Tools Of The Trade Part 1: Nightwing's Costume

My nana says acab

Should I tell the story of how I found out?

If anybody has a reference for one character bandaging up another character then PLEASE send it to me I've been trying to draw it for ever and I can't get it right

PARIS ....

Iceman costume concepts by Kevin Wada

Let's look briefly at the Coffee Bean in Spider-Man comics!

Contrary to popular memory, Peter's college pals initially met up at a diner called the Silver Spoon (ASM 44, but also 46, 52, possibly 125).

The spread at the top of this post takes a lot from this place's layout. But as newcomer MJ might have pointed out, diners are so fifties. The modern teen needed someplace cooler and edgier to hang out. Somewhere more underground. Literally.

Maps place The Coffee Bean alternately in East Village or Tribeca. The beret and glasses? The lowercase Dante's Inferno quote? The wall-hung guitar? So hipster. Wait, wrong decade. So beatnik.

The OG Bean didn't show up much more frequently than the Silver Spoon (ASM 53, 59, and 82, most notably), but it's the one that stuck in the cultural imagination. I enjoy Tim Sale's take in Spider-Man: Blue with the unfinished basement look and cult film posters.

In early modern flashbacks, the location is plagued by a specific continuity problem: "then [character] leaps through the WINDOW!" from new writers who missed the fact that it's below ground. In ASM Annual '96, JRSr complies by raising the ceiling a level!

The Sensational Spider-Man Annual's approach to the Coffee Bean makes me a bit sad. Dialogue repeatedly emphasizes its unique character and long history and how well MJ knows the place. But it's drawn aboveground and totally generic. (This from an issue with a dozen Silver Age panels directly traced!)

It's not the first time that happens, but here feels like a critical failure of show-don't-tell. The eventual window smash is worth it, but... I'd argue this would work better set at the Silver Spoon (where MJ actually met the gang, old in an uncool way, aboveground) instead.

Brand New Day reestablishes a solid sense of place for the Coffee Bean. Brick and glass entryway, a logo that's less beatnik and more Starbuck, and an interior that reminds me of a Panera Bread.

(If it's supposed to be canon that the new more corporate look is due to renovations by Harry, that's been lost in the shuffle. But it would make sense to me. His effort at impressing Norman with a plan to make the Bean a chain store circa ASM 569 would extend his trend of editorializing his own memories.)

While it still teleports between Astor Place and Tribeca, this version has now had more consistent (and just more) appearances than the original. And, of course, it has a beautiful bank of windows to—

Ah, that's more like it.

The Coffee Bean has become a symbol of innocent nostalgia and a happier past. It was also (as designed by Romita Sr) a virtual bunker: not until 1977 would superheroics be written to take place inside the Coffee Bean. (ASM Annual #11—Romita Jr's first ever penciling job on Spider-Man, interestingly.)

As a silver age icon, the location was physically safe and interruption-free in a way that even Peter's apartments and Aunt May's house couldn't be. The architecture—and how it's changed—has been a large part of that symbolism, underappreciated as it sometimes is.

Ngl I read this as asymmetry at first

Reblog if you think asexuality is a legitimate sexuality.

I'm trying to prove something.

"GOD, TAKE ME INSTEAD!"

31 DOD: Day 15 - vehicle

Honorary mention to the Wing-glider. Night-wing? The glider from Tomasi's run on Nightwing 🤣

And to the Nightbird, because the idea of having multiple vehicle body shells and one chassis to switch to fit what was needed was brilliant

But my favorite is the Wingcycle.

But really, there's something about Dick on a motorcycle (he's had the Nightcycle, Wingcycle, Nightbird cycle and Robincycle 😁)

(I asked Patrick Zircher once what kind he drew for the Nightwing run, and iirc it was a Ducati 900 series, from sometime in the 90s. I don't remember which year now)

average friend group of ppl in their mid to late 20s consists of someone who just got married and bought a house, someone’s who’s already a divorcee with a kid, and someone who still hasn’t recovered from that one thing that happened when they were 12

people talk a lot about how terrifying it must be to see those two bat eyes come out of the darkness, or to hear the swish of a cape and suddenly you’re being completely overpowered. bc that’s the bat’s whole schtick: striking fear into the hearts of criminals by being the darkness come to life. but imagine what it must be like, in the middle of the night, to be surrounded by darkness. then, out of nowhere you hear a chuckle, light and amused and promising something dangerous. you whip around, trying to pinpoint where it came from, but the voice is thrown, so it sounds like it’s ringing from everywhere around you. you see a flash out of the corner of your eye, and out of the darkest corner of the room, you see two bold blue stripes, and a bright blue mask. twin escrima sticks twirl, the light of the crackling electricity setting the coloured part of the costume alight. then, as he steps out into the light, all you see are flashes of that deep electric blue and the white glint of a smirk, before you’re suddenly taken down by an absolute hurricane of whirling flips, of black and blue and black and blue and the colour, twisting into a vivid work of art against pitch black.

anyway dc that’s my pitch on why you should bring nightwing’s fingerstripes back-