wrong with her! It is meant to be out of character for her here, as this is her demon side speaking, but it loses a lot of impact because there has been no attention paid to Raven's pacifism. We don't even know if she's even meant to be from Azarath in this current run.
Because they've distanced themselves so much from Raven's original backstory and vital parts of her characterization, this moment falls flat. While what she did (cutting her brother's arm off) is more brutal than her usual attack style, there's been nothing in this run to suggest she shies away from offensive attacks. It's not even particularly egregious by superhero standards: he's a demon, and we can assume his arm will grow back or otherwise be magically healed, and he was threatening a lot of people when she attacked him. It's even less dramatic than NTT's ongoing conflict of Kory thinking the Titans should kill their enemies and everyone else having a more merciful approach.
Then there's the distancing of actual Raven (I refuse to call her Rachel) from anything her demon side does. She's literally imprisoned in a gem. It isn't even her body committing these evil acts. A lot of the impact in the original Terror of Trigon arc is that it really is Raven doing all this; Raven, who's been worn down for years both in universe and out of it, finally snapping and becoming a villain.
This, in contrast, has about as much impact as if Trilogy was the main villain of this story. I do like the angle this comic is going of having demon Raven pretending to still be her normal self among the Titans, but having normal Raven be a physical separate person who's in magic prison really weakens it. It's not as far as I can tell that it's meant to be a trapped aspect of her soul, it seems like she's just an entirely separate person from her evil self. Demon Raven even calls normal Raven her sister.
It's meant to be more figurative (at least I sure hope it is) but it just drives in how severe the degree of separation between normal Raven and demon Raven has gotten. Nothing about this story would change if demon Raven was Raven's shapeshifting half-sister. Contrasted to something like Terror of Trigon, where Raven being the same person, just corrupted into something unrecognizable, is so central to the entire plot and theme, it feels a lot cheaper and less impactful.
I just think this arc could be so much better without the weird complete division of Raven and demon Raven as separate people. Instead of having both Raven and demon Raven be physically separate people, they could've still gone with the gem thing as a sort of projection in Raven's mind, with her good side locked up in it. They still share the same body, it's just different aspects of her soul fighting each other.
I don't hate this story, but it's frustrating because it feels like it could be so much better if just more care was put into it. I wish there was more time to show the Titans' friendship, so the betrayal of Raven siding with her father could be more devastating. I wish they'd paid more attention to Raven's pacifism earlier, so this issue would actually be jarring. I'm interested in Trilogy, but they haven't shown us enough of him to really get any feel for his personality and motivations other than a vague jealousy over Raven being Trigon's favorite. Hopefully more will be revealed in the future, but with the way this comic has been going so far I'm not too hopeful.
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wonder woman limited series that exists in my brain where diana has to embark on a quest into hades to save a woman destined to be reborn in well of souls but who has been cursed by the gods for defying them during her time on earth. something something cycles of love and grief something something
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Waitwaitwait lemme become an English teacher real quick the way I'm about to make an analysis that doesn't exist.
So this panel, yeah? The one I just posted?
I'm just going slightly insane over the fact that. The ring he shot was his ring. There are five rings, and while he wasn't an official member at that point he'd later become one of the five main Titans. That was his ring.
And it's fine. It doesn't matter because that ring's empty, right? Nobody gets hurt when that ring's on fire, because there's nobody there. It's just an empty ring.
Like how Roy's fine. It doesn't matter if he's excluded, it doesn't matter if his friends call him a junkie, it doesn't matter when Donna breaks up with him. Nobody gets hurt if Roy's the one people are lashing out at, because he'll smile and make a joke out of it. It's just Roy.
And I know that the characterisation of Roy I'm talking about wasn't really present pre-Snowbirds and that he wasn't even a Titan in that issue and I know that I'm jumping to some big conclusions but I could not care less.
Because even when it looks like he'll hurt his friends, he'll always let himself get hurt first. He's just an empty ring.
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there’s a pattern of behaviour in emergency services wrt police — meaning if emts or firefighters report police misdemeanours or unlawful actions against civilians then police might retaliate by not answering emergency calls from said teams that reported them. this is an established thing, at least among people i know.
reworking nightwing 96’s cop plotline (beloathed) to be dick grayson taking on the role as an emt to investigate a number of suspiciously timed murders and the police who are trying to cover up is a lot more interesting to me than just…. him being a cop. he’s still doing tangible good in bludhaven. he’s able to directly witness how the system has failed the people it’s supposed to protect. it adds an actual, proper investigative element as dick is forced to tactically gather evidence and build alliances. his ability to lead and think rationally during a crisis is a lot more valuable when performing life saving medical care vs kicking down a door with an assault rifle. let him drive an ambulance!!!!
#OOOOOH I LOVE THIS I LOVE THIS#dick grayson#this would be so good for letting Dick investugate#for him to continue to be a prt of his community#to do good in a way thats not just throwing money at a problem kinda way or a vigilante directly kinda way#op ur so smart
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Starfire!!💜Based on Megan thee Stallion’s awesome mean girls red carpet look!!💜💜💜
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