Oliver Queen's New Suit

As I'm sure some of you may have heard, the CW's hit DC show Arrow recently had itself a grand old time at Comic Con as it does every year. Plenty of things were teased, hinted at, and confirmed. Diggle's costume, gay Mr. Terrific, Barrowman's ring, some other shenanigans that are probably currently escaping my mind because I'm still picking pieces of it off of the walls.

And that's just the news for Arrow. There was also a ton of bombs dropped for its spin-off shows The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, and Vixen. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which I follow for the same reason you would follow a drunken friend who just walked out of the house carrying a salad fork instead of his car keys, also showed off a new trailer.

As you can well imagine, being the intrepid blogger that I am, my heart swelled with the possibilities this news provided me with. What to write about? What not to write about seems like a better question, really. Not going to lie, I'm excited. I'm positively giddy and I'm bouncing off the walls.

That said, I did eventually have to pick something to write about. I'm an independent blogger scrapping a living almost entirely off of borrowed money. I do not own a press pass and thus am not the kind of person who has any business "breaking the story" as it were. I do, however, find myself in a nice comfortable position from which I can analyze the story, and offer up opinions that would otherwise be wasted in the comment sections of other people's articles.

So, right now, I'd like to talk about the latest image of Oliver Queen's new suit. I don't want to risk my humble little digital desk being overturned and burned by the WB legal team, so I'm not going to include the image here. Instead I'll just post a link to it.

Seen it? Awesome. Now let's talk.

To start with, I like the suit. I find it to be an interesting new direction, and it definitely feels more superhero-y, if that's an adjective (and if it isn't it is now), what with the exposed arms and what not. I had a feeling the sleeves were coming off the suit eventually, given that the showrunners have always stated an eventual goal is Green Arrow in all his glory.

That said, I think I like the old suit more. It was kind of cool how it was slowly modified and updated with necessity and opportunity. It almost felt like a character all its own, growing and changing but still being the same original object. This new suit change isn't an update, its an all-out swap. Which, actually now that I think about it, could work from a character standpoint. Huh. Well played, writers. You're transformation symbolism is duly noted.

So yeah, overall I like it. It's more comic book-y (also probably not an adjective but it is now) which is a direction I can get behind. What I do take issue with is one particular area of skin the Green Arrow's costume leaves exposed. Go ahead and take another look, and pay special attention to the bow arm.

Those new gauntlets the Green Arrow suit has leave Oliver's inner forearm completely exposed. As someone who has operated a bow and arrow multiple times in the past, I can tell you first hand that this is not an area you want exposed when a high tension cord is zipping mere centimeters past your arm after you just used upwards of sixty pounds of force to draw it back. One wrong move, and that bowstring is going to drag itself across your forearm, potentially slicing it open if the bow is powerful enough.

Now I understand my capabilities with a bow and arrow border on the absurdly novelist, and Oliver Queen is literally the most skilled archer in modern fiction (thank you Stan Lee's Fan Fights for settling that debate), but even still. You can't tell me that in the heat of battle, bullets whizzing everywhere and maybe having just been punched in the face, that there isn't even a chance that Oliver will mess up on his form a little and get slapped by his bowstring. Well, you could, and there's actually a chance you're right, but there's also a chance you're wrong, so HA!

Anyway, it just seems odd that an archer superhero's costume would leave exposed an area that archery stores sell gear specifically to protect. But whatever. The suit's great. That forearm's gonna bug me. Can't wait for Season 4. Hi Tom!

Arrow returns to the CW October 7. 

Crackpot Theory: The Infinite North Korea Theorum

As I'm sure most of the free world is aware, North Korea is an interesting place. It's pretty poor, technologically lagging, full of Stalinistic policies so Stalinistic Stalin himself would demand freedom, and its run by an inarguably eccentric man-child. In the 50s, Korea had a big political split that to this day hasn't been mended, necessitating the "North" in its name.

 Despite repeatedly insisting it wants to destroy us all and become the dominant species, most of us sensible nations are content to pat its cute little head and reply "Of course you will, dearie," every time it threatens Armageddon so that we can focus our attentions on countries with more oil.

Like those. Those'll do very nicely.

It was while pondering this, the existence of an ongoing space war between humanity and a bunch of long game playing space, and the presence of surface to space planetary railgun in our backyard that I and my good friend Gamma One came to one, obvious, undeniably fact.

Our planet is the North Korea of the galaxy. 

While you pick your jaws up from the floor, I will elaborate. As previously stated, North Korea is pretty poor, comparatively speaking. A lot of people within its borders seem to be going hungry, or so I'm told from the Grade A journalism that is The Interview. In the past people have attempted to alleviate this by doing what people always do, send in aid. Unfortunately, North Korea is pretty notorious about not being so gracious with accepting aid.

This seems, at least to me, to be a pretty foolish position to take, up there with shooting yourself in the stomach and then punching anyone who offers to stop you from bleeding to death. But hey, to each their own, right? Because now, I want you to picture this:

A galaxy full of space faring, interplanetary traveling, alien civilizations. Some civilizations are bit better off than others, there are a few unstable military regimes and downright horrible places to live. And then, in that one corner of the galaxy, is that planet. 

You know the one I'm talking about. So woefully behind in technology they've only occasional been to their own moon. Full of starving people, poor as poor can be, and incredibly hostile to outside cultures. You've heard rumors of people who visit the planet being locked up in government facilities, never to be heard from again because they're being interrogated and tortured and experimented on. The governing bodies run by eccentric man children. In the 50s, it had a big political split it still hasn't mended. 

The government of the planet insists it is capable of going to war with the rest of the galactic superpowers, and puts out streams of propoganda attesting to this that also paints outside cultures as hostile forces out to destroy them and their way of life.

Luckily, these days, most of the galactic community is content to ignore this backward bizarro world, patting its cute little blue head and saying "Of course you can, dearie" every time it threatens War of the Worlds so that it can focus on planets with more magic space elements.

Like this one. This'll do very nicely.

Some planets do try to send in aid to the poor, starving people of Earth, but the local government is pretty bad about accepting aid from outside civilizations, so- you see where I'm going with this.

For all the looking down on North Korea we here on planet Earth do, there is a proportionately equal amount of looking down on Earth being done here in the Milky Way. And it doesn't stop there, for it also follows that just as the Milky Way looks down on Earth, so does the local galaxy cluster look down on the Milky Way. And just as the local galaxy cluster looks down on the Milky Way, so too does the universe look down on our local galaxycluster. And just as the universe looks down on our local galaxy cluster, so too does the multiverse look down on our universe!

Best of luck with coming to terms with that.

003 out.

Phoenix Creation Journal #4

If you read my last Story Spotlight post, then you know that sometimes when I'm at my computer, I'm not working on my own book (like I probably should be), but I am instead checking out Fictionpress and more recently Wattpad in search of something interesting and well written, doling out constructive criticism as I go and secretly hoping to cause one of the people I critique to go read something I've written and in turn comment on that. (Preferably something I've written this year.)

So I admit I have something of an ulterior motive, but hey so does everyone. Your parents probably had any number of secret reasons for you being born. Maybe they needed another tax write off. And it's not a sinister one, so I have no guilt.

But anyway, I recently took a look at three different stories, two of which I was genuinely interested in and one which I admit I was drawn to simply because the summary was a horrendously common "I suk at summaries lol" and I wanted to impart some advice and hopefully make the poor author stop being so generically bad.

None of the three stories ended up being worth writing up a story spotlight on. There was a story which lured me in with a zany title and promises of cyborg adventure fun times, but at time of reading it consisted exclusively of a single prologue which detailed a horrible childhood accident (presumably giving birth to the titular cyborg). Nevertheless, I was genuinely alright with it and wish there had been more, since what was there wasn't enough to make me want to set up notifications.

See, I don't "follow" or do the local equivalent lightly, like a lot of other people on the internet (no offense). I don't friend someone on XBL or Steam unless I've played with them on two separate occasions and enjoyed both times. I won't favorite an author online unless I like at least two of their works. I won't subscribe to a Youtube channel unless I enjoyed at least two of their videos. Okay, I completely break that rule on Twitter, but that's just because I can't take Twitter very seriously. And neither does it. 140 characters is not enough space for serious. I digress.

The other two stories consisted of a story about a human/alien hybrid caught between the two sides of a human/alien war and another prologue, this one to a story about angelic warfare and fallen angels and also the apocalypse? Pretty sure there was an apocalypse thrown in there. They mentioned nuclear war once.

I left some constructive criticism on all three, opening by stating my intentions were benign but this was going to hurt, like the nurse who gives you your shots. I admit, I got a tad scalding at times. I'd just finished a marathon of Zero Punctuation, it rubs off on me. But I tried to keep my tone light and supportive. I think I did a fairly good job of it too.

The author of the alien story offered a brief reply, paraphrased as such: "Thanks for the feedback. I'll work on it." The author of the angel story opted to assume the fetal position and have themselves a brief cry. That in an of itself isn't the end of the world. Criticism can hurt sometimes, even if it is made with best of intentions. As long as you don't ignore it, you're doing fine.

But this is where it gets interesting. Because a fan of the story, not the author, but a fan of the story, decided to take it upon themselves to stick up for the story, and responded to my criticism with a levelheaded and dignified acknowledgement and rebuttal.

By that of course I mean they cursed me out (that'll show me, trying to call the writing style immature), declared that they and plenty of other people liked the story (which clearly means it is flawless and couldn't possibly be improved by something like proper grammar), informed me that the author's work was way more original (I never slagged the author's originality. If anything I think I'd actually praised it, but what ever) and all around better than mine because they'd seen my work (And I wonder what they meant by that. The single, three year old story I have on Wattpad? Or the various five year old stories I have on FF.net?) and my work was just a rip off of most Sci Fi RPGs (Now they're just making things up. I wrote PJO stories that borrowed from CoD and zombie movies [not as cool as it sounds] not from Sci Fi RPGs. My Wattpad story was about a fat guy joining the CIA and dying. What Sci Fi RPGs was this kid playing?), and if I wanted to be "that guy" I could take my critique somewhere else because I'm a horrible human being. Also, fuck me, apparently.

And my apologies to you sir or madam. I did not realize that the word "comment" translates directly to "cheerlead." Constructive criticism, which I'd left, is meant to help the author improve their work. Those who cannot accept it are doomed to fail.

All of this came to my mind as I read the extremely eloquent and well thought out response to my criticism, and suddenly I realized that the "Reply" button was sitting there, mockingly mooning me and daring to fire back.

"No, it's okay, you don't have to stoop to their level," it cooed seductively. "You can be calm and rational and be the bigger person and make them see the error of their ways. Then after lunch you can cure cancer and go piggy back riding sea horses on the moon. It'll be wonderful."

So I did not click the reply button, and I never will. In fact, I intend to never directly acknowledge my extremely well mannered new friend ever again. Because some people are just not worth the effort, and those people typically conveniently coalesce in the comment sections of the internet.

I still wanted to rant out my rebuttal though, so you guys get this. And to you, my silver tongued fellow Wattpad connoisseur, to you who will almost certainly never read this, I say

Fuck off.

Story Spotlight #1 Defenders of Earth - Book 1: Bittersweet Reunions

To start off with, since this is a bit of a new thing I'm doing here, I'd like to explain what's going on right now. As I'm sure I've mentioned about six or seven billion times, I'm writing a novel. In this particular case, it doesn't really matter how much further in the future you're reading this or how known I may or not have gotten in time since writing, because I will always, always be writing a novel. At some point, I'll develop dementia and every time I sit down to start writing I'll have forgotten what I'd written before and probably never get anywhere anymore, but still. I will always be writing a novel. That's one status that never needs updating.

But anyway. I know how incredibly hard it can be one of the innumerable horde posting writing to the internet. I know firsthand the steady decline in ambition when you throw your work out there for all to see and no one so much as glances your way. Yeah, maybe you see the view count go up a hair every now and again, but really, no one seems to taking notice. No one makes note or comment of your existence. It sucks. I don't like that feeling, and I certainly wouldn't wish it on anybody else.

So to that end, I'm going to do my fellow unknown authors a bit of a service, and give them a shoutout. Fat lot of good that'll do them now, since at time of writing I'm pretty sure the only one who reads this blog is my wife. But whatever. It's the thought that counts.

Alright, that's enough explaining what I'm doing, time to start doing it. For the first ever Story Spotlight, I give you:

Defenders of Earth - Book 1: Bittersweet Reunionsby Fatal-Blow

The Defenders of Earth series is, by all impressions thus far, a snugly fit member of the superhero genre, one of my favorite genres of all time ever, so even going init had already scored points with me just by being about one of my favorite subjects. Which was good, but it definitely lost a point or two with it's title. Colonize if you want, but if you're going to colonize, please drop the "Book 1."

Anyway, the title can be forgiven for now, since the big function of a title is to draw new readers in and if you're hearing about this story from me instead of Fictionpress you obviously don't need the title to be directed to give this story a try. Makes sense? Good.  Now we can talk about more important things.

Defenders of Earth, as I've said, is a superhero story, chronicling the coming together of a group of teens who have all inherited superpowers from their biological parents, a group of genetically engineered superheroes who used to work for the government. The teens come from a very diverse range of backgrounds and locations, with many of them not even speaking the same language (though you'd be amazed at how many people in this story speak Wolf).

The one thing they all have in common though, is that they're all kids dealing with their powers. My favorite chapters in this story are easily the character spotlight and introduction ones, where the reader gets to walk in the shoes of the new character and see what it's like ti have any number of these abilities.

If you're like me and you're fairly well versed in comic books and comic book movies, you're going to notice some X-men parallels. There's a good guy with mental abilities recruiting the kids so he can help them deal with life and they've got a really swanky mansion, and there's a bad guy who the good guy used to know who's also recruiting for his own likely nefarious causes. Where I think the two IPs differ, at least importantly, is that the X-Men franchise has always been much more about asking the question of how the world would react to people with fantastic abilities (and also an allegory for LGBT rights if you're Bryan Singer, apparently. Totally missed that as a kid. But hey, I was like six when I saw those movies.). Which is a great question to ask and answer. Defenders of Earth, however, looks at things from a different angle and asks how the people with the powers react to having powers.

One complaint that I'm sure some may have will be that the actual plot does seem to be moving a bit sluggishly, at least so far in as chapter 10. I personally didn't mind too much, since there were a lot of characters being introduced in all of those chapters and I was just having a ball getting to meet them and then watch them interact with each other. Call it a character driven story I guess? I hear people like those.

So anyway, if you like superheroes, and if you like character centric writing, I think this might be worth a look for you. I know the author would be thrilled to get some feedback on what he (or she? It's the internet, it's kind of hard to be clear unless they come out and say it.) (...I'm a guy, by the way.) has out so far. So please, saunter on over. And tell 'em 003 sent ya. (You don't actually have to say that I sent you. Though I guess it'd be cool if you did.)

Anyway, I'm Agent 003, and this has been Story Spotlights.

Lazy Sunday Post: Typo Terrors

For those of you who don't know, I do more than just blog incoherently at nothing about nothing in particular whenever the mood strikes me. In fact, there's even a chance that at least one person reading this actually recognizes my screen name and knows that I'm actually an author.

Well, I say "author", but I'm pretty sure you actually have to have a book published before you can call yourself one of those. But you know what, I've written an embarrassingly large enough amount of fanfiction, and I've got enough book ideas in my head that I'm going to keep using that title and hopefully no one will think to call me out on it. Or look up my fanfiction. Please, God, don't look up my fanfiction. It's atrocious and from when I was in middle school. I keep it exclusively as a souvenir, not as a serious example of me as a writer. 

I was going somewhere with this. And I still am, so don't commit me to the asylum just yet. I bring up my identity as an author because I once again am writing a novel, Sara Barton and the Argo, a story set in the Adventureverse/Phoenixverse/whatever I decide to call it one day. I'll probably explain what exactly that's about one day soon, but for now I'd just like to throw that out there. It's a whole lot of fun, especially thanks to my recent discovery that I can type without looking at the keys (No idea how that happened, never got around to taking Keyboarding in school), and I can't wait to publish it.

That being said, the experience so far has also served as a wonderful reminder as to why I use a laptop over a typewriter. Well, besides the whole thing about typewriters weighing a metric butt-ton and being incredibly out of date. I make a lot of typos. Little ones, mostly, and nothing helps hide them than the red squiggly line and Google's right-click to correct feature.

And since this is the lazy Sunday post, I figured I'd crank out a free article by listing out my most common typos. Enjoy.


Pari/Paor=Pair I have no idea why this happens so much, but it does, and it annoys me. 

Sra: Sara This one happens almost everytime I try to type out this girl's name, and she's the protagonist of the whole dang novel, so yes, this one comes up fairly regularly.

hoepful: hopefully I don't know what it is with me mixing up the order of letters.\

frood: food Heh. Frood.

iot: it The more of these I list out, the more I think that I really should invest the eight seconds it takes to program an autocorrect.

slgith: slight This one is a nightmare. I literally retyped it three times while trying to correct it once.

And, as a bonus, my favorite typo that I ever made:

pooped: popped Really changes the meaning when the sentence was supposed to be "a brick wall popped out of nowhere."

The CW and Their Justice League

If you're my wife or one of my classmates, you probably know that a while ago I released a video to YouTube in which I pointed out the very obvious and said that the CW network was building their own small screen Justice League, and upon further review I've come to the conclusion that I was even more right than I thought, which as you may well know is saying something, because I usually assume that I'm 100% right all the time unless Wings says otherwise.

She's always right.

My initial thesis that CW is making its own Justice League was based on the fact that there were about seven DC superheroes working together. At the time, that I was as far as I thought the rabbit hole went. Oh, how short sided all thinking seems in retrospect.

I have discovered that if the CW's Justice League roster fleshes out as I've predicted, we could actually be looking at something even more similar to the classic comic book Justice League than we thought.

The Dark, Powerless One

No, I don't mean in a race kind of way. What I do mean is that the Justice League has that one dark, gritty hero who has no superpowers but has instead risen to superhero status through intensive physical and mental training. They operate largely at night and focus on ridding their cities of crime by striking fear into the hearts of their enemies while adopting a strict no-killing policy.

For the classic Justice League, that job goes, of course, to the Dark Knight Detective himself, Batman. But on everything I've just said also applies to a CW hero who is no doubt going to be fulfilling the same role once his Justice League comes together. 

What I'm saying is (really what we've all been saying) that the Arrow is Batman. I've always held my suspicions that he didn't just act like Batman, but for all intents and purposes was that universe's Batman, but there were a few moments that really hammers this idea home for me. 

The first thing that really sold me on this was when I watched the two-part Arrow/Flash crossover, and literally every thing that anyone has ever said makes Batman/Superman team-ups cool was on display in those episodes, with the Arrow very comfortably filling in Batman's half of that relationship. 

But what really left no doubt in my mind was when (SPOILERS FOR ARROW SEASON THREE SKIP DOWN TO THE NEXT PARAGRAPH YOU'VE BEEN WARNED) Ra's al Ghul, rather than killing Oliver Queen for assualting Nanda Parbat, offers Oliver the chance to take over the League of Assassins. For those of you who aren't obsessed with Batman, allow me to explain that this kind of relationship with Ra's is a huge element of the Batman mythos, and for the Arrow to take it on has left me with no doubt that in this universe, the Arrow is Batman.

And you know what? I'm okay with that. The Justice League needs a Batman, even if its not a literal Batman. As a sidenote, please note, Warner Bros, that I said a Batman, as in singular. That does not mean that you need to turn every single one of your superheroes in a dark, gritty, tortured avenger. (Believe me, that is not the last you'll hear from me on that subject.)

The Ultrapowerful Boy Scout

Before he stood for wanton destruction and neck-snaps, Superman stood for truth, justice, and the American/Russian (long story) way of life. He was a ultra powerful metahuman who managed to retain his humanity. He was compassionate and brave, a symbol of hope and inspiration. He was a good guy. Not in the sense that he was on a particular side in the good vs evil thing, but he really was a good guy. The kind you were supposed to take home to meet the folks.

Hm. Ultrapowerful metahuman with a heart of gold who's been openly stated by others to be a symbol of hope, now where else have I seen- enough foreplay it's Barry Allen.

I never even considered that the CW's Flash could be an analogue to any Justice Leaguer other than the Flash. At least, not until I saw the Arrow/Flash crossover, when I realized that just as Oliver was fulfilling the Batman half of the classic Batman/Superman dynamic, Barry was just as comfortably fulfilling the role usually held by Supes.

And the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Comic Superman and CW Flash are both ultrapowerful golden boys who play good cop opposite their grim and brooding buddies. 

The Tech-y Flyboy

Unlike my earlier Batman/Arrow comparison, here's one I'm fairly certain a lot of other people on the internet haven't made.

To begin with, a lot of people are still calling the CW's Ray Palmer aka "The Atom" an Iron Man rip-off, which I have to say is a bit unfair. For starters, while Iron Man is easily the most recognizeable flying dude in power armor, he's by no means got some kind of patent on that shtick. Beyond that, the character that is now Ray Palmer was initially supposed to be Ted Kord, a genius inventor crime fighter known as the Blue Beetle. Blue Beetle in power armor makes a lot of sense. The Atom, less so, but when DC tells you that you can't use Ted Kord and have to use Ray Palmer, then you use Ray Palmer. S'the way it goes.

But enough about that, because I've got someone else to compare The Atom to. To begin with, let's boil him down to some defining traits that he brings to the table. An overconfident smartass who utilizes hyper-advanced technology to manifest all kinds of powers from flight to energy projection while also using said technology for a wide range of information gathering activities.

Know anyone else like that?

Hint: It's this guy.

That's right, ladies and gentlmen of the jury, I propose to this courtroom that despite that one Superman joke in "All-Star Team Up", Ray Palmer is actually an analogue to the Green Lantern!

The Lighthearted One

Referencing that one video I made once again, I'd like to once again bring up the prospect of The Flash's Cisco Ramon becoming the superhero Vibe, and how he'd fit into this still technically hypothetical Justice League the CW very obviously has cooking.

Cisco has been the lightest heart on an already lighthearted show. He's the one who gets all excited watching Barry in action, gets a stupid huge grin whenever he's talking about tech and inventions, and gives all the supervillains their cool supervillain names. Despite this, he has shown his more mature and emotional side at times, proving theirs more to this loveable nerd than an endless supply of cool t-shirts.

If Cisco were to become Vibe, he'd be the slightly immature, lighthearted superhero who can occasionally get himself caught in jams as a result of his youth and inexperience. I could also see a lot of people misunderstanding or underestimating his powers when they first meet him.

And that description fits perfectly on...the Flash. Don't worry, it confused everyone else I told too. I'm not talking about the CW Flash. I'm talking about the Flash from the Justice League animated series, and to a lesser extent comic book Flash. 

On top of these comparisons, comic Flash is pretty good friends with comic Green Lantern. They have all kinds of team-ups and, for lack of a better word, bromance. That's not a far stretch from what we got to see with Cisco and Ray, who as previously established, is this universe's Green Lantern.

Mind blown? Mind blown.

The Freaky Outsider

Do you know that Martian Manhunter really, in terms of power level, pretty much a green Superman? He's got superstrength (okay, whoop dee doo on that one, since every other person in comics has super strength) and he can fly. He's also a shapeshifter, he can go intangible, and he's a telepath. A very, very powerful telepath, who if you wanted to could lobotomize everyone in a room all at once with his mind.

He's also green, and socially awkward, and incredibly isolated from the rest of humanity due to his species and powers. Complain all you want about your isolation Supes, at least you were raised here and aren't green. J'hon J'onzz just sort of showed up one day. Born in a world where everyone was a telepath probably feels terrifyingly alone even inside his head on Earth. That is a man who is alienated.

But who on the CW's roster of heroes has been made into something of a powerful freak due to his superpowers? Well, just taking a shot in the dark here, but I'm going to say its the disassociative identity disorder patient who's on fire all the time.

In this world, Firestorm is our Martian Manhunter.

The Girl

Okay, I admit this is where my comparisons get a little flimsy. Laurel Lance and Wonder Woman don't have a ton in common outside being the only girl who seems to be around right now. I hear there's another CW spinoff in the works that's aiming to bring in, among other people, Hawkgirl, and if that happens I'm pretty sure their Hawkgirl will make a much better Wonder Woman stand-in than the Black Canary, what with Hawkgirl being an aggressive femme warrior type. But for now, this is what we've got.

The Other Guy

I said this is where things get flimsy, and I meant it. Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash, Martian Manhunter. Those guys have been on the Justice League since (in technical historic terms) like forever. Their archetypes are things that you will see in a Justice League roster. 

But the seventh guy? That's a bit trickier. Comic tradition says Aquaman is the seventh member. But then there's the extremely popular and beloved DC Animated Universe that says Hawkgirl is the seventh (probably for the sake of having more than one girl on the team). Then the New 52 decided Cyborg is the seventh.

So, for the sake of making this argument even feasible, I'm going to say the seventh is Cyborg, boil him down to a younger hero swept into the larger conflicts of the League by circumstance, and then declare that Roy Harper can probably fill that mold if we needed him to. 

Yeah, I know Colton Haynes left the show as a regular, but he's still open to guest appearances, so I can still use him. 

Man, this argument kind of fell apart toward the very end... ah well, was fun to write.

Phoenix Academy Art

SO recently, I've been kicking around the idea of starting a Phoenix Academy comic. To that end, I went and drew up some artwork for it in my sketchpad, then scanned it into the computer, as seen below.

But that struck me as a little boring, so I went into Photoshop once again, and this was the result:

Now that looks ready for action. I'll probably keep the actual comic black and white just to save me the time, but it is fun to dabble with some eye catching color every now and again.