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#i take a certain special level of comfort in that

hwallazia · 2 days

Text

ANT!FRAGILE – 최산

synopsis . in which you pamper your successful boyfriend after his dream night at coachella.

pairing . choi san & fem!reader

genre . smut (mdni!) fluff at the end, comfort, established relationship, idol!au, and a poor attempt of comedy.

taglist . @bro-atz @purplenimsicle | comment your username if you wanna be added to my permanent taglist! ♡

word count . 3,1k

DISCLAIMER! unprotected sex (wrap before tap!), bath sex, slight degradation? (reader’s referred as “dumb girl” once), dirty talk, softdom!san, sub!reader, dacryphilia?, slight overstimulation, hickeys, size difference, bulge kink, cow girl position, petnames (princess, love, darling & more), teasing, squirt, suggestive language (yn tells wooyoung to kill himself, jokingly! they’re two very friendly friends ;)), coachella san (as a warning itself, yes).

NIC’S NOTES this took way too long for no reason at all (⁠￣⁠ヘ⁠￣⁠;⁠) but here it is! my brain rot of coachella san (ofc with teeth rotting fluff at the end bc i’m the one writing it) also, lowercase is intentional! (again, to lazy to write it properly;;)

you should’ve seen it coming after you found out that your boyfriend, san, would be performing at an event as important as coachella. not that you were complaining though.

you knew how much your boyfriend loves attention, how much it turned him on to hear the fans scream for him, and how the cameras adjust their lens to zoom in on his face or his toned muscles from dancing and moving from side to side. there were constant conversations in which san would ask you “should i wear this?”, “if i unbutton a couple of buttons will i get a reaction from atiny?” of course, you’d tell him dismissively that no matter what he does, he’d always get a reaction from everyone, from you especially.

but taking off his shirt in the middle of a concert? really?

you had already seen him without clothes on the upper part of his body, of course, —and also without clothes down there, but let’s omit details—. the thing here’s that you knew how cautious he was with his clothing, always trying to cover what was most important. but this surprised you, and immensely.

it is, in fact, a sight for sore eyes. but a certain level of jealousy invaded your body; you liked to think that you were the only one with the privilege of seeing his well-worked body. but now millions of people and locals would have photos and videos of your shirtless boyfriend on stage. you definitely couldn’t accept it, even though the entire internet already knows exactly what ateez’s choi san looks like underneath the expensive fabric that covers him at concerts.

you were fully aware that this was his job, and that he was paid for it, but did it really have to be him? why not any other member? maybe seonghwa? or mingi! what about him? he also has a pretty active and... desperate fanbase. it was obvious that more than one fan would pay to get, at least, a glimpse of his abs. so, with so many options, why was your boyfriend the exposed person?

but of course you couldn’t show up in his dressing room with a jealous expression clearly decorating your face, you had to act like the sweet and tender girlfriend you were and put jealousy aside for a moment. your boyfriend had just finished performing on a dream stage for any artist, you couldn’t ruin his night because of a little scene.

you weren’t a jealous or toxic lover; you were a conservative one. you liked knowing that you were special to san and you expected exclusivity from him; consequently, he would receive the same treatment. but you should’ve expected it when you started dating choi san. he’s an idol and that's his job: to cause, in any way, the attention of the fans which, consequently, would keep them afloat or flying through the charts.

but, that was an indelible feature of yours. therefore, in some way, you would make it noticeable.

you hit your knuckles a few times, with moderate intensity, against the modern metallic door decorated by a gold star that highlighted your boyfriend’s band name. you watched as the handle turned slightly and opened the door wide, managing to discover wooyoung with a foaming glass of champagne that found its rest in the palm of her hand. behind his figure, you could see mingi sitting on a noticeably comfortable leather couch next to yunho, both of them clinking their glasses together with a clink; yeosang and seonghwa taking a selfie in the mirror and jongho and hongjoong talking animatedly, perhaps about the upcoming scenarios you thought.

“what the hell are you doing here?” wooyoung said, looking at you confusingly. you narrowed your eyes slightly at his quick lack of courtesy.

“good night to you too, wooyoung. you were incredible out there.” you replied sarcastically, hoping he would finally greet you properly.

“oh thank you so much. but seriously, what are you doing here?” he asked once again.

“what do you mean what am i doing here? i came to congratulate y’all for the show because you totally killed it. all the atiny around me went absolutely feral because of you guys.” you praised, and wooyoung grinned nicely. jongho and hongjoong came up behind him, intrusively joining the conversation.

“well thank you very much, yn.” jongho responded and you gave him your purest smile, truly meaning your words.

“but i also came here to congratulate my boyfriend personally?” you interrogated since his figure wasn’t appearing in your visual field.

“that’s why i was asking! damn, you really don’t listen." wooyoung sentenced, his gaze being comparable to that of a mother scolding her daughter. “as soon as the concert was over, he changed and went to the hotel to see you. he thought you’d be there.”

“but i don’t have a ride home, and my phone died” you explained, doe-eyed as you waited for wooyoung, or any of the boys, to take the hint and quickly take you to the hotel to your boyfriend.

“you could just ask for it, you know?” wooyoung tsked, but finally surrendered to your big, brown eyes with a sigh. “give me two seconds to look for the car keys. i’ll take you there.”

and that’s what he did as fast as lighting since he knew they’d only have that night all for themselves before flying back out to korea. the next day would be full of promotion of their songs to the locals and their stage in coachella, so san wouldn’t be able to even spend a bit of his day with you.

during the ride to the hotel, wooyoung spoke, “hey just don’t tire him out since we have quite the amount of work to do tomorrow.”

“you know, you could say something like ‘have a nice time together’, ‘take care of him’, ‘call me if you need anything-” before you could continue, he interrupted you briskly.

“oh hell no. the both of you are responsible adults who know how to take care of themselves without someone else’s help so don’t even try to bother me tonight because i’m exhausted as shit.” he confessed, hands adjusting their position on the steering wheel when cornering.

“oh so now you’re saying i’m a burden?” you asked ironically, knowing wooyoung would catch it was only a joke.

“oh you do know how to think!” he smiled looking away from the road for a bit to lock gazes with you. wrinkles decorated the corner of your eyes as you closed them a little.

“go kill yourself.” you huffed.

“shut up, you love me,” his puckering lips sent a flying kiss to you. he stopped his words briefly, “actually you kind of have to, since i’m taking you with your beloved boyfriend.”

“touché” you agreed.

the ride to the hotel was quick and calm since you were talking and joking animatedly with wooyoung. and when you least expected it, the car stopped moving. consequently, you turned to look out through your window, yellow lights, and gold decorations hurting your eyes with how beaming they looked, even when it was one in the morning.

“here we are.” wooyoung turned to look at you, his sincere eyes transmitting warmth, “remember what i told you-”

“yeah, i got it mom,” you answered, rolling your eyes vexingly. the man gave you an annoying gaze, so you replied, “what? you’re acting as if you were my mother! chill out, for fuck’s sake. as you said, both of us are responsible adults who know how to take care of ourselves.” you used his own words as a weapon to defend yourself against his exaggerated concern.

“whatever. just go,” he unlocked the car’s door so you could get out of the car once you finished your little conversation. “he’s been a pain in the ass lately because he hasn’t had time to see you.”

“imma get going then,” your hand approached the car door handle and finally opened it and got out of the vehicle. “thank you, woo. i owe you one.”

“you owe me way too many to count ’em” wooyoung wheezed. “but yeah, we’ll add it to the list.” he gave you one final smile, which you reciprocated sweetly.

you finally closed the door and watched wooyoung make his way back to where coachella was taking place, he’d probably go to enjoy the rest of the night’s stages with his members. you genuinely wished for him to do well and arrive with the boys safely, but now you had something more important to do: pamper your successful boyfriend after his dream night at coachella.

after you saw wooyoung getting lost on the dark LA highway, you turned around and ran towards the hotel to get into the elevator and quickly dial the floor of your boyfriend’s room.

once there, before your brain could think about it, your legs moved on their own and guided you recklessly toward the door. you hit your knuckles against it a few times, but there was no response.

“sannie? it’s yn. are you there?” you mutter softly against the door frame. another moment of silence came in response.

remembering your boyfriend had given you the key card, you pulled it out of your coat and faced it against the handle. after a soft peep sounded, you opened the door. just to be greeted with a dim-lighted room.

you wandered around the room, looking carefully at the floor so as not to bump your feet against any furniture or step on any item of clothing that, perhaps in a hurry, had been forgotten on the carpeted floor. you kept repeating your boyfriend’s name until the silence stunned you. the dazzling city lights illuminating what the poor little lamp that rested on the nightstand could not illuminate.

suddenly everything went silent. until you heard, in the back of your head, a faded tune. you quickly recognized the melody and started humming the song, the lyrics of the weeknd’s starboy being the only thing you could think about.

once again, you knocked a few times on the door, this time receiving a response from the other side. a dull “who is it?” was heard. “it’s me, love. yn.” you replied.

“oh, babe! come in!” he said happily, you could imagine the adorable smile drawn on his lips.

you turned the handle gently. and lord, didn’t the scenery you were greeted with turned you on.

your boyfriend’s toned body resting on the bathtub, lavender-scented bubbles covering most of it, his nipples being exposed to the fresh bathroom air that would soon turn into a heavier one, and his arms resting on each side of the tub. a serene, yet excited, expression decorating your boyfriend’s gaze.

“hi, beautiful,” he welcomed you. his eyes becoming crescent moons due to the effect of his beaming smile.

“there they are, those beautiful eyes i love so much,” you mumbled, walking right next to him to caress his left cheek soothingly. “how’re you feeling, champ?”

“alive as fuck,” both of you giggled at his response, your loving gaze locking with his for a moment of comfortable silence. suddenly you felt his hand fondling yours.

“mind joining me here?” his sharp eyes turning darker than they already were as they looked at you. fortunately for your boyfriend, you were willing to give him the moon and the stars that night.

you still can’t explain how you ended up on top of san, the water covering up to your navels, while he moved his thumb masterfully over your clit and his fingers repeatedly entered your cunt. his phalanges stretched you deliciously, causing several moans and moans from you.

“is that the spot, sweetheart? you're shaking so much.” his voice was hoarse and deep as the ocean, causing dizziness to affect your common sense.

“y-yes, don’t stop, please- ahh! ngh...” you could barely answer.

“sorry, love.” he announced before stopping his movements, drawing a annoyed, pathetic whine from your swollen lips. before you could insult him, he spoke first. “’wanna feel your tight cunt cumming around me, pretty.” during his brief pause, a pitiful cry from you was heard. “will you let me?”

“yes!” you answered desperately, “y...yes, i’m all yours, sannie. use me.”

san let out deep groan, which resonated inside your ears and made your heart jump out of your ribcage for a second. you rapidly adjusted yourself so you could reach the height of his crotch and massage his veiny, prominent erection, then align it to your entrance.

“go down slowly, don’t want my pretty girl to break.” he expressed, his soft, low voice driving you insane. still, you looked at him with cocked eyebrows.

“break? hah. surely, coachella drove your ego up to the clouds.” your eyes stabbing daggers into his. his hands found a home on your hips, slightly drawing them down to insert his cock inside you. your hand landing on his bare chest stopping his every move.

“nah. it’s just that you’re kind of fragile after all.”

you knew he was messing with you, provoking you. if there was one thing he always reminded you of, it was how strong, determined, and passionate you were, and it was one of the many features that made him fall deeply in love with you.

“let’s see who’s the fragile one here” you went down without warning on his cock, surprisingly touching your cervix all at once. a moan was snatched from both of you. your shaking body began to move carefully up and down him.

“f-fuck, yn- mm,” you heard a strangled moan from your lover, his lower lip was caught in between his teeth.

“f-fragile? that’s y...your- ah! your shit ass cock.” you manage to respond, notoriously provoking him.

“i don’t think it’s a shit ass cock, beautiful- ngh.” he panted, “just look how full you are.” he held your hand delicately despite the momentary brutality and placed it over your belly, a small lump formed there, “full of me, and my shit ass cock.” san breathed, kissing your collarbone, leaving cute lovebites in it. “you cry and beg for it every single night, hun. what does that have to say about you, hm?” a pitiful whine left your lips, demonstrating san that you were truly incapable of formulating coherent words. you were just too fucked out.

“well, lemme tell you,” he continued. “you’re just a dumb girl who needs to be fucked by a big fucking cock, otherwise, you don’t stop whining.” he said profoundly, his voice stimulating all your senses at once as he absolutely ravished you. “isn’t that right, princess?”

“i- ah! sannie, pleeease.” you blubbered, your eyes shedding the most precious tears.

“i asked you a question, darling. and i expect you to answer.” he sentenced sternly, grabbing your jaw and mushing your cheeks together. a pout was, therefore, formed on your lips.

“yes! yesyesyes, you’re right. i just need and think about being fucked by your big fucking cock-” you acknowledged, immersed and lost in the feeling, feeling like he was fucking you just like the first time.

“you’re such a cutie when you whine for me.” he chuckled while you, on the other hand, couldn’t hold back your screams anymore. his eyes stuck to your bouncing breasts, and your parted lips.

“what happened, princess? is it too much?” he cooed at you, looking at you adoringly, his eyes beaming at the sight of you.

“n-no,” you tried with all your might not to stumble over your words, but it was almost impossible since your thoughts were interrupted by the intrusion of your boyfriend's cock into your tight cunt.

“no? let’s see if it is now,”

your bastard boyfriend directed his hand toward your vagina, his ring finger and middle finger deliciously touched your clit. san watched as you exploded inside, his cock was bringing you closer to an abysmal orgasm that you doubted you could withstand, but you were a masochist, and despite all of this, you continued to go up and down on his cock sloppily.

“san! i’m s-so close- fuck!” your frowned eyebrows, reddened cheeks, swollen lips, and arched back made san float, he couldn’t worship you more than he already did at that moment. he was internally so grateful that you were his. only his to kiss, to hug, to fuck, and to adore.

you had had many guys behind you in the past, and they all promised the same thing: ‘i promise you the moon and the stars’, but absolutely none of them reached the level that choi san reached, who promised and delivered to make you see the stars, the moon and– fuck, he made you see the entire milky way every time you were with him.

“go on, babe. let it out for me, i got you,” he hid his face in the crook of your neck when you slowed down bouncing, and then he lifted it up. his lips brushed your neck, a position which he took advantage of to lick and suck on the side of it, adorning it with some nice and new hickeys next to the ones he did some moments ago.

san did everything he could to give you a good orgasm, a strong one, but pleasant. he loved seeing your expression as you had reached the peak of pleasure, a squirt erupted between your bodies, causing strangled moans to come from both mouths. your walls became tighter, squeezing out every drop of cum held in san’s hard cock. you felt how a strip of that viscous, white essence warmed your insides even more. the feeling even being comfortable in some kind of way.

“see? i didn’t break, idiot. hah,” you huffed out a sigh, looking at that beautiful face that you would never get tired of.

“mhm, you’re always so strong and beautiful. aren’t you, my love?” he reacted breathlessly as he stroked your cheek, as if it were the finest diamond.

“always, and only for you,” you wrinkled your nose as you looked at him foolishly in love.

you turned and felt stupid every time you were around this man, but what could you say? you weren’t complaining at all.

that man was capable of loving you in all your facets, in all your states and moments.

you were also grateful that choi san was yours, and solely yours.

“well, big boy,” you started, settling into his chest with him still inside you, keeping you warm, “i’m very proud of you and your achievements, love. you really brought home the trophy.”

“actually, you came here all by yourself.” he flirted, a cocky smile causing a giggle to ring inside your ribcage. “hm. thank you, princess. but the actual trophy is you and will always be you.”

you hid your face with your hands, splashing a little water unintentionally, “don’t start being all mushy, you softie. i’m gonna cry otherwise,”

he laughed, his voice causing your skin to vibrate lightly. “okay okay. wanna finally wash up?”

“can we just... stay like this? just for a bit,” you closed your eyes, enjoying the warmth your boyfriend provided you.

“of course, princess. whatever you want,” he held you in his arms safely, making you sleepy. two minutes of silence filled with tranquility and love passed, until san started talking, “remember you’re always my trophy.” he muttered lowly with his honey-dripping voice.

“babe,”

“hm?”

“shut up.”

| masterlist

#hwallazia #ateez #ateez smut #choi san #choi san smut #san smut #san x reader #choi san x reader #san fanfic #choi san imagine #ateez scenarios #ateez x reader #ateez imagines #ateez fanfic

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jester-lover · 8 months

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Hi! How are you doing?

May I please request fem!reader having a 'Cinderella fairytale moment' with the first years?

You know like NRC is hosting a ball and they're waiting for her and then she enters wearing a ballgown and all eyes are on her because she looks so beautiful? If that's alright?

Magic Moment

W/ the First Years! + PLATONIC! Trein (I had to for this ask)

I’m doing wonderfully, thank you for asking! This ask is super cute and I’d happily answer more like it!

CW/ Fem! Reader, fluff, shyness, nervousness, average Sebek behavior (he’s my favorite), MR. TREIN BEING A BETTER ADOPTIVE FATHER THAN CROWLEY, I tried to leave the dress details vague, but the general ballgown shape is mentioned

The bustling sounds of the Ball were ringing through your ears as you slowly walked through the hall into the ballroom, your wide ball flowing behind you. Grim had already shot past and went straight for the buffet, which was expected but did nothing to stop your nervous mind.

Suddenly you felt a comforting presence beside you, and you turned around to see Professor Trein, wearing robes with a bit more formal flair.

"I can assure you that they won’t bite; those boys are rambunctious, but they have a certain level of decorum."

He had a rather comforting smile on his face, which you mirrored as a surge of confidence went through you.

"Thank you, Professor."

He nodded slightly as you turned on a heel, holding your head up higher with a small smile on your face.

The great doors opened with a small creek as you stepped onto the main staircase, the bustling crowd flitting throughout the ballroom as you stood at the helm of the stairs.

All eyes were on you, and the crowd seemed to shush a little as you glided down the stairs. The flowing dress made you seem like you were floating. As you stepped onto the main floor, the sensations hit slowly; the sweet smells of the chocolate fountain and the gentle viola and cello melodies set a soft mood.

However, all of the decadence was put to shame when you saw a familiar face waiting for you.

Ace

He had to cram himself through a crowd of eager boys, all wanting what he did, the first dance of the night with you

Ace’s usual smug grin feels a little shaky, just like his hands as they grasp onto yours

“You wouldn’t mind if we danced, would you?”

His voice is almost nervous as he takes in the sight of you, your beauty and how lucky he is to call himself yours

he guides you to the center of the ballroom, as the lights dim slightly and the music becomes romantically fast paced and delicate

His hands clasp at your waist gently as the two of you begin stepping in matching order

Your gorgeous dress flutters on the ballroom floor as Ace twirls you to the music

After the two of you danced till your legs were sore, you wander off by the gardens

“I feel like I’ve been a little quiet tonight, don’t get too used to it, okay?”

Ace’s usual quips become a little gentler, you can tell he really wants you to have a nice time, and also because he wants you to think well enough of him to spend more time together

He’ll take any chance he gets to prove himself to you

The night ends with a kiss on the cheek as his face turns redder than his hair

Deuce

Through the bustling ballroom, Deuce used all his track skills to get to you as fast as he could before someone else could woo you away

“P-please let me have a dance with you!”

You guide him to the dance floor as the music gets slow and soft, his hands still against your waist as his heart beats normally again

This sweet boy is trying desperately to remain respectful in front of a lady, especially one as special as you

as the two of you twirl through the night, his gaze never left yours, you felt yourself fall deeper in love with the boy in front of you

Deuce guides you off to get some light refreshments when the two of you seem tuckered out, and the two of you exchange pleasantries as the party dissipated

He walked you home after the Ball, dutifully watching for anything that could cause you harm until you stepped onto the Ramshackle grounds

You kiss him on the cheek and wish him farewell, as you walk back into your dorm to a chorus of cheering ghosts

"....A kiss...? Wow...."

Epel

Epel’s eyes met yours as fireworks seemingly erupt in his head

he rushed (undignified in Vil’s opinion) to you and softly grasped your gloved hand between two of his own

He presses a kiss to your glove as he confidently raises his voice

“Can I dance with you? I’ll be a good partner!”

(You swear you can see steam come out of Vil's ears at his abrupt question)

as Epel dances with you, he makes sure to keep the mood light and fun with a couple jokes and jabs at the professors expenses

his movements are quick as he guides the dance, but he makes sure to keep at a similar tempo to you so you don't look strange

the two of you are definitely the 'it couple' at the Ball, with your looks and attire

Epel gets bored of the attention quite quickly, and the two of you end the night somewhere quieter, like the calm balcony of the ballroom

he tells you stories of the perilous prep Vil and Rook made him do before the dancing, how hard it was to learn the old style of waltz they preferred

"It was horrible, but I guess it was all worth it, seeing how much fun you had and everything..."

The two of you part ways when Vil sweeps him away for pictures, but he promises to dance with you again when the chance arrives

Jack

His breath hitches in his throat as he sees you, his pace quick as he walks up to you with a mildly dazed expression

“Um, could I dance with you? If it’s alright with you of course…”

As the music softens, Jack becomes painfully aware of how soft and beautiful you are, and decides to treat you like a piece of glass

his hands hover, and his red face is tucked into your shoulder as the slow dancing begins

the closeness between the two of you is tender and kind, and he eventually loosens up a little as the pace of the cello gets steadily quicker

Jack's radiant smile as the two of you dance together is so perfectly domestic, you begin to ignore everything else

the two of you focus on only one another, and he loves hearing your soft laughter as he spins you in the air

since our wolf is one strong boy, he'll adore spinning and lifting you in your long luscious ballgown

"Hold on to my shoulders, I'll lift you up."

the night ends with him escorting you back to Ramshackle, his hand in yours as he grows more comfortable with physical affection

however, when you press a kiss to his cheek, Jack flusters again and rubs the back of his neck

"You look really beautiful tonight, and I had a really nice time dancing with you."

Sebek

A startled gasp catches in Sebek’s throat as Lilia pushes him to the front of the crowd and presents him to you

“Human! May I please have the honor of being your first dance partner tonight?”

the music is a lively tempo, Sebek looks straight ahead with perfect posture, dancing as if it means life or death

His serious demeanor is a little funny at first, but breaks pretty easily when he realizes how romantic the moment is

He calms down and acts more down to earth for the rest of the night, something that is truly a rare sight

His grip on your waist loosens a little bit as he hears the music slowly descend into a lower volume

Sebek sighs a little as he checks the time, knowing that the two of you have been dancing for hours

he strongly suggests that the two of you spend some time away from the commotion of the party (ironic coming from the loudest thing in the room)

You two spend an hour walking through the ornate halls of the ballroom, with him excitedly boasting about how the ballrooms in the Valley of Thorns far exceed the one you're in

"Perhaps, I may accompany you to the next big occasion..."

Sebek walks you back home slowly, trying to preserve some sweet time with you until you must part for the night

As you step onto the stairs to bid him farewell, you press a kiss onto his cheek, and he blushes a stark red; his mouth opens to speak but no words come out

for once in his life, Sebek is completely speechless.

☁️☾☁️☾☁️☾☁️☾☁️☾☁️☾☁️☾☁️☾

The cool night air that filters through the cracked windows of Ramshackle house serves to calm you down after a long night of dancing and socializing. You laid on the dusty couch, still clad in your oversized ballgown, sparkling in the dim candlelight.

Grim was asleep beside you, his warm fluffy fur pressed against your arm, and his gentle purring made your painted eyelids flutter with tiredness.

You thought back at the unforgettable night, dancing in his arms was a memory to cherish forever.

As you shook your arm to try and remove Grim, you realized he wouldn't budge, succumbing to your fate, you smiled and closed your eyes.

A wonderful ending to a wonderful night.

a.n/ Prof. Trein would be such a great father figure.

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genderqueerdykes · 1 year

Text

Testosterone HRT Overview, Guide & Information for All People Seeking It

Hello, we're a genderqueer person who's been taking testosterone HRT since 2015. I've also worked in a pharmacy and we've seen a lot of the roadblocks that comes with people trying to start HRT. Nobody really explains how difficult it can be, even when you get your prescription. Because testosterone is a controlled substance in many places, it creates hurdles. There can be a lot going on, and some folks become very disheartened if their T isn't covered by insurance. i get that. We wanted to create a relatively easy to digest and succinct post detailing some common hurdles people have to face on the doctor/prescriber and insurance level, as well as after getting their hormones. *please note that a lot of this information is United States centric as that's where i live, i can't give information for a country i've never lived in, unfortunately.*

The estrogen HRT version of this post is here!

Doctors, Insurance & Getting Your Prescription

If your primary care provider is already familiar and comfortable with prescribing HRT, you can go through them, find an informed consent clinic, or seek an endocrinologist or gender affirming care specialist. Planned Parenthood is a good option for many people. If you don't have insurance, check to see if your area offers medicaid or other low income insurance plans, T can get pricey in some areas, especially for topical. if you can't access insurance please look into services like GoodRx that offer coupons and discounted rates for prescriptions.

Here is a list of informed consent clinics in the US for HRT.

Your provider will ask you some questions about your experience with gender, any dysphoria, why you want to seek medical transition, if you'd like to seek surgeries, assess your mental health, and then screen you for potential health problems or roadblocks. Your liver enzymes will be screened, as will your hormone levels, blood pressure, and some other things. Make sure your doctor knows to note that you are a transgender patient so that your blood tests are not discarded because your gender says "F" instead of "M" on the paperwork.

In some areas it is required to seek treatment with a therapist who specializes in transgender care to make sure this avenue is right for you. Not everywhere requires this step.

Make sure you talk to whoever is prescribing the testosterone to you about insurance, and if they are aware that testosterone is a controlled substance. A controlled substance is a substance that has been restricted by your country's government or governing medical organization and has to be monitored carefully. You need what's called a "prior authorization" from your doctor in order to get your insurance to give you your hormones in most states. Talk to your doctor and pharmacy about prior authorizations for your testosterone and syringes if you need them.

Currently, the only forms of testosterone available for masculinizing HRT are testosterone cypionate (injectable), topical gel, and patches. Topical forms are usually applied daily, injections can be done once or twice a week, or even more or less frequently if a person needs it. There is no pill option available for masculinizing HRT currently.

Do NOT become disheartened if you do not see the effects you want to see right away. It can take several years for the full effects of certain aspects of medical transition to show themselves. Stay patient, talk with your provider, talk to other trans people!

Stay patient, Stay positive!

HRT and Administering Testosterone

When you get a prescription, how things go will depend on if you get your doses administered at the clinic, or if you choose to do them at home. If you are not comfortable self administering, ask if they will at the clinic. many places offer this service.

if you choose to administer at home, if you are using injectable T, note that pharmacies may give you the wrong gauges of needles because they don't often give out needles for HRT. You need two different sizes- a thicker, longer needle for drawing from the vial, as testosterone cypionate is thick. You will generally be given large 18g needle for drawing and a small 22 or 23g needle for injecting. Many people have preferences for different gauges so ymmv. Depending on if you are injecting intramuscularly or subcutaneously the gauge of the needle with vary. Sanitize your injection site and your hands, never using the same needle tips twice for any reason. Never use needles that have touched another surface, and get a sharps container.

Make sure you are injecting in different spots every time you inject. you do not want to inject into the same patches of skin every time, as this can cause tissue damage, tissue death (necrosis), and severe scarring after long periods of time of having to heal but being interrupted over and over again. inject into slightly different spots every time to make sure your skin and muscle tissue can heal.

Here is a guide on safely injecting your own testosterone, including steps on how to prepare your skin for the injection, hold the vial while drawing, change needles, and more.

Another guide for hormone injections.

Make sure to check with your provider to see what type of injection you are meant to do, many do intramuscular injections, but many opt for subcutaneous (just below the skin) injections because they are less painful and require less frequent injections.

If you receive topical testosterone like androgel or other alcohol based testosterone gels, make sure you read the informational packet that comes with it to ensure you are administering it in the correct areas- your exact formulation will need to be applied in a certain area, if you do not have the guide or packet that came with it, please read this page to figure out where you need to apply it. if your topical T isn't working you may be applying it in the wrong place.

When applying topical T, make sure you clean the skin before putting it on, and do not shower or go swimming for 2 - 5 hours after application. make sure you cover the skin with some kind of clothing. You want to make sure it doesn't rub off on other people, as other people can absorb it as well by touching you. Do not ever have someone else apply topical testosterone for you, even if they are also trans, as this can mess with their levels in a bad way.

After starting T you may have to adjust your dose over time to achieve desired effects. if so, you will start on a starter dose and then you can move up to higher doses as your body adjusts. This process is called titration.

No matter HOW tempting it is, NEVER TAKE MORE T THAN YOU ARE PRESCRIBED! It is processed through your liver, which can completely wreck it if you take more than it can handle. Slow and steady wins the race with HRT. If you take too much T at once, your body can also aromatize it, meaning your body will convert it and encourage the production of further estradiol, which will provide unwanted effects. Do not increase your dose without your doctor's advice or knowledge, and do not go any faster than advised.

Effects of Testosterone HRT

Growth and thickening of facial and body hair begins 3 - 6 months after treatment starts and the full effect happens within 3 - 5 years.

Menstruation (periods) stop. This occurs around 2 - 6 months within starting treatment, and is one of the most desired effects.

Voice deepens. The vocal cords thicken, which can cause uncomfortable sensations in the throat for a time, such as a scratchy feeling, dryness, tightness, pressure, and a 'sore' throat that isn't sore in an illness related way. This begins 3 - 6 months after treatment starts, and the full effect happens in 1 - 2 years.

Body fat redistribution begins 3 - 6 months after treatment starts and the full effect happens within 3 - 5 years.

Growth or enlargement of Adam's apple.

Clitoris grows larger, and vaginal lining can thin and become drier. Some experience vaginal atrophy and/or painful levels of dryness, while some maintain a healthy level of vaginal fluids without problem. This begins 3 - 12 months after treatment starts, and the full effect is usually seen within 1 - 2 years, though some experience growth over a long period of time if their dose is low.

Change in body odor and increased sweating occurs within 1 - 3 months of starting treatment.

Muscle mass and strength increase, this will begin within 6 - 12 months and the full effect will be seen within 2 - 5 years.

Possible libido increase, though some report no changes or even the inverse.

Potential but not guaranteed balding or receding hairline, which is treatable, and not seen in everyone.

Potential increase in energy in general, some report an almost antidepressant like effect.

Possible increase in red blood cell production leading to high blood pressure, which is treatable via medications and donating red blood cells when appropriate and safe.

There is not really a guide book to masculinizing HRT and medical transition, most of the information there is is passed along between each of us. We will continue to edit this post as we think of more important information.

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wholoveseggs · 6 months

Text

Warmth

18+ ---- {Masterlist}

This is just a smutty little thing about being in an arraigned marriage to a certain original vampire. This is the first thing I've ever posted so please be nice :)

{Part Two} {Part Three} thanks for all the love ❤️ If you rather read this on Ao3- Link is here

5k words - No warnings other than smut and mentions of a shitty family.

It's your wedding day, but it feels more like being sold off than a celebration. You're about to marry into the most powerful family in history, but it's not by choice—it's all politics. All you can do is hope that the guy waiting for you at the altar is decent and that somehow, you'll survive whatever comes after "I do."

Part One

You delicately picked at your freshly-manicured nails, your heart pounding in your chest as his sister's circled you, their hands adjusting your dress, hair, and veil.

"Is he a good man?" you whispered nervously, feeling one of them gently pull on your dress, making the low cut of the back align perfectly with your body.

Rebekah gave you a kind smile, applying a touch more blush to your cheeks with a makeup brush. "Yes, dear. He's a good man," she replied.

"He's the best of us, you have nothing to fear," Freya chimed in, taking your hand in a reassuring gesture.

You let out a long sigh as they placed the veil over your head, their satisfied smiles providing some comfort. "You look perfect," Rebekah said, offering a sweet smile. "Welcome to the family."

Walking down the aisle felt like a surreal dream, your heart racing, and time behaving strangely, as if you'd indulged in a bit too much wine. You couldn't help but feel a sense of relief as you laid eyes on the groom. At least he's handsome, you thought. But fear still gripped your heart; marrying a vampire was one thing, but becoming a part of the family of the most deadly vampires was a whole new level.

Standing across from him, you barely registered the officiant's words as they initiated the ceremony. Up close, he was even more striking with warm brown eyes, a sharp jawline, and a physique that complemented his looks. He gazed down at you with a gentle smile, though there was a hint of sadness in his dark eyes, a reminder that he hadn't desired this union any more than you did.

The vows were recited, their words escaping your consciousness as you mechanically repeated them. He lifted your veil and with a chaste peck on your lips, the marriage was sealed.

At the reception, your new husband mingled with the guests, sealing packs and making deals, laying bare the true intention behind your marriage. You observed his brother taking the stage, silencing the band.

"I'd like to thank you all for coming. I have a special gift for the bride and groom. Since they didn't really have a honeymoon planned, I took it upon myself to help them out. Outside, they'll find a car ready to take them on the adventure of a lifetime," Klaus announced, giving his brother a wicked smile, clapping him on the back in a way that seemed almost malicious. "To the bride and groom!" he cheered, raising his glass in your direction.

All eyes were on you as your husband led you to the car. You didn't recognize a single face in the crowd, but you hadn't expected to. The people who had sold you had gotten what they wanted, and this arrangement was a win-win for them.

You settled into the back seat of the car, the leather sticking to your bare back. You adjusted your white silk dress nervously, and he sat down beside you, his jaw and fists clenched, the tension palpable. You drove in silence for a while, stealing glances at your new husband, his expression stern and unreadable.

Wanting to break the silence, you considered a joke or maybe a compliment about his looks, but instead opted for the safest option. "Hi, I'm Y/N. Nice to meet you," you said quietly, extending your hand.

He chuckled slightly, and you appreciated his handsome smile as he took your hand, giving it a gentle shake. "Hello, I'm Elijah," he replied.

You exchanged smiles, and the tension in the car began to dissipate. The street lights reflected in his eyes as the car headed toward an unknown destination.

"Do you know where we are going?" you asked.

"The airport," he responded, gazing out the window with a hint of bitterness.

"Not a fan of flying?" you inquired, trying to discern Elijah's emotions.

"No, it's not that," he sighed softly and placed his hand on yours. "I'm sorry this happened to you. When I began negotiating an alliance with your faction, I didn't know they would require a marriage, I agreed to it for peace." he explained.

You shrugged, attempting to suppress the emotions swirling within you. "They've wanted to get rid of me for a while," you confessed.

Before he could inquire further, you arrived at the airport. A private plane awaited you, and you crossed the windy tarmac in your wedding dress, Elijah shielding you from the chill. You hoped someone had remembered to pack you a change of clothes.

Seated in the plane, the gentle hum of the engines made you instantly drowsy. You reached for a glass of champagne, quickly downing it before pouring another.

Elijah took a seat beside you, selecting a book from a pile on the table. He watched you consume your second glass, a playful smirk playing on his lips. "Are you alright?" he inquired.

"No," you admitted, shifting in your seat and closing your eyes.

"Don't like flying?" he teased.

"Hilarious," you replied sarcastically, before turning in your seat, surrendering to sleep before the plane had even taken off.

You awoke to the sound of the arrival announcement. You noticed a warm blanket on you and realized your head was resting on Elijah's shoulder. He smelled faintly of alcohol and nice cologne, and you couldn't help but feel a twinge of embarrassment at the sudden intimacy with a stranger, although you supposed he wasn't one anymore.

"Apparently, we're in Canada," he informed you in a soft tone, offering a gentle smile.

"What?" you replied, lifting your head from his shoulder and peering out the window to see nothing but white.

"I suppose my brother's adventure for us involves some cold," he remarked.

The plane touched down, and the pilot's announcement revealed a bone-chilling temperature of -20°C. Panic set in as you realized your thin dress offered no defense against the frigid cold.

"I don't suppose you happen to have a winter coat?" you asked, your tone flat with a hint of desperation.

Elijah calmly removed his suit jacket and handed it to you, offering a warm smile. As he stood in just his dress shirt, concern flashed in your eyes. "It's alright; vampires don't get cold," he reassured you. "Besides, I'll get us to the car quickly.”

He was being humble when he said 'quickly.' He wrapped his arms around you, and in a literal instant, you found yourselves in the warmth of the waiting car, with Elijah in the driver's seat, studying his phone with a furrowed brow.

"It seems our destination is a cottage up a mountain," he said, clearly displeased as he reviewed the itinerary on his phone.

"Not a fan of snow?" you chuckled.

"I'm not a fan of my brother playing games," he replied as he pulled out of the airport.

The drive up the mountain was a strange mix of anticipation and discomfort. The grandeur of nature unfolding around you offered a stark contrast to the peculiar circumstances that had brought you together. You gazed out of the car window, lost in your thoughts.

After a while, it was Elijah who dared to break the silence, his voice carrying a genuine curiosity. "You mentioned your family wanted to get rid of you. Why?" he asked, his eyes shifting briefly from the winding road to you.

Your gaze remained focused on the passing landscape, a mixture of mountain vistas and dense forests. "I wouldn't call them family," you replied, a hint of bitterness in your tone. "They weren't my blood, and they certainly didn't treat me as such. They wanted to get rid of me because I was no longer of value."

Elijah furrowed his brow, seeking to understand. "No longer of value?" he inquired, his voice gentle.

With a deep breath, you began to unravel the unfortunate chapter of your life. "With the human faction, marriage pacts are common. After I lost my parents, they took me in, providing for my clothing, food, and education, with the understanding that, in return, I'd remain pure until they could marry me off," you paused, your eyes meeting his for a brief moment, searching for any hint of judgment. "I didn't remain pure,"

He listened attentively, his warm smile putting you at ease. "Well, you will fit in with my family just fine," he said with a sweet smile. "Purity isn't our thing either. You're free from all that now."

You couldn't help but chuckle bitterly at the irony of the situation. "Out of the frying pan…" you mumbled, a sense of resignation in your words. "I know all about your family. I don't think this will end well for me."

The falling snow whipped past the car windows, obscuring any view beyond. You arrived at the cottage, and you sucked in the cold air as Elijah whisked you inside. He disappeared momentarily before returning with your bags. You sat on the sofa, taking in the place. It was more of a chalet than a cottage, and you couldn't help but shiver in the chilly interior. Elijah noticed.

"I'll gather some firewood," he said, heading outside.

You got up and explored the place, finding some whiskey and taking swigs straight from the bottle as you wandered. Your attention was captured by a sizable record collection, and you began to browse. You found a record you liked and started playing it, swaying to the music in an attempt to warm up.

Elijah returned inside, his arms laden with firewood, determined to make your cold sanctuary warm and cozy. His eyes softened as he noticed your shivering form.

"I'll get a fire going," he said, his voice gentle. He quickly set about arranging the logs, expertly lighting them, transforming the room with the comforting glow and crackle of the flames.

Taking your icy hands in his, he remarked, "Your hands are freezing." He brought you closer to the fire, the warmth seeping into your chilled skin. You couldn't help but be captivated by his kindness and the concern in his eyes.

"You need to warm up," he insisted, his voice a soothing melody.

“You are nicer than I was expecting,” you replied, a playful smile tugging at your lips.

“I know my family's reputation is not great, but you are a part of it now. I want you to know I will always protect you,” he said softly, his words sincere and reassuring.

You nodded, feeling a rush of gratitude for his understanding and genuine care. "I believe you," you said, your voice barely above a whisper.

He pulled you in and held you close, trying to warm you up; you found yourself drawn to him, his charm and sweetness melting your reservations. In that moment, overwhelmed by his kindness, you leaned in and kissed him softly.

When you pulled away, his expression was both surprised and understanding. "You don't have to do that," he said, his tone gentle. "You're not obligated to do anything with me just because of our situation."

His words filled you with a mixture of relief and gratitude. Here was a man, a vampire, who respected your boundaries, a stark contrast to the people who had controlled your life before.

Elijah guided you to the soft rug in front of the crackling fire, arranging the blankets around you to ensure you stayed warm. The bottle of whiskey sat between you, its amber contents promising warmth from the inside out. You extended the bottle to him, a silent invitation to share in the fleeting comfort of alcohol.

You both drank in companionable silence, the warmth from the fire seeping into your bones, the whiskey adding a pleasant haze to the room. As the evening wore on, conversation flowed more freely, and the barriers between you began to dissolve with every shared story and laugh.

Elijah stood and helped you up, his hand finding its way to your waist, and before you knew it, he was leading you in a slow dance, his movements graceful and confident. The room seemed to fade away, leaving only the two of you, swaying to the music.

"What is this song?" he asked, his voice barely audible over the music.

"It's called bitter sweet symphony,'' you replied, your eyes meeting his. "It's one of my favorites."

He nodded in agreement, his gaze fixed on yours. "I like the strings, the whole thing is very melancholic," he observed.

You smiled, your fingers tracing patterns on his shoulder. "I find it beautiful. It's a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, don't you think? Even in the face of adversity, we keep going."

He regarded you with a mixture of curiosity and admiration. "Something you have a lot of experience in, I gather," he said, his tone appreciative.

"I wouldn't say I'm resilient," you responded modestly, the music guiding your movements. "More like adaptable. Life throws curveballs, and you either adapt or get swept away."

He pulled you closer, the dance now a slow, intimate sway. "Indeed, life has a way of testing us. But it also brings unexpected joys."

The dance continued, a silent conversation unfolding between you, transcending words. As the music wove its spell, you felt a vulnerability and connection with Elijah that surpassed the constraints of your forced union. The walls you had built around yourself began to crumble, and you found solace in the unexpected warmth of his embrace.

A soft smile played on your lips. “You're not the monster they make you out to be," you replied, your words carrying a newfound trust.

Feeling an unspoken longing between you, you reached out, your fingers tracing a delicate path along his jawline, your touch conveying what words couldn't express. His eyes, dark and intense, met yours with understanding, a silent acknowledgment passing between you. You pulled him closer, your lips meeting in a passionate kiss that ignited a spark, setting the room ablaze with desire.

His response to your kiss was a slow, seductive smile that went straight to your core. He gently slid a hand around the back of your neck, his fingers winding in your hair. "Are you sure?" he asked, his voice a low murmur.

You nodded, your own desire mirrored in your eyes. "Yes," you whispered, placing your hands on his chest.

With a sudden surge of intensity, he lifted you effortlessly, his arms strong and secure as he carried you to the nearby sofa. The room seemed to come alive, dancing with shifting shadows painted by the flickering firelight. He gently set you down on the plush sofa, his eyes never leaving yours.

"You are truly exquisite," he murmured softly, as he carefully peeled your wedding dress away, letting it cascade onto the floor like a waterfall of silk and lace.

"I-I think you're beautiful too," you stammered, your words catching in your throat, feeling the chill creep back in after losing the warmth of your dress. You reached out, your fingers trembling slightly, and began to unbutton his shirt.

His smile remained warm and affectionate as he took your hands, pressing a gentle kiss upon them. With a swift motion, he shed his shirt, and pressed his skin to yours in a tender embrace, an effort to restore the warmth that had been lost. He shifted you so you lay side by side, pulling your thigh up to wrap around his hip, the other hand gently cupping your neck as he kissed you softly.

You lingered there for a while as his hands explored the curves of your body. Your own hands ventured, touching his toned chest and shoulders, marveling at the strength beneath your fingertips.

His lips trailed soft, lingering kisses down your neck, each one a tender declaration of affection. His gentle gestures made you blush, the heat of your cheeks contrasting with the cool air in the room. You couldn't help but giggle from the sheer sweetness of his actions.

His hand glided down between you, his fingertips tracing the sensitive skin just above the edge of your white lace panties. A soft moan escaped your lips, a rush of heat pooling between your legs as his hand ventured beneath the fabric. He began to slowly circle your clit, the hand that rested on your neck pushed your head forward, his lips capturing yours in another gentle kiss.

His fingers traced slow, deliberate circles, their casual dips down to your opening making you moan softly into his mouth. The sensation was exquisite, driving you closer to climax with each subtle movement.

“You make such lovely sounds,” he hummed against your lips, then he dipped a finger inside you.

You let out a low, desperate whine, your hips instinctively rocking into his hand. You closed your eyes and swore under your breath, your voice barely audible, your fingers clutching at his neck as he continued to work his magic with his skillful hand.

He smiled, clearly savoring the way you were unraveling under his touch. He slowly pulled his hand away, leaving you achingly empty for a moment before repositioning you. Suddenly, you found yourself underneath him, your back pressed into the softness of the sofa, desire reflected in his eyes.

He began trailing soft kisses and teasing bites down your body, each touch sending electric pulses of need through you.

With slow, deliberate movements, he removed your panties, the fabric sliding off with a tantalizing intimacy that sent your heart racing. He pushed your thighs up, his fingers briefly teasing your clit before he leaned in, his hot breath against your skin.

Then, with an agonizing slowness that made your breath catch, he lowered his head, his tongue finding its way to your clit, sending waves of pleasure crashing over you. The world blurred into a haze of sensation, his expertise evident in every flick and swirl, each touch bringing you closer to your peak.

You ran a trembling hand through his hair, your fingers gripping the strands as you surrendered to his tongue. Your hips moved in a desperate rhythm with his mouth, seeking more of the exquisite sensation he was providing.

His hands pressed into your thighs with firm, possessive intent, holding you in place, stilling your movements. With each flick of his tongue, each press of his lips, you felt the tension rising within you, like a coiled spring ready to release.

You couldn't hold back any longer, and your body convulsed as the waves of pleasure overtook you. It was a moment of pure bliss, your cries echoing in the room, as your fingers tangled in his hair. He didn't falter in his attentions, riding you through the aftershocks of your climax.

Your body was still pulsating with the aftermath of the first orgasm, yet he skillfully coaxed another wave of pleasure from within you. He pushed two fingers inside you, finding that perfect spot, and your moans grew louder, filling the room.

"My pretty little wife," he murmured in a seductive whisper. The rhythm of his fingers and his tongue on your overly-sensitive clit created a delicious combination.

You squeezed your eyes shut, completely overtaken by the sensations, your body responding eagerly to his skilled touch. The second orgasm began to build, a powerful surge of pleasure that threatened to consume you entirely. His deep hum against you made you squirm, your legs shaking as you moaned.

His hand shifted from your thigh, splaying across your lower stomach with just the right amount of pressure to hold you down, halting your movements completely. His control heightened the intensity of the moment, trapping you in a delicious blend of pleasure and surrender.

You came apart a second time on his tongue, your body writhing with pleasure as you looked down at his handsome face, his lips glistening with your wetness.

“Fuck,” you breathed out, your voice barely audible, your eyes locking onto his. He made his way back up your body, his lips finding yours in a passionate kiss. Cupping his face with your hands, you traced the lines of his jaw affectionately as your lips moved in a heated dance, the taste of your shared desire lingering between you.

You pulled off your bra, the cool air of the room contrasting with the heat that radiated between you. His eyes were glued to your every move, filled with desire as you exposed yourself to him. His gaze slowly traced over the curves of your body with a look of admiration and hunger.

He positioned your legs around his hips, and you could feel his cock through the fabric of his pants. You reached down to unzip him, but he caught your wrists with a swift yet gentle motion, pinning them above your head with a possessive grip, his eyes locking onto yours in a dark, intense gaze.

“Stay just like this,” he said firmly. He pressed a gentle kiss to your lips before pulling back, his eyes never leaving yours as he removed his pants, the room filled with a charged anticipation that crackled in the air between you.

He leaned in closer, his handsome form fully on display, the intensity in his eyes growing as he gazed down at you. You could feel the heat of his body against yours, the anticipation building between you. His cock brushed against your clit, a tantalizing tease that made you let out a soft, desperate moan.

Unable to resist the urge to touch him, you lowered your hands to feel him. He let out a quiet "tsk" and shook his head gently, guiding your hands back above your head. His lips curved into a soft smile, as he held you in place, his dominance making your heart race.

His eyes bore into yours with a gentle intensity as placed a pillow under your hips and positioned himself. With a deliberate yet tender motion, he guided himself slowly inside you, filling you inch by inch. A gasp escaped your lips as he leaned forward, pressing his forehead to yours and rocking his hips gently. Each movement sent shockwaves of pleasure through you, his pelvis brushing against your clit with every stroke, creating a delicious friction that made your toes curl.

He let go of your wrists and his lips met yours in a passionate kiss, and your breaths became shallow as you clung to his arms, your nails digging into his skin.

He maintained his agonizingly slow pace, a rhythm that kept you on the precipice of release. You could feel his eyes on you, studying your reactions before your eyes fluttered closed and your brows arched in pleasure. His hot breath danced on your skin as he whispered soft encouraging words, his lips trailing up your neck, nibbling your ear. Each touch, each whisper, pushed you closer to the edge, intensifying the pleasure that pulsed through every fiber of your being.

"Tell me what you want," he murmured, his voice a seductive melody that made your breath catch in your throat.

"I... I want," you stammered, your voice shaky with desire, your hands clutching at his chest.

"What?" he teased, slowing his pace even more, pulling all the way out before plunging back in, savoring the exquisite torture he was subjecting you to. "You have to tell me," he insisted, his words laced with a playful yet commanding tone.

"More, please," you begged. He took your hands from his chest and pinned your wrists above your head again, your body aching for more of his touch.

"Like this?" he asked, his thrusts becoming deeper and rougher, each one hitting your sweet spot with a precision that made you gasp in pleasure.

"Y-yes, yes, yes," you whimpered, your back arching involuntarily, your legs trembling beneath him as the pleasure intensified, pushing you closer to the edge of climax.

He leaned back, and his eyes locked onto yours, a warm smile forming on his face as he enjoyed the flush of your cheeks in response to his actions. With a gentle touch, he ran his thumb over your clit, feeling the immediate response of your body, tightening around him in pleasure. A low hum of approval escaped his lips as he continued to graze your clit, attuning himself to your body's responses.

The room was filled with the intoxicating sounds of your bodies colliding, mingled with soft moans and the crackling of the fire. Elijah's gaze darkened as the pace of his thrusts gradually increased, the desire between you igniting the air. He released your pinned wrists, his hands guiding your thighs up around your waist, spreading them wide, pushing his cock even deeper.

His thrusts grew more urgent, a relentless rhythm that was hard and passionate. Your body tensed, the overwhelming pleasure reaching its peak as you came completely undone, your head falling back, and your back arching as you moaned his name.

"That's it, beautiful wife," he said softly, his voice strained as his own peak approached.

His own climax surged through him, a wave of heat and pleasure washing over you both. He let out a low groan as his body relaxed. Leaning forward, he captured your lips in a passionate kiss, his mouth melding with yours in a heated exchange. The room seemed to pulse with the aftermath of your shared pleasure, the fire casting a warm, golden glow over your entwined bodies.

"You are perfect," he whispered against your lips, wrapping his arms around you, pulling you into a sitting position in his lap. You were still breathless, placing your hands on his chest as you looked into his dark eyes.

"This is not how I pictured this night going," you said softly, a contented smile playing on your lips.

"How did you picture it?" He asked gently, his fingers tracing down your spine as he spoke.

You took a deep breath, your fingers tracing invisible patterns on his chest as you gathered the courage to speak your truth. "I thought you might kill me," you confessed, your voice barely audible, carrying the weight of your fears. "I have this fear of vampires. They killed my parents, and I've been haunted by that memory ever since."

Elijah's eyes softened with understanding, his thumb gently caressing your cheek. "I am truly sorry for the pain you've endured," he said, his voice laced with genuine empathy. "You're incredibly brave for facing your fears and allowing yourself to trust me."

You nodded, a lump forming in your throat as you continued. "My adoptive parents married me off to you as punishment, not expecting any kindness from you. But you've shown me a side of vampires I never knew existed. I didn't expect this... warmth, this understanding."

Elijah's hand cupped your face with a gentle reassurance. "I take my vows seriously," he said, his voice unwavering. "You are my wife now, and I will protect and care for you always."

In that moment, the warmth of his touch and the sincerity in his eyes filled you with hope, erasing some of the lingering pain and fear.

With a single, elegant motion, he effortlessly lifted you into his arms, holding you close as he guided both of you into the shower. The hot water cascaded over you, cleansing your bodies of the remnants of passion and desire. He gently pressed you against the cool, slick tile, his lips capturing yours in a soft, lingering kiss. His hands asserted a possessive grip on your waist, drawing your body in close to his.

You pulled back, your breath momentarily catching in your throat as his affectionate touch lingered. The hot water continued to flow over your relaxed bodies. "You know," you confessed, "I think I might actually really like you."

He grinned bashfully, his eyes filled with adoration, and leaned in to kiss you again. You could feel his cock harden against your leg, his desire reignited by your proximity.

You pushed lightly on his chest, moving both of you around so his back was against the tile, the warm water streaming down from above his head. You pressed your lips against his neck, then trailed kisses down his shoulder and chest.

Your hands glided over his damp skin, tracing the contours of his muscles as you moved downward, your lips leaving a trail of warmth in their wake. His breath hitched when you reached his abdomen, and you glanced up, locking eyes with him before continuing your descent.

You took his cock in your hand, feeling the weight and heat in your palm. His sharp intake of breath spurred you on, and you pressed a lingering kiss to the sensitive tip before trailing your tongue along his length, savoring the salty taste of his desire. His hand threaded through your hair, his chest rising and falling with each ragged breath.

You closed your lips around him, your tongue swirling around the sensitive head, eliciting a low groan from deep within his throat. The water cascading around both of you seemed to heighten the intensity of the moment, amplifying every sensation. His fingers tugged on your hair, his touch both commanding and gentle, guiding your pace.

His hips moved in response, a silent plea for more, and you obliged, taking him deeper. His groans filled the steamy air, your lips and tongue working in harmony to bring him to the brink, his breaths turning shallow and erratic. A satisfied smile played on your lips as you reveled in the power of making a man like him come undone.

You gazed up at him through your fluttering eyelashes, giving him your most innocent expression as you intensified your movements. You pushed your head further down, burying your face into his pelvis, and with a deep groan, he found release down your throat.

Elijah leaned against the tiled shower wall, catching his breath, a satiated smile playing on his lips as he looked down at you with admiration. You, on the other hand, wore a confident smirk, the satisfaction of pleasuring him evident in your eyes.

Elijah placed a gentle kiss on your lips as you stood together under the warm cascade of water, both of you still savoring the shared moment of passion. He then guided you out of the shower, wrapping a large, fluffy towel around your shoulders before drying himself off.

As you both made your way to the bedroom, the soft hum of the bathroom fan in the background, he looked at you with affection. "You're quite extraordinary," he whispered, his voice filled with warmth.

"Why? Was that your first blowjob?" You teased, giving him a sweet smile.

He let out a little chuckle, his laughter filled with warmth. He pulled the blankets back on the bed and you both got underneath them. You gladly snuggled up next to him, laying your head on his chest, listening to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat. In that moment, wrapped in his arms, you felt a sense of peace and contentment, knowing that you were exactly where you wanted to be.

{Part Two} {Part Three}

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kteezy997 · 23 days

Note

I’ve never seen someone do this with Timmy so :

Maybe reader is a masseur and when she massages timothée things get spicy

Oh fuck yes I love this

massage room//t.c.

warnings: workplace smut, handjob, male and female receiving oral sex, doggystyle, cumshot

Your eyes nearly bugged out of your head when you looked at your schedule for the day. Did you read it right? Your last appointment of the day was Timothee Chalamet. As in uber famous Hollywood actor, Timothee Chalamet? Was this even real?

You peeked out into the lobby of the salon, and there he was. In the flesh. Like a tall drink of curly-headed water.

You couldn't believe it. Whoever took the call to make his appointment just jotted his name down, like it was no big deal? How was no one else among the salon employees aware of who was coming in? For he was the most beautiful and talented movie star since Elizabeth Taylor.

You were just stunned at the whole situation. But you had to get yourself and your massage room together, because his appointment time was inching closer.

You were anxious to meet him, as you had been watching him in movies and crushing on him for years now. But you drank some cold water and tried to calm yourself. You were a professional. He was only a typical client. A very hot and sophisticated client, but it did not matter. He would get the same treatment from you as any other person.

You walked out to greet your client; you saw him relaxing on one of the couches in the lobby sitting area. "Mr. Chalamet?"

He shook his curls out of his face as he looked up, smiling.

"I am ready for you. My name is y/n, you can follow me." you smiled politely back a him, trying to not dwell on his charm.

"Perfect." Timothee said, standing up from the couch.

You turned on your heels, leading the way to the back room.

...........

You entered the room, Timothee right behind you. "Thank you for coming in, Mr. Chalamet. I hope you enjoy your experience today."

"Oh, you can just call me Timmy. And the lady I talked to on the phone highly recommended you, so you must be one of the best here."

"Oh, well, I don't know about that, but I will do my best to make you feel better." you turned to face him, "Are there any problem areas for you that I need to give special attention to?"

"Ugh, yeah my back muscles have been really sore lately."

"Okay, sounds good. I assume you've been working on your feet a lot?"

"Yes," he combed his fingers through his hair, "feels like I've been working nonstop lately. Sorry if I seem tired, it's cause I am." he chuckled.

You giggled, "Hopefully I can get some of that stress out of you and you'll be feeling more comfortable. Now, you're scheduled for a one-hour massage, so I'll be working on your full body. I'll give you a moment in private to undress down to whatever your comfort level is. And I'll have you start out laying on your front."

"Is it okay if...I'm naked during the massage?" he crooked an eyebrow at you.

You nearly blushed at the thought of him naked, then you caught yourself, "That is perfectly acceptable. It is most important that you are comfortable. I'll be back in a couple of minutes, Timmy."

"Sounds great, y/n." he smiled softly, starting to take his jacket off, his eyes wandered down your body.

You almost forgot that you needed to leave the room. "Oh, sorry." you laughed at yourself, leaving the room quickly. You could hear him chuckle lightly at you.

Timothee Chalamet had checked you out. You were certain that's what he was doing. And you were going to put your hands on his body?? NO! You are a trained and certified professional. There was nothing sexual or erotic about what was to happen in that room. This was your job. You were providing an innocent service to this man. Right?

.........

You gave Timmy a short amount of time to get undressed and then get comfortable on the massage table, then knocked on the door.

"I'm ready, you can come in." he called from inside the room.

The sound of the calming spa music and the mist from the humidifier in the room brought you to your senses. This is what you did every day. Timmy was no different than any other client.

You found him lying on his stomach as you had instructed him. His cute little bubble butt exposed. You shook your head, getting rid of your filthy thoughts. You then took the blanket on the table and covered him up to his waist with it.

You didn't speak as you lubed your hands up with lotion. You almost always remained quiet during your massages, so that the client can be at their most relaxed state.

As you pressed your hands into his muscles, you said, "If the pressure is too much, just let me know."

Timmy hummed an, "Okay." underneath you.

You went into your massage routine, finding the hard and tender spots up in his shoulders. As you worked out his knots, you took notice of his smooth, pale skin, and his many sprawling freckles all along his back. He didn't make a sound or move at all as you got the deep kinks out, and you knew that they had to be painful. "Be sure to drink plenty of water this evening, to flush out all of those knots, Timmy." you said.

His body was built thin, but his muscles were firm. He was healthy and strong, you could tell. You moved around toward his feet to massage his legs. His calves were tight, so you gave them a good kneading with your fingers.

Next were his feet which were rather long and bony. But they weren't smelly or hairy, so you were glad. Timmy actually smelled quite nice, like soap and a little bit of musk.

"Okay, Timmy, you may turn over onto your back now. Take it nice and slow." you said, as thirty minutes had gone by, and you had finished his back side.

He did as you instructed, slowly turning over to lay on his back. As he settled comfortably, you tucked the blanket along his waistline again.

Timmy's eyes were closed, so he didn't see you bite your lip as he turned over. His chest and abs were super defined. You imagined your tongue running down the lines and valleys of his body, and flicking over his tiny, cute nipples.

You pumped some more lotion into your hands, warming the cream between your palms before spreading your hands over his chest.

You heard a soft, contented sigh leave his throat. You smiled, please with yourself at making him comfortable. Thus was the goal of the massage therapist: to soothe your clients.

"You're great with your hands, y/n." Timmy said, opening his eyes under hooded lids and looking at you.

"So I've heard." you answered, running your fingertips under his collarbones.

"Is it weird if I watch you work?" he asked.

You swallowed, continuing your hand movements along his chest. "No, this is your appointment, sir, you may do as you wish."

"As I wish?" he repeated. You could practically hear the smirk toying with his lips.

"I just mean you should do what makes you comfortable." you moved up, pushing your fingers into his shoulders. The more he talked to you, the more nervous you felt.

"Are you always so professional sounding, y/n?"

"When I am on the clock, yes, Mr. Chalamet." you answered, rubbing and massaging his upper arms.

"What if I paid you to stay after you got off the clock?"

You blushed, but kept your poise, "Well, if you're paying me, sir, am I not on the clock still?"

"Touche." he said simply, then rested quietly, closing his eyes for several minutes as you massaged his forearms and his hands.

You fought the urge to nibble and suck on his long fingers. As you circled your thumbs into his palm, you stared idly at his hands, wondering how his fingers would feel inside of you. Gently, you set his arm down on the table.

You moved down slightly to work on his abdomen, and then his lower body. You rubbed your fingers in your taught patterns along his abdominal muscles, mentally reminding yourself that you were a professional. Though Timmy's previous offer gave hints to something perhaps not so professional.

"What are you thinking, y/n?" came his soft voice, "And be honest." It was as if he had known you for years and could see right through you.

"Um, nothing, sir, I'm just working." you made a feeble attempt to resist the temptation of this man. He was winning.

"I think you're lying." his tone was slightly harsher now. "Are you thinking about my cock? Don't lie to me." He moved up, propping himself onto his elbows and looking at you.

Okay, it was time to play. "Hmm, maybe I am, Mr. Chalamet." You looked at him.

"Well, you should know that I can't stop thinking about your tits. Not even those scrubs can hide how nice they are."

"Really? You think so?" you teased, placing your hands over your boobs.

"Yeah." he replied, tucking his tongue between his teeth cheekily.

"Well, Mr. Chalamet,"

"Timmy." he corrected you.

"Timmy," pushed your hair back off your shoulder, trying to exude confidence, "you show me yours; I'll show you mine." you grinned.

"Take the blanket off me." he demanded.

"Hm." you hummed, leaning over and pulling the big, white blanket off of his lower body, leaving him totally exposed. His cock was long and half hard already. You were genuinely intrigued by the size of him.

"Now take your clothes off." he ordered, not making a move from the massage table.

"So bossy, Timmy." you teased, but shed your uniform and underwear anyway.

The instant your breasts were free, he groped them, "Fuck, they're so nice." He pinched each of your nipples between his long fingers.

You were turned on the second he touched you, and you started to get wet. "Should I massage your cock for you?"

"Yes, please." he answered, leaning back on the table again.

You got the bottle of lotion, and he watched you pump some straight onto his cock. You then set the bottle back down and wrapped your hands around his length. You worked your hands up and down on him, slowly at first.

You looked at Timmy's face as you stroked his cock. His eyes closed, lips pressed together, he let out a "mmm" sound. He began to move his hips upward to meet the rhythm of your hands.

You rolled your wrists back and forth, creating a tight friction on his smooth cock. The lotion worked wonderfully for a hand job. Timmy's cock got fully hard for you, and you had never seen a cock stand so tall. A tiny bead of precum seeped out of his tip. You felt desperate to taste it.

You leaned forward to put your mouth around the tip of his cock. You put your tongue on the saltiness of his precum, then swirled your tongue around him. You took your mouth off of him to lick a stripe from his base to the tip, then you put him back in your mouth to suck.

You moaned at how good his cock felt sliding in and out of your mouth. Timmy kept a firm grip on your hair. You gently massage his balls with your hands, then used your tongue on them.

"Oh, y/n." Timmy cooed.

You licked you hand and jerked his cock again, looking at his shiny, slick body all lubed up from the massage. You licked the head of his cock, then said, "You know, looking like that could get a man ridden to death."

"Yeah?" Timmy raised his brows, "Well, let's see." he made the "come here" motion with his fingers.

You took the invitation to climb onto him. You straddled his waist, and held his cock as you sunk your pussy onto it. His cock introduced a massive pressure inside of you. "Fuck, Timmy." you sighed.

He put his hands on your hips, digging his fingers into your skin.

You grabbed onto his abs, then softly started moving to and fro, getting a feel for his cock, letting it stretch you. You picked up speed, riding him fast, having an image of riding a bull in your mind. You whimpered at the pleasure his cock gave as it hit your g spot.

"Up and down, please." Timmy huffed out the request.

"Yes sir." you said, grinning as you bounced on his dick. You could hear the slapping of damp skin on skin, your ass hit his thighs over and over. You cursed again, tightening your hold on his body, probably scratching him, but he didn't seem to mind.

You felt Timmy's hand gripping your hips, and he slowly started to shake you back and forth as you were fucking him up and down.

The head of his cock hit your g spot with each thrust. It was immaculate. It was pleasure like you hadn't known before. You cried out, you squeezed your breasts, as you trembled on the brink of orgasm.

You knew you were coming, you stopped your movements, pressing your hands onto his chest so you wouldn't fall. You nearly collapsed onto him, huffing and puffing, trying to catch your breath.

Timmy put his arms around you and gave you a kiss on the side of your head. Without a word, he got out from under you.

You felt an instant sense of cold and emptiness once his skin was no longer on yours and you thought that he was going to leave.

Before you could even process it happening, Timmy grabbed you, pulling you to the edge of the table. You gasped as he brought your ass up.

He spread your pussy lips from behind you, and you felt his warm breath on your clit. He swiped his tongue over your pussy, his hands squeezing your ass as he did so.

Your body shook as you were overwhelmed with pleasure.

Timmy suckled your clit between his lips, then dipped his tongue onto it. He did it over and over again, in a pattern that drove you crazy. You moaned his name like he was God.

His mouth left your pussy, but he quickly replaced the sensation with a swift push of his cock all the way inside you, making your toes curl.

"Oh, my fucking god." you purred, taking a grip onto the blanket beside you.

Timmy held onto your waist firmly as he pumped his cock in and out of you. You could hear him breathing hard and grunting. "Do you fuck all of your clients, y/n?"

"No!" you cried. He thrusted deep into you, making you pause before you could say another word. "I've never done anything like this before."

He grabbed your ass by the handful, ramming you hard and fast now, "I knew you were a good girl, ahh, I could just tell." He leaned onto your body, pushed you down onto your chest, then drilled into you.

You moaned wildly; the legs of the massage table creaked as the table shook. Timmy might break the table, but you didn't care.

"Fuck." he muttered, pulling his cock out of you.

You raised up, looked behind you to see him jerking himself and he came in white streams on your ass cheek.

Timmy groaned in the most feral way. Coming down from his high, he looked at you.

You giggled as your eyes met, you couldn't believe the filth that just transpired in your workplace, and how much you loved it.

"I'll be coming back here for sure." Timmy declared.

@gatoenlaciudad @thebetawolfgirl @musicandbooksaremyhappyplace @softhecreator @tchalamss @bitchyunknownuser @lixzey @ducktapebar @aoi-targaryen @yukideadinside @mel-vaz @thatoneweirdgirl17 @iwishchalamet @jindongdongie @elloise0 @rennyd26 @briefkittenearthquake @that-one-fangirl69

If you have been on my taglist before, but I have left you out, please let me know. Or if you would just like to be added, you can also just tell me lol

#timothée chalamet #timmy chalamet #timothée imagine #timothee x reader #timothee chalamet smut #timothee chalamet #timothee fanfic #timothee chalamet fanfic

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atierrorian · 1 month

Text

| Glad it's you | — R.H

PARING: Rook Hunt x Deaf!reader

SYNOPSIS: All your entire life, you knew silence. But—it isn't as bad as people make it out to be. Because even with your biggest flaw, he still chose you.

˗ˏˋGENRE ´ˎ˗ — Romance, fluff, angst/comfort

˗ˏˋCW ´ˎ˗ — Rook is already a warning. Ooc, mentions of bullying, stalking(It's Rook, duh) horrible poetry.

˗ˏˋNOTES ´ˎ˗ — Wow! It has been a while and I am so sorry for not making anything in quite some time, I've become so busy nowadays that writing has barely crossed my mind, so I'll make most of my free time writing this!

✎| Masterlists|Navigation |

♡ "Are you really willing to accept me?" ♡ "I've accepted you a long time ago."

People always pitied you for as long as you can remember now. Frequently assuming it must be hard not being able to hear. And yeah, sometimes—but it isn't as bad as they make it out to be, if anything, you find solace in the silent world you have lived in all your life. Sure, there were times when it was hard to understand people, especially if they didn't know sign language.

Luckily, you mostly used poems to interact with them. Though, it was amusing to see them struggle to grasp your poems—that's what makes it fun anyway.

And so, making use of your skills, you swiftly wrote down another poem for a certain hunter. He's one of the few people you've known who could actually decipher what your poems meant. And it's not to say each and every time you show him your masterpiece, he always seems to be on your level when it came to writing back to you.

It always makes you feel giddy inside when he writes back to you. Re-reading every syllable. Caressing the ink that was clearly carefully written with such consideration with each word he used, you couldn't help but feel as though he was hinting to you about something.

You scoffed; shaking the thought away. Who were you trying to fool? This was the Rook Hunt you were thinking about! He's like this with everyone. Besides—why would he go for someone who had a defect? To say the least, you weren't insecure with your disability but, thinking about the blonde hunter who seemed to always cross your mind whenever you wrote—you couldn't help but feel your heart tightening in your chest from such thoughts.

In the end, why would he choose you? You're nothing special, far from it anyway. You're just someone who could never hear and someone who just writes to communicate. But, even then, you were still wrapped around his fingertips. And besides—it doesn't hurt to hope, right?

You felt a hand placed on your shoulder, you froze. You had never stayed still like a statue so fast in your entire life until now. What? Millions of thoughts were racing through your mind right now—was it another of the students who were here to once again chuck balled up papers again? Take your poems away from you and ripped them to pieces or flames it until there's nothing left but ashes?

"Awww, what's this? Another one of your silly stories?"

"Look! It's another one of their love poems!"

"Pathetic if you ask me."

You didn't focused on them, you never even knew what they were saying, and you could care less what insults or degrading comments they were spewing from their filthy mouth. Your knees on the ground while clutching onto what was remains of the paper you once cherished. And they tore it all up like it was nothing.

Shuddering from the memory, you closed your eyes and continued to look at your lap; prepared for whatever torture they were gonna do to you again. Tore your poems? Throw paper at you? Mocking at you while you cry in tears because they had nearly killed you? What else did they had in store for you?

You gripped the paper even harder, shutting your eyelids even tighter if that was even possible. You were scared.

Huh.

You felt a piece of paper slid onto your lap, hesitantly, bit by bit, you forced your eyes to open to see what it was. Was it an insult written in a letter? If so, then you're surprised that they were even intelligent enough to finally realized that you had a hearing disability instead of using their vocals to try and insult you.

But no, it was not anything you expected or thought. Instead, your vision was blessed with a familiar handwriting. Subconsciously, you read what was was written on the white letter that graced your sight, and goodness it always doesn't fail to make your blood rushing through your face. By the sevens, how does he always make you feel this way?

Why such a blue face? You don't need to be ashamed of such a heartache; If you need someone to wipe your tears, my heart will gladly volunteer; What you consider flaws, is what I consider perfection —

Mon Cherie, you are the belle of my dairy heart, You, sweetheart, have me wrapped around your fingertips; I will never let go of the string that wraps around my wrist; That connects me, to you.

My heart beats loudly; even you could hear it— If your heart longs for anything, Mon cherie, just write to me; And tell me all your silly sorrows. -Rook Hunt

Though it was short and simple, you couldn't help but re-read the words every now and then. You smiled seeing the words written on the paper. How could you not? His words sweet like candy, it was addicting in a way even you were worried you wouldn't get enough of it. Or maybe it's too late for you.

Your heart started racing so fast you thought even you could hear it. The more you examined the poem the more it started to look like a love confession. But it couldn't be that, could it? You so badly wanted to hope that you had a chance but you didn't want to get your hopes up.

You, sweetheart, have me wrapped around your fingertips.

Those lines, shit, you couldn't help but swoon over them. Clutching the poem, you finally gazed at the author with wonders and hope. He smiled at you and signed those three words you've been waiting to see.

"I love you."

Was it even possible for your heart to be beating faster than it was before? You held the poem closer to your beating heart, trying to conceal it; worried he might hear it. It felt like your heart was about to leap out of your chest. You sighed dreamily and thanked your heart for choosing him.

Meanwhile, Rook chuckled seeing your flustered expression. He found beauty in all things whether it was considered good or bad to others. But he found you the most beautiful of them all. He won't lie, he fell for you hard when he saw you. Because even when he learnt about your flaw, it didn't matter to him; you were still the fairest of them all. You weren't able to hear his words—but that's alright; he'll gladly write thousands or more letters if it meant to show you just how much he loves you.

He'd gladly and happily dance in hot and burning shoes if it meant to show you his devotion to you, just to show how much he cares for you. And if anyone were to make you doubt? Let's just say they wouldn't be coming closer to you anymore if they caused you pain. But before that, he'd come and comfort you, with words written on paper just so all your worries would go away.

Even if his fingers start to go numb and bruises appear, he won't stop until he finally sees you smile. He's glad that his heart chose you.

END

Wow! Uhm, heyy ik it's been awhile but I finally found enough inspiration to make this! Again sorry it's been awhile I've been so busy that I barely found any time to write at all, but I do hope you guys liked this!

#atier's works✎#rook hunt x reader #twisted wonderland x reader #twst x reader #twst fluff #twst scenario

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passerkirbius · 8 months

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Where are all the Audio Fiction Fandoms?

To be clear, this isn't me complaining, and I know, there are plenty of fandoms for audio fiction podcasts and the like.

But I have always found it weird how few shows get the big, self-sustaining kinds of fandoms, the ones where there's always at least a little trickle of fanfic and fanart. So weird, in fact, that I've been thinking about it on and off for the last 5-6 years, and I have a few theories I'd like to share with y'all as to why, and to see if I can't get some feedback from the audio fiction fans on Tumblr.

Theory 1: Audience Size

The first theory is mostly about demographics - fundamentally, a fandom has to be large enough to sustain itself, and only a certain number of audience members are going to become the kind of fans who make fan works, so ultimately, an audio fiction show needs to get popular enough before fan works start appearing.

There's plenty of support for this theory, of course - Welcome to Night Vale, Wolf 359, The Adventure Zone and The Magnus Archives are titans in the fiction podcast space, and indeed they have big fandoms. But, with that said, there's plenty of other podcasts that are just as big that don't have fandoms, so this can't explain it all.

Theory 2: Audience Distance

This one is similar to the first, but subtly different. A few creators in the space I've talked to have noted that they'd never make fan works of their friend's shows - that feels weird, like deliberately treading on their friend's work. They don't have this feeling when playing in big fandoms, or fandoms where they don't know the creator. This implies to me that fans need a certain level of distance from creators in order to feel comfortable playing with that fictional space. While this is less the case now with the fall of Twitter, a lot of shows, for better or worse, used social media as the primary pillar of their marketing, as well as using Patreons with special access as part of their monetization strategies.

In short, it's never been easier to get close to the creators of your favourite shows, and for smaller shows, the most exuberant fans - the kinds who might make fan works - are also the kinds of fans who will take those opportunities to get closer to the creators. In short, there just might not enough social distance for fans to be comfortable creating works, not at least until the audience grows sufficiently that a creator simply cannot be that close with their entire audience.

This theory I'm not so sure about these days - this one is probably a lot more dependent on the generation of fandom you belong to. Older generations of fandom are more likely to have this queasiness around creator closeness, because they were creating in a time where fandom was a shadow realm, desperately hidden from The Powers That Be, and "No Copyright Infringement Intended" was carved into fan works as an eldritch attempt at legal protection.

Theory 3: Audience Age

To be clear - there are fans of all ages out there. But it is clear to me that fandom trends young, and part of that is just the time needed to participate in fan culture - creating and consuming takes a lot of time, time that tends gets scarcer and scarcer as you get older (there are obvious exceptions of course - stay-at-home mothers have consistently been a major force in fandoms!). It's possible that audio fiction fans just tend to trend older, and thus don't have the time available to create and consume fan works.

Honestly, I'm not sure how relevant this one is - Audio fiction is becoming more popular with younger audiences and slowly shedding the "old fuddy-duddyness" that surrounded it when I was first getting into the space. And, ya know, there are audio fiction fandoms out there, so obviously either the youth aspect of fandom isn't a thing, or it is, but audio fiction audiences are still trending young anyway.

Theory 4: We're getting what we need!

A lot of academic discourse often focuses on the idea that fandoms create for a reason - and that reason is often to focus on parts of a fiction that the original text, for whatever reason, doesn't. The most obvious form of this is the many, many, many examples of ships and erotic fanfiction. You, as a fan, watch a show, see something between two characters, and get frustrated that the show isn't giving you more of that, won't make what is clearly obvious to you, explicit. So, you consume and/or create fan works that help relieve that tension instead.

Or, in shows where the focus is primarily on plot advancement or action, you feel a desire to get to know the characters better - you see the stirrings of these characters, you want to know them better, but the show just isn't the type of show to give you that slow, character-heavy scene/episode that you know would give you exactly what you need, so, again, you go consume and/or create fan works to fix that.

It's very possible that a lot of audio fiction is already built to give these sorts of fan audiences what they want. There's already romantic relationships, characters are openly queer, the nature of the audio medium means that character-heavy scenes are something that the medium directs creators towards, so there's already a lot of character engagement. So, for many fandoms, there just isn't much need to create fan works - there's no tension between what the show is and what it could be.

Theory 5: We can make our own at home!

One interesting theory is that one reason that people make fandom is because, fundamentally, the creators understand that they're not going to be making a film, or a TV show, or a book. They have creative urges, and they're not in a situation in life where they're likely to overcome the enormous barriers to entry in mainstream media, so, in combination with the stuff in theory 4, they play in other people's worlds instead. They know that there's already an audience who will consume their work (they're part of that fan community, after all!), so they can get that validation of creation without needing to create their own TV show or film or book, etc.

Podcasts, however, are different. Now, it's not true to say that podcasts have low barriers to entry - to create a podcast, there's a lot of skills you either need to learn yourself, or find collaborators with those skills. But, those barriers to entry are much lower than visual media. At the very least, audio production is significantly cheaper and less complicated for an equivalent runtime.

Better, podcasts have absurdly low barriers to publication - There are no gatekeepers to satisfy, no distributors you have to convince. Once your thing is made, pretty much no one can stop you from distributing that work. You don't even really need to pay for a podcast host - there's a few free podcast hosts now. So, once you've done the work, pretty much nothing stops you from publishing said work.

So... If you're a creative fan, who loved a show but thinks you can do better? Well, you can! You don't need to play in other people's spaces, you can be inspired by the podcasts you listen to to create your own original work, in the same medium and genre.

What do y'all think? Which of these feel right, which of these feel obviously wrong? Are you part of a audio fiction fandom? What does your fandom feel like to you on the inside? As a audio fiction creator, it's kinda hard for me to get into the inside of fandom culture, so insider perspectives would be super neat for me, so please reblog this to anyone you feel might have an interesting perspective on the whole thing!

#audio fiction #audio drama #podcasts #fiction podcasts #welcome to night vale #the magnus archives #tma #wtnv #podcast theory #fandom #audience feedback requested!#taz #the adventure zone #wolf 359 #fandom meta #fandom culture

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jgoddesstarot · 8 months

Text

Pick-A-Pile: Moon & Stars | Aspects of Compatibility Between You & Your Future Spouse's Natal Charts

👑Check out my masterlist to see all of my pick-a-card readings😊

✨ Visit my shops at Ko-fi.com or J.Goddess Tarot✨

🔮Disclaimer: This reading is for entertainment purposes only. Tarot readings are based upon my intuitive interpretation of the cards and about possibilities based on your current energy. Energy is forever changing and nothing is set in stone. Always remember, you have your own free will to make whatever decision you feel is best.

🔮How I read: I use a mix of tarot cards, oracle cards, along with my intuitive abilities of claircognizance, clairaudience, and clairsentience.

🔮How this works: Close your eyes and take deep breaths, pick the pile you are most drawn to. If you aren’t drawn to any pile then that’s okay, these messages aren’t for you.

Pile 1

Tarot Cards: 4 of Swords, The World, 8 of Swords, Page of Wands (in reverse), and 5 of Wands.

Oracle Cards: 4th House: Home & Family, Libra: The Beautiful Mind, On Sunday.

Welcome, my Pile 1's. Let's dive deep and explore what the cards have to say about the compatibility between you and your future spouse's natal charts. Starting with the 4 of Swords, it suggests a need for rest and retreat. In regards to compatibility, it signifies that you both will find comfort and solace in each other's presence. A sense of peace will prevail when you two are together.

Moving onto The World, this card is all about completion and fulfillment. It suggests that you will find a sense of wholeness with your future spouse. You might have different backgrounds or perspectives, but together, you form a complete picture. You compliment each other and that's something truly special.

As for the 8 of Swords, this card often represents a feeling of being trapped or restricted. However, in the context of your future compatibility, it signifies that both of you will help each other overcome personal fears and limitations. You both will act as each other's catalyst, pushing one another towards growth and self-improvement.

The Page of Wands in reverse indicates a certain level of immaturity or impatience. This suggests that there might be occasional conflicts due to a lack of maturity or understanding. However, with the 5 of Wands in the spread, it indicates that these conflicts will be resolved through communication and mutual respect.

The Oracle cards further paint a picture of your compatibility. The 4th House: Home & Family card suggests that family will play a significant role in your relationship. Libra: The Beautiful Mind adds another layer, hinting at a strong intellectual connection between you two. Lastly, 'On Sunday' suggests that your bond will be characterized by a sense of peace, tranquility, and a slower pace of life.

In conclusion, my dear Pile 1's, your future spouse is someone who will complement you in every way. While there might be occasional conflicts, you both will find a way through them. Your relationship will be based on peace, intellectual connection, and family values. So, keep your heart open and let the magic of love weave its spell. After all, it's all about finding that perfect harmony in the dance of love.

Pile 2

Tarot Cards: 9 of Wands, Ace of Swords, The Tower (in reverse), Knight of Wands, and The Magician.

Oracle Cards: 12th House: Spirituality & Art, 7th House: Love & Partnership, 3rd House: Communication & Interaction.

My dear Pile 2's, let's delve into the mystical realm of your future spouse's compatibility with you. The 9 of Wands card is our first clue, suggesting a bond that can withstand the test of time. You both are resilient, standing strong in the face of adversity. Challenges may come, but together you can handle anything.

Next, the Ace of Swords presents itself, symbolizing a relationship rooted in truth and clear communication. Intellectual stimulation and honesty are key themes in your connection. Your future spouse will be someone who values communication as much as you do, leading to a bond that is transparent and filled with clarity.

The Tower card, in reverse, signals a turnaround from a rocky phase. This tells me that while there may be initial hiccups or misunderstandings, these will be resolved, leading to a stronger and more stable relationship. It's almost as if these trials come to strengthen your bond, not break it.

The Knight of Wands suggests an energetic, passionate connection. There's a lot of movement here, perhaps indicating travel or shared adventures. This energy, when combined with The Magician card, speaks of a relationship that's full of potential and creativity. You both will have the power to manifest your desires and create the life you dream of together.

The Oracle cards further add depth to this narrative. The 12th House: Spirituality & Art implies a shared interest in the esoteric or artistic avenues. You may find common ground in spirituality or creative expression, strengthening your bond further. The 7th House: Love & Partnership confirms a deep love-based relationship, while the 3rd House: Communication & Interaction reiterates the importance of open dialogue and mutual understanding.

In conclusion, my dear Pile 2's, your future spouse and you are set to create an energetic, passionate relationship. The cards speak of resilience, clear communication, and a bond that grows stronger with trials. A shared love of spirituality or art and an emphasis on partnership and communication will be your strengths. So, brace yourself for an exciting journey of love, growth, and shared adventures.

Pile 3

Tarot Cards: 10 of Swords, 8 of Wands, Knight of Pentacles, Queen of Pentacles, 3 of Pentacles, and Judgement.

Oracle Cards: Scorpio: The Mystic, 10th House: Career & Success, Sextile: Change & Opportunity

Greetings, my beloved Pile 3's! Let us embark on a mesmerizing journey into the mystical realm that your cards unveil. The 10 of Swords, the harbinger of transformation, reveals an enchanting path for your relationship. Embrace this card's message of endings and new beginnings. Fear not, for it signifies that you and your future spouse will evolve and flourish together, casting away old patterns and embarking on a wondrous voyage of mutual understanding and growth.

Now, behold the 8 of Wands, a card brimming with optimism and vibrant energy. It foretells rapid growth in your connection. Imagine the sparks igniting the moment you meet, a magnetic force drawing you closer. This immediate connection shall swiftly blossom into a profound and profound bond.

Let us not forget the Pentacle cards, the Knight, Queen, and 3 of Pentacles, which weave a captivating tale of stability and shared values. The Knight of Pentacles represents a steadfast and reliable partner, cherishing loyalty and hard work. This essence resonates with the Queen of Pentacles, a nurturing figure who values stability and security. The 3 of Pentacles further signifies a robust partnership built on common aspirations and mutual respect.

Ah, the final Tarot card, Judgement, a powerful symbol of realization and awakening. It signifies that your future spouse and you will deeply understand one another, unlocking a profound awakening that leads to personal and joint growth.

Now, let us delve into your Oracle cards. Behold Scorpio: The Mystic, a testament to the profound emotional bond and magnetic attraction between the two of you. The 10th House: Career & Success, a clear sign that your relationship will play a pivotal role in each other's professional achievements. And the Sextile: Change & Opportunity, perfectly aligned with the Tarot, promising a relationship adorned with opportunities for growth and transformation.

In conclusion, my cherished Pile 3's, your future spouse awaits in a realm of transformative passion. Together, you shall embark on a journey of mutual growth, understanding, and shared values. The cards whisper of a thrilling adventure, where rapid growth, abundant opportunities, and resounding success intertwine. Brace yourselves for an extraordinary voyage filled with love, magic, and boundless excitement!

Other Resources:

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#j goddess tarot #jgoddess tarot #bipoc tarot reader #tarot reading #tarot community #pick a card #tarot pick a card #pick a pile #intuitive tarot reader #future spouse readings #pick a card reading #moon and stars #astrological compatibility

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defiblover27 · 1 month

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Simulation

In the bustling corridors of the underfunded hospital, a faded flyer catches the eye of passersby, its corners curling with age. "Volunteers Needed for Trauma Training Exercise," it boldly proclaims, beckoning those with a sense of adventure or altruism to step forward and lend their aid.

Among those drawn to the call is a 24-year-old woman, her determination evident in the set of her jaw as she approaches the hospital's trauma director. They exchange a brief but earnest conversation, the young volunteer expressing her willingness to participate in the training exercise while voicing her concerns about her comfort level with certain procedures.

"I'm eager to help in any way I can," she explains, her voice tinged with a mix of nervousness and resolve. "But I'll admit, I'm a bit apprehensive about some of the more invasive procedures. I'm comfortable with basic first aid and CPR, but I'm not sure I'm ready for things like intubation or defibrillation."

The trauma director nods understandingly, his expression one of reassurance rather than judgment. "That's perfectly understandable," he replies, his tone gentle yet firm. "Your safety and comfort are our top priorities. We'll tailor the scenario to suit your preferences and ensure you're only asked to participate in tasks you feel comfortable with."

With a sense of relief washing over her, the young volunteer nods gratefully, grateful for the understanding and support offered by the trauma director. Together, they discuss her role in the upcoming training exercise, mapping out a scenario that challenges her skills without pushing her beyond her limits.

Preparing the volunteer for the trauma training exercise is a meticulous process, undertaken with care and attention to detail to ensure her safety and comfort throughout the simulation.

As she arrives at the hospital, the volunteer is greeted by a team of trained professionals who guide her through each step of the preparation process. They lead her to a private changing area, where a set of hospital scrubs awaits her. With gentle encouragement, they assist her in disrobing, providing her with disposable undergarments to wear beneath the scrubs for modesty and hygiene.

Once dressed, the volunteer takes a seat as a makeup artist meticulously applies special effects makeup to simulate the injuries she will portray during the exercise. With a steady hand and an artist's eye for detail, they create realistic bruises, lacerations, and abrasions, transforming the volunteer's appearance into that of a trauma patient in need of urgent medical attention.

As the makeup artist works their magic, other members of the preparation team gather the necessary equipment for the simulation. They retrieve a backboard from its storage location, laying it out on a nearby gurney in anticipation of the volunteer's arrival. Alongside the backboard, they arrange a cervical collar (C-collar) and an inflatable orange brace designed to stabilize her right leg.

With the makeup application complete, the volunteer is guided to the gurney, where she lies down with a sense of trepidation mingled with excitement. The preparation team surrounds her, their movements practiced and precise as they secure her to the backboard with straps, ensuring she remains stable and secure throughout the simulation.

Next, they carefully position the cervical collar around her neck, adjusting it to provide support without impeding her breathing or movement. With gentle yet firm hands, they slide the inflatable orange brace into place around her right leg, inflating it to the appropriate level to immobilize the limb and prevent further injury.

As the final touches are made, the volunteer takes a deep breath, steeling herself for the challenges that lie ahead. Though she may be nervous, she knows she is in capable hands, surrounded by a team of professionals dedicated to her well-being. With a nod of affirmation, she signals her readiness to begin, eager to play her part in the training exercise and contribute to the hospital's ongoing mission of saving lives.

The simulation begins with the trauma team gathered around the gurney, their expressions grave as they assess the condition of the patient lying before them. The young woman, named Emily, is 24 years old, her face drawn with pain as she struggles to maintain consciousness amidst the chaos of the emergency room.

Emily's injuries are extensive, the result of a harrowing car accident that left her trapped in the wreckage for hours before help arrived. She presents with multiple traumatic injuries, including a deep laceration on her forehead, contusions and bruising across her chest and abdomen, and a visibly deformed right leg.

As the medical team conducts their initial assessment, Emily groans softly, her voice barely above a whisper as she describes the events leading up to the accident. She recalls the screech of tires and the sickening crunch of metal as her car careened off the road, the world spinning in a dizzying blur before everything went dark.

Her breathing is shallow and labored, punctuated by gasps of pain as she struggles to draw air into her damaged lungs. A rapid pulse races beneath her clammy skin, a testament to the body's instinctive response to trauma as it fights to stay alive against overwhelming odds.

The trauma team works quickly and methodically, their movements a synchronized dance of urgency and precision as they address each of Emily's injuries in turn. They apply pressure to the gaping wound on her forehead, staunching the flow of blood with sterile dressings and medical tape.

Meanwhile, others attend to her chest and abdomen, palpating for signs of internal injury while monitoring her vital signs for any indication of deterioration. X-rays are ordered to assess the extent of her injuries, with the medical team bracing themselves for the possibility of life-threatening complications hidden beneath the surface.

Throughout the simulation, Emily remains conscious but disoriented, her grip on reality tenuous as she grapples with the enormity of what has happened. She reaches out for reassurance, her eyes searching the faces of the medical team for a glimmer of hope in the midst of her darkest hour.

As the simulation progresses, the trauma team springs into action with renewed determination, their focus unwavering as they fight to stabilize Emily's condition and save her life. Though the road ahead may be long and fraught with uncertainty, they refuse to give up hope, drawing strength from their collective commitment to excellence in the face of adversity.

As the simulation progresses, the trauma director approaches Emily with solemnity, his voice gentle yet firm as he explains the next phase of the exercise. "Emily," he begins, his tone tinged with empathy, "in just a moment, we'll be simulating a critical event. We'll need to simulate your heart stopping. We'll need to cut open your shirt to begin chest compressions, and we'll place an ambu bag over your mouth and nose. You should remain still and 'lifeless' during this process. You may choose to close your eyes or keep them open."

Emily nods in understanding, her heart pounding in her chest as she braces herself for what's to come. With a deep breath, she closes her eyes, surrendering herself to the immersive experience of the simulation.

The trauma team springs into action with practiced efficiency, their movements choreographed to perfection as they simulate the onset of cardiac arrest. With a swift motion, they cut open Emily's shirt, exposing her chest to the harsh glare of the overhead lights. A sense of vulnerability washes over her, but she remains steadfast in her commitment to the exercise.

Chest compressions begin in earnest, the rhythmic thud echoing through the trauma room as the medical team works tirelessly to restore circulation to Emily's failing heart. An ambu bag is placed over her mouth and nose, delivering precious oxygen to her struggling lungs with each squeeze of the bag.

Amidst the chaos, Emily lies perfectly still, her body limp and unresponsive as she embraces the role of a patient in cardiac arrest. Though her mind races with adrenaline-fueled anticipation, she remains focused on maintaining the illusion of lifelessness, drawing upon her training and instincts to convey the gravity of the situation.

As the simulation unfolds, Emily finds herself enveloped in a surreal sense of suspended animation, her senses heightened as she navigates the fine line between reality and simulation. With each passing moment, she grows more deeply immersed in the role, her commitment unwavering as she plays her part in the collective effort to save lives and improve patient outcomes.

In the tense silence of the trauma room, Emily waits with bated breath, her entire being poised on the precipice of uncertainty. Though the outcome remains uncertain, she knows she is surrounded by a team of dedicated professionals committed to her well-being, ready to spring into action at a moment's notice to ensure her safety and success in the simulation.

As the simulation progresses and Emily remains in her role, the trauma director approaches her once more, his demeanor compassionate yet resolute. "Emily," he says softly, "we need to simulate defibrillation and the removal of the rest of your clothing. Are you okay with that?"

Emily meets the trauma director's gaze with a steady nod, her determination shining through the mask of simulated injuries. "Yes," she replies, her voice steady despite the rising tide of nerves coursing through her veins. "I'm ready."

With Emily's consent secured, the trauma team prepares to take the simulation to the next level. The room hums with a sense of purpose as equipment is brought forth, including the defibrillator paddles and a privacy screen to shield Emily from prying eyes.

With practiced hands, the trauma team carefully removes the remainder of Emily's clothing, revealing her body in its entirety to the stark fluorescent lights of the trauma room. Emily feels a pang of vulnerability wash over her, but she remains steadfast in her commitment to the exercise, drawing strength from the knowledge that she is surrounded by a team of professionals dedicated to her well-being.

As the final pieces of clothing are set aside, the trauma director approaches Emily once more, his expression one of reassurance as he prepares her for the next phase of the simulation. "Emily," he says, his voice gentle yet authoritative, "we're going to simulate defibrillation now. You'll feel a brief shock, but it's perfectly safe. Are you ready?"

Emily nods, her heart racing with a mixture of anticipation and apprehension. "I'm ready," she affirms, her voice a whisper in the stillness of the trauma room.

With a sense of purpose, the trauma team positions the defibrillator paddles against Emily's bare chest, their gloved hands steady as they prepare to deliver the simulated shock. A hush falls over the room as the trauma director counts down, his voice a steady cadence in the tense silence.

"Clear," he calls out, his command echoing through the trauma room.

In the next instant, Emily feels a jolt of electricity course through her body, sending a shiver down her spine as her muscles twitch in response to the simulated shock. Though the sensation is fleeting, it leaves her breathless with adrenaline, her senses heightened as she remains poised on the brink of uncertainty.

As the simulation continues, Emily finds herself drawn deeper into the immersive experience, her commitment unwavering as she navigates the challenges presented by the training exercise. Though the road ahead may be fraught with obstacles, she knows she is surrounded by a team of dedicated professionals ready to guide her every step of the way, ensuring her safety and success in the simulation.

As the simulation progresses, the trauma team continues their relentless efforts to resuscitate Emily, their movements a blur of urgency as they alternate between chest compressions, defibrillations, and the administration of resuscitation drugs.

With each compression, Emily feels the pressure against her chest, a rhythmic reminder of the tireless dedication of the medical team fighting to bring her back from the brink. The defibrillator paddles crackle with energy as they deliver simulated shocks, each one sending a jolt of electricity coursing through her body in a desperate bid to restart her faltering heart.

Amidst the chaos, the trauma director calls out the duration of Emily's cardiac arrest, his voice a steady anchor in the storm of uncertainty. "Five minutes," he intones, his words a stark reminder of the precious seconds slipping away with each passing moment.

The medical team works with practiced efficiency, their movements synchronized as they administer resuscitation drugs in a last-ditch effort to revive Emily's failing heart. The air is thick with tension as they watch for any signs of response, their collective gaze fixed on the monitor displaying Emily's vital signs.

Minutes stretch into eternity as the trauma team refuses to yield to despair, their determination unwavering in the face of overwhelming odds. With each passing moment, Emily feels herself drawn deeper into the immersive experience of the simulation, her senses attuned to the ebb and flow of life and death unfolding around her.

Though the outcome remains uncertain, Emily knows she is in capable hands, surrounded by a team of dedicated professionals committed to her well-being. As she lies in the midst of the simulated cardiac arrest, she draws upon her training and instincts to convey the gravity of the situation, embracing her role with a sense of purpose and determination that belies the simulated injuries adorning her body.

In the stillness of the trauma room, Emily waits with bated breath, her entire being poised on the razor's edge of uncertainty. Though the road ahead may be fraught with obstacles, she remains steadfast in her commitment to the simulation, ready to face whatever challenges lie in store with courage and resilience.

As the simulation intensifies, a sense of unease washes over Emily, a peculiar sensation prickling at the edges of her consciousness. Though she tries to push aside the feeling, dismissing it as a product of the immersive experience, a growing sense of dread gnaws at the pit of her stomach.

Unbeknownst to Emily or the trauma team, a medical student, eager to prove themselves in their new environment, has made a critical error. In their haste to assist with the simulation, they mistakenly administered a vial of real epinephrine instead of the simulated medication, a grave oversight that goes unnoticed amidst the chaos of the trauma room.

As the potent drug courses through Emily's veins, she feels a surge of adrenaline flood her system, her heart racing with an intensity that surpasses the bounds of the simulation. A sense of disorientation washes over her, her senses overwhelmed by the sudden onslaught of physiological responses triggered by the real medication.

Despite the mounting alarm bells ringing in her mind, Emily says nothing, her voice lost amidst the cacophony of the trauma room as the medical team continues their efforts to resuscitate her. With each passing moment, her condition deteriorates, her heartbeat growing erratic as she teeters on the brink of true cardiac arrest.

In a cruel twist of fate, Emily's worst fears are realized as she plunges into the depths of a genuine cardiac arrest, her body succumbing to the deadly grip of arrhythmia. The trauma team, unaware of the unfolding crisis, presses on with their simulated interventions, their attention focused solely on the task at hand.

As Emily's consciousness fades into darkness, she realizes with a sinking heart that she is no longer a participant in a training exercise but a patient in desperate need of salvation. Though the realization comes too late to alter the course of events, she clings to a flicker of hope, praying for a miracle to save her from the abyss of death that looms ever closer with each passing second.

As the trauma director attempts to speak to Emily, a sense of urgency grips him as he notices her lack of response. His brow furrows with concern as he leans in closer, his voice tinged with desperation as he calls out her name. "Emily, can you hear me? Emily?"

There is no response, no flicker of recognition in Emily's glassy eyes as they stare blankly ahead. Panic begins to rise within the trauma director's chest as he realizes something is terribly wrong. With trembling hands, he reaches for Emily's wrist, his fingers searching for the reassuring throb of a pulse beneath her skin.

His heart sinks as he feels nothing but stillness, his worst fears confirmed in the absence of the vital sign he had hoped to find. In a state of shock, he checks for a pulse again, this time beneath the cervical collar, but the result remains the same—Emily is in cardiac arrest.

A sense of urgency washes over the trauma director as he springs into action, his training kicking in as he directs the medical team to shift their focus from simulation to reality. "She's in cardiac arrest!" he declares, his voice cutting through the chaos of the trauma room. "Start chest compressions, now!"

With practiced efficiency, the trauma team pivots to the new reality before them, their movements swift and sure as they initiate CPR in a desperate bid to revive Emily's failing heart. Each compression is a prayer whispered into the void, a plea for a miracle to breathe life back into the stillness that surrounds them.

As the trauma room buzzes with frenetic energy, the trauma director's mind races with a million questions, each one more pressing than the last. How could this have happened? What went wrong? But amidst the chaos, there is no time for answers, only action as they fight to save Emily's life against overwhelming odds.

In the midst of the turmoil, Emily lies motionless, her body a canvas for the frantic efforts of the medical team as they work tirelessly to bring her back from the brink. Though the road ahead may be fraught with uncertainty, they refuse to give up hope, drawing upon their training and expertise to navigate the stormy seas of cardiac arrest and guide Emily safely back to shore.

As the resuscitation attempts continue, the trauma room pulses with urgency, the rhythm of chest compressions driving the frantic tempo of the medical team's efforts to revive Emily. With each compression, her body sways from side to side, the force of the compressions causing her breasts to shake in a stark reminder of the gravity of the situation.

Amidst the chaos, the trauma team remains undeterred, their focus unwavering as they prepare to escalate their interventions in a desperate bid to save Emily's life. With a sense of grim determination, they gel the paddles and charge them with electricity, the anticipation hanging heavy in the air as they prepare to deliver a shock to Emily's bare chest.

In a moment fraught with tension, the paddles are placed on Emily's skin, their cold metal surface a stark contrast to the warmth of her flesh. With a silent prayer on their lips, the medical team braces themselves as they prepare to unleash the full force of the defibrillator in a last-ditch effort to restart Emily's faltering heart.

A heartbeat later, the trauma room is awash with blinding light and crackling energy as the paddles deliver their shock, coursing through Emily's body in a desperate bid to jolt her heart back into rhythm. The room holds its breath as the monitor displays the outcome, the fate of Emily's life hanging in the balance with each passing moment.

But despite their best efforts, the monitor remains stubbornly flatline, a grim testament to the stubbornness of death in the face of human intervention. With a heavy heart, the trauma team presses on, their resolve unshaken as they refuse to yield to despair.

In a final act of desperation, the medical team moves to intubate Emily, their hands steady as they guide the endotracheal tube into her airway, securing her breathing and allowing for the administration of life-saving medications

As the resuscitation efforts persist, the passage of time weighs heavily on the trauma room, each minute stretching into eternity as the medical team fights desperately to revive Emily. Over thirty agonizing minutes tick by, marked by the relentless rhythm of chest compressions and the mechanical whir of life-saving equipment.

Despite their tireless efforts, Emily's condition continues to deteriorate before their eyes. Her once rosy complexion fades to a pallid shade of gray, her skin growing cold to the touch as the chill of death creeps inexorably into the room. The gel from the defibrillator paddles glistens on her bare chest, a stark reminder of the futile battle being waged against the icy grip of mortality.

A bruise blossoms between Emily's breasts, a grim testament to the force of the chest compressions that have been administered in a desperate bid to restore her failing circulation. Her eyes remain wide open, staring blankly into the void as if searching for answers that will never come.

Sensing the gravity of the situation, the trauma team pauses momentarily, their hands hovering over Emily's motionless form as they perform a vital signs check. With a heavy heart, they prepare to confirm what they already fear to be true—that Emily is beyond saving, her journey on this mortal coil drawing to a tragic and untimely end.

A cardiac ultrasound reveals the harsh reality of Emily's condition, the images on the monitor painting a bleak portrait of irreversible cardiac damage. Her heart lies still within her chest, a silent sentinel to the finality of death's embrace.

#cpr #resus #resuscitation #defib #defibrillator #hospital

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comfortfoodcontent · 7 months

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THE COMFORT FOOD COMICS CANON

Some of you may recall my old website www.comfortfoodcomics.com , where I really wanted to explore that special personal connection to comic books. There are so many comics and everyone has so many opinions and stories relating to the ones they love the most that end up getting extremely personal. I love that aspect of this unique art form. The way certain issues or story arcs crawl into one's brain and soul and stay there forever. The way comics become synonymous with certain memories, time periods, people or places in our lives. I love that. I don't want to read or hear reviews or scholarly, pretentious drivel about the "GREATEST COMICS EVER!!!". What I want is to write and read about those special comics that rise to the top of your thoughts unbidden for a lifetime. Not necessarily the best crafted books ever, but those ones that ride or die with us. The ones that we revisit over and over again. The ones that make us happy and provide excitement and solace and everything in between. Our Comfort Food Comics.

Recently I've been filling some essential longboxes and painfully wracking my brain as to what of my Comfort Food Comics would make the cut to be in these boxes. It's been fun narrowing down which ones bring me that special feeling I described above and adding them to the box. As I go through this journey, I thought I'd blabber a little about it as a personal record of sorts for me. Above you'll find my "Comfort Food Comics Canon" - Dave Shevlin's personal comics canon, the selections that comprise my comics DNA. Quintessentially my shit! I'll continuously update the lists in the graphics above when new or revisited picks make that difficult cut.

Below the cut I wrote a brief bit about each pick. If you want me to specifically expand on the why of a certain choice, please ask and I'll get to it quicker or expand more on it per your request!

Please note these are just the story arcs and single issues that I physically own each issue of that really lend themselves to that format and they are nestled safely in the CFC longbox. Plenty of other OGN's, runs, longer arcs, manga or other formats are also my Comfort Food Comics but don't apply here.

Long Form Stories

New Warriors Vol. 1 #40-42: Mark Bagley and Darick Robertson deliver a gorgeous looking mega epic that takes the Warriors into space and levels up Dick Rider for a spinoff solo series. They actually hyped this story up and released it and Nova #1 in a Marvel Classics Collector's Pack in the 90's. I of course own that.

The Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 1 #31-33: THE Marvel Comic. Spider-Man pushes the heavy weight of every problem life throws at him to face his responsibility. The best Lee/Ditko story.

Secret Defenders #9-10: Tom Grindberg inked by Don Hudson is one of the best penciller/inker team-ups ever. Together they made unique magic they never achieved apart. Here they draw Thunderstrike and War Machine in a team-up of 90's replacement heroes vs Nebula. It rules.

Marvel Knights 4 #1-4: Steve McNiven, despite only doing some of this series, it's covers, and some moments in Civil War, is one of my de facto Fantastic Four artists. I also love the hook of the FF going bankrupt and kicked out of their science skyscraper and what happens next. Also that Sue as a teacher, ooowhee!

The Girl Presents: Body Heat #1-3: As a teen in the oughts delving into porn comics of the era, Kevin Taylor was the GOAT. This mini collects a bunch of what I consider to be the best stuff he's ever done.

Thunderbolts Vol. 1 #155-157: My personal highpoint from maybe the best run on Tbolts. A very snarky, fun and titillating Satana is recruited to Luke Cage's merry band of misfits. Kev Walker's best work is on this run.

Detective Comics Vol. 1 #622-624: 622's copy text tells all: "There's a new Batman in Gotham City. His name is Simon Petrarch, he has supernatural powers, and he believes in killing his enemies. What happened to Bruce Wayne? Where is the Batman we all know?" John Ostrander gives us a comic within a comic as a Gotham citizen makes his own comic about Batman. Ostrander didn't get many chances to write Bats, but when he did he killed it. The only Mike McKone art I've ever enjoyed. Highlighted by Dick Sprang doing INSANE covers in 1990 that also serve as covers for the fake comic.

Action Comics #858-863: Superman and The Legion of Super-Heroes! Supes travels to the 31st Century to see it's become a perverted dystopia. Geoff Johns and Gary Frank give us a colorful, action packed blockbuster that firmly reestablishes Superman and the original Legion, as it should be.

Avengers Vol. 1 #358-359: My beloved Bob Harras 90's Jacket Avengers are whisked away to Polemachus to help Arkon and Thundra. The Steve Epting/Tom Palmer art team give us some amazing art here, including the best page of Crystal ever published.

Gen 13 Vol. 2 #13A-13C: Grunge has a dream adventure where he teams up with Archie, Betty, Veronica, The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Spawn, Bone, Madman, Maxx, Hellboy, Shi, Katchoo and Francine, Monkeyman & O'Brien, Wolverine, Tony Robbins and many more. A 90's comic industry meta joke romp.

Green Lantern Vol. 3 #48-55: Emerald Twilight/New Dawn. Hal Jordan's fall into Parallax and the debut of Kyle Rayner. Kyle is my favorite DC character and this is in contention for my favorite DC story. It's biggest failing is it is so rushed (I delve deep into why here), but amidst that fast paced chaos, DC gets it's own Magneto and it's own Spider-Man. Just the best!

The Amazing Spider-Man #498-500: Spidey is magically cast adrift outside of time. But in order to get back, he needs to relive every experience he’s ever had as he climbs his own timeline. So much to love here - Last Stand Spidey, glimpses of his whole history, John Romita Sr. drawing a reunion with Uncle Ben. The pinnacle of the JMS and JR Jr. run.

First Knife aka Protector #1-5: Arguably the best world building I've ever come across in comics. Inspired sci-fi realism story blended with Artyom Trakhanov's otherworldly, surrealist, almost cubism like style.

The Incredible Hulk Vol. 1 #402-404: Gary Frank's 90's style he employed with Marvel UK and this Hulk run is about as good as comic art could possibly get. I hate that he decided to add about a billion more lines to his gorgeous, clean art. Here he gets to draw Hulk's mindscape of villains, Juggernaut, Red Skull, and the 90's Harras Avengers. Great bits with them in these issues. God, it is good! (It drives me insane though they color Sersi correctly red in 403, then botch it and color her green in 404! ARGHH!!)

JLA Volume 1 #10-14: Rock of Ages! The best Justice League story. Morrison blends every bit of 90's DCU with his own crazy creative mind to create an alltimer. Almost a proto Final Crisis, this one is more like the awesome Saturday Morning Cartoon version of that story.

Journey into Mystery Vol. 1 #652-655: Kathryn Immonen, one of comics' most underrated creators, gave us an all too brief Sif solo book here that was one of the best Marvel books ever. This is the highlight of that run. In this one we get a Sif and Beta Ray Bill romance/horror story that meshes the new status quo of the time with their past relationship.

Sabretooth Vol. 1 #1-4: Love Sabes, love Hama, and love obscure mutant Birdy, who essentially only ever got play in this mini. This is the 90's direct to VHS action movie starring Sabretooth, Birdy, Wolverine, Mystique and Graydon Creed.

Sandman Vol. 2 #21-28: The best story in Neil Gaiman's masterpiece. The introduction of The Endless followed by Lucifer abandoning Hell and getting his revenge on Dream by giving him the key and telling him to deal with it. Gaiman's clever takes on Gods and mythology are done so well here.

Daredevil Vol. 1 #275-276: A tie in to Acts of Vengeance, my favorite Marvel Event, during my favorite run on Daredevil. That's right, this is my favorite DD story. Batshit insanity as Ol Hornhead, some of the Inhumans, and an animal rights revolutionary battle an old Ultron robot that grapples with his own existence as he kidnaps a genetically altered, indestructible bimbo who is wrestling with the same issues. Ann Nocenti man, nobody did it better.

New Avengers Vol. 1 #1-6: When I was getting back into comics in my teens after taking a long time off, this was maybe the first title I bought monthly. Spider-Man and Wolverine....AVENGERS??? The roster, the David Finch art, the whirlwind breakout to Avengers Tower to the Savage Land, all of it hooked me back in so hard. This is the clear start of the Modern Marvel Universe as we know it. I was fully on board. Nowadays I know it spits in the face of what Avengers always was and should be; and it's filled with annoying Bendis continuity mistakes and terrible dialogue, but damn I love it regardless.

Thunderstrike Vol. 1 #4-6: I could put the entire run on Thunderstrike on this list (I kinda did!) but this is my favorite arc of his short lived title. Spider-Man and Eric team up for some weird Blackwulf(remember him) and SHIELD shenanigans. Frenz's art here is amazing and we have the best jokey covers during this arc.

The Infinity Gauntlet #1-6: Starlin, Perez and Lim continue the development of Thanos into one of Marvel's first event books. You'd expect it to be a big, dumb romp but it's really an entertaining 90's Marvel snapshot with loads of tiny spectacular character moments, huge stakes, and quiet emotional depth.

Gen 13: Magical Drama Queen Roxy: As much as I love the start of Gen 13 with J. Scott Campbell and Jim Lee, Adam Warren was the best to ever work on this team. This is a great character study of Freefall as we get a scathing parody of just about everything pop culture in the late 90's in that charming, hilarious way only Warren can do.

Wolverine Vol. 2 #38-42: Storm! Albert and Elsie-Dee! Sabretooth! Lady Deathstrike! Jubilee! Forge! The Reavers! Cable! Nick Fury! All by Larry Hama and Marc Silvestri. Easily the best Wolverine comics ever made.

Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 1 #118-120: My favorite Ultimate Spidey story. The gang plus Johnny Storm and Iceman go to beach for a fun night out and Mutant shenanigans occur. This is sort of a precursor to the full house status quo of Ultimate Comics Spider-Man later, which I love dearly. I just love this big cast of teens hanging out and the fun that comes from it.

Green Lantern Vol. 3 #63-64: Parallax returns to get his ring back from Kyle and Kyle gets Hal's old Justice League pals back together to stop him.

Legion of Super-Heroes Vol. 2 #290-294: The Legion vs Darkseid and his Servants, back when using a modern day villain against the Legion was a first. This is your big boy, the best of the best. Levitz and Giffen leveling up to reach their Legend status.

Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 1 #33-38: Objectively this is probably the best story Bendis ever does with Ultimate Spidey. The Venom suit, Eddie Brock Jr., Peter's and Eddie's parents and the legacy they left their children - it's all wonderful stuff done in such a dour, moody way.

Shadow of the Batman (1985) #1-5: Baxter Stock reprints of primarily Steve Englehart's legendary Batman run with some Len Wein and some short Marshall Rogers extras. 40 pages no ads chock full of Walt Simonson, Al Milgrom, Rogers and Terry Austin art. All with new beautiful painted covers by Rogers. For me, this is the only way to experience this run.

Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen #142-143: Dabney Donovan, Cadmus mad scientist, creates a miniature planet full of "atomic liquid" denizens who are shaped by outside stimuli, in this case, horror films, which spawns a race of Jack Kirby's Universal Monsters who start to cause trouble for Jimmy Olsen and Superman, before they save the day and Superman replaces the horror films with the musical, Oklahoma! King Kirby everybody!

Batman Vol. 1 #676-681: Batman R.I.P. My favorite Bats story of all time. The culmination of Morrison's weird and wacky attempt to take the character’s entire publishing history, say everything happened, and somehow reconcile that all together and show us what Batman would really be like - The world’s greatest superhero, an extremely multifaceted man at the top of his game and surrounded by a support net of people inspired by him who he loves, always ten steps ahead of any villain with contingencies for everything.

Superman Strength #1-3: My favorite Superman story. Scott McCloud, Aluir Amancio and Terry Austin give us a tale of what makes Superman so strong. It's not his powers, it's his inner strength, because he is centered and self assured from being raised by such formative, ethical, and truly good parents. That source of strength is contrasted by relatable everyman criminal, John “Fido” Pollock, the main villain here who had the exact opposite in life. I can't do it justice here, it needs to be read.

Daredevil Vol. 1 #319-325: Fall From Grace. Years ago I read the 90's trade of this story mid November and fell in love. So every November, every Thanksgiving is Daredevil season for me. Daredevil in his new suit goes through a gauntlet of big name guest stars every issue as well as the return of Elektra from Frank Miller's mountain purgatory. This story is bursting with raw, messy enthusiasm that doesn't always work but you feel that soul and love put in and get swept away by it. Although this story is better in trade with slight edits and added pages, it NEEDED to be here for me, plus I get a fold out awesome poster this way and I have it in the format of yet another rad 90's Collector's Pack.

Thor Vol. 1 #337-340: Walter Simonson and Beta Ray Bill's debut on Thor! This one is up there with Spider-Man #31-33 as the best story Marvel has ever put out. Simonson's Thor run is arguably the best run in comics and this opening salvo is S-Tier writing and art every single page.

Detective Comics Vol. 1 #592-593: Alan Grant and Norm Breyfogle's run on Detective is a real highpoint for Batman. He described this Detective run as ” We kind of handled what Batman did on his nights off from Batman monthly.” and I think that’s so perfect. Here is all the creepy, strange, fantastical events that take place in the dingy corners of Gotham City when Batman isn’t being a Justice League member superhero. No story represents that vibe better than this two parter with weird two-parter about a fear based hallucination causing cannibal.

Fantastic Four Vol. 1 #347-349: This is my top Fantastic Four story. I never had this one growing up but we did have the trading card when I was like 4 or 5 and this was a truly mythical thing I needed to experience. Years later when I was a preteen I stole my mom's credit card and bought these issues of the internet. It did not dissapoint. The New Fantastic Four team of Wolvie, Spidey, Grey Hulk and Danny Ketch Ghost Rider will always be the coolest thing they ever did. Walt Simonson & Art Adams, how do you possibly get better than that?

Wolverine Vol. 3 #73-74: Every day of Wolverine's week is expressed in one panel showing how he has his own solo book, how he is in X-Men, how he is in X-Force, how he is cameoing in everyone else's book, etc which eventually ends with him talking to Spider-Man in a bar. It's such a fun meta way of showing how overused he is and Aaron uses it as a story point that maybe the old man is tired and needs a rest. There's also a shitty Daniel Way story in these issues but skip that.

Batman vs Predator #1-3: This has no right being as exceptional as it is. Dave Gibbons writes and BOTH Kubert brothers are on art and they skip any irony or idiocy and give us a played straight story of what happens when a Yautja drops into Gotham City. SO GOOD!

Final Crisis: Superman Beyond 3D #1-2: Superman develop 4D-vision and teams with a group of Multiversal analogues of himself to fight against a reality consuming evil vampire Monitor, Mandrakk. Their combined powers allow Superman to merge into the Superman Colossus, a giant thought robot to combat the Dark Monitor in the Monitor’s world, in a self assembling hyper story that is alive and adapts around them. A thoughtful meta narrative about the power of stories, about creators and the ongoing real life comic industry.

Luke Cage, Hero For Hire Vol. 1 #8-9: Luke Cage invades Doom's Latverian castle to get the $200 bucks he owes him. Spawning legendary one liners such as: "Where's my money, Honey?" and "Ha ha ha ha!, You are the ultimate, Cage!"

Invincible #63-64: Usually I'm not a fan of all the bloody stupidly absurd violence in Invincible, but Atom Eve vs Conquest goes hard.

Axis: Hobgoblin #1-3: Roderick Kingsley Hobgoblin is my fave Spidey villain and this mini set when he was magically inverted into being an opportunistic brand pushing hero is loads of fun with very nice art by Javier Rodriguez.

Detective Comics Vol. 1 #604-607: MUDPACK! Another Grant/Breyfogle Detective gem. The OG Clayface, who was just an old actor with some masks, recruits every subsequent Clayface that had appeared over the years to level up and take down Bats. Looker from the Outsiders guest stars to help Batman.

Thor Vol. 1 #168-169: Thor and Galactus sit down together in space to talk and Big G gives us his origin. A Stan and Jack classic.

Adventure Comics Vol. #369-370: MORDRU! His first appearance in a wonderful story. The Legion represents a dream of a brighter future all about science, progress, youth and evolution all done through a massive group of selfless, heroic kids all from different planets and races that work together as one. Mordru is the perfect Legion villain because he is the diametric opposite of all that. He is an ancient singular wizard from the past that only cares about himself and his own needs that uses evil dark magic to further his goals.

Archie vs Predator #1-4: I don't care for Alex De Campi as a creator, and I care even less for her as a person. This story succeeds in spite of her, as her questionable decisions, poor dialogue and bizarre and truly stupid ending try their hardest to ruin this. Honestly, a monkey could've written the plot for this and I'd still be on board as I just need a Yautja hunting the Archie crew with all the good vibes classic Archie comics provide. Artist Fernando Ruiz thankfully provides just that saving this crossover and making it one of my faves. He is the true heavy lifting star here and he really makes this thing work retaining the humor and idyllic, innocent charm of Archie Comics and blending it with the bloody action and gore of a Predator story. Further proof he is the key ingredient here is the sequel they do to this without him is utterly forgettable nonsense.

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight Vol. 1 #65-68: The best Joker story ever. J.M. DeMatteis tells the tale of Batman dying, which causes the Joker to go sane and what happens next.

Spider-Man: Web of Death - Amazing Spider-Man #397-398 and Spectacular Spider-Man #220-221: DeMatteis, DeFalco, Bagley, Buscema, Sienkiewicz! Easily the best Doctor Octopus story and constantly battling in my head for best Spider-Man story. Spider-Man is dying and who better to save him than his self proclaimed greatest foe, Doc Ock. A tragically poignant tale with expert characterization. Oh also it has Kaine and Stunner and Mary Jane announcing she's pregnant, so you know, it's just the best.

X-Men Vol. 2 #188-193: Rogue assembles a hand picked team to take on the new and mysterious Children of the Vault. Mike Carey's debut story arc with Chris Bachalo. This coincided with a linewide relaunch and as a newly graduated high school teen, it was a perfect personal jumping on point. Little did I know I was getting in on maybe the second best run on X-Men ever.

Kraven's Last Hunt - Web of Spider-Man #31–32, The Amazing Spider-Man #293–294, and Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #131–132: I've tried over and over again as a cynical critic to find ways to NOT hail this one as an alltimer classic, but try as I might, it is one of those much lauded stories that actually are indeed alltimer classics. DeMatteis, Zeck and McLeod dust off old lame Kraven, plug him into a sequel to a Captain America/Spidey Marvel Team-Up issue, and somehow make a masterpiece.

Wolverine Vol. 2 #7-8: Joe Fixit Hulk and Patch Wolverine have to team up in Madripoor by Chris Claremont and Big John Buscema. Awesome.

Thor vol. 1 #447-448: Eric Masterson Thor had such a fun little friendship with The Absorbing Man. In this one Absorbing Man's love, Titania, wants to go back to crime so he calls Eric to stage a fake rumble to trick and pacify her. But things go sideways when Spider-Man gets involved.

Superman: Blackout - Action Comics Vol 1 #671, Adventures of Superman Vol 1 #484-485, Superman Vol 2 62, Superman: The Man of Steel Vol 1 6: I wrote more in-depth on this one here. Superman loses his memory on a tropical island and is to be wed to the island princess. A perfect slice of the amazing Triangle Era with killer art from Jurgens and The Bog.

Superman/Batman Vol. 1 #60-61: A dreamworld where the Justice League and the Teen Titans and their villains get amalgamated with killer art by Francis Manapul.

Rival Schools #1-2: I love Capcom's video game Rival Schools. I love comic creator Corey Lewis. Put them together and you get just about the perfect comic made just for me. The only negative is they never published issue 3.

Convergence: Shazam #1-2: After reading through all of the Golden age Fawcett Captain Marvel comics, I've come to regard DC's version of him as a bit of a letdown. I'm always searching for that modern day high I got from those classic tales. This series by the S-Tier creative team of Jeff Parker and Doc Shaner is the closest I've ever gotten to that feeling again.

The Demon Vol. 3 #26-29: Dwayne McDuffie and Val Semeiks deliver us one of the smartest, funniest, pull no punches parody of American politics as Etrigan runs for President. This one is in contention as my favorite DC Comics story of all time.

X-Men: The Asgardian Wars - New Mutants Special & Uncanny X-Men Annual #9: The New Mutants and Storm get transported to Asgard and integrated into their mythology and culture. The X-Men eventually to join to get them back. I don't know why but the combo of Asgard and the X-Men goes together better than sea salt and caramel. Easily my favorite X-Men story. Another Art Adams masterpiece.

New X-Men Vol. 2 #42-42: Chris Yost and Craig Kyle's run on New X-Men is in my Top 10 for Marvel and this quiet story set in between two massive upheavals gives us a genuine tale of teen emotion, trauma and sweetness with inspiring and whimsical art by Skottie Young. I love these issues so godamn much.

Ben Reilly: Spider-Man #1-5: In an era of (GOOD LORD WHY AND HOW?!) 20 or so years of pretty terrible Spider-Man comics, Marvel blessed us by getting J.M. DeMatteis to revisit Ben Reilly for an untold tale perfectly nestled during his brief time as Spider-Man. I won't spoil it but he manages to take a forgotten, height of excess 90's character and give them a poignant, spectacular story juxtaposed against Ben, in the usual psychology filled DeMatteis way.

Justice League United #11-16: A very brief magnificent run where Stargirl, Equinox, Animal Man and Alanna Strange recruit whoever they need from across the DC Universe to do the job they need to do. This was a title DC should have published in perpetuity but alas it barely survived two arcs. Still some of the best ever done by Jeff Parker, Travel Foreman and more. Check out the digital only "Sneak Peek" they released to start this series. Comics don't get much better than that.

Spider-Man: Revelations - Astonishing Spider-Man(UK) #56-57: Revelations is a Top 10 Spider-Man story and I could rave about it all day. The return of Norman Osborn in a full team effort by all the writers, editors and artists, it's a perfect ending to The Clone Saga and an amazing jumping off point for the Spidey line. But why a UK reprint of the story in here? Well besides the new exclusive covers, #57 contains a fantastic written epilogue by Peter Parker only published here.

Webspinners: Tales of Spider-Man #17-18: It's honestly hard to try to think of a better duo in comics than Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz. Here we get them making SUCH solid little story revisiting aspects of their run on Amazing with some Doc Ock thrown in. There's nothing flashy or important here but it's just the pinnacle of what Spider-Man comics should be.

John Constantine, Hellblazer #7-8: A haunting, chilling tale of the love between a fishmonger and a mermaid and the disparity between their perceptions of the romance. This one doesn't really "comfort" me but it's so creative and sweet as well as disgusting and terrifying, and that's why it sticks with me so much.

Beyond #1-6: McDuffie never really made a bad comic during his all too short life. This one absolutely RULES! The "Beyonder" gives us a new Secret War and McDuffie throws together some 2000s underused Marvel characters(at the time) in The Hood, Al Kraven, Gravity and the Mac Gargan Venom (Still the only time the character actually used a scorpion tail with the Symbiote. How was that not a permanent thing?) alongside some similarly underused classic characters in Hank Pym, Firebird, Medusa and the Michael Collins Deathlok. A perfect example of "there are no bad characters, just bad writers".

Masters of the Universe Vol. 1 #1-3: Before the cartoon and the general established lore of He-Man was established, DC Comics was able to publish a few stories where they sort of filled in their own version of that mythology. They went with more of a Conan/barbarian serious style and I find that take so cool.

Spider-Man: The Lost Years #0-3: Arguably the best "Spider-Man" comic ever. DeMatteis and John Romita Jr. just GO SO HARD giving us a gritty and deep story of Ben Reilly, Kaine and all the other people caught up in their tragic lives on the road.

Dark Horse Extra #1-7: These were big foldup like 4 pages newspaper comics. Madman, Concrete, a little of everything Dark Horse published. The Madman story is a treat(and recently reprinted in the Library Editions!). But the draw here for me is a fun Art Adams Monkeyman and O'Brien story only published here.

Magneto Vol. 4 #1-4: An earnest psychological exploration of all the various personalities Magneto has displayed throughout his comic history in the usual DeMatteis way. That it's done in a genuinely well told story set during his time as the New Mutants Headmaster is just a bonus.

Young Justice (2011) #20-25: I was a fan of the Young Justice cartoon when it came out and recently watched the entirety of the series and found myself falling deeply in love with Greg Weisman's version of the DC Universe. This tie-in series swiveled from shallow kid's comic to fun fill in the gaps for the show. But no arc was ever as deep or essential as this one which gave us a great prequel set before Season 2 expanding and fleshing out the new cast and the post time skip dynamics. AMAZING Nightwing moments, Brainiac, Weisman baby Kylstar, a HUGE cast and so so much more all with wonderful art by Christopher Jones.

Avengers: Ultron Forever: Al Ewing and Alan Davis give us a time twisting tale reminiscent of Avengers Forever as a time plucked team of modern day Vision and Black Widow, future Danielle Cage Captain America, just a little future Jane Foster Thor, the end of Simonson's run Thor, Jim Rhodes Iron Man, and the unrefined original Hulk take on future All Father Ultron.

Green Lantern Vol. 3 #146-150: Judd Winick's time with Kyle Rayner is a real mixed bag for me. Winick tended to write everyone like they were on a 90's sitcom all desperately trying to be the youngest, coolest, hippest person in the room often to the detriment of the story they were in. But there is no denying that this arc really sings. Kyle gets godlike powers and and helps his friends and the world in a revitalization of the GL line, clashes with Superman, chats with Alan Scott, and finally meets his real Dad.

Action Comics Vol. 2 #36-39: Besides Morrison, the only other time I enjoyed New 52 Superman was Greg Pak's brief time with the character. In this one he returns to Smallville to find it a warped, zombie nightmare dream world with an otherworldly tentacled horror possessing Lana Lang. A great character study of Clark wrapped in a horror story.

The Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 1 #315-317: You can't beat Michelinie and McFarlane together, especially when Venom was involved. This is the second ever Venom story and to me the best ever done with the character. Venom is a charming, funny madman who poses a real terrifying threat to Peter. This is also one of the few stories that actually uses the relationship between the Symbiote and Peter.

Detective Comics #456-457: These are here for the Elongated Man backup stories. The plot involves Ralph getting kidnapped and his wife Sue, the superior character, takes center stage as Elongated Woman. It's as extremely silly and fun as you'd expect. The art is by Kurt Schaffenberger and he makes Sue look so damn cute. I don't know if anyone has ever been better at drawing women in comics than Schaffenberger.

Superman/Batman #79-80: At the time this was like the first mention of DC One Million in years and it was such a delight to see a return to that era and it's wonderful characters. There's a two page spread in here of the time traveling villain bouncing around time and seeing the various Superman/Batman teams of thos eras from throughout DC publishing history and it brings SO much magical comics comfort to me. It's so cool. Chris Roberson, even with such a small sampling, is one of the best Superman writers ever.

Spider-Girl Vol. 1 #96-100: I previously had just #100 on this list because that issue is an oversized anniversary special featuring the amazing climax to this storyline AS WELL AS a reprint of issues #27 and #53, two of the best single issues in the run. But that';s not all you also get a cover gallery, a Spider-Girl villains section, and character info file pin-ups from previous issues. Obviously one of the best single issue packages ever. But I recently reread the entire tale preceding this and realized that one of my favorite moments ever in comics, Hobgoblin escaping from jail in his MC2 comic debut, was from this same story arc in #97. And it's not just those issues, the entire story arc has it all, it's a PACKED celebration of this entire legendary series and the Spider-Man franchise as a whole.

Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 1 #97-105: I was kind of shocked how much Ultimate Spider-Man is making the cut for these CFC boxes. For years I had disregarded it as a thing in my past and as just more Bendis nonsense. I reread all of it in 2023 and was so happy to see I still love it as an adult and A TON of it still holds up, just as I remember, giving me those same comfort food feelings I felt then. I was OBSESSED with it as a teen and it was the book I kept picking up ravenously as I got through high school and entered adulthood. I have vivid memories of buying these issues from my local shop my first year of college. I remember I hated the idea of an Ultimate Clone Saga but was quickly proven wrong as every single issue had a MIND BLOWING final reveal that just kept ramping up the action and stakes. Rereading it now, even though it's one of the longer arcs in the run, it's surprisingly not too decompressed like the usual Bendis story, and delivers some great story moments that radically smash the status quo for the better. I also really enjoy issue #100 with it's extras celebrating the entire run up to that point.

Silk Vol. 3 #1-5: Maybe it's because Maurene Goo is a successful novelist, but this series has such a professional polish to it that is lacking a lot in comics. The writing is so on point from the overall plot, to the snarky jokes, to the character interplay, to Cindy's inner monologue; all masterful work that entertains in such a charming way. This series also feels so additive to Cindy's little world as well as the Marvel Universe as a whole with new frenemy Saya Ishii and her familial ties. Takeshi Miyazawa is an artist that I've yet to find a line drawn by him I don't enjoy. I truly wish Goo was writing a long ongoing for Silk.

Darkwing Duck (Boom! Studios) #5-8: Negaduck and Magica De Spell team up to take down Darkwing by bringing all the Darkwings from across the Multiverse together. All capped off by the return of Paddywhack. This is my favorite Darkwing Duck story ever across all DD media. It has everything!!

Daredevil Vol. 1 #254-256: I'll be honest, it's extremely difficult to not just place the entirety of Ann Nocenti's Daredevil run in these boxes. This is another alltimer in a run of alltimers here with the introduction of Typhoid Mary and the brutal, toxic relationship her and DD share. Nocenti's dialogue, inner monologues and character actions are so weird but also so natural, so REAL!! I absolutely love how she translates manic, fractured human behavior and the messy gross truths of real life into the usually fine tuned scripting of superhero comics.

X-Force Vol. 3 #7-10: Craig Kyle and Chris Yost rank only behind Claremont and Mike Carey as the best X-Men writers ever for me. We didn't know how good we had it with them, as they banged out incredible story after incredible story bouncing around the X-Franchise over the years. I loved this messy, violent X-Force relaunch they helmed. It took the best bits of their New X-Men work prior and blended it with decades of past X continuity; dug up and given fresh new paint with some of the most staggering stakes the mutants ever faced. This arc was my favorite of the series. There's some wonderful New X-Men kids content here with some amazing X-23 and Elixir character work. There was such good development for all the members really, as well as the fun as hell introduction of Domino and Vanisher to the team. Each issue had a different character giving a narration inner monologue that felt so character authentic. Yost and Kyle always really nailed staying true to how each character spoke, acted and even thought. I deeply miss that. Mike Choi was an artist I loved back then and it was great to see him continue his work with X-23 here. This arc is probably his finest hour.

Black Adam: The Dark Age #1-6: I was such a sucker for the early Oughts development of Black Adam, usually by Geoff Johns and his stellar work throughout JSA and 52(We don't talk about World War 3). But as great as Johns' work with Adam is, I always feel he truly believes the guy is a hero, sure he's got his problems but he will always be the hero when Johns writes him. For my money, Adam is DC's Dr. Doom instead. They are both noble, royal souls that live by some absurd code of honor and are capable of truly heroic acts, but no matter what, WAYYY deep deep down, they are vain, bitter shitheads more in love with themselves than ever truly being the people they claim to be. And really, that's why we love them so much because they are the same messy people we are filled with all the shades of grey. Peter Tomasi's handle on Adam in this series is exactly that, and it's why this series is so damn fun. Well, that and Doug Mahnke's absolutely fantastic art. Mahnke has been spinning gold for 3 decades now but this may be the pinnacle of his career. This is also one of those rare miniseries that isnt trying to be some new reader friendly, evergeen, prestige collection that is sold forever. This is a series that will ABSOLUTELY lose you if you werent reading DC Comics weekly for the years prior as it drops you in and assumes you know all the events and stories and character relationships Adam has been dealing with. It also has no concrete ending, as all types of dangling plot threads are teased for the future, wherever they may pop up. I LOVE stories like this. In the age we live in now, everything has to be new reader friendly or tie in to a movie or lead into a new series or stand alone so we can sell the collected edition. This is real superhero comics, a story that exists in the LIVING, BREATHING DC Universe between all the events and ongoings and everything else. Just a continuing piece of the woven tapestry of the magic that is these decades old superhero universes. I MISS THIS! Oh, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the comedy gold of "Chocolate Egg Cream". One of the best comic moments ever.

Spider-Man: Grim Hunt - The Kraven Saga & Amazing Spider-Man #634-637: Since One More Day permanently ruined Spider-Man comics, I can think of only ONE truly great Spider-Man story that has been published and Grim Hunt is it. Joe Kelly is one of Spidey's best scribes ever and he weaves such a dark, thrilling tale of the resurrection of Kraven the Hunter, that no matter how much I SHOULD hate it, I ended up loving it. Kelly has such a great handle on the Kraven family's characterization all the way to the Chameleon and it's so fun seeing them all play off each other. Kaine, the Kravinoffs, the Spider-Women, hell even "Ezekiel"; he utilizes them all brilliantly. He writes a "dark" Spider-Man that somehow doesn't make you cringe. Michael Lark and Marco Checchetto's art is gorgeous and sets the mood so well. It's baffling, TRULY BAFFLING that this story ends up an alltimer, BUT IT DOES! A bonus in these issues is they all have a backup story of Kaine and Kraven having their own Kraven's Last Hunt back in the day by J.M. DeMatteis and Max Fiumara. It is an exceptional story, as expected of DeMatteis, but WOW! These issues all together represent some of the best ever published for Spidey.

X-Men: Pixie Strikes Back: I am in love with Kathryn Immonen's writing. She writes in a way that's very similar to Ann Nocenti, as I described above. It's a bit more fun, more entertaining but may be even more manic and strange than Nocenti. Immonen is WEIRD and I love it. Everything she writes feels so real. Have you ever overhead a conversation in public and you only hear snippets? You have no context, no understanding of the people or the meaning behind what they're saying. Sure, you may get pieces of what they say or follow some of it so you think you know, but you don't truly know. You're stepping in mid way through, hearing a slice of these people's lives. You're an observer, not a real participant. This is how Kathryn Immonen writes. This is not a perfectly crafted piece of prose manufactured for the entertainment and understanding of the reader to sell a product. This is true writing of the characters as if they are real, as if you are overhearing and getting a glimpse of their lives. A perfect example of this is when Mercury and Armor talk about the inane nonsense of Big Bird and Sesame Street while crawling through a duct escaping from being kidnapped by demons. Kathryn Immonen IS MAGIC. She opens a scrying pool into another reality for the briefest of moments so we can interact with Pixie and the New X-Men kids for a few issues. I deeply treasure the opportunity to experience that magic.

Ant-Man Vol. 2 #1-5: Zeb Wells gives us an endearing, evergreen story about the lovable "loser" that's truly a hero. Dylan Burnett’s art is dynamic and excels at facial expressions that add to the story in such a special way. Colorist Mike Spicer makes said art POP in such a way that you feel like you’re a kid at the grocery store filling a plastic bag with every bright, sweet and sour bulk candy they have to offer. It smacks you in the face and stays with you. The story relies on obscure past continuity while moving things forward, takes you on a tour of the entire Marvel Universe and hits on movie synergy while not being beholden to it. This is an alltimer.

Black Widow and The Marvel Girls #1-4: If Paul Tobin's name is on a comic, you're gonna have a good time. Eternal law of the universe right there and especially for this series perfectly crafted for all ages from the most devoted Marvel Zombie to the person who's never read a comic. Widow teams up with The Enchantress, Wasp, Carol Danvers and Storm all in one off stories throughout an ambiguous Marvel history with art by some of my favorites like Salva Espin, Takeshi Miyazawa, and Jacopo Camagni.

Avengers Vol.1 #256-257: Roger Stern's run with John Buscema and Tom Palmer is my favorite Avengers run and issue 257 where we get a peek into a day at Avengers Mansion where Black Knight works out, The Wasp wears skimpy 80's workout gear, Hercules proudly rejoins, Starfox tries to explain he's not creepy, and Wasp is later elected Avengers Leader has ALWAYS stood out to me as MY issue of Avengers. The larger continuing plot where the team ventures to The Savage Land to fight Terminus alongside Ka-Zar and Shanna(complete in an even skimpier outfit than Jan), AS WELL as Monica Rambeau in space vs Nebula is just an added bonus.

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #16-20: Venom!!! The magic of Batman is how he works in literally any story you place him. From the Batgod of Morrison to the drug addicted all too real human of this one. I LOVE this take on a very relatable, new to the job Bats who fails to save a little girl so he ends up juicing so it won't happen again. Sadly this leads him to become a sad, savage, pathetic wretch of a man and we must witness the depths he falls to and his eventual climb back to the top. The continued development of Santa Prisca and the debut of the drug Venom are nice nerd bonuses to this brutal tale of men and the power they seek and how the misuse of said power can make them monsters. There's some LEGENDARY art in these issues from the absurd dream team assemblage of Trevor Von Eeden, Russell Braun, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez and Steve Oliff.

Girl Crazy #1-3: When I first started reading this Gilbert Hernandez story I was so damn lost, utterly bewildered, massively confused but also titillated and intrigued! The art was some of the cleanest, most beautiful I'd ever seen, and the manic story peppered with 1950's, jungle and future aesthetics forced me to read on! I'm glad I did as the biting commentary, genius science fiction and heaving breasts all fell into place just like Kitten's fake boobs fell into place into her butt. I ended up LOVING the wild and wacky coming of age story revolving around death, freedom, sisterhood, resurrection and most importantly of all not being afraid of expressing your true self.

Titans Sell-Out Special!, New Titans #93: Titans Sell Out!!! I really enjoy this era of team of New Titans. In a money pinch and on a break in Hollywood, the Titans license their images to the movie and merchandising industry which results in an embarrassing The Teeny Titans cartoon they can't stand. It's incredibly entertaining as they actually devote part of the comic to the cartoon, then show us the comic adaptation of the cartoon. It's extremely funny and meta and I love every instance we got of The Teeny Titans. Both of these issues also contain some rare Adam Hughes art, first as a photo scrapbook of their visit to Hollywood then as a parody of an erotic adult magazine.

Classic X-Men #41-42: This gives me some of the phenomenal Dark Phoenix storyline issues but the actual main reason these are in the CFC Canon is the chilling and brutal backup stories featuring Mr. Sinister. This is right before the new backup material in Classic X-Men was stopped altogether as well as Claremont's departure from the X-books. It's a frequently overlooked story that starts to dig into the actual origin and story of what Claremont actually wanted to do with Sinister. Here we see Sinister in control of the orphanage where Cyclops is as a boy and his constant manipulation of his life. It's a truly horrifying and unsettling story filled with so much pathos and development for Scott. Some of Claremont's best work was these backup stories. It's always been cool to me that while Claremont hints at things here he never puts in something truly contradictory or set in stone to his original vision for Sinister, so this story isn't ignored or explained away later, it's woven into continuity just from a different angle.

X-Men Archives Featuring Captain Britain #1-7: A 90's deluxe reprint series of Captain Britain's Marvel UK adventures by Dave Thorpe, Alan Moore and Alan Davis. Sometimes I honestly think the Jasper's Warp storyline that makes up most of this series may be the best Marvel storyline of all time. It's certainly always up for contention as my favorite comic story of all time. It has everything that makes comics great. Thorpe and Davis' initial Multiverse setup and relaunch of the character starts off so additive with the iconic costume redesign and introduction of Jim Jaspers and Saturnyne. It soon gets real dumb, real fast but thankfully some behind the scenes drama led to Thorpe leaving and a young and wildly creative non jaded Alan Moore coming on the book. He takes the ingredients Thorpe bundled together and turns them into unparalleled fine dining. Without missing a step, it becomes a dark sci-fi comic alltimer, almost a proto version of all the stories Moore does after this. All the usual brilliant Moore tropes, hell all of the more nuanced and mature storytelling comics tropes from the 80's and up are done here in such a masterful way. It's always shocking to me this one is still quietly underrated as it's influence is still being felt in media today. The magic is it's not dated and it is in many aspects way better than all the similar stories done after. I remember reading this one my first year of college and being blown away, my mind now open to how truly amazing comics could be. I'm pleased to see that feeling hasn't gone away upon rereads. GOD, IT'S GOOD!!

Magik Vol. 1 #1-4: When I got back into comics in my late teens, back before I first knew what a torrent was, wayyyy before readcomiconline existed, all my comic reading was done by whatever vestiges of the 90's survived one family move or whatever I'd find in a bookstore. I'd fallen in love with the X-Men fully and got by with whatever trades were coming out but when I saw a footnote in an issue about a random Magik series I never knew existed, I hopped online and it was one of my first ever online comic purchases as a teen. Newkadia I believe. Magik has always been a fave of mine, really only getting beat out by Rogue, Wolvie and Mags as my favorite X character. I couldn't believe such an obscure character really got her own mini back then. Now, Claremont always made the X-Men kinky and full of suffering but JESUS, this mini cranked it up to 11. It's a brutal and horrifying tale but it is also DEEPLY AWESOME!! Ilyana is FUCKED UP. There's so much depth to her character provided here that makes her such a fascinating and complex character. I love her and this series so damn much.

New Mutants Vol. 1 #18-20: In the early Oughts I was reading New Mutants for the first time as they released New Mutants Classic trades. The sporadic releases of the first two volumes with Bob McLeod's adequate but largely un-fantastic work on the series was fine, but I found myself a bit bored by it all. When the third volume finally came out with Bill Sienkiewicz's work my mind exploded. Head, gone. Bits of brain matter everywhere. Suddenly this cookie cutter series that sometimes put me to sleep was a transcendent work of art pushing the boundaries of the medium. WHAT??? The Demon Bear Saga here is the definite high point of the run and the entire volume. I can't even count how many times I've pored over the art in these ones. The weird ass story from Claremont combined with the experimental art by Sienkiewicz blend so well to make this alltimer.

Books of Magic Vol. 1 #1-4: I got this story in trade form along with all of Sandman from my oldest brother back when I was 18 or so and I'll be forever grateful that he opened up such a world to me. At that point I hadn't really gotten into much of DC besides the usual classics and this gave me a peek into how charming and special and full of depth the DCU was. This is the story JK Rowling ripped off for Harry Potter where a young bespectacled, black haired boy is revealed to be a magical chosen one and suddenly leaves his normal British life behind and is swept off to the world of magic. I didn't know many of the worlds and characters presented within when I first read this but I was soon captivated by how amazingly cool the magic side of DC was, and in turn this led me to becoming a full on DC fan for life hunting down more and more comics from this dark, mysterious corner of that universe. This is an extremely special one that has stuck with me for years as I often find myself thinking about random panels from it such as the Helmet of Fate demanding to be worn by a reluctant host body.

Daredevil Vol. 1 # 262-263, 265: Ol Hornhead deals with Inferno! More from Nocenti's run with JR Jr. on here. I told you it was going to be hard not putting their full run in these CFC boxes. Nocenti seems to be the only one who actually GOT Inferno and how fucked up it would be if New York City got overrun and possessed by demons. It's an absurdist dark comedy nightmare she presents herein. Years ago reading this I found it silly how she wrote the regular citizens barely caring or reacting to the horror around them but seeing where our world is now and how fucked it is and how unaffected people are by the grind and insanity of life, I fully believe she presents the most realistic shit ever in these comics. The last issue where DD just silently runs around absolutely beating the shit out of demons, then tries to pick up some trash to make things better, then sits and has a beer and cheers to NYC being the greatest city on Earth is the most brilliant perfect thing ever. Life and all of it's horrible happenings will try to kill you every single day, but you gotta grind and along the way do your small part to better the world and your soul, and find time to sit back and catch a quiet moment for yourself to smile and take it all in and love it, suffering and all.

Batman Vol. 3 #36-37: Tom King's Batman is a mess of a traumatized writer grappling with issues he should be dealing with in therapy but instead does through a comic, editorial meddling, grand aspirations that were never going to be allowed to happen, and a few gems along the way that are some of the best Batman comics ever. It's an infuriating, stupid run that I hate with rare moments I absolutely love. It is maddening, like most of Tom King's output. This story is one of those few gems I love. Presenting Superman, Batman and their respective partners, Catwoman and Lois Lane, as a normal pair of buddies and lovers in the most unusual world gives us such a fun story to work with. Add to this the incredibly sexy art of Clay Mann, which is always a sumptuous treat, and you get an alltimer.

Bram Stoker's Dracula #1-4: I love this movie. It's a 90's cultural touchstone that I can remember being SUCH a big deal thing in my hazy kid mind. It's not actually a very good movie but it also is one of the best movies. This is the magic of superb costume design and set design. An emphasis on practical effects and mood and atmosphere. The bizarre cast which blends legend Anthony Hopkins with the baffling choices of young Keanu and Winona, and the wild card payoff of Gary Oldman as Dracula. The whole movie is a tremendously soulful vibe where you all it's shortcomings don't matter when everything feels so well done with a real creative effort you can actually FEEL and appreciate behind every aspect of making the film. It's a rare thing I dearly miss. And that brings us to this comic adaptation. Like I said, cultural touchstone, so of course this gets a 90's adaptation, but just like the movie we get Roy Thomas, MIKE MIGNOLA, and John Nyberg bringing that same soulful creative mastery to this project. I often regard this as Mignola's greatest work, from adapting such a sprawling movie complete with actor likenesses that are instantly recognizable but also definitively his style, to in many ways improving on the execution of scenes, movement and story from the film. A failing card company's comic division puts out a masterpiece of a 1990's movie. It makes NO SENSE we got this wonderful comic. I own the polybagged versions complete with trading cards for the film, which is a charming bonus.

Dragon Ball Part 2 #5-15: The 21st World Martial Arts Tournament Saga!!! Easily my favorite story arc from the OG Dragon Ball. It's such a perfect synthesis of the gag manga and perfect shonen fight manga spectrums of Dragon Ball. A guy who's fighting style is being disgusting and smelling bad, a woman who uses gender stereotypes and her own sexuality as weapons, a dinosaur monster thing, Goku, Krillin, Master Roshi in disguise parodying Jackie Chan, an honorable warrior fighting for his poor village - it's just the perfect mix of serious and silly and I love it so so much.

Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1 #462-465: Chris Claremont does a mini Excalibur reunion with Psylocke and Rachel Summers, as well as Alan Davis for the first two issues before we get Chris Bachalo and the House of M Universe for the last two issues. This is Claremont finally getting his hands on all the Marvel UK Dave Thorpe/Alan Moore characters and having a ball. This was actually the first place I encountered those characters and I was so into it I tracked down the original stuff and just fell in love. I love how Claremont blends his own continuing run with those old elements, the Excalibur stuff and his own fun take on the House of M. All with art by Alan Davis AND Chris Bachalo?? It's a bizarre amalgamation of decades of Marvel Mutant stories and I just love it.

Generation NeXt #1-4: As much as I lament the fact that this mini completely derailed the momentum of the launch of Generation X by popping in only 4 issues in the fledgling ongoing series, it may well be worth it for this PERFECT story. Easily the best material from my beloved Age of Apocalypse. This is the bleakest, most cynical, most appropriate reflection of that dark alternate reality. I also consider this to be the pinnacle of the Chris Bachalo/Mark Buckingham art team, and nearly everything they ever did together is solid gold, so that's saying something.

Dragon Ball Part 1 #2-3: I prefer the original DB over the latter DBZ era and I love this fun early arc of Goku and Bulma bonding and starting their grand adventure and meeting Master Roshi, uncensored Bulma pulling up her dress and all, here in the Viz floppies.

Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1 #172-173: The X-Men in Japan for Wolverine's wedding. One of my alltime fave X-Men stories and the best of the Claremont/Paul Smith run. Rogue proving herself to the team and bonding with Wolvie in an iconic team-up. Yukio unleashing Storm's punk side. Maddy Pryor entering the bizarre world of the X-Men. Mastermind behind the scenes being a dick. Just sublime.

Resurrection of Magneto #1-4: I wasn't sure what to make of this series as it is mired in the terrible output of the end of the Krakoa era but I was pleasantly surprised to find it to be a fine exploration of Magneto and Storm as characters tying into decades of past obscure continuity as well as recent nostalgia minis Marvel has put out for the characters. What made it become part of the CFC Canon though was the work done with the Shadow King, confirming connections if the reader so choose for that character that I have been eternally clamoring for.

Single Issues

Spider-Man: The Parker Years: My favorite comic ever.

Green Lantern Vol. 3 #59: My second favorite comic ever.

Spider-Boy #1: My third favorite comic ever and easily the best Amalgam Comic. When DC and Marvel crossed over they smushed together and made Amalgam Comics. While some creators didn't quite understand the assignment, Karl Kesel and Mike Wieringo absolutely did! It's a weird time in the 90's and Ben Reilly is Spider-Man so they blended him with Kon-El the clone Superboy. It's a super strange pairing but it allows Kesel to go hog wild with Cadmus stuff and make such novel creative choices to make the unique blend of characters work so well. Every panel of this implies and develops the larger fake Amalgam Universe in such an entertaining way.

Marvel Two-In-One Vol. 1 #86: My fourth favorite comic ever. The Thing and Sandman stop fighting and sit down to have a beer and talk.

Hector Plasm: De Mortuis: My fifth favorite comic ever.

Godzilla vs Barkley: An absurd tie-in to a 1992 Nike commercial, this comic has a young Charles Barkley fan with a magic Silver Dollar, give said Dollar to Chuck, who he describes as "Earth's Greatest Warrior", so he can magically grow to Godzilla size to stop Godzilla. Charles does this by playing one on one in the Grand Canyon. It's so godamn stupid and so godamn AMAZING!!!

Marvel Tales: The New Fantastic Four: This is just a packed single issue reprint of Fantastic Four Vol. 1 #347-349 with all the extras from the TPB. A really cool done in one package. I appreciate these new Marvel Tales that Marvel is putting out. I recommend they take some of my picks for future releases!

Legionnaires Vol. 1 #59: I love the 90's "Archie" Legion and nothing exemplified their unique charm more than the downtime issues, like this one, where they'd go to the beach, or go on dates, or deal with solo stuff or regular life problems.

Age of Apocalypse featuring the X-Men #1: The 2005 revival of my beloved Age of Apocalypse event is largely a very stupid mess where writer C.B. "Akira Yoshida" Cebulski seems to have never even read the original event, BUT we did get this anniversary oneshot out of it with a bunch of cool pin-ups and short untold tales style stories from that world. The best is the Scott Lobdell and Alvin Lee story.

The Amazing Spider-Man #300: Maybe the best anniversary issue ever. The definition of a PERFECT single issue. A tight single story that manages to fit in a ton of turmoil for Peter Parker as we get all in one the origin of Venom, an eerie creeping suspense story, a knockdown slugfest, and the return of the red and blue costume.

Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps Special: My memory is fuzzy but at the time this came out, I was only reading DC Comics by trade. That finally changed here. I can still remember people losing their minds over the final page on the CBR forums. Not only Sinestro but also Cyborg Superman, Parallax, Superboy Prime AND The Anti-Monitor??? I was floored. These were all the big bads from all the evergreen DC collections I had been reading. Absolutely unbelievable levels of hype!! I immediately downloaded a scanned copy and have been reading DC Comics weekly since. This one is still so special to me, this is THE comic that got me to follow DC live and religiously.

LCSD 2018 Cheryl Blossom #1: Cherly Blossom is my favorite Archie girl. Originally Betty & Veronica #320 - the first appearance of Cheryl Blossom, where she shows up and immediately starts stripping on the beach, was in the CFC box until I found this neat little oneshot collection of early Cheryl stories which reprints "Dare to be Bare" from Betty & Veronica #320, "Fast & Loose" from Betty & Veronica #322, "Which is Rich" from Archie #323, and "It Seams Sew Sad" from Archie's T.V. Laugh-Out #90.

Batman Adventures - Mad Love: Nothing really beats when Bruce Timm does interior sequential comic art, and this is probably the best he ever did. Paul Dini and Timm make a comic tie-in to the legendary Batman the Animated Series that is SO GOOD they later adapt it in as an episode.

Marvel Holiday Special #1: I have distinct memories of getting this when I was VERY young while out with my Mom on errands and looking through it (I don't even think I could read yet) while I waited for her to get her hair done or something. Even as like a 4 year old, Art Adams's artwork called out to me; that cover and the value of getting Spidey, Ghost Rider, the X-Men and everyone else for the price of one issue? It was a must to toddler me. Looking at it now as an adult, although it has stiff competition from the 92 Holiday Special #2, this one is still the best of the Marvel Holiday anthologies, packed with so many fun little Holiday stories from so many top creators.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Vol. 1 #8 Remaster: I've never read Cerebus and I think Dave Sim has lost his mind nowadays and sucks but I absolutely love this incredibly weird Ninja Turtles/Cerebus crossover. It makes no sense to me why this is my favorite Mirage Turtles issue. Maybe I just love Renet, who knows?! There is just such a joyful, authentic feeling of hungry, hard working indie creators of the 80's just jamming together to make something silly and fun they wanted to do in this one. I was pleased to see a rerelease of it in 2023 with a nice new cover.

Jughead Double Digest #195: The new lead story in this digest has Jughead attending the Wing Fest in Buffalo, NY. I am a Buffalo, NY native who has lived here all my life and I was shocked how many very inside Buffalo cameos and references that this story contains. I love it.

Superman #654: Lois and Clark’s “Special Day” – the first time that he as Superman held Lois in his arms.

Batman #400: Doug Moench, Steve Lightle, George Perez, Paris Cullins, Bill Sienkiewicz, Art Adams, Tom Sutton, Steve Leialoha, Joe Kubert, Ken Steacy, Rick Leonardi, Brian Bolland, John Byrne, Bruce Patterson, Larry Mahlstedt, Terry Austin, Ricardo Villagran, Karl Kesel, Adrienne Roy, John Costanza, Tom Orzechowski & Andy Kubert - ALL OF THEM DOING INTERIOR SEQUENTIAL PAGES!!!

Spectacular Spider-Man #200: DeMatteis and Sal Buscema bring us the stunning conclusion to the greatest Spider-Man run ever.

The Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 1 #328: Mr. Fixit Hulk vs Cosmic Powers Spider-Man, during Acts of Vengeance, drawn by Todd McFarlane. Just staggering how much this one is all my shit.

Ultimate Spider-Man Annual #1: Ultimate Kitty Pryde and Peter Parker 4Eva!!!! One of the best comics ever. Kitty and Pete go on a date in this perfect little slice of teen love.

DC Comics Presents: Harley Quinn: a 100 Page Spectacular collecting BATMAN: HARLEY QUINN #1, JOKER'S ASYLUM II: HARLEY QUINN #1, and stories from BATMAN: GOTHAM KNIGHTS #14, COUNTOWN #10, BATMAN GOTHAM KNIGHTS #30 and BATMAN BLACK AND WHITE(2013) #1. The main draw here for me is the Joker's Asylum story with art by Joe Quinones, which is my favorite Harley Quinn story of alltime. Add in more Quinones, from the Black & White story, as well as some Bruce Timm with the origin file from Countdown, and you've got one of the best Harley oneshots ever.

The Batman Adventures Annual #1: A star studded anthology of various Batman rogues featuring the work of Paul Dini, Bruce Timm, Mike Parobeck, Matt Wagner, Dan DeCarlo, Klaus Janson, John Byrne and Rick Burchett. Nearly every issue of Batman Adventures is great but these issues full of Dini, Timm and other legends are on another level.

Spider-Boy Team-Up #1: Karl Kesel brings us a Spider-Boy sequel which dare I say could be better than the first, this time with Roger Stern helping to write and absolutely breathtaking art from Ladronn. The fun part of this one is they smush together The Legion of Super-Heroes and The Guardians of the Galaxy and it serves as a hilariously fun parody poking fun at all the various different versions of these teams that have existed.

Best of DC Blue Ribbon Digest #61: The Best of 1985's DC Comics! A beautiful little snapshot of 80's DC as you get Swamp Thing's "Anatomy Lesson", Wolfman and Kane Supes, Levitz Legion, Blue Devil, "Who Is Donna Troy?", and an issue of Atari Force!

The New Avengers Vol. 1 Annual #1: The initial roster and status quo of the New Avengers only got about a year and a half before it was torn apart by Civil War. This is a VERY specific slice of time where you get to see that team hang out in Avengers Tower, have a standard superhero fight, and then attend Luke Cage and Jessica Jones' wedding; all with Olivier Coipel masterfully doing his thing.

The Flash Vol. 2 #182: Geoff Johns and Scott Kolins revolutionized the Flash's Rogues during their run on The Flash, both injecting so much personality into their backstory, motivation, "code", and visuals that you often felt more like reading about them than the Flash. This is the best spotlight of that as we get a full Captain Cold issue.

Cavewoman 2014 - 20th Anniversary Convention Book: This has my favorite Cavewoman story in it, which is just a simple plot of Meriem getting her top half stuck in a cave hole. It has humor, big apes, dinosaurs and Meriem hopping all over while naked, so it's a perfect Cavewoman story.

Batman Vol. 1 #666: Damian Wayne as the soulless Batman of the future vs The Devil. Wish we could see more of this from Morrison & Kubert.

Ultimate Spider-Man #200: A wake of sorts for Ultimate Peter Parker and to me the perfect final issue of the Ultimate Universe. Contains what may be my favorite double page spread ever by David LaFuente

Copra #45: A damn good issue of Copra but this issue has a letter from me and pictures of my dog, D.D!!!

Adventures in the DC Universe #16: A riff on the classic Green Lantern & Green Arrow drugs story from the 70's but with Kyle Rayner and Connor Hawke in the kinda sorta DC Animated Adventures Universe. The highlight is Kyle discussing jazz with his neighbor.

OMAC Vol. 1 #1: A startling look into the world that's coming by King Kirby. The perfect single issue. The perfect first issue.

Garfield's Pet Force 2014 Special: Pet Forces from across the Multiverse come together to fight Vetvix and all the villains from the original 90's book series(including the ones they planned but never debuted). This in turn merges the Boom continuity with the 90s books continuity. As a HUGE fan of the 90's books this delighted me to no end.

The Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1 #308: The X-Men Thanksgiving issue!! Some of John Romita Jr.'s best work.

The Sensational Spider-Man Vol. 2 Annual #1: Right before they dissolved Peter Parker and Mary Jane's marriage, Matt Fraction gave us this tale of why those two will never be broken up, no matter what.

Action Comics Vol. 1 #762: Clark Kent's Christmas shopping goes awry when the department store Santa turns out to be Etrigan the Demon. La Encantadora, a personal fave character of mine, just so happens to also be shopping there and teams up with Supes.

Green Lantern/Silver Surfer: Parallax and Thanos team up to take on Kyle Rayner and Silver Surfer by Ron Marz, who wrote both of their titles in the 90s, and drawn by original Kyle artist Darryl Banks. It's everything you could ask for from this crossover.

The Curious Mystery Involving Dracula And The Wolfman: Such a cute and fun take on spooky boys.

Wolverine First Class #6: Kitty Pryde, Siryn, Amp and baby Ilyana Rasputin have sleepover shenanigans that bother Logan, when all he wants is to sit down and watch the hockey game. Salva Espin is SUCH an amazing artist.

Invincible #54: Some time travel nonsense happens, but forget all that. This is the date night all over the world romance issue for Atom Eve and Invincible!!

The New Warriors Vol. 1 #39: The best issue of New Warriors. A quiet downtime issue where we check in on all the civilian lives of the team. Drama, romance, so much angst! This one has it all.

Thor Vol. 1 #437: Bumbling, loveable Hercules tricks Quasar into battling Eric Masterson Thor, in a misguided attempt to help train Eric. More fun ensues when The enchantress fouls up the fight even further. Wendell Vaughn and Eric Masterson, two of my eternal faves, this comic was made for me!!

Legionnaires Vol. 1 #7: This is the Legion beach anime episode and it’s drawn ENTIRELY by comics legend Adam Hughes.

Swamp Thing Vol. 2 Annual #2: Swampy goes to Hell to save Abby, encountering all the mystical/magical DCU characters along the way. An absolute masterpiece.

X-Men #24: A quiet downtime issue (gosh I love those ones, don't I?) with gorgeous moody artwork by Andy Kubert, Bill Sienkiewicz and Paul Becton. Rogue and Gambit go on a date, Cyke and Jean have some long talks, and Psylocke and Kwannon try to deal with what's happened to them.

Detective Comics Vol.1 #526: An oversized fantastic anniversary issue wherein Killer Croc, here as the new big bad member of the Batman rogues gallery, assembles just about every Batman villain you can think of to take on the Batfam.

New Gods Vol. 1 #7: THE PACT! Probably the best issue of Jack Kirby's Fourth World. A flashback history lesson of the eternal struggle between Apokolips and New Genesis.

Grendel: Devil by the Deed: I love every Grendel story but nothing hits as hard as this prose story of the original Grendel, Hunter Rose, accompanied by such moody art deco artwork.

Batman Shadow of the Bat Annual #3: Sadly, Brian Apthorp is a comic artist of which we never got much work from. But the material we did get, WOW!! This is a wonderful reimagining of Batman's first encounter with Poison Ivy and the artwork here is just next level. I adore the storytelling and the vibrant personalities that Apthorp puts into everyone's expressions and body language.

Hitman #34: I'm not an Ennis guy besides Hitman. His cynical hate of superheroes while writing superheroes is always annoying, but it's so refreshing when he rarely writes one he clearly loves, in this case Superman. Maybe the best examination of the character ever done here.

Superman Man Of Tomorrow #1,000,000: Superman, while in the future, asks to be shown the entire history of the whole Superman line, his ancestors and their centuries long battle with Arch-Enemy Solaris, The Tyrant Sun. This book is PACKED with so many interesting, amazing ideas about Superman’s son, grandson, and so on and so on. Each little sentence about a Super ancestor could be a whole comic series.

The Uncanny X-Men and The New Teen Titans: Darkseid and Dark Phoenix team up to punk some teenagers by Chris Claremont and Walt Simonson. No Marv Wolfman in sight. All of that equals perfection my friends.

Secret Wars: Secret Love: An anthology book that features Michel Fiffe riffing on Typhoid Mary and Daredevil in an Ann Nocenti run tribute, a Robbie Reyes/Kamala Khan team up by legend Felipe Smith teasing us and their respective love interests with the possibility of those two getting together and an Iron Fist and Misty Knight story where Danny braids Misty's hair drawn by Gurihuru.

Special Edition X-Men #1: A reprint of Giant Size X-Men #1, still such a great comic, but with an added Claremont, Dave Cockrum story where Kitty Pryde and Ilyana Rasputin give a tour of the X-Mansion and everyone throws Kitty a surprise birthday party. It's a real Cockrum tribute issue. I will always prefer this version over the original or the 90's chromium Gary Frank cover reprint.

Sharknife FCBD #1: Corey Lewis is right up there with Jack Kirby and J.M. DeMatteis as my favorite comic creators ever. His Sharknife comics are pure soul rejuvenating bombs of creativity and comfort for me. This is a short and sweet Free Comic Book Day Sharknife Gaiden.

Hector Plasm: Totentanz: While not as good as the other Hector Plasm comic above, this one still has a great lead bit and a ton of pinups and extras and short fun things, I just wish it had more pure comics in it. That being said, it's still Hector Plasm, so it's great.

Spectacular Spider-Man Vol. 1 #115: I am absolutely OBSESSED with Mark Beachum and his dream like erotica style artwork. This is a perfect encapsulation of his mastery of dynamic body poses and seeming obsession with asses. I also really dig the weird 80's period of Spec Spidey by Peter David with Spidey in his black costume and Black Cat and all types of weird side villains. This is a beloved snapshot of just that.

X-Men Vol. 2 #1: Let me first say that the plot and writing in Mutant Genesis is absolute ass as Chris Claremont is shoved out the door. BUT the art and designs by Jim Lee and the exciting new launch for the franchise as X-Factor is folded back into the main team for the 90's is so undeniably cool. The pin-ups, the fold out cover, everything about this is the hypest, coolest shit ever made. It's a very confusing feeling as I hate everything this issue represents and does while simultaneously loving every single thing about it. More often than not, that was what it was like reading comics in the 90's.

Christmas with the Super-Heroes #2: The rare Holiday anthology where every single story is a home run. This one contains my second favorite Superman story ever as well as a truck colliding with your heart and soul Deadman/Pre-Crisis Supergirl story.

Solo Avengers #14: Chris Claremont and Alan Davis bring us the best She-Hulk comic ever made.

Batman Vol. 1 #244: Ra’s al Ghul is my favorite Batman villain and this is my favorite story of the O'Neil/Adams era of Batman. Batman and a sexy Olympic skier chase Ra's and Talia down a snow covered mountain and then a shirtless Batman vs Ra's in a sword fight in the desert which ends in defeat for Ra's and a sweet mack session with Talia for Bats. Perfection.

Scooby Doo Team-Up Vol. 1 #40: Loveable weed smoking hippie Chester Williams of the Swamp Thing supporting cast is revealed to be Shaggy from Scooby Doo's Uncle, thus initiating the team-up visit. Solomon Grundy and Swampy shows up, and even Abby eventually!! It ends up being a funny Moore era Saga of the Swamp Thing reunion and homage that rules so much.

Legionnaires Vol. 1 #77: Basically a combo of the two other Legionnaire issues I posted above, a quiet down time issue for the full cast as they go to a beach resort. It's a celebration of the entire 90's "Archie Legion" era and a fitting goodbye from the creative teams as Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning come on right after and soon relaunch the title.

Justice League of America #200: Oh baby!! The premise of this one is all brawling as an original Big 7 Leaguer fights a Satellite League member all drawn by some huge comic legend - Pat Broderick, Jim Aparo, Dick Giordano, Gil Kane, Carmine Infantino, Brian Bolland and Joe Kubert!!!

Deadpool Vol. 3 #11: Deadpool time travels to the Amazing Spider-Man #47 and has to take Peter Parker's place while also making sure to not muck up the timeline. Absolute genuine hilarity ensues.

Thunderstrike Vol. 1 #1: Thunderstrike's big debut!!! Just big sweeping action and character in an exciting, oversized intro issue from DeFalco and Frenz. I'm always wowed with the experimentation of big single and double page spreads and huge single panel art Frenz does in this issue.

The Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 1 #400: The death of Aunt May. Stunning revelations, inspired character work, and scenes that will make you cry like a baby. All of that while making it work as yet another chapter in the blossoming Clone Saga. One of the all time best!

X-Men Chronicles #1: I am irrationally obsessed with the Age of Apocalypse event and literally anything related to it. So I'm constantly craving more tiny bits of lore and continuity for that reality and that's why I love these "Chronicles" one shots that replaced the X-Men Unlimited series which usually told self contained side stories to fit in wherever for the line. We get to see a flashback tale to the early days of the X-Men of this universe and the ascension of Apocalypse all done with some very pleasing and unique Terry Dodson inked by Klaus Janson art. These also had specific history or character pin-ups by some legendary artists in the back.

G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero #25: The famous "Silent Interlude". No dialogue as Snake eyes rescues Scarlett from Cobra and the mysterious ties to Storm shadow are revealed. The blueprint on story telling and artistic draftsmanship in comics.

Thor Vol. 1 #444: Eric Masterson Thor takes on the mystery of a sewer dwelling creature that resembles The Grinch in this Holiday classic.

Green Lantern Vol. 3 #78: The Kyle Rayner/Donna Troy relationship commitment issue. My second favorite relationship in comics behind Peter and MJ is given some time to shine.

The Uncanny X-Men #205: WOUNDED WOLF! Lady Deathstrike and The Reavers hunt a feral Wolverine with only Katie Power of The Power Pack to help him during a snowstorm. Barry Windsor-Smith's artwork here is an otherworldly swirling tornado of detailed lines and emotions.

Birds of Prey Vol. 1 #8: I'm a Dick/Starfire kind of guy myself but even I can get on board with Dick and Babs when it's done so authentically sweet as this romantic, inspiring tale is.

Spectacular Spider-Man Vol. 1 #241: The epilogue issue to The Clone Saga. This is a heartfelt issue with Peter and MJ about dealing with grief and loss and finding the love and strength to carry on.

The Incredible Hulk Vol. 1 #418: I wrote above how Gary Frank's art during this era is as good as comic art can get and it's on full display here with the dozens of guest stars and cameos (Including Death of The Endless!) for the wedding of Rick Jones and Marlo Chandler. The fold out faux wedding invitation cover is so cool.

Mary Jane and Black Cat Beyond #1: Us true Mary Jane fans have been starving for so many years now. We finally got some sustenance in this sexy heist one shot with some excellent dialogue and characterization for Felicia and MJ regarding their longtime relationship.

Green Lantern Vol. 3 #81: Special issue for the funeral of Hal Jordan which has priceless moments like Kyle Rayner meeting Nightwing, Kyle and Jack Knight being antique art dorks together, cameos by most of the 90's DCU, and a prominent and rare non-Vertigo Swamp Thing appearance. All of that bolstered by a rad foil cardstock cover and a Silver age Hal story reprint complete with a new Ron Marz/Gil Kane framing sequence!

Wolverine Vol. 1 #75: The aftermath of Magneto ripping the adamantium out of Wolverine and the physical and emotional trauma he goes through while almost dying. This shit absolutely traumatized me as a kid, but I couldnt stop reading it over and over it's so well done.

Jungle Action Vol. 2 #18: Billy Graham!! Graham's Will Eisner influenced work with Don McGregor on this Black Panther run is full of stunning visuals but for me, nothing beats the double page spread introducing the leopard print covered Madam Slay in this issue.

Swamp Thing Vol. 2 #34: Few things comfort me as much as Swamp Thing and Abby Holland's love for each other and this issue is solely that. In one of the rare breaks from horror and heartbreak during Alan Moore's run, we get Abby and Swampy having their version of sex, a level of intimacy of which we mortals could only dream of.

Batman Vol. 3 Annual #4: This story celebrates the magic of Batman and how he fits into any plot you want in his unending mission. The premise of this one is that we are reading Alfred’s diary, which is a logbook of all the various adventures Batman faces. When we start, these diversified tales are given 4-5 pages to breathe. Then, the stories continue but they get one page, then 3 panels to a page, then 4, then 5, then 6, 7, 8, 9 as each panel represents a wildly different day of events Batman lives through.

Generation X Underground Special: I deeply miss the 80's/90's indie comic - usually black and white, deeply weird, full of jokes and pop culture references, done with a soulful style where you felt like you could feel the blood, sweat, and tears that went into publishing this random periodical that only a couple hundred people may ever read. That type of thing has been replaced by like an Instagram post comic. The internet SUCKS now guys. Anyways, this was basically Marvel looking at some fan comic about Generation X by indie comic master Jim Mahfood and saying yea ok, we'll publish your little zine. It's sort of a miracle that this thing even exists.

Ultimate Spider-Man #155: The entire run of Ultimate Comics Spider-Man up until The Death of Spider-Man is my fave era of Ultimate Spidey material. Cramming his house with all his various friends and constantly expanding that huge group of teens was just the best. This is the last issue before Bendis jarringly swerved and killed Ultimate Pete and to me it represents a window slamming shut on a status quo that had truly unlocked perfection and had such promising potential for future stories. I'll never not be mad at the direction they took after this. It was also really cool to have Chris Samnee briefly do some work with these characters.

Superman Vol. 1 Annual #3: One of my alltime favorite single issue packages. A huge reprint filled book with pretty much every Silver Age Supes story you could ever want. Yes, that includes the lion head Superman story.

The Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1 #137: Another one of those much ballyhooed classics that actually is that good. The Dark Phoenix Saga as a whole is great but not perfect, until you get to the final heartbreaking issue which really is, from pacing, to plot, to dialogue, to art, about as perfect a comic as you'll come across.

X-Men Chronicles #2: Just like #1 above, this gives us a flashback tale of when The Wolverine attacked Magneto's X-Men and the story of when Rogue's love drifted from Gambit to Mags. Love the way Ian Churchill draws every single character here. This one too has the wonderful pin-ups in the back again.

Jonah Hex Vol.2 #50: The tragic tale of Jonah Hex and Tallulah Black's child, and all the Western gunslinging vengeance thats comes along for the ride. Incomparable art by the legendary Darwyn Cooke.

Action Comics Vol. 1 Annual #1: Batman and Superman team up to take on Skeeter, the Daisy Dukes wearing vampire with art by Art Adams. If there's anything I've learned assembling these CFC boxes it's that Art Adams may be my favorite comic creator ever.

The Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 1 #102: The Lizard, Morbius and Six-Armed Spidey all collide in the climax to this classic body horror Spider-Man story!

The Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1 #273: Besides The Outback Era, my favorite era of X-books was the weird X-Men Disassembled, I call it, time period when Forge and Banshee were essentially Headmasters and they were trying to find various members of the team that were flung all over the world by the Siege Perilous. This is a quiet come down issue during the height of that era right after the X-Tinction Agenda crossover where all the various X-Team members are FINALLY back together again. This is also a jam art issue featuring a bevy of comic legends - Jim Lee, Whilce Portacio, Klaus Janson, John Byrne, Rick Leonardi, Marc Silvestri, Michael Golden and Larry Stroman.

X-Factor Vol. 1 #87" X-Aminations! Doc Samson has each team member sit down on the couch for some psychological evaluations. A revolutionary single issue that provides some essential character moments for all involved, especially Quicksilver.

X-Factor Vol. 3 #13: Re-X-aminations! Doc Samson sits down with the new version of X-Factor for some psychological evaluations. Just as entertaining and insightful as the original story.

Everything Sucks! #1: I once described this series of comics as "Curb Your Enthusiasm meets Tiny Toons" and I still stand by that description. Awful, wacky, cynical but somehow loveable characters that you find yourself relating to way too much, which is probably a bad thing. This one is all about Noah stubbornly needing to get the burger he craves. I felt that shit so hard. There's a few bonus pin-ups and short comics in the back of this one I really love too about Noah and his cat.

DC One Million 80 Page Giant: Extremely unique set of anthology tales that offer a wide variety of story genre and art styles. Much like Age of Apocalypse, I irrationally love anything DC One Million and this is about the only non the big event slice of it we ever got. Huge fan of the Mark Millar, Mike Wieringo story in this one.

Superman Vol. 1 Annual # 11: Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons extremely perverse but oddly sweet and comforting classic. I'm such a big fan of the deceptively talented clean and simple linework Gibbons does here. Moore is able to imbue Mongul, Wonder Woman, Robin, Batman and characters from Supes' dream world with so much personality, often times with just one line of spoken dialogue. They make it seem so easy with their staggering talent here.

Mega Man #50: A great chapter of the Worlds Unite crossover but the reason to love this one is the backup story where Mega Man and Mega Man X get some quiet time to interact and compare and contrast their history and their lives.

Scott Pilgrim: Full Colour Odds and Ends 2008: When I was 19-20 or so I was OBSESSED with Scott Pilgrim. His life mirrored my own in so many eerie ways. Back before all the main books were colored, this one shot was a rare treasure to have to see that world in color with bonus sketches, mini-comics and extras all in one package. The shitty movie and growing up kind of made me want to forget about Scott Pilgrim and leave it, along with the kid I once was, in the past. But I recently reread the series with a new adult perspective and found myself falling in love again. I was glad I held on to this one and can appreciate it once more.

Swamp Thing Vol. 2 #50: Similar to the Annual listed above, this is Swampy alongside an even bigger cast of the magical side of the DCU in the climax to a longer tale of a conflict against a great unknown Darkness.

Swamp Thing Vol. 1 #7: A little superhero spills into the Bernie Wrightson original horror Swampy series as he clashes with Batman.

X-Men Vol. 2 #109: A Christmas themed 100 Page Monster! Around this time in 2000 Marvel made a few of their books 100 Page Monsters and reprinted about 3 issues after one regular new lead issue. This one is a new X-Treme X-Men and regular X-Men team Christmas story along with reprints of X-Men #98- Christmas in Manhattan as the Sentinels attack, Uncanny X-Men #143 - Kitty Pryde vs the Demon, and Uncanny X-Men #341 - Cannoball vs Gladiator - all some of the best single issues of X-Men ever. I'm blown away at how much good shit they packed in here.

Superman Adventures #41: The novel idea of a different story on every page. Each bite sized tale surprisingly rules.

X-Force Vol. 1 #19: Post X-Cutioner's Song, X-Force finds themselves at a crossroads without a leader and under house arrest at the Mansion. Without Xavier, without Magneto, without Cable - who are these characters and what path will they take as they enter adulthood, not as X-Men but as X-Force.

The Multiversity Guidebook: Grant Morrison and a huge selection of artists either create new or revisit old universes to create a catalog of the DC Multiverse. Still so cool even if nothing much ever came from this.

Superman Vol. 1 #156: “Every man can be a Superman”

The Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1 #138: The very next issue after The Dark Phoenix Saga, Cyclops recaps every single X-Men story while wallowing in his grief. It's so damn cool to see Claremont and Byrne give us this trip down memory lane.

Batman Vol. 1 #156: Probably my favorite Silver Age Batman story. This one has some surprising depth and subject matter for the time as we delve into the psychological trauma Batman feels over Robin potentially dying.

Forever People Vol. 1 #4: "All young humans recognize the real thing when they see it". The ultimate character showcase for Darkseid and a fascinating exploration of how we perceive good and evil and how we cope with it for better or worse.

DC Comics Presents Legion of Super-Heroes #2: A collection of various Geoff Johns Legion Threeboot stories - the first appearance of the Legion from Adventure Comics #247, the Legion co-feature from the short lived Adventure Comics #0-4, Action Comics #864 - a bridge issue between Superman and the Legion and Legion of Three Worlds, “Friday Night In The 21st Century” from Action Comics #900, and a Mon-El tale from Action Comics Annual #10. I LOVED this older reinstatement of the original Legion and will always be sad we didn't get more from them by Johns. Levitz's material usually outright ignored what was established and had some pretty terrible plots. But at least we got this little Legion celebration package

I Heart Marvel - Web of Romance #1: A lovely story about Spider-Man and Mary Jane's relationship during the New Avengers Tower era drawn by Cory Walker. Perfection

Daredevil Vol. 1 #260: This is basically Daredevil's version of Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1 where he fights the Sinister Six. Typhoid Mary and all the villains Ann Nocenti had introduced in her run up until that point round out this Sinister Six in a brutal, fast paced fight comic.

Superman and Batman: World's Funnest: Comedy genius Evan Dorkin has Mr. Mxyzptlk and Bat-Mite have a brawl through pretty much every planet, reality, universe or continuity DC has ever had with a staggering art roster which includes Mike Allred, Brian Bolland, Frank Cho, Dave Gibbons, Jaime Hernandez, Stuart Immonen, Phil Jimenez, Doug Mahnke, Frank Miller, Sheldon Moldoff, Alex Ross, Scott Shaw, Ty Templeton and Bruce Timm!!

Guy Gardner: Warrior #29: I'm a big fan of Beau Smith's oddball Warrior run and the jewel of that run is this issue drawn by Phil Jimenez. Guy opens his bar and just about every single character in the DC Universe shows up for the grand opening.

Legion of Super-Heroes Vol. 4 #100: A huge anniversary issue with a great Computo lead story but ALSO with a ton of amazing pin-ups and short stories in the back featuring Alan Davis and Walt Simonson.

Mortal Kombat Collector's Edition Comic Book: A mail-order comic tie in to the original Mortal Kombat written and drawn by series co-creator John Tobias. If you read Nintendo Power growing up, you may remember some of the art from this comic used for MK features. That art was burned into my brain as a kid and it wasn't until recently, when I bought a slabbed copy of this and cracked it out of it's stupid shell, that I got to experience the majesty of this official comic that feels like a great indie book. Tobias' art is MY Mortal Kombat.

The Punisher Meets Archie: An absolutely ludicrous crossover idea that thankfully is in on the joke. Everything you could ever want when you read that title is delivered here.

Spider-Girl #0: A reprint of What If? #105, the debut of Mayday Parker aka Spider-Girl, the greatest what If? issue ever. I prefer this reprint of the issue instead of the original as it contains little previews for the new series of the MC2 Universe- J2, A-Next and Spider-Girl!

The Kingdom: Offspring #1: The Kingdom is a great event that is never talked about. This one shot about Plastic Man's son, Offspring is the charming highlight, especially because the art is all Frank Quitely. Always amazed at that.

DC Comics Presents Vol. 1 #47: Like I mentioned above, I love DC's use of pre-refined He-Man and his world. How can you not love this issue where He-Man and Superman team up to take on Skeletor?

Batman Adventures Annual #2: The all stars of Batman The Animated Series - Paul Dini, Glenn Murakami and Bruce Timm - team up to give us a Ra's and Talia story that ends up being a Jack Kirby tribute. Murakami's coloring really makes this one special.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles In Time #1: The IDW Turtles travel back to the age of dinosaurs with my fave Renet, drawn so cute here by Sophie Campbell. This is where they adopt their adorable dinosaur pal, Pepperoni. So cute! All so cute!!

Resident Evil #1 (Marvel Comics): A free Marvel/Capcom promo comic prequel for the release of the original Resident Evil. Check out my extensive Oral History of this comic if you want to learn everything about it and read it, in the article I am most proud of writing.

The Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1 #244: My beloved Outback X-Men era. It's ladies' night and our loveable cast of X-Women hit up The Hollywood Mall for a night of shopping and fun!

The Sensational She-Hulk #50: Such a fun anniversary issue where Jen breaks the Fourth Wall and "auditions" some creators to take over after Byrne leaves including Dave Gibbons, Frank Miller, Wendy Pini, Walt Simonson, Howard Chaykin, Terry Austin, Adam Hughes and Howard Mackie.

Earth Prime - Stargirl #4: I don't know if I can resolutely say that Stargirl is my favorite live action superhero show ever, but it just may be. To have a tie in to the show I love written by legendary creators I equally love, James Robinson and Jerry Ordway, is a dream come true. This is a very quiet, touching story.

X-Men Legacy #234: Mike Carey is my guy, and excluding Claremont, he produces the best X comics. This is a quiet, character driven single issue during his long Rogue centric development that ends up involving her past romances. Who better to portray all that sexiness than Yanick Paquette who provides us some very memorable steamy scenes!

Black Lightning Vol. 2 #5: Tony Isabella and Eddy Newell's brief 90's Black Lightning run is about all you could ever want out of comics and few single issues come close to this one by them. Isabella's narration, character work and emotional heartstring pulling is paired with an gorgeous artistic showcase for Eddy Newell. Seriously, just about every page in here should be hanging in a museum somewhere.

G.I. Joe Deviations: What happens when Cobra actually takes over the world? Well, a lot of world peace and stability, boring management, paperwork and politics. That doesnt sit too well with Cobra Commander who rallies a ragtag group of Joes to dismantle the New cobra World Order. Paul Allor teams with my Comics God, Corey Lewis on this one to make such a funny, super fucking cool, amazingly awesome looking book.

Power Pack Vol. 1 #19: Katie Power invites the Morlocks, Kitty Pryde, Wolverine, Beta Ray Bill, Franklin Richards and Cloak & Dagger over for Thanksgiving. Chaos ensues at the Thanksgiving Day Parade. The best Thanksgiving comic ever!!

Batman Adventures Holiday Special: Phew! All the usual Batman the Animated Series all stars are here in a big ol' anthology of Holiday goodness! All of these were adapted into the episode "Holiday Knights" EXCEPT the Mr. Freeze story which may be the best one in here. I think for all of these, except the Harley & Ivy one, I prefer the comic version to the adaptation.

Radioactive Man #197: The Best Jack Kirby Comic is a Simpsons Comic

Teen Titans Vol. 3 #35: I read this comic when I was 18 and that image of a naked Ravager sneaking into Robin's bed is permanently tattooed into my brain. I love the weird Kid Devil, Ravager era of Teen Titans.

Archie #636: Rule 63 Archie by Gisele Lagace!!!

JLA #61: Joe Kelly and Doug Mahnke's JLA is such an imperfect, sprawling monster of a run that you can really feel the hunger they had and appreciate how much personality they give each team member. This is such a fun issue of that run where we get to see a peek into the lives of each member right before they are all called into action.

Invincible #144: The final issue of Invincible. Rushed, sloppy, jarring and perfect.

Supergirl Vol. 5 #9: This issue of Supergirl struggling with her place in the world and her awkward growth into an adult alongside all the expectations people put on a teen girl as well as her personally as an "S" shield bearing superhero really rings true to me. She fights, she rebels, she smokes, she goes out clubbing with an older guy, she deals with family drama and childhood trauma and she saves a little girl who innocently helps put her on the right path. I also love Ian Churchill's art here so damn much.

Legion of Super-Heroes Vol. 4 #4: Mon-El vs the Time Trapper with the most heroic, noble sacrifice you've ever seen all expertly done by Keith Giffen. This is a fight you can really FEEL!

Batman 1989 Movie Adaptation: I miss the era when movies and tv got comic adaptations so fans could experience the story if they werent able to see the movie or just to keep that experience going. Sure a ton of them were crap, and in an era where literally everything is available whenever you want it, the need for them just doesnt exist anymore. But man when they hit, THEY HIT!! This one by Denny O'Neil with lush, vibrant artwork that stunningly captures the actor's likenesses by Jerry Ordway and Steve Oliff, shows how some adaptations are so well done they end up having a place next to what they were adapting as an equal piece of unique art.

Thor: The Worthy: Walt Simonson's Thor run, Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz's Thor and Thunderstrike runs, and Kathryn Immonen's Sif led Journey Into Mystery run are my three favorite Thor/Asgard comic chunks in order. Guess what this anniversary oneshot celebrates? Yep, all three of those! I know!! I can't believe it either!!! It's like this was made for me. One of my favorite comics ever.

Dragon Ball #1: In the late 90's Viz started publishing Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z under the Viz Select comics banner as standard American floppies. I love this weird rare format and I was lucky enough to find this rare first issue that reprints one of my favorites, Chapter 1, for under ten bucks. Sometimes virtual bin diving for hours online pays off.

The Incredible Hulk Vol. 1 #417: Another Gary Frank one, another gorgeous aesthetically pleasing feast for the eyes. This one is Rick Jones and fiancée Marlo Chandler's bachelor and bachelorette parties. Captain America unknowingly hires a stripper and Betty Banner yells for them to "Take it off!" as She-Hulk takes the ladies to Marvel's version of Chippendale's.

Thunderstrike Vol. 1 #15: Eric vs Sif! Hela vs Mephisto! Thunderstrike and Thor back in action together! All while the soul of Eric's son, Kevin hangs in the balance!

Spider-Man Unlimited Vol. 3 #14: A short, solid story of Spidey and Black Cat vs Doombots with art full of dynamic action and sexy cheesecake by David Finch. There's nothing particularly special or important or must read here but it is a comic that I always fondly remember and it always makes me smile. That's what Comfort Food Comics is all about.

Captain Marvel Adventures #31: Captain Marvel visits Buffalo, NY!! A real treat for me as a native Buffalonian. They even show off City Hall, still there today, where I got married (well where we filled out the paperwork haha).

X-Men Vol. 2 #8: Still contained in the extremely hype Jim Lee era with the spectacular art, vibe and design he brought. A quiet issue where cyclops drools over Psylocke's Pikachu swimsuit, and Bishop fucks up Rogue's home made boysenberry pie. THE BEST!!

Thor Vol. 1 #356: A HILARIOUS fill in issue where Hercules tells a tall tale of him just absolutely beating Thor's ass with such funny exaggerations to some kids.

The New Titans #126: My favorite Titans comics are from this brief era where Arsenal led a mid 90's ragtag group that included Impulse, Kyle Rayner, Supergirl and more. This is yet another of my favorite genre of superhero comics, the quiet downtime issue where the team hangs out together. All drawn by Rick Mays, an underrated fave of mine. If anyone out there knows any info whatsoever on this issue's writer, Dale Hrebik, PLEASE TELL ME! He wrote this, my favorite Titans issue ever, a fantastic Rose Wilson story in Deathstroke Annual #4 and scripted Marv Wolfman's plot in Deathstroke #50 and that's apparently it. The internet has surprisingly NOTHING else for me.

Daredevil Vol. 1 #397: Daredevil only has two moods - annoyingly jolly swashbuckler swinging freely through the sky and self destructive, depressing man of passion. This is the perfect encapsulation of the latter in this Typhoid Mary focused issue.

Uncanny Avengers Vol. 1 #5: Ok, so this comic is dumb. Rick Remender is dumb. Havok is dumb. His M word speech is impressively dumb. BUT, God help me, I love it. This issue is, you guessed it!, a quiet downtime issue where the team hangs out again!!! Olivier Coipel flexes his God Tier art muscles here and also draws Rogue in her best fit ever.

Wolverine Vol. 1 #54: A fill in issue by Fabian Nicieza and Darick Robertson featuring a great Wolverine and Shatterstar team-up with a nice Rogue bit thrown in as a cherry on top. For some reason Robertson's art in this issue has stuck with me for most of my life.

Legion of Super-Heroes Vol. 3 #5: One Legionnaire is murdered which leads to a fellow Legionnaire pulling just about the most badass moment ever in comics to get revenge. I jump around celebrating like I saw a Kobe to Shaq alley-oop whenever I read that moment. GOD, this story is good.

Thunderstrike Vol. 1 #19: Thunderstrike's tagline was "The Everyman Avenger" and that really was his strength as a character. His real life relatable problems, his ex wife and son, his large and diverse supporting cast, his job - it all built such a charming and enjoyable life for Eric. This issue gives us "A Day In The Life", whisking us around and highlighting all of those things that made The Everyman avenger so great.

JLA #5: RECRUITMENT DRIVE!! Most people probably remember this one for the done in one story of Tomorrow Woman, which is great, but I'm sitting here grinning like an idiot reading this one for the group of my beloved 90's era DC Comics characters that come to the JLA Satellite to try out for the team. Hitman shows up just to use his x-ray vision to peep at Wonder Woman! Ha!! Priceless!

DCU Holiday Bash #1: All of the Holiday Bashs were good comics but I have a soft spot for this one because of all the great stories but especially the Walt Simonson and Sal Buscema story where Highfather and Orion fill in as a department store Santa and "Christmas Gnome". Walt's one of about 3 creators who ever GOT the New Gods like Kirby intended and Sal rarely did any DC work so this one is such a special treat.

Untold Tales of Spider-Man Annual #1: Kurt Busiek writing a story where Spider-Man and Sue Storm go on a date which is promptly ruined by Johnny Storm and Namor, drawn by my guy Mike Allred and inked by Marvel Legend Joe Sinnott, equals perfection.

Classic X-Men #27: Every time I read the Classic X-Men vignettes I am left stunned by what an incredible creator John Bolton was. These reprint issues were absolute works of art, perfectly expanding on what came before, always additive, never harmful with simple, clean artwork that Bolton was able to use to infuse the characters with body language and expressions that helped tell those tales so well. This one is my favorite, one of the Ann Nocenti written joints, where Wolverine and Jean are forced together to confront their animalistic heat and passion in the face of a horrifying death.

Batman Returns Movie Adaptation: Another Batmania adaptation! This is another one that stands on equal footing with the movie as it's own thing worth experiencing. Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez's inks over Steve Erwin's pencils are out of this world gorgeous. Some of my favorite comic art ever produced.

Thunderstrike Vol. 1 #16: Like the Thor story above, Eric gets roped into yet another Absorbing Man scheme that ends with Eric promoting a fight between She-Hulk and Titania. It's another hilarious sitcom moment for that weird friendship and has some amazing Frenz art, especially his rendition of She-Hulk and her outfit.

Mortal Kombat 2 collector's Edition Comic: Just like the above first one, this was a mail order tie in comic by John Tobias for the release of MK2. This one is a bit more chaotic but it's so fun seeing the story officially expanded on and seeing more of Kintaro, my fave. I love absolutely anything to do with Mortal Kombat 2.

Adventure Comics #500: This is from the tail end of Adventure Comics when it turned into a digest. This one is all Legion baby!!! Classic after classic after classic from the Silver Age. My absolute favorite shit. All bookended by a fantastic Keith Giffen front and back cover.

Daredevil Vol. 1 #181: I recently reread Miller and Janson's DD run for the first time in over a decade and was pleasantly surprised to see how well it held up and how much I love it more than I ever did. One thing I was particularly struck by, was how much his run resembled a season of television with each issue serving as an episode. He rarely has what we'd call a traditional arc with a continuing story. Sure, stories continue, but time skips, moments are left to the viewer to imagine and fill in, the episodes just keep going forward with an overall seasonal mega-arc focused on Elektra and Matt. He even talks about how the tv he is watching at the time is a big influence on his storytelling in interviews. It's wonderful pacing and planning. This would be your big penultimate episode or your first hour of a season finale (Remember when shows would have 2 hour long special event finales that were essentially two episodes smashed into one? I miss those). Bullseye and Elektra's relationships with Matt expressed herein are eternally complex, ugly, tragic and beautiful.

Daredevil Vol. 1 #179: The Elektra and Daredevil fight in this one should be studied on how to convey movement and action in comics. The sai hitting Urich along with his inner narration should be studied for pacing and storytelling in comics. The art and the PLANNING of the art here can be felt by the reader and teaches so much. This issue is a treasure trove of wisdom on how to make good ass comics.

Daredevil Vol. 1 #175: This would be your mid season finale of Miller and Janson's Daredevil Season. Many of my favorite iconic moments in this issue, from the GORGEOUS opening splash page, to Elektra rolling and throwing her sai at Matt right after, to the masterfully told simultaneous attack on the Hand ninjas by Matt and Elektra. Those pages where Matt fights the ninjas at the bottom of the stairs while Elektra desperately attempts to kill Kirigi at the top of the stairs is such a claustrophobic, anxiety inducing moment. I don't know how but Miller and Janson make you feel like you're there experiencing all the tense panic and fighting. No matter how slow you read it, you feel that rush in your soul as you bounce between Matt and Elektra.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2011 IDW) #65: The Turtles throw a Christmas party and just about every single cast member so far is featured. Mateus Santolouco's art has never looked better, filled with a whimsical fancy for the Holiday and thrown into some experimental storytelling perspectives. This one is guaranteed to make you happy.

Best of DC Blue Ribbon Digest #22: Christmas With the Super-Heroes: A digest sized stocking stuffer that contains my beloved "The Seal Men's War On Santa Claus!" An essential Comfort Food Comics for me, not just at the Holidays, but all year round. The other stories are also Holiday classics, including another old personal CFC fave, Justice League of America #110 - "The Man Who Murdered Santa Claus!"

The Legend of Zelda #2 (Valiant Comics): Growing up we had a bunch of the Valiant Nintendo comics and they comprise some of my earliest memories. None more so than this one. I can remember being like four years old and feeling very outraged that Link kept being tricked. Hahaha I still love this story of that weird diapered man sprite from Zelda 2 as a buddy of Link's.

Hawk & Dove Vol. 3 #20: Dove goes Christmas shopping and ends up in a comedic Die Hard parody all drawn by the master Kevin Maguire. I remember reading this when I was younger and didn't even know who Hawk or Dove were and I STILL LOVED IT!! It's that fantastic!

Klaus and The Crisis in Xmasville: What if Coca-Cola bought Christmas and replaced Santa with their own werewolf Santa from the Dark Multiverse? God bless Grant Morrison

Scarlet Spider Vol. 2 #12: Kaine wants to be hardcore, but the Marvel Universe won't let him was the best premise for a Kaine solo book and I will always treasure this excellent series. My favorite issue is this one where Kaine wants to get drunk and be edgy again but his Parker genes, his new life and his new friends won't let him. Throw in a group of Santa themed criminals, the "quiet downtime plot where the characters hang out" plot you must be sick of reading about by now, and the extremely pleasing Reilly Brown art and you have an instant Holiday classic!

Spider-Man's Tangled Web #21: Darwyn Cooke and J.Bone did two issues of this title that felt like some 50's Alternate reality Marvel Universe and they both were incredible. This one is on a rarified level though for being such an entertaining and heartwarming Christmas chaos story that juggles about a dozen characters so damn well. God this makes me miss Cooke. Damn. RIP

Daredevil Vol. 1 #225: I've had a real internal struggle during multiple rereads of Daredevil: Born Again where I get so whisked away by David Mazzuchelli's art and wonder if it should be in these CFC boxes but those last two issues always let me down compared to the perfection of it's start, and I always end up vetoing it from this list. While I am consistently in awe of Mazzuchelli's art in that story, I find myself loving this issue's art by him even MORE. The opening splash page alone is a Rockwellian portrait fit for framing. This is a strange little story that uses The Vulture to symbolize death as Matt fights that symbol to get over his own depression and suicidal thoughts to want to live again. Denny O'Neil gives us such a fascinating, unique take on The Vulture while also constantly showing and telling us how legit of a threat he is. It's really wonderful angle for him that I haven't really seen in any other appearance of him. All this together makes this such a standout issue.

Spider-Man: The Jackal Files: This isn't exactly a comic, it's more a framing sequence with a set of Who's Who/Official Handbook style pin-up info pages for all the major Spider-Man characters during my favorite Spidey era, The Clone Saga. Rather than being just a boring fact file thing though, the entire book is narrated by The Jackal, as written by the vastly underrated Spidey Legend, Todd DeZago. DeZago is a naturally witty writer and instead of this being a groanfest, he makes this whole thing quite humorous. I had this as a kid and my experience and deep personal connection to it is almost exactly the same as The Parker Years oneshot above.

Batman: Gotham Adventures #51: I was such a fan of these latter era Batman Adventures comics as they tended to have more free reign to carry the continuity forward as the series had ended by this point. This is an emotional issue focusing Mr. Freeze and his wife Nora reuniting since she's been thawed and remarried, with a HUGE twist along the way. I'm not a fan of the Batgirl relationship with Batman but this is the only time I've ever been on board with it. Terry Austin's thick inks over Brad Rader's DCAU/Kirby style makes some spectacularly unique and moody art.

Batman Adventures Vol. 2 #15: The sequel to Gotham Adventures #51 as Nora takes the main character role for another incredibly moving analysis of her and Victor's relationship ending in an inversion of their usual roles. These two stories were written by Jason Hall, who hasn't written much else besides this, which is a real shame, as these are STAGGERINGLY good and would be hailed as some of the best episodes of the Animated Series if they had been the cartoon.

What If? Vol. 2 #4: What if the Alien Costume had possessed Spider-Man? Oh man! What a classic! I love this horror story of the Symbiote as this malevolent being that drains the life from it's host and is always seeking out a stronger host to bond with. This is after Venom's debut by like a year but also way before a lot of the hard rules of the Symbiote were nailed down so it's fun to see this wild alternate take. We get the Symbiote bonding with The Hulk and then Thor, both of which are incredibly cool to see way before Marvel's publishing plan became "Oops, All Venoms!". The decrepit old man Peter becomes after the Symbiote leaves him, Black Cat's revenge mission, and the brutal shock ending; this one is full of great moments. And it's all drawn by a pre superstar Mark Bagley!

The Music Man Adaptation (Dell Comics 1963): I'm such a huge fan of the 1962 film, The Music Man and watch it quite often with my wife. I was pleasantly surprised to see an old comic adaptation of the movie one day. It's a bit.....dry as they do not adapt any of the songs so a ton of the magic is lost but the main gist is all there done with solid artwork and effort which I appreciate. The standout for me is they write out little Winthrop's lisp with -th on all the S words he speaks which is a really fun and charming touch.

Essential X-Men #38: This is a UK reprint title of X-Men that packages together Uncanny X-Men #328 and Sabretooth Special #1. Uncanny #328 is one of Joe Mad's best issues during his run with God Tier art of Boom Boom, Psylocke and Sabes and the Sabretooth Special is an oversized gem by Fabian (Never written a bad comic) Nicieza and 90's less lines Gary Frank! Both of these are two of my favorite single issues so I was overjoyed to find them mashed together as one alltimer single issue complete with exclusive new cover art. The Sabes special is really good and gives a lot of nuanced character depth to Sabes as he tangles with Caliban and then the Original 5 X-Men, each of whom get the same great character depth, particularly Jean.

Everything Sucks: Friends Forever: More of Michael Sweater's Curb Your Enthusiasm meets Tiny Toons franchise. My favorite one yet! This one is really funny from Noah grousing out loud which leads a girl to shockingly talk to him and invite him over to the stupid ass hijinks as the cast gets locked in the bathroom. The art here is spectacular, experimental, diverse and grand and you can noticeably see Sweater's improvement as an artist.

Krania #1: Brian McCray, one my alltime favorite creators, brings us this pulpy Swords & Sorcery Conan-esque tale of Krania, the Warrior Woman. These are such interesting comics because McCray toes the line between satirizing those old Conan Magazines, subtly communicating he's reinterpreting them with a revisionist take, while also not - at it's core these are fun dumb barbarian romps where the creator, the reader and the material are all in on it. McCray takes the thought of "Yeah this shit is goofy and fantastical but isnt that fun?" and plays it straight. The refreshing part is McCray flips gender roles and gives us all the self aware parody tropes of these types of tales but that's not his intent. This isnt meant to sock you in the face with those elements to stand out as something unique. None of that is in the material blatantly. McCray just gets the appeal of his influences and gives us an amazing love letter to the genre. I also have to point out how impressive his shift from whimsical, cartoony art to bone crunching realism fight comics is done and how well it all blends.

Krania #2: More of the same from above but now in color!! The fun of this one is that McCray is free of doing the establishing story and hitting the usual tropes for the homage pull in readers effect and is allowed to start building his own world and cast in his way. I'm constantly impressed by how well McCray conveys movement and the impact and feel of fights. I love to FEEL a fight in comics, bone against bone, sinew against sinew, the shock and blinding impact of blows. There are a lot of fights in this one and the artistic skill is on another level.

Marvel Riot #1: A oneshot classic Mad Magazine style roast of the X-Men Age of Apocalypse event. HOW DID I NOT KNOW THIS EXISTED UNTIL A FEW WEEKS AGO!??! You'd think something like this would be lame and corny, but the great thing here is it is absolutely BRUTAL! They go in so hard eviscerating everything about the event, the creators, the X-Men, Marvel and the comics industry as a whole. I kept thinking I cant believe theyre doing this while reading. It ends up being hilarious because of that self awareness and the art is great too.

Marvel Collector's Edition - Charleston Chew (1992): Man how odd that Charleston Chew/Sugar Babies was a candy Marvel partnered with for packaging, cards and promo comics like this. I've never had Sugar Babies and I cant reliably even say I've ever had a Charleston Chew. So weird. anyways, this thing is pretty good! We get 4 stories in this one. One is a Spider-Man vs The Eel story by Tony Isabella that is actually pretty funny and has some cute Peter/MJ moments. There's a Howard Mackie written Danny Ketch Ghost Rider story which is fine but more cool it's by the character's actual writer at the time. Man I wish I had this thing as a kid, those two were my favorite characters then. Another story has the Silver Surfer help a red skinned, elf eared blonde alien with humongous breasts in a jungle girl bikini. So you know, it obviously RULES. And the last and best story is a Sam Keith drawn Wolverine and Jubilee tale. It's always a treat to see Sam Keith's Wolvie but it's also really cool to see his Jubes too, complete in the X-Uniform circa Uncanny 275.

X-Men Firsts #1: This is a really cool 1996 single issue package that reprints the first appearance of Wolverine, Rogue, Gambit, and Sinister in Avengers Annual 10, Uncanny X-Men 221 & 266, and Incredible Hulk 181, complete with a new Tim Sale cover. I love that Michael Golden Annual where Rogue first appears, it's one of the best Marvel comics ever published. The Gambit one, even with dull art, is very fun to see the early not defined Remy, back when he had ambiguous powers and was meant to be an aspect of Sinister. The Sinister first appearance is a Claremont/Silvestri/Green personal fave where Madelyne Pryor fights The Marauders in a hospital in a quietly exceptional issue of Uncanny. And lastly the old school Wolvie debut where he fights the Hulk is always a fun read. What a fun single issue jammed full of old issues that then, and even more so now, are too expensive to find themselves.

What If? Vol.2 #44: What If Venom had possessed the Punisher? Kurt Busiek and Luke McDonnell bring us this awesome story of The Punisher using the Symbiote and the Symbiote using The Punisher on their separate revenge crusades.

Superman 80 Page Giant (2010): This one is here for Kathryn Immonen and Tonci Zonjic's wonderful Lois and Clark story. Easily up there in contention for my favorite Lois or Clark story ever. It is so endearing and funny and Lois reminds me so damn much of my own wife here. Some of the other stories are very meh but there's two good'ns at the end that really shows the wholesome innate goodness of Superman and how he affects so many people positively.

Parallax: Emerald Night: I loved Hal Jordan's sloppy turn from boring GL to DC's Magneto and if I had my way he never wouldve sacrificed himself in Final Night. That being said I can't complain about this heart wrenching one shot we got of the character tackling his final moments before he reignited the Sun. Ron Marz once again gives us an excellent character study of this Hal Jordan, coming to terms with who he is now and trying to reconcile that with the past he left behind.

The New Mutants Vol. 1 #51: An excellent one off issue with GORGEOUS artwork from Kevin Nowlan. This is a super weird little story where the New Mutants end up with Xavier when he was in space with Lilandra and the Starjammers(I'm always shocked they never did more with Xavier in space, but also I'm thankful as I loved when Claremont would write people out of the book and they'd stay that way). The art is just stunning, STUNNING I TELL YOU! I really enjoy the interplay between the Professor and Magik in this issue as they both deal with their own struggle to stay in space or go home, to remain stuck in the fear of the past or trust the path they're on and stride into the unknown future. Sadly Xavier basically mindrapes Ilyana into going forward, but I'd argue it's a pretty great character study of him that he has the best intentions and seems so wonderful but is actually unable to truly be the man he believes he is and completely unwilling to go along with anyone who disagrees with himself.

G.I. Joe Yearbook #4: This bad boy makes the list for the very short but incredible story by Larry Hama and Tony Salmons in the back. Scarlett and Snake Eyes as civilians in suits and shades go to a country gas station and Snake eyes ends up having to Macgyver his way out of an armed robbery. All done in Salmon's wonderfully unique abstract artstyle.

Superman Villains Secret Files & Origins: One of the alltime best Secret Files stories. There is no reason Stuart Immonen had to go this HARD, but he did. See, the story is Lex Luthor telling his newborn daughter, Lena all about various Superman foes, but Immonen presents the tales as parodies of Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland. IT'S GLORIOUS! A work of art!

Adventures of The Fly #9: So I was scrolling through a scan of an old Archie Super Hero Digest bored until I came across a story involving some cute and unique catgirl who I came to find out was named the very inventive Cat-Girl. Id never read any of the MLJ/Red Circle/Impact/Archie superhero comics before so I was quickly fascinated by The Fly with his magic ring and buzz gun and seemingly ENDLESS and unlimited array of superpowers related to anything bugs that he could call forth whenever. Cat-Girl seemed like a pretty blatant Catwoman ripoff and she was quite enjoyable freeing cats and seeming to get along with The Fly as he carried her back to her cat infested secret lair. The true hook of Cat-Girl happened here as she instantly betrays him and tells him to solve the riddle of who she is. At this point I expect her to be some character in this universe I don't know but instead she turns out to be the literal Sphinx of Ancient Egypt, an immortal and all powerful cat goddess. MY GOD DO I LOVE THE BATSHIT INSANITY OF SILVER AGE COMICS! Naturally I had to track down every appearance of Cat-Girl. Sadly not many exist. She's in the next issue of The Fly and it's fine but not CFC worthy, so I moved on to her next comic in some other Archie superhero book called.....

Adventures of The Jaguar #4: There was Cat-Girl again, front and center on the cover, proudly proclaiming her return. I'd never even heard of The Jaguar before but quickly came to see he was a very blatant ripoff of The Fly. Both can fly, magic belt instead of a ring, all the vague powers of the animal kingdom rather than bugs. The only unique thing going for him was the fact he had a pencil moustache he magically lost when turning into The Jaguar. I kid, he can also mentally talk to animals. This one ramps up the Silver age insanity even further as The Jaguar faces off against Cat-Girl before she's transported to a dimension where everything is paper thin and the animals in this dimension wanted to help The Jaguar fight Cat-Girl for whatever reason. God, it's insane and amazing. I had to continue to sate my Cat-Girl obsession into....

Adventures of The Jaguar #5: I was reading through this one wondering if there was some mistake on the wiki as I was receiving no Cat-Girl. Instead we get a story about a race of shirtless blue pear shaped aliens who serve some Queen named Tola who for some reason doesn't look like them but instead a 60's actress in a swimsuit. They've brought her to Earth because The Jaguar is the finest specimen to be her mate. They capture him and just when Tola is about to kiss him a gigantic talking lion emerges from the jungle to save him. The aliens shout "The L..Lion Talks! It Has Intelligence!" to which the lion replies "Yes-and the power to carry out my ideas!" Hahahah WONDERFUL! The Lion scares the aliens off planet and it is here where we reveal THE LION IS CAT-GIRL, acting far more bratty and flirty, proclaiming only she will be the one to marry The Jaguar! It was at this point I started to feel like I was reading Silver Age Superman and Lois Lane comics. This feeling only intensified further when reading....

Adventures of The Jaguar #6: Cat-Girl mustve proved popular or they just liked her a lot as she returns once again in two of the three stories in this one!! Cat-Girl is fully smitten now and this turns into an issue of Lois Lane as she schemes to make The Jaguar fall in love with her. She makes a love potion and douses him with it so the next person he sees he'll fall in love with. Shenanigans of course ensue, as Jill Ross comes through the door looking to be The Jaguar's secretary and he instantly falls for her. This enrages Cat-Girl even though she knows it's the potion, leading to this hilarious panel of her throwing a beaker at his head. At this point for no reason at all, the story is revealed to be a dream. Relieved, Cat-Girl goes to visit The Jaguar only to see Jill Ross actually debut and join the book as The Jaguar's co-worker who suspects he is The Jaguar, cementing her place as this book's Lois Lane thematically and visually. This in turn puts Cat-Girl into the Lana Lang role as the fellow scheming romantic interest. This is blatantly done even more so in the second story as Cat-Girl gives herself a magical makeover into a leopard spotted top and boots with a blue mini-skirt and gloves as well as a new red hair ponytail look. Cat-Girl hatches multiple schemes involving a giant living robot and Ancient Egypt monsters she summons from the past, that immediately go awry. To deal with the monsters, The Jaguar travels undersea to find someone named Kree-Nal, The Sea Circe From Space, who can turn anything living into a monster or vise versa. She ends up being a green skinned, platinum white haired knockout in a bathing suit that also is in love with The Jaguar and wants kisses after she helps save the day, leaving a regretful Cat-Girl crying as she's inadvertently drawn another romantic rival into this Jaguar love sweepstakes. HAHAHA WHAT?!?!? AMAZING!! Naturally I had to see if Kree-Nal was in any other issues which led me to....

Adventures of The Jaguar #3: There's Kree-Nal on the cover! Kree-Nal is amazing. A hot green skinned white haired sea creature alien that pops up out of the water and starts turning everyone spitefully into gross animal creatures because she "despises imperfection and ugliness". She's such a hilariously arrogant brat. I love it. Naturally though she's struck by The Jaguar's ruggedly handsome good looks. She wants kisses so he's like look If I ever get ugly, you'll stop all this ok? and she's like of course you're so hot that will never happen now shut up and give me the damn kisses. Inexplicably, The Jaguar morphs his head into a real jaguar's head, a power he has never shown before or after. She gets real grossed out and returns to the sea. It is some of the absolute FINEST Silver age insanity. At this point I feel like The Jaguar is just Superman with Jill Ross as his Lois, Cat-Girl as his Lana, and Kree-Nal as his Lori Lemaris, so I had to look up who wrote these. Turns out it's Robert Bernstein, who go figure, wrote a ton of Superman franchise books during this time period too. I was right! These are just the absolute best of the batshit weird Supes romances of the time but with the dullard Jaguar instead of Supes. Of course, I NEEDED more of this romantic trio and thankfully I was served well with....

Adventures of The Jaguar #7: In this one The Jaguar is having anxiety dreams about not being able to handle all the shit he usually has to deal with and he disappears on a mission. Jill Ross, Cat-Girl and Kree-Nal jump into action handling the threats the world faces in his absence. They are really run ragged throughout the day on mission after mission until Jill realizes the life size statue she made of The Jaguar (YES! YES, SERIOUSLY!) has a different number of whiskers on the uniform. Yep that's right, The Jaguar has just been standing there all day motionless pretending to be a statue watching them as they are being tortured by these catastrophes as well as the emotional turmoil of him being missing, possibly dead. See, he was a little worried he may be too busy someday and needed to make sure someone, hopefully all of them stepped up to deal with it. HAHAHAH SILVER AGE BASTARD! It's at this point they all put their hands in and he proclaims them the "Jaguar Rescue Team". Yes, amazing, everything I could ever want. I am fully obsessed with these characters at this point. I love them so much. It's at this point I want the Jaguar to permanently exit his own book so we can just get the adventures of these three. Sadly that doesn't happen and the only other time they ever team up is.....

Adventures of The Jaguar #9: A bizarre robot alien travels the universe to find iron, the sustenance for his people and finds it on Earth, obviously putting him in conflict with The Jaguar. Jaguar is almost immediately murdered, essentially, and this robot lays eyes on Jill Ross and gets SUPER horny for her. She plays him for time and assembles the "Jaguar Rescue Team" and the three of them take over the comic to save the day in a grand adventure and bring Jaguar back to life, again showing that they should headline this book and not the dolt Jaguar. At this point I was so madly in love with them all and their crazy ass adventures that I couldnt possibly imagine it to be the end. That's right, they never team up again. In fact this is pretty much the swan song for each. Jill continues to be in the few remaining issues of Jaguar sparingly. Kree-Nal is never seen again as far as I know. And Cat-Girl, my beloved Cat-Girl, the cause of this grand journey, well, she shows up another time briefly, and they even make it seem like she's end game for Jaguar, but then her next appearance she reveals off panel that radiation has caused her to lose all her powers and she's just a normal human socialite with a completely different visual with black hair. They turn her into a less interesting Selina Kyle. I've rarely been more angry. Damn!! Oh well, I sure didn't expect it but these random ass issues of some obscure lame superhero ended up being CFC alltimers for me. The magic of Comfort Food Comics right there people.

Superman & Batman Magazine #7: This entire series is pure gold. A spinoff of the Batman Adventures line of DC Adventures, each issue was a short magazine styled package for kids that would establish the DC Animated Universe before the DCAU existed all done by Adventures mainstay artists Mike Parobeck and Rick Burchett. This one is my favorite as the focus is on my beloved Kyle Rayner. We get a poster, Fact Files, and a wonderful Kyle Rayner Adventures story written by the man himself, Ron Marz. While that's my main reason for loving this one it also contains a fantastic Dan Jurgens penned Superman/Doomsday Adventures tale as well as a whole section titled Milestone For Kids! That's right, the Milestone Imprint gets a spotlight and their actual creators do their own version of Milestone Adventures with Icon, Rocket, Hardware and Static. It's such a cool idea and I love they got that exposure and this rare version of those amazing characters.

Jean & Scott Vol. 1: A collection of Max Wittert's hilarious X-Men fan comics. Legit probably the best X-Men comics ever made. The blend of all the comic and Animated Series tropes filtered through Jean being just the worst, but EXTREMELY relatable, is pure genius.

Jean & Scott Vol. 2: More of the same of the above. Still the funniest shit ever made.

Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1 #287: How fascinating that the best Whilce Portacio era X-Men story is the only one he's not credited in whatsoever. I LOVE this issue. It's maybe the most cohesive issue of the post Claremont Image Boys tenure and certainly the only one that makes you think "Ok, maybe we are in good hands, maybe we will be ok that Chris is gone." Jim Lee and Scott Lobdell pack this one full of tantalizing stuff! The Witness, named Lebeau, which was revealed to be Gambit's last name in X-Men #6, which dropped right before this issue, is so mysterious and intriguing. The X-Traitor storyline is introduced here, and will dominate X-Men media for years before fizzling out, but here it's done in such a mysterious and fun way that you are fully on board. As much as I think Bishop's introduction a few issues earlier is done well enough in the way he's a fully formed character whole cloth from his first panel, I don't actually think that story arc is good. Fitzroy SUUUUUCKS, as does the complete waste of the Hellions as they are all murdered, as well as the ending of just leaving Bishop, the XSA members and the escaped future convicts just out there. Portacio just is a terrible plotter and writer. He's a generally great dude and a fantastic artist but just should be told what to draw and end there. More care and potential is given to Bishop, his compatriots Malcom and Randall, Fitzroy, and the future era Bishop comes from in this issue than literally any other instance, which is a huge shame, but it erases any bad taste from the intro story. Rather than leave Bishop with just the admittedly genius hook of X-Men fanboy now stuck in the past with the X-Men, Malcom and Randall are murdered giving Bishop a bit more emotional depth and the sole focus he deserves, and he finally joins the X-Men motivated to protect them from the mysterious traitor. This is also the first issue to feature John Romita Jr. back on Uncanny. No lie, his brief time on the title with Dan Green is to me the best his art has ever looked. Sadly Green isn't with him here as a gaggle of 5 different inkers instead do the job including Scott Williams, Bob Wiacek, Bill Sienkiewicz and Dan Panosian, who just happen to be some of my favorite inkers ever, so it's still a visual feast!

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Villains Micro-series #7: BEBOP AND ROCKSTEADY! How can you not love them? Dustin Weaver and Ben Bates bring us this absolute romp with our favorite idiot rhino and warthog mutants. Weaver's work with the duo is a huge bright spot for the IDW Turtles and anytime we get to see artwork from Ben Bates is a time for intense celebration. He's an artistic God and I love anything he ever does.

Savage Tales Vol. 1 #5: My memory is hazy but when I was a kid we'd sometimes visit this antique shop in our town and one day my Mom bought some marble top chest thing to put in our home. Now I remember this comic being inside a drawer in that antique, but it may have just been on top of it in the store. Either way when we wound up with that chest we wound up with this comic. What an absolute treasure!! I didn't know Conan really at the time but finding a comic while forced to antique with your Mom? Like a prayer answered to a little boy obsessed with comics. It was insane!!! To this day, the Conan story within which ends with a hilarious joke of him choosing a horse over a woman, is MY Conan story. The end all be all top of the pile Conan story. Of course, it's written by Roy Thomas but it also features great art by Jim Starlin, which is always something I forget but end up pleasantly surprised at every time I reread it. The bonus in this one is an equally great Ka-Zar story by Stan Lee and John Buscema about lizard people and their half naked Queen.

Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1 #310: As I mentioned above, there's a short little run of Scott Lobdell, John Romita Jr., Dan Green Uncanny X-Men that only lasts from 300-311. It's one of my alltime favorite runs for the X-Franchise and features what I consider to be John Romita Jr's best art. He was KILLING it these few years in the early 90's and his stuff never looked better than when he was inked by my favorite inker ever, Dan Green. Although my fave issue of this run is the Thanksgiving issue listed above, this is a close second. Nothing really happens here, sure the X-Cutioner infiltrates the Mansion, but really it's a quiet downtime issue where Cyclops and Cable FINALLY hash it out about their father and son relationship all while the male X-Men hang out at a bar waiting for Scott to have his Bachelor Party. Sabretooth pops in too, during his captivity/rehab at the Mansion period. If you've been reading these entries you should see that all these ingredients are what I crave and love, so this one is a tremendous favorite. (Super Bonus: This one has an order form for Thunderstrike and ads for Mega Man X, Street Fighter 2 Champion Edition, and the 94 Fleer X-Men Cards)

Captain America Vol. 1 #367: Ah my beloved Acts of Vengeance, a real VIP event in my CFC boxes. This is an absolute classic one shot where after Magneto and Red Skull are forced together into the villain consortium, Mark Gruenwald rightly asks "Why doesnt Magneto, survivor of Auschwitz, FUCK UP the Red Skull?" and devotes an entire issue to that. It's great and so satisfying.

The New Mutants vol. 1 #52: Half of this issue is devoted to a Danger Room sequence of the Marauders wrecking the New Mutants, which is cool and fun to look at because it's Rick Leonardi, but the real draw here is Headmaster Magneto supporting and bonding with Magik. In the previous issue, as I wrote about above, Xavier and Ilyana are compared in their personalities and difficult circumstances, but Xavier ultimately fails her, as he literally forces her to obey him and do what he wants against her free will without any doubts in what he's doing. It's for the greater good, Magik be damned, his way is right. In this story we get the contrast to Xavier's and Magneto's leadership methods as Magneto thinks how wrong he is for the position and how he could force Magik to obey him, but that would achieve nothing. Instead he calmly and gently listens to her and supports her in any way she needs. He opens up and becomes vulnerable discussing his own villainous dark side and past, comparing it to her own struggles in an empathic way and even offers to fight the Hordes of Limbo for her. A very important thing here is he offers, but takes no action without her consent. She ultimately says no, she needs to deal with her own problems and through all this feels empowered and closer than ever before with ol Mags. It's a resounding breakthrough and a wonderful character study for both of them. I don't know if Claremont was purposefully contrasting Xavier and Mags' approaches between issues but this was such a meaningful stepping stone on his years long rehab of the character into the rightful leader of the X-Men over Xavier as planned.

Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1 #183: This is the issue where Wolverine and Nightcrawler bring Colossus to a bar to fuck him up after he broke up with Kitty Pryde, ultimately pushing him into an insane brawl with The Juggernaut. Now don't get me wrong, THAT PART IS AWESOME!! But, there's so much more going on here besides that. From the brutally real break up convo Kitty and Colossus have, complete with Kitty's thought bubbles, to Storm, Rogue and the others dealing with their own shit in the mansion, all the way to the seemingly random girl Juggs is macking on at the bar being revealed to be Selene, this issue is a perfect example of Claremont's long form character development and storytelling every issue. This is also an early John Romita Jr./Dan Green collab and while not as incredible as their early 90's team-up, it's still so nice to look at.

Beautiful Duck Comics #1: A collection of Brian McCray's strange and sexy duck women. I'm a sucker for literally anything McCray draws, so I was already down, but I really enjoyed these esoteric slice of bizarre life tales with a cast of hot ducks. I mean I shouldn't have to say more than hot ducks. It rules. We as a society need more hot ducks. I really hope we get more of these from McCray.

Generation X Vol. 1 #25: I don't remember how I came to own this one. Maybe I found it at a comic shop, maybe it was gifted to me(people always knew I liked comic books so family and family friends would get me boxes at garage sales or random ones they'd find). Who knows? That memory escapes me. But I've had this one a long time. Well before I read any of the rest of the series. Maybe that's why I love it so much OR maybe it's because of the incredibly stylistic Chris Bachalo art that exists in a very small moment of time where it's a blend of his earlier Mark Buckingham inked stuff and his polarizing late 90's style OR maybe it's because it spotlights how weird and wonderful this series was with it's focus on Howard the Duck, his girl Bev, a random Recorder alien woman and the kid crew of Artie, Leech and Franklin Richards they'd babysit in this series OR maybe it's because it's a double sized special issue that is also Scott Lobdell's farewell to the series. The only downside to this issue is that the cast of kids besides Penance and Jubilee aren't really even in it.

X-Force Vol. 1 #25: This and Wolverine #75 listed above are comics I've had nearly my whole life. I didn't buy them and I have no actual origin for where they came from. My best guess is my oldest brother bought them because of the hologram card special covers they had. He never really bought X-Men comics though, so who knows?? Either way I've had this one since I was a kid and it was my first exposure to Cable and the cast of characters here. The idea presented here that Cannonball is the best leader of mutants because he's been taught by Xavier, Magneto and Cale and is able to blend all of their teachings together into an ideal form of leadership is something that's stuck with me forever. I love it so much and besides Mike Carey briefly toying with this, it's never been utilized as it should. This is just a great issue packed with wonderful character interplay between Cable and the team as he finally gives a long exposition to all his secrets (aka Rob Liefeld's dumb writing), as well as between Magneto and his former students that are in X-Factor. Greg Capullo's early art also rules even if he has like 10 inkers here.

The New Mutants Vol. 1 #53: The New Mutants go to a dance thrown by the Hellions at their Massachusetts Academy!!! What fun. Some of my favorite moments are Dani Moonstar and Warpath bonding over being leaders and Native Americans, Magik threatening a terrified Empath while they dance, Catseye and Rahne going animal form and running around, and Doug Ramsey gambling and drinking and hanging out with the Hellions bad girls and acting like an idiot just like an insecure teen would. (Fuck you Doug for that slap)

Captain America Vol. 1 #395: I've written before about how most of the comics I had as a kid was a big random batch of Marvel Comics that came in a Sears/JC Penney green Marvel shortbox in these Collector's Packs they used to do in the 80's to the early 90's you'd find in the Sears or JC Penney Wishbooks. The green shortbox had like 75 random Marvel Comics in it from the line between 1990-1991. Me and my brother may have gotten two of these from our parents. So yeah for most of my life the comics I owned were a random assortment of early 90's Marvel. One of which was this random Cap issue. Now as a kid, unless it had Spidey or Ghost Rider or like Sauron or someone dinosaur related I was barely interested. Me and my brother though for our whole life fondly remembered the tagline on this one : The House That Dripped......DOUGH?!" and still to this day say it stupidly and dramatically to each other. As an adult I'm delighted to find it a rather fun issue with my beloved Eric Masterson featured heavily. They even have Cap admonish Eric, Quasar and Herc for the events of Thor 437 which I wrote about above!! What a treat to find!! This is a comic that has survived with me throughout and will stay with me my entire life.

Adventures of Superman Annual #3: Ahh the Armageddon 2001 Annuals. They all dealt with some future story for the DC line and I generally love them all, good or bad. This one is a real fave as we get Superman after the death of Lois, leaving Earth and shacking up with Maxima. Nothing beats Lois & Clark, but damn if I don't love the idea of Supes and Maxima together and Louise Simonson gives us an oversized imaginary tale of just that with some early Bryan Hitch art.

DC Primal Age: I came across this 100 Page Giant while shopping at Target with my wife and had to buy it. This was a Target exclusive book that tied into Funko's brief DC Primal Age toyline, which reimagined the DC Universe as a barbarian fantasy world with figures that were DC characters like the original Masters of the Universe toys. AWESOME! They were pretty neat and I'm bummed we never got Wave 3 and 4. I wanted that Supergirl and Catwoman damnit!! Anyways this book is an anthology of stories that function like the He-Man mini comics for this line. We start with a Marv Wolfman story that relies heavily on artist Scott Koblish to do everything in his power to make cool and interesting and he can barely do that. Somehow Wolfman makes this whole thing dull as can be. Man, Wolfman really sucks 95% of the time. Thankfully, the rest of the stories wash away that dullard's uninspired attempt with a roster of old school legends. We actually get a written AND DRAWN by Jerry Ordway tale featuring Wonder Woman and Solomon Grundy, a Louise Simonson and Phil Winslade beautifully illustrated story of the ice mage Mister Freeze, another Weezy tale about Batman with Brent Anderson art, an interesting Ordway written Joker story with Chuck Patton and Karl Kesel, and finally another Wolfman regular ass DC inventory story that thankfully Keith Pollard and Jose Marzan Jr. manage to save.

Thing Vol. 1 #15: This is another mystery comic we had for my entire life. Much like the Cap issue above this was one me and my brother fondly remember for the cover and the tagline. We said "It happened on yagwibzehejeye Street" to each other as much as we did the dough line. I never actually read it as a kid and was always baffled by it. Where the fuck is the Thing and why can he turn into this lame dude in a one piece bathing suit? Like what?? That red head's pretty and cool though. I was happy to get older and read more comics and finally get the required context and understand this story. It's actually a pretty fun little issue where Ben and his gal go to an alien bar. Somehow, like the Cap issue this one has survived all the different phases and moves in my life and I still own that battered copy. This one will also accompany me to my grave.

The Terrifics #25: Overall I felt the Dark Matter/New Age of DC Heroes thing by DC was a dumb failure of an idea that rarely went anywhere beyond "this is based on a Marvel character". (Sideways was cool though, him and his sleepy eyed friend. I wish they'd have given Sideways more love.) The Terrifics was always a weird this is pretty forced idea for a team but it usually had good art and out of left field ideas, and no issue exemplifies that more than this charming Choose Your Own Adventure issue with art by Dan Mora. It's pure fun.

Fantastic Four Vol. 1 #275: Man, I hate, like REALLY HATE but also love John Byrne. I don't get it. He's just the grade a worst manbaby idiot but also I love so many of his prime era comics and art, especially his dumb horny shit. This issue really embodies that love/hate relationship as the dude seriously takes a whole issue of FF to write a story where She-Hulk sunbathes topless and someone snaps pics of it and sells them to a dirty magazine. THAT'S IT! A WHOLE ISSUE! It's so stupid and sleazy. BUT it's also really fun to see sexy She-Hulk antics and it's quite satisfying to see Shulkie's attempt to stop it. Basically just like his run on She-Hulk, it's a titillating sexy romp with hilarious stupid satire nonsense. I hate it yet I also DEEPLY love it. That's Byrne for you!

Justice League International Vol. 1 #24: It's hard to pick specific bits of the JLI era to add to the CFC Canon as I greatly adore nearly every single issue of it so much, but this one has managed to carve out it's own corner of my brain. Mostly because of the Maguire drawn last tale where the glut of JL members have their party ruined by a small group of lame villains who never expected so many heroes to be in the same room together. But this also features stories with the wonderful art of Ty Templeton and Dan Spiegle, so it's like a full course comfort food meal.

Titans: Scissors, Paper, Stone: An Elseworlds future oneshot where Adam Warren is just left alone to cook. It's basically DC 2099, with very tenuous connections to the actual Titans, influenced by but allowed to really be it's own thing that can stand on it's own. It breaks my heart we never got to see Warren do more with this.

Origins of Marvel Comics: A 2010 oneshot where every page is a one off "story" showing the origin and throughline to the 2010 version of Marvel's teams and characters. I'm always shocked they got so many big name artists and the actual artists associated with those characters to do these.

Origins of Marvel Comics: X-Men: Same as the above but focused specifically on the X-Men. This one again gets big name artists associated with the characters, but also some nice unique surprises like Jill Thompson. The highlight surprisingly though is the writing team which includes second best X-Men writer ever Mike Carey, third best X-Men writer ever Chris Yost, and other fave X-writers like Peter David and James Asmus.

Harley Quinn Vol. 4 #29: The main story here is meh whatever. What I'm here for is the Adam Warren backup that is not only the traditional Warren hilarious and gorgeous, but also one of the best character studies for Harley ever done. Man, I'm realizing I REALLY LOVE Adam Warren. One thing that irks me so godamn much is they didn't have Warren do one of the three variant covers for this issue. THEY HAD HIM DO VARIANTS FOR ISSUES BEFORE AND AFTER, WHY WOULDNT THEY FOR THIS ONE?!?!? ARGHHHH! So I hunted down this Natali Sanders sexy nightgown one instead. I enjoy it a lot but would kill for a Warren cover of this one.

The New Mutants Vol. 1 #21: A quiet and charming down time issue with mutant teens being mutant teens AND it's drawn by Bill Sienkiewicz AND it's double sized?!? Pshh, forget it! What an absolute classic! Can you imagine just getting a regular monthly comic these days that's oversized and has Bill Sienkiewicz level art?? Godamn, this one is special.

Superman Vol. 4 #7: A one shot set during the time Clark and Lois were raising little Jon in Kansas. And all they do is go to the County Fair!! IT'S INCREDIBLE!!! This one really hits for me because we always have the Erie County Fair come to town where I live and since I was born it's always an annual community Big Deal. A quiet down time issue again, my absolute jam as you must know by now. Surprisingly, I always forget this one is drawn by Jorge Jimenez before he became a breakout star.

Immortal X-Men #5: I hate what the Krakoan X-Men era very quickly became after Hickman set up so much and can't stand much of what was published near the latter part of the era, but one exception was the EXCELLENT character work Kieron Gillen did with Exodus. I've always loved Exodus and felt he had so much story potential and had barely been used or explored since his debut in the 90's. My socials are gone now but I actually spent quite a bit of time making an Exodus infograph/reading order some years back. I love the guy and I've been waiting so many years for him to get his due. Mike Carey did some nice work with him but essentially he's been a blank canvas for much of his existence. Gillen's time with him has been a revelation(pun intended) as he's finally revealed what his power actually is in a deeply satisfying OHHHHH OK YEAHHH THAT'S GREAT moment earlier in the run in conjunction with his relationship with Hope Summers, and this deep dive issue that tied into the AXE event. From revealing new canon, to connecting and reframing old, this story finally gives Exodus the care and development he's always deserved.

Astro Dutchie: Aaron Ancheta is an online acquaintance of mine and it's been an honor to chat with him and see behind the scenes of the comics he makes. I'm absolutely in love with every single piece of artwork he's ever done. His long running and ever changing ACHTUNG!! Magical Girl Corps webcomic is always such fun to read. The huge bummer of all this is how none of it is in print so it was a godsend when he put out this stupid, hilarious side story for sale. It's a true joy to physically hold in my hands and a real gem in my collection.

Justice (1994): Not actually a comic but a collection of great content put together from the Japanese doujin fanzines Justice and Gadget. It's incredibly fascinating to read about the Japanese perspective on popular American comics from the 80s and early 90's and see the wide range of fan art many of these fan artists created.

Nation X #3: As I wrote above, Corey Lewis is my guy. He's my comics GOAT. He contributes a story in here about Cannonball. One of my fave X-characters by my dude??? Forget it! It's so entirely my shit. I love this fun little story so so much.

Superman #400: A momentous celebration of Supes. I'm not a huge fan of all the many short stories within, but they do honor the character very well and feature some inspired ideas and wonderful art. The real reason I love this one so much is the whole big package, including pin-ups by so many legends alongside all the stories. It's one of the alltime best anniversary comics.

X-Men: Curse of the Mutants - Storm & Gambit: This is such a weird, obscure little comic. It's a one shot tie-in to a largely forgotten and middling event where the X-Men fought vampires. It has no reason to be this good. We get a fantastic action packed adventure that features great characterization and character interplay between the X-Men that honors past continuity, really heartbreaking and strong moments, and it's all drawn by mega fave Chris Bachalo.

Ghost Rider Vol. 6 #35: Johnny Blaze in Japan versus a body horror demon that looks like Sailor Moon, all drawn amazingly by Tony Moore. What else could you ever ask for in a comic?

Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1 #309: Another in the Scott Lobdell/John Romita Jr. Uncanny run. Seriously I just love this run so much. This is another classic Lobdell "Quiet Issue" where the spirit of Magneto in Charles' mind forces him to examine his love life and failings as a man. It's Lobdell's best written issue in my mind. (My only nitpick with this issue is when the Mags spirit says "Ennnnt" like a buzzer wrong answer noise to Charles. Hahah I can't picture either man speaking that way)

Venom #150: Can we all sit and take a moment to appreciate that we get to live in an era where we can experience the mindblowing art of Tradd Moore? This is a severely overlooked anniversary one shot that features Moore doing his usual blowing up the artform style in an admittedly pedestrian written tale, but it doesn't matter because we get to see his spectacular take on the Symbiote and how it moves and works as well as plenty of other Venom history callbacks and dynamic fights. It's a visual masterpiece. There's also a fun bonus David Michelinie/Ron Lim 90's Venom story with gorgeous retro coloring.

X-Factor Vol. 1 #25: Easily the best issue of X-Factor. X-Factor Vol. 1 is a maddening title, always shifting from an insomnia cure to essential X-Book, even when Walt Simonson was drawing it. It never makes sense how it constantly goes from peaks to valleys. This one is definitely the highest peak as Angel is dramatically revealed to be Archangel to the team and we get big world conquering stakes with Apocalypse. It also features the best work from Walt during his tenure on the book.

Dragon Ball Part Four #6: More of Viz's initial American floppy comic version of Dragon Ball. One of my favorite gag fights in the whole series that hinges on Bulma's boobs popping out, fully uncensored in this unique publishing run. Also one of my fave Toriyama color pieces as the cover here!

Excalibur Vol. 1 #43: The best issue of Excalibur. Alan Davis' run on Excalibur is a real highmark of comics full of witty humor, zany antics, and peak character interplay. This issue is a perfect representation of all of that in one single issue package.

DC Universe #0: A 2008 50 cent hype comic that featured exclusive little preview stories for such stories as Legion of 3 Worlds, Batman RIP, Final Crisis and more written by Grant Morrison and Geoff Johns and featuring art from Doug Mahnke, George Perez, and more. It's such a wonderful snapshot of 2000's DC by the two main architects of the company during that period.

Martian Manhunter Vol. 2 #24: A flashback "imaginary story" set during the JLI days where J'onn becomes possessed and too addicted to Chocos and Hulks out needing his fix. It's a dark comedy masterpiece by John Ostrander along with a dream team of Doug Mahnke inked by Patrick Gleason.

FF Vol. 2 #9: I think Matt Fraction's FF is one of Marvel's alltime greatest comics and my favorite issue of the run is this silly downtime pool party issue. It features the whole sprawling cast in a fun filled setting bouncing off each other that really gets to highlight the found family theme of the series. It also features Joe Quinones filling in for the Allreds on art and he is always a MEGA fave of mine.

Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1 #311: The last John Romita Jr. drawn issue of his Lobdell Uncanny run I love so much. I can't complain too much as Joe Madureira gets his rise to fame right after but I'm still annoyed we didn't get more of this creative team run after Editor Bob Harras basically tricked JR Jr. off the book. I felt Scott Lobdell was really gelling with Romita Jr. for these issues and finally coming into his own as a writer as he was really getting a handle on fusing his action issues and quiet issues together into just really good all around issues. This one is the best example of that as we get a really nice quiet character focus on Bishop, Jubilee and Storm that also features a kickass Sabretooth conflict and a weaving of the ongoing Phalanx subplot into the story. A bummer Dan Green doesn't ink the whole issue but Al Vey steps in and does a pretty great job even if he goes a bit too heavy on the lines.

Archie #635: An Occupy Wall Street storyline in Riverdale. The writing is fine. The reason it's here is because it's a Gisele Lagace drawn Archie. I find her art at all times captivating and gorgeous and it just fits Archie Comics so well. It's somehow still "classic Archie style" while also being something so fresh and new. She's just SUCH an incredible artist!

X-Men: Earthfall: A 90's deluxe reprint of Uncanny X-Men #232-234 where the Brood come to Earth and my beloved Outback X-Men need to murder the shit out of them, all while Madelyne Pryor deals with some serious psychological shit. This is my favorite story arc set during that special era and it's so cool they reprinted it all in one comic with a nice new Ian Churchill cover.

Dragon Ball Part 2 #2: This issue collects both chapters of the debut of Launch. It is a terrible tragedy and mystery that Toriyama forgets about her way later on as she's easily one of the best characters ever. I love her.

Batman Vol. 1 Annual #8: The absolute best of the 80's James Bond vibes Batman by Mike Barr, the GORGEOUS pencils and inks of underrated legend Trevor Von Eeden, and the mindblowing colors of Lynn Varley. This thing is a work of art. Seriously. Each page should be hung in a museum. The perspective work and the line work Von Eeden unleashes here are spectacular. And Varley's psychedelic blend of colors here are my favorite work she has ever done. It's a high stakes Ra's Al Ghul story (my fave Bats villain) which people often criticize for Batman not caring if he's complicit in Ra's dying. To me I think it's perfect characterization as I feel of all his villains, the "immortal" constantly resurrecting biggest threat madman, SHOULD and would be dealt with this way by Batman. He knows Ra's' whole deal by this point, he doesn't need to swing in and save him like a common criminal, he will never truly be rid of him.

Daredevil Vol. 1 #268: A haunting and overwhelmingly satisfying, brilliant examination of the human condition and Matt Murdock's entire personality and how he interacts with the world and all the people in it, in a brutal one and done by, you guessed it, Nocenti and JR Jr. again!

Magneto #0: A mid 90's Fatal Attractions prequel complete with holofoil cover that collects the two Magneto focused Classic X-Men stories by Chris Claremont and John Bolton, a new Fabian Nicieza endcap and a few pinups. The Magneto Classic X-Men stories are some of the best work Claremont ever did and are still the gold standard for Magneto and his characterization. As close to perfection as you can get. What a treat to have them in this wonderful little package with new extras. The only downside being this contains more of Nicieza's downright offensive and ill researched retcon to make Mags of Gypsy descent that he fully went into in X-Men Unlimited #2.

Classic X-Men #8: This battles it out with I, Magneto in the one shot above for best backup story in all of Classic X-Men, where we see Jean dying as she meets the Phoenix for the first time. Claremont destroys the whole "Phoenix and Jean are separate beings" retcon, and presents such a touching story of a girl and an omnipresent Force having a chat and reconciling the fact they are the same being, mind, body and soul, and ultimately choosing to live life and embrace all of its contradictory happiness, messiness, tragedy, and passion.

Everything Sucks: Noah's Millions: More Everything Sucks! Noah finds a bag of cash and hijinks ensue with the usual EXTREMELY relatable feelings and dialogue that accompanies every Everything Sucks comic. I adore the perfect sandwich and thrift store double page spreads in this issue as well as Calla's cute goth dress.

Dragon Ball Z Part 2 #8: The opening chapter of the Goku/Vegeta fight, arguably the greatest Shonen fight chapter ever made, featuring the most iconic and my favorite panels of the Dragon Ball Z era.

Generation X - Opening Volley: I LOVE Generation X but I also find the series to be highly disappointing. It starts off so ridiculously good and never reaches those highs again. I've read just about every interview or promo material they ever did for the title and Scott Lobdell had some big plans for the book, that by about the first year of the book existing, around issue #8 or post the Girl's Dorm exploding, he completely drops. The plan to continually develop the kids so they graduate and we get new classes of mutants coming in never happens. Mondo never really joins the team. M, Penance and Emplate all become something vastly different than conceived. Dozens of dangling plots or hints vanish. It becomes a Howard the Duck book. Mark Buckingham leaves and Chris Bachalo's artstyle changes so much. It's a huge bummer. BUT for a time, we got some gold nonetheless I truly cherish, including the absolute height of the series, this special promotional issue given away at the 1994 San Diego ComiCon, full of all the amazing potential the book promised. It represents Lobdell and Bachalo's original vision for the series set a bit into the future, before things quickly changed. The original thesis of the book and the team is all there, these are kids who won't necessarily become X-Men, but they will be taught and learn how to deal with the world that hates and fears them. Mondo is a main member. Emplate, M and Penance are all their own intriguing original characters full of mystery and potential without any St. Croix family connections or retcons. Jubilee functions as the main POV character. And it's all set directly after the Girl's Dorm has exploded. This is sadly, as far as Lobdell ever plotted out for the book prior to writing it. In those same interviews the man says he never plots past the issue he's writing for creative spontaneity and boy does that show, NEGATIVELY, in his work. He is the definition of no plot, all vibes comics. The beginning of Gen X, his trademark Uncanny X-Men quiet issues, all amazing and all very light on continuing story plot. This is what ultimately starts Gen X as a unique, brilliant masterpiece but quickly turns it into a bitter disappointment. A bonus is the copy I own is signed by Lobdell, Bachalo and Richard Starkings.

Dragon Ball Part 1 #5: More OG Dragon Ball, this time with the chapter of Yamcha peeping on Bulma getting out of the shower, presented here again in the fully uncensored glory of the Viz floppies.

Roxxon Presents: Thor #1: An absolutely hilarious laugh out loud romp that parodies everything in our current hellhole of American capitalist culture. Villain Dario Agger has bought the rights to the old Thor comics and name and using a combination of magic creates a soulless corporate hire Thor. That they got Greg Land, the finest example of a soulless corporate hire artist, to do the art is such a perfect choice. So godamn funny.

Rom and the X-Men: Marvel Tales: With Marvel reacquiring publishing rights to Rom, they released this oversized oneshot package that collects ROM #17-18 and #31-32, all written by Bill Mantlo and drawn by Sal Buscema. Both stories feature X-Characters and the absolute horror show that is Hybrid, the disgusting and evil offspring of a Dire Wraith and a human, which Cerebro scans as a mutant. The first story features a great three way battle between Rom, Hybrid and the X-Men and has elements I love like Mantlo writing a Wolverine that sounds exactly like the Animated Series Wolvie and Buscema drawing a wonderfully emotive Kitty Pryde. The followup story features Rom vs Mystique's Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and Hybrid again. This is a particularly important story as it is the only story featuring a pre X-Men Rogue that delves into her personality softening and going against Mystique's control and resembling the heroic X-Man she becomes. Buscema also does an incredible job drawing her and helps shift her from the old lady look into the Southern Sexpot we eventually get. It's an incredibly fun fast paced tale and integral to her character development and history.

X-Men Classic #54: This is a reprint of Uncanny X-Men #150 which is the first true story where Claremont retcons Magneto to be a Holocaust survivor and starts his magnificent and brilliant reclamation project for the character to change him from Silver Age maniac to noble leader of the X-Men. It is a stunning work of art, highlighting the best of Claremont's writing as well as the best of Dave Cockrum's art. Easily the highpoint of their second run together and arguably the best work they ever produced together. Why do I have the Classic X-Men reprint rather than the original issue? Well, I've always loved that new Andy Kubert cover, the brighter coloring, as well as the fact this 1990 reprint contains ads for the specific Marvel Universe Series 1, NBA Hoops and Skybox NBA Trading Card sets that I owned and adored and dominated my young life. Not to mention the Revlon Super Mario Bros Shampoo ad, another ad burned into my memory.

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yangsharperavery · 9 months

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carmy telling sydney that she loves taking care of people is SO specific and exacting coming from him bc carmy hasn’t really experienced or allowed himself care... yet he recognizes that ability and characteristic so astutely in sydney.

that line is a callback to what nat says to him last season about chef’s liking to take care of people through their creativity, their gifts, their food. which is one of the reasons carmy gravitates toward food.

that’s one of the ONLY times he felt connected to and cared for within his highly dysfunctional and fractured family. THRU their likeness with and for food.

every other time he cared within his family, it was thrown in his face, he didn’t do it right or he was punished for trying.

part of him recognizing sydney’s brilliance and capability is absolutely about her skill and the food but it’s also about her ability to CARE about all of these things above and beyond the food as well.

something carmy really struggles with. like the accolades, the stars, certain details of the business. he can’t care bc care is such a tenuous and foreign concept to him on so many levels.

some people took noticeable (and justifiable) issue with all that he saddles sydney with both last season, and moreso, this season.

but without delving too much into the unjust and imbalanced distribution of labor on a black woman, which has valid and necessary critique, part of the reason carmy feels so comfortable and trusting in allowing sydney to do so many things is because he feels secure in her care and the expressions of it.

not for him specifically or directly, but for all the things that are required in their business. and even all that is required as a human as well.

he knows that her care extends beyond the food and the nourishment and the fulfillment of a meal.

and i think he does this almost unconsciously because he still wanted final say and approval on things. that’s his limited need for control and to know the working facets of a thing in order to feel certain it won’t implode.

but the CARE. that is something he sees in her. it’s something he’s lacked in a broader sense for most of his life. that care from another, directed back.

carmy desperately wants to feel and experience care. but he can’t. he keeps it at arm’s length, he self sabotages from it.

this also speaks to how we don’t ever even see HIM experience this basic care via a meal. like this guy is a chef, he’s surrounded by chefs and owns a restaurant yet he eats pb&js and poptarts?? cannot experience or allow himself care.

i think his simple acknowledgement and vocal proclamation of sydney’s care and heart is so special and impacting bc that’s what he needs. that’s what he desperately craves. but he has no real concept of it. he’s tried to display it so much throughout his life in his family but the remnants and byproducts have wounded him so severely.

so even in the way he expresses care there is an inconsistency or a haphazardness.

which is also why him telling her earlier in this season: “you’re gonna have to care about everything, more than anything” is actually just a projection. because sydney doesn’t have a lack of perception and understanding and dynamic with care. HE does!

sydney has experienced care on additional levels he hasn’t had access to. sydney has been loved. even if primarily in a familial, parental way. that is a foundation for so MUCH when it comes to the capacity of care and nurture. both giving and receiving it.

this is also why he seems so visually fixated on her sometimes. he’s trying to gauge and learn her but also figure out how he can care for and about her (while also keeping her at an arm’s length and protecting himself) because someone like her is literally BRAND new to him.

this is why he can’t handle her being upset or peeved at him.

this why he called in the favor he did for something he KNEW she would care about wearing.

WHY HE LITERALLY TRIES TO GIVE HER WHAT SHE WANTS NEARLY ALWAYS.

he witnesses her capacity for care continuously displayed and feels his own opening up toward and for her.

#sydcarmy #carmy x sydney #the bear #the bear fx #the bear meta #sydcarmy meta #the way i'm ENTRANCED with this dynamic #i need to be able to focus on other things PLSSSS

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thestobingirlie · 1 month

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top 5 stobin hcs GO

it takes them a few years to get to that level of comfort, but eventually there are really zero boundaries between them. steve can get tired of chewing his gum and robin will just chuck it in her mouth to have a few chews. if anyone pulls a disgusted face when they do that kind of shit they just go “it’s good for the planet!!! we’re saving waste!”

they have gotten fired from a lot of jobs because if one of them calls off sick, the other Will Not come in.

on that, they share a resume. it’s better for the planet ☺️

the biggest fight they ever had is when robin used so much of steve’s special expensive conditioner that she emptied half the bottle.

they share clothes. if you looked at them from behind during certain years (before robin went through her buzzcut era) it was very easy to confuse them. oh and their fights over who gets the “good jeans” have gotten ugly.

(an extra one because i had two about jobs) they share a flat as soon as they leave hawkins, and because they live in a ‘cool’ city (anything that isn’t hawkins is cool to them) the kids are always forcing them to let them spend the night (erica steals some of their ice cream every single time).

#trying to think of hcs i haven’t already said is tough lmao. so a few of these may be repeats #stobin #steve harrington #robin buckley #stranger things #asks #anon

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skullpie · 1 year

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OHMYGOD NEW BLOG THAT WRITES FOR TWO OF MY FAVOURITES??:!189( SCREAMS

anyways is it okay if you just do some silly relationship hcs with joonyeong (aouad) and jaeheon (sweet home) separately I WILL LITERALLY CRY TEARS OF JOY

relationship hcs x

joonyeong x reader; jaeheon x reader (separate)

summary: relationship hcs for joonyeong (aouad) & jaeheon (sweet home)

warning(s): series typical warnings!

note(s): anon based on this request i think u have a type.. side eye.. can’t blame u tho uptight dorks with wire framed glasses are hot ! hope u enjoy lovely :) and ty for being my first request on this blog!! i thought i’d have to put some fics out before i got any so this is rly encouraging. i appreciate you!

joonyeong

such a little nerd

definitely started out as good friends

absurdly proud of the fact that he has a partner

like… him?? he feels so special

(he is)

study dates where he actually intends to study and you distract him the whole time by begging for kisses and sitting on his lap etc

sometimes he caves, sometimes he doesn’t, he takes his academics seriously

but idk the image of you wrapping your arms around his neck and telling him to take a break with you during exams week.. lord….

“i miss my boyfriend”

“we’ve been together for the past three hours”

“but you’ve not been paying any attention to me! :(“

he does help you with work though, he thinks it’s really important

your parents adore him, they think he’s a great influence on you (even if you’re also great at school)

he’s the type to think the secretly hate him, though, so you often go over to his to spend time with each other

really enjoys going to whatever events you’re involved in

even if he doesn’t understand jack shit about any of it

remembers really specific and small details about you for sure

very eager to introduce you to people as “my girlfriend/boyfriend/partner!”

really proud of you and your relationship–does not try to hide that he’s taken

but he overall prefers private intimacy and affection

and very small, gentle forms of it at that

you can fluster him pretty easily tho

i can definitely see a friendly academic rivals to lovers situation happening

when the virus breaks out he never lets you out of his sight

cliché, but if you’re ever accused of being infected, he’s defending you with his life

when you can’t sleep he holds you, which doesn’t make you sleep but it is comforting

tries his hardest to tell you how important you are to him very often while everything is happening

first (and last) l-word is said when he decides to jump out of the barricade to save everyone (sorry ouch)

jaeheon

wholesome wholesome wholesome

he admires you so much

you probably meet in the elevator

he tries talking to you about his lord and savior–you think it’s really endearing how passionate he is

genuinely believes god sent you to him personally like an angel

just always smiling with you

holding hands everywhere you go

very often being mistaken for a married couple when you’re out and even by neighbors

(hyein starts telling people you’re married, and referring to you as ‘that married couple’)

likes holding your face and just admiring you, pressing little kisses to every spot he can think of

basically worships you

not the type to get flustered, per-say but he does get very hesitant and shy about certain levels of intimacy

hugging you from behind and pressing kisses to your shoulder, up your neck and to the top of your head. omg

just very traditionally romantic in the ways he shows you affection

kissing your hand, getting you flowers often, opening the car door for you, etc

biggest gentleman

when you get locked in the apartment building, he becomes bolder, or at least less hesitant about things

literally would die to protect you (and he does)

is always holding onto you in some way in low-intensity situations

the thought of you asking him to teach you how to use his sword, and he does that cute thing where when he goes to teach you, he stands behind you and holds your hands and arms to show you IM ON MY HANDS AND KNEES

forehead kisses. that’s it just forehead kisses

when either of you are given a task, he always makes sure to hold you for at least a minute or two before he leaves. in case it’s the last time (sobs)

really good friends with jisu during the lock-in

you two find comfort in each other after he’s gone (NOT LIKE THAT) ((but also maybe like that idk im not the boss of you))

#aouad #all of us are dead #sweet home #aouad x reader #all of us are dead x reader #sweet home x reader #joonyeong #joonyeong aouad #joonyeong all of us are dead #jaeheon #jaeheon sweet hime #joonyeong x reader #jaeheon x reader #hcs #headcanons #x reader #relationship headcanons #kdrama #kdrama x reader

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stellocchia · 5 months

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I've talked about this already in a reblog [LINK] but I do find it fascinating how every time, without a fail, when cTommy would start getting close to someone they would immediately register as a threat to cDream.

cWilbur is the most obvious one. He was cTommy's big brother, his protector, the person he arguably loved and relied on the most. And cDream was very very obviously jealous of said fact. And he'd been jealous from the beginning. And he tried to weasel his way into the big brother role from all the way back in og L'Manburg.

I will never get over the fact that he only ever tried to change cTommy's mind on even being in L'Manburg [LINK because this is fucking funny]. And then later in Pogtopia that he left a special gift basket which included his treasured crossbow as well as the book Tyrant and a bunch of other stuff to cTommy when he only gave Techno (Pogtopia's most skilled fighter) one single either gold or god apple. The fact that, despite saying he would help from the shadows only, he still very much fought the pet wars by cTommy's side. Or that, after confession he was actually on cSchlatt's side and being against cTommy going to retrieve his stuff from his old house in public, he still allowed him in private. And then spent the whole pre-war hanging with cTommy.

He was always trying to get in cTommy's good graces. To sorta take him from under cWilbur's nose. And it didn't work because cTommy has always been about as loyal as you can get, so he went with the best possible alternative and encouraged cWilbur's self-destructive behaviors until he did the job for him. And then he just never brought him back until he was certain that he was no longer a threat to his big brother role [LINK to Tommy literally saying that cWilbur was worse than cDream].

But cWilbur was so SO far from being the only threat to cDream's fragile attachment. And, in fact, I would argue he wasn't even the biggest threat in cDream's mind.

After all, cDream never put that much effort into getting rid of cWilbur. Partially because cWilbur was already spiraling and distancing himself from cTommy, but I also think that he just didn't respect him all that much as a rival. Though that's mostly speculation.

No, the biggest threat was always cTubbo. The best buddy, best friends forever. There is a reason why during exile, while the role he was trying to cover was more akin to cWilbur's role in cTommy's life, his wording wasn't. He never used the term "brothers" always "best friends".

There is a reason why he went through the trouble of utterly destroying cClingy relationship far more than he ever did for cCrime, by framing cTommy, by demanding harsher punishments at the trial, by taunting cTommy and escalating the situation over and over again. And then still by discouraging cTubbo from visiting and by lying to cTommy about cTubbo just discarding his 'my Tommy' compass. And then, when none of that worked, he went for the ultimate betrayal, because he knew it would hurt cTommy immensely if cTubbo gave up the disc he'd been given as an ultimate act of trust, and he knew that he could break cTubbo's trust in cTommy even more. And when EVEN THAT didn't work he straight-up went for murdering cTubbo because my man was fed up (at least if we assume that the staged finale didn't completely go according to plan, but if I go on a rant about how UTTERLY MORONIC the staged finale was here I'll never stop).

cTubbo was always cDream's biggest enemy, and it really goes to show how single-minded he was as a villain that cTubbo being his nemesis wasn't even about cTubbo.

Next level obsession there.

Of course, the two of them weren't the only threats, just the biggest. Bud cDream didn't stop at them. He tried to kill Ghostbur during exile just because his constant presence was too much of a comfort to cTommy and later on actually killed him to revive the version of cWilbur cTommy seemingly hated. He took two of MD's lives because he not only was willing to move in with cTommy, but also wasn't afraid to call cDream out on his bullshit which, if you rewatch that stream, seemed to really bother cDream. Also the fact that cTommy, as soon as he was offered an alternative to follow MD's orders and rules instead of cDream's took it with pretty much no hesitation probably didn't help cDream's dislike of MD. He also never revived cRanboo, and it is very possible that it's because he knew that he and cTommy were friends.

Murders aside, he also sabotaged cTommy's and cRanboo's communication more than once when he realized they were getting close. Which shows that he ether considered cRanboo only a minor threat or simply still useful, because had anyone else visited that much they would be dead.

He also immediately threatened to hurt cPhil when cTommy started relying on him post-prison break. And let's not forget that time cLazar was literally only going to visit with a present and cDream considered it such a big threat that he made cLazar take part in abusing cTommy so thoroughly that cTommy was sure not to want anything to do with him in the future. (also, kind of an interesting coincidence that cLazar was one of the unlucky two selected to be slaughtered for the sake of science...).

Every time cTommy has gotten especially close to anyone, cDream was always there, ready to intervene, ready to deal with the threat as swiftly as possible. Because ANYONE would have been a better choice for cTommy and he knew it. And he acted accordingly.

Curiously, the only one he never took action against was cTechno, though I do wonder if that was just because of how obviously doomed cBedrock bros were from the very start. cDream does know the extent of cTommy's loyalty very VERY well after all...

#dream smp #dream smp analysis #tommyinnit #c!tommy #c!dream #wilbur soot #tubbo #c!wilbur #c!tubbo #c!ranboo #mexican dream #c!lazarbeam #c!primeboys #c!discduo #long post #I was in a 2021 mood today it seems #hope you guys enjoyed my way too long and somewhat disconnected rant!

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