Exile Down The Shore

Pedestrian traffic lights

This may seem like an exaggeration, the idea that one can learn how to properly think like a criminal by learning how crime stories work. On a personal note, let me tell a story from the Leverage writer’s room.

Apollo Robbins (http://www.istealstuff.com/) runs a crew of professional thieves who consult for law enforcement. He was also our criminal consultant on Leverage. Every few weeks he would visit the writer’s room to advise on the scripts and keep us up to date about new cons and the latest in criminal technology.

One day during the third season he sat in with the writers while we broke a story. We posted the details of a real-life white collar criminal up on the room’s whiteboard, using him as the basis for our Mark. We looked at his weaknesses, how he moved his money, what his hobbies were. Once we were happy with that element of the story we added a Vault to the mix, one that used an interesting new alarm technology we’d researched. We then spent about an hour figuring out how to circumvent that alarm. We even sketched out a map of the imaginary building so we could keep track of our Crew’s movements during the Job.

“Well, I’m done here,” Apollo muttered. Noting our confusion, he pointed at the board and index cards cluttering the wall. “This is exactly how real Crews plan these things. This writer’s room is now a fully functioning criminal gang. You could be thieves.”

Of course writing television pays better than crime (usually), with far less chance of being arrested (usually), so we all managed to resist the temptation. But aside from the day a US Attorney asked us to change a plot because we’d created a scam that was a little too foolproof, or when a Homeland Security Agent admitted they were spooked by a security hole we’d exploited in our season finale, it was certainly one of the proudest moments I had on the show.

Rest in peace to the incredible Anthony Stewart Head (20th February 1954 - 1st June 2026)

Tucker, the cat behind Lady Normalgirl’s noble eunuch, passed away on Tuesday morning.

From about the time I could talk, I dreamed of having a pet cat — and when I was ten, that dream finally came true. But in all my tiny child dreaming, I don’t think I could have imagined a cat better than Tucker. He’s been my constant companion for the last thirteen years, through all the best and worst bits of my life and as much as I know it’s good he’s no longer in pain, it seems very wrong that I have to do this next worst bit without him.

I’m thankful that we were able to spend so long together (even if it doesn’t feel quite long enough) and I’m so very grateful that over the last year and a bit I was able to share him with all of you. Knowing that he will be remembered so far and wide means more than I can really express. He definitely knew how insanely much I loved him (and I know how much he loved me back), but I’d like to think he knew how much so many of you loved him and how much joy his noble likeness’s comics brought so many people. While I know I will never stop missing him and that my sadness might never truly go away, it will always be a comfort to know my little cat has left behind such a grand legacy of love and happiness.

<3

His name was David Chen, but on my screen, he was "Male, 82, Congestive Heart Failure, Room 402." I spent seven minutes with him that morning. Seven minutes to check his vitals, listen to the fluid in his lungs, adjust his diuretics, and type 24 required data points into his Electronic Health Record. He tried to tell me something, gesturing toward a faded photo on his nightstand. I nodded, said "we'll talk later," and moved on. There was no billing code for "talk later."

Mr. Chen died that afternoon. As a nurse quietly cleared his belongings, she handed me the photo. It was him as a young man, beaming, his arm around a woman, standing before a small grocery store with "CHEN'S MARKET" painted on the window.

The realization hit me like a physical blow. I knew his ejection fraction and his creatinine levels. I knew his insurance provider and his allergy to penicillin. But I didn't know his wife's name or that he had built a life from nothing with his own two hands. I hadn’t treated David Chen. I had managed the decline of a failing organ system. And in the sterile efficiency of it all, I had lost a piece of myself.

The next day, I bought a small, black Moleskine notebook. It felt like an act of rebellion.

My first patient was Eleanor Gable, a frail woman lost in a sea of white bedsheets, diagnosed with pneumonia. I did my exam, updated her chart, and just as I was about to leave, I paused. I turned back from the door.

"Mrs. Gable," I said, my voice feeling strange. "Tell me one thing about yourself that’s not in this file."

Her tired eyes widened in surprise. A faint smile touched her lips. "I was a second-grade teacher," she whispered. "The best sound in the world... is the silence that comes just after a child finally reads a sentence on their own."

I wrote it down in my notebook. Eleanor Gable: Taught children how to read.

I kept doing it. My little black book began to fill with ghosts of lives lived.

Frank Miller: Drove a yellow cab in New York for 40 years.

Maria Flores: Her mole recipe won the state fair in Texas, three years running.

Sam Jones: Proposed to his wife on the Kiss Cam at a Dodgers game.

Something began to change. The burnout, that heavy, gray cloak I’d been wearing for years, started to feel a little lighter. Before entering a room, I’d glance at my notebook. I wasn’t walking in to see the "acute pancreatitis in 207." I was walking in to see Frank, who probably had a million stories about the city. My patients felt it too. They'd sit up a little straighter. A light would flicker back in their eyes. They felt seen.

The real test came with Leo. He was 22, angry, and refusing dialysis for a condition he’d brought on himself. He was a "difficult patient," a label that in hospital-speak means "we've given up." The team was frustrated.

I walked into his room and sat down, leaving my tablet outside. We sat in silence for a full minute. I didn't look at his monitors. I looked at the intricate drawings covering his arms.

"Who's your artist?" I asked.

He scoffed. "Did 'em myself."

"They're good," I said. "This one... it looks like a blueprint."

For the first time, his gaze lost its hard edge. "Wanted to be an architect," he muttered, "before... all this."

We talked for twenty minutes about buildings, about lines, about creating something permanent. We didn't mention his kidneys once. When I stood up to leave, he said, so quietly I almost missed it, "Okay. We can try the dialysis tomorrow."

Later that night, I opened my Moleskine. I wrote: Leo Vance: Designs cities on paper.

The system I work in is designed to document disease with thousands of data points. It logs every cough, every pill, every lab value. It tells the story of how a body breaks down.

My little black book tells a different story. It tells the story of why a life mattered.

We are taught to practice medicine with data, but we heal with humanity. And in a world drowning in information, a single sentence that says, "I see you," isn't just a kind gesture.

It’s the most powerful medicine we have.

Codename: Kids Next Door

Created by Thomas Warburton and produced by the Cartoon Network, Codename: Kids Next Door follows the adventures of a diverse group of five children who operate from a high-tech treehouse, fighting against adult and teenage tyranny. Using their code names (Numbuhs 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5), they are Sector V, part of a global organization called the Kids Next Door.  This organization is dedicated to protecting children from all manner of threats, from the mundane (forcing kids to floss their teeth) to the severe (mind control that robs children of their free will).  

Sector V is composed of the squad’s leader, Numbah One (voiced by Benjamin Diskin); its chief engineer Numbah Two (also voiced by Benjamin Diskin); tactician and medic Numbah Three (voiced by Lauren Tom); their enforcer Numbah Four (voiced by Dee Bradley Baker); and the team’s intelligence officer and second-in-command, Numbah Five (voiced by Cree Summer).  

tagged by @greymvs ! 💋

made on piccrew!

Thank you for all who tagging me! I had so much fun!

Oh these are just brilliantly done...

Time traveler who always is running into these other people who seem to know what's going on or what will happen and is so happy he can finally share his travel stories.

Precognitive who is relieved he isn't the only one with the gift and who is glad to get help averting future disasters.

Mind reader with a horrible memory who tries to stay on top of things by skimming surface thoughts. You want to talk about next week's election results and how they changed the next decade? She's with you.

Mind Reader is standing in the middle of the park, sweating. They do not know why they're here, and obviously none of the people around them do, either. The truth is, they were on their way to the grocery store and got lost and then forgot. It happens.

But, then, they see Precog on a bench and Precog is thinking of them, because Precog had a vision of meeting Mind Reader here today. Of course, Mind Reader thinks, they were here to see their friend! They sit down next to Precog. Precog knows Mind Reader's name. Mind Reader can pick up Precog's name. They have a long and stimulating conversation, like they've known each other forever, courtesy of mind reading and future seeing. Precog assumes this is because Mind Reader also foresaw this. About halfway through, Precog starts finishing Mind Reader's sentences before they say them, and Mind Reader is picking up thoughts like 'it's wonderful to meet someone with the same abilities as me.'

They part ways with a promise to meet again for a coffee/rube-goldberg-esque prevention of a kidnapping.

.

Normal Guy is just walking home from a Revolutionary War reenactment. They see Time Traveler walking the same way, also dressed in old-timey clothes.

"Oh, hey," they say, "were you just at the battle of such and such?"

"Why, yes," says Time Traveler, "did you also come from [year]?"

"You could say that! Do you live around here?"

"I do, for the moment. We should get lunch sometime and talk about yesteryear!"

"Sounds like a plan!"

.

Precog encounters Time Traveler for the first time while breaking in to the corporate offices of a fabulously corrupt company. As in, they are both breaking in, and for the same reason. Thing is, Time Traveler has 'seen' Precog before! Precog thinks Time Traveler means 'seen' as in vision, but, nope!

Turns out that in the future, Precog foresees that Time Traveler needs some help with something similar, makes a lot of 'seeing the future' jokes that the Time Traveler misinterprets, and doesn't register that his old friend doesn't recognize him at all, because, hey, Mind Reader reacts to him in the same way whenever they meet up!

.

Cartoon Heroes Paper Cut-Outs

The Bionic Six

Created by Ron Friedman and produced by TMS Entertainment, The Bionic Six was an American cartoon series directed by renowned Japanese animator Osamu Dezaki.  The story is set in the near future where a scientist develops a special process that augments humans by implanting bionic technology.  

Test pilot, Jack Bennett was the first to receive this augmentation and it bestowed him enhanced senses, x-ray vision and the ability to fire energy beams from his eyes.  When an accident nearly killed Bennett’s family, the only way to save them was to have them also augment with bionic implants.  The family went on to become The Bionic Six, a family of heroes each with their own special bionic powers and abilities.  The Six embarked on numerous adventures, protecting the world and foiling the schemes of various villains (most notably the diabolical Dr. Scarab).  

The Folks behind the Toons

Bruce Timm

Bruce Timm was born on February 5, 1961, in Oklahoma.  His family relocated to California in his childhood. Timm became fascinated with comic books and superheroes at an early age, first exposed to the concept by way of the 1960s Batman television series.

After dropping out of college due to lack of interest, Timm was working at a department store when he came across an advertisement from Filmation Studios inviting new artists to take a layout test.  Tim was rejected his first time around but tried again a year later and was offered employment at Filiation doing layout work.  Among the project Timm worked on at Filmation included Blackstar, Flash Gordon, The Lone Ranger, and He-Man and The Masters of the Universe.  

Timm then went over to Sunbow Productions where he illustrated background stills for GI Joe: A Real American Hero.  Thereafter he was recruited by Don Bluth to work on the animated feature, The Secret of NIMH. 

After this Timm worked for Ralph Bakshi, providing layouts for the animated series Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures.  Timm greatly enjoyed working for Bakshi and considered it his most fulfilling work in the field up to that point.  After the Mighty Mouse series was cancelled, Timm went over to DIC Entertainment and worked on a season of the Real Ghostbusters animated series.  Whilst working on these projects, Timm submitting scripts and illustration work to Marvel Comics but the publisher was not interested.

In 1989 Timm joined the animation department at Warner Brothers, working on the animated series, Tiny Toons Adventures.  Around this time, Warner Bros. live action Batman movie had become a smash hit and the studio quickly started production on an animated series based largely on Tim Burton’s vision of the Caped Crusader.  A long time Batman fan, Timm hustled to get on board the project.  

Timm and Eric Radomski rush-produced a silent short film called The Dark Knight's First Night that demonstrated their aesthetic vision for the show.  Drawing inspiration from Burton, Max Fleischer’s Superman and Alex Toth, the short was sleek, moody and exactly what the studio was looking for.  The series was green lit with Paul Dini and  Alan Burnett brought on board to help produce the show’s overarching narrative.   

Entitled Batman: The Animated Series, the show was licensed for broadcast on Fox Kids and premiered in September of 1992.  It was a smash hit and received widespread acclaim from both fans and critics, hailing it as a groundbreaking superhero show; receiving praise for its writing, art design, voice acting, orchestrated soundtrack, and modernization of its title character's source material. Batman: The Animated Seres (or BTAS) went on to win multiple Daytime Emmy Awards as well as the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Programming.  

Timm was principally involved in the character designs for BTAS, creating the looks for nearly all of the characters involved.  His style, something of a mix of Alex Toth meets Dan DeCarlo, is uniquely recognizable and just super cool.  The clean lines, economy of detail and reliance on blacks translated incredibly well to the animation process; making the character look quite striking in both still and action-based sequences. 

Background designers Ted Blackman and Eric Radomski created a Gotham City with a dark Art Deco style.  The bold visuals combined with a stellar voice cast and strong, emotionally-charged scripts written by Paul Dini, Sean Catherine Derek, Michael Reaves, Randy Rogel and others led to BTAS being one of the greatest cartoon series of all time.  

Along with featuring many of Batman’s villains and allies from the comics, BTAS also introduced a handful of brand new characters.  This include Detective Renee Montoya, the villainous business man Roland Daggat and The Joker’s girl Friday, Harley Quinn. 

Both voiced and inspired by actress Arleen Sorkin, Harley Quinn was created by Timm and Dini and would go on to become a fan favorite.  She transitioned from the animated universe and appeared in the DC Comics Universe, gaining greater and greater popularity.  Performed by actress Margot Robbie and Lady Gaga, Harley would eventually star in four live action movies in the DC Cinematic Universe (as well as her own animated series) and is now one of the most recognizable and popular super hero characters out there.     

With the great success of BTAS, Timm and Dini were tasked with creating a follow up series focusing on Superman.  They chose to create this series as existing in the same world (or continuity) as BTAS thus allowing for cross-overs and ‘shared universe’ projects.   Although not as universally lauded as BTAS, Superman: The Animated Series was also a huge hit and was likewise nominated for and won several prestigious awards.  

Whilst working on Superman, Timm was approached by Steven Spielberg who was interested in producing action cartoons for his new venture, Amblin Entertainment.   Tim pitched a number of ideas for Amblin.  One was an action comedy called Freakazoid about a computer nerd who is transformed into a powerful hero with rather slapstick sensibilities.  Spielberg loved this idea and Timm and Paul Dini fleshed out the idea into a series.  Freakazoid was produced for the Kids' WB programming block, premiering in September of 1995.  A modest success, Freakazoid ran for two seasons.  

Comic book creator, Mike Allred complained that Freakzoid was something of a rip-off of his own character Madman, both in terms of appearance and behaviors.  Although no legal actions were taken, there is little doubt that Freakazoid was heavily inspired by Madman.

In 1997, BTAS left Fox Kids and moved to Kids WB, retitled as the New Batman Adventures.  Timm provided a number of redesigns of the main characters and the show was allowed to explore dark themes and plot lines that were disallowed at Fox. 

They additionally created a three part cross-over event where Batman and Superman met one another shared an adventure.  Meanwhile, the Superman series introduced a number of other heroes from DC Comics, including The Flash, Green Lantern and Aquaman, laying the ground work for a series based on the superhero team, The Justice League of America.  

Following conclusion of both the Batman and Superman animated series, Timm and Dini were asked by Warner Brothers to create a Batman project featuring a younger iteration of Batman.  Rather than creating a series based on the original batman in his teen years, the pair came up with Batman Beyond.  This was a series set in a technologically advanced future, were an aged Bruce Wayne takes on a young protégé to act as the new Batman. 

Tim and Dini created Terry McGinnis, a cocky juvenile delinquent with a good heart who, through wild circumstances, ended up becoming the new Dark Knight.  The show premiered in January of 1999.  Fans were initially reluctant to accept an iteration of Batman who was not Bruce Wayne, yet the show’s quality, its slick design, smart storytelling and exciting action ultimately won over both viewers and critics alike.  Batman Beyond would go on to accrue a vigorous cult following and won two Daytime Emmys as well as two Annie Awards.  

In conjunction with producing Batman Beyond, the team of Timm and Dini also began work on a Justice League series that teamed up the Batman and Superman alongside Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, Hawkgirl and The Flash.   The show premiered in November of 2001 and was immediately a huge hit.  The show ran for two action packed seasons before segueing into Justice league Unlimited, a continuation series with a widely expanded cast of heroes and villains.  

Batman the Animated Series, the Superman Series, Batman Beyond and Justice League all existed in the same continuity (a continuity that came to be known as The DC Animated Universe or DCAU).  Herein, characters and plot lines carried over from one series to the next.  This ‘shared universe’ became the template that helped to make the Marvel Cinematic Universe so immensely popular and engrossing.  Many subsequent projects would also utilize the shared universe format (some quite successfully, others less so).    

The DCAU came to its conclusion with the finale of Justice League Unlimited.  Following the end of the DCAU, Timm went on to produce several DC animated films under the DC Universe Animated Original Movies line, such as Wonder Woman, Batman: Under the Red Hood, Superman/Batman: Apocalypse, Justice League Doom, Superman vs The Elite, The Dark Knight Returns and Justice League: Gods and Monsters.  

Timm additionally producer and created Green Lantern: The Animated Series in 2011.  This was a digitally animated series that was not a part of the DCAU but rather a continuation of the live action Green lantern movie that had come out earlier the same year.  Although the Green Lantern film was a commercial and critical bomb, the animated series was much more well received (although only lasted a single season).   

Along with his work in animation, Timm has also written and illustrated comic books for various publishers, including The Batman Adventures, The Avengers, Fantastic Four, Vampirella, Flinch, Conan the Barbarian and others.  Tim’s one-shot special, Batman: Mad Love detailed the tragic origins of Harley Quinn.  The comic was nominated for and won an Eisner Award and the story itself was later adapted in animated form as an episode of the New Batman Adventures.  

Timm would often draw commission pieces at conventions.  A sizable number of fans requested saucy and/or nude drawings of his characters.  Seeing the interest in this matter, Timm released an art book entitled Naughty and Nice: The Good Girl Art of Bruce Timm, with numerous color and black and white illustrations of nude and semi-nude women.  The book sold quite well.  

Around 2021, Timm teamed up with Matt Reaves and JJ Abrams to create a new Batman animated series.  This series, entitled Batman: The Caped Crusader focuses on Bruce Wayne’s early adventures as the Dark Knight.  Actor Kevin Conroy, who voiced Batman through the DCAU and in many additional Batman animated projects, was set to reprise the role in The Caped Crusader.  Tragically, Conroy passed away following a valiant battle with cancer.  Actor Hamish Linklater stepped in voice the character instead.  

The show was originally set to air simultaneously on The Cartoon Network and HBOMax. Cutbacks at HBO led the series to be shelved and potentially cancelled.  Fortunately, Amazon TV picked the project up and Batman: The Caped Crusader premiered in August of 2024.  The series received excellent reviews and drew substantial viewership numbers.  A second season has been confirmed and will be released in 2025.   

Timm is married to his wife, Marta. The couple has a daughter and they currently reside in his native Oklahoma.