Robert E. Wronski, Jr.

Source: The NCSN Life Success group is all set to launch

One hundred and four days after conception, the Northampton Community Support Network’s first weekly Life Success group will launch this Friday, August 4, at 1:30 PM.

The weekly group will be at First Churches, 129 Main Street, Northampton, MA.  It will run from 1:30 PM to 3:30 PM, followed by an hour of community service from 3:30 PM to 4:30 PM.

The group’s focus will be on participants sharing what they have done during the week to improve their life situation, and what obstacles stood in the way of improving their quality of life.  We then will take the common denominators of those obstacles and focus on how as a community we can work towards overcoming those challenges.  In future weeks we will build on overcoming those obstacles, and new obstacles we face, as we work together as a supportive community, and we will bring in guests from support services to help in overcoming those obstacles.

There will be coffee this week, provided by Thrivent and Cathedral in the Night, and pizza and soda provided by Robert Wronski.  We could still use some donations for future weeks, either in financial donations or in direct food and beverage donations.

This group is the first step toward a larger goal of creating a community center.

For more information on how you can support us, or about the services we currently offer and our plans for the future, visit our website, http://www.NorthamptonCommunitySupportNetwork.com, or find us on Facebook.  If you have questions, you can contact Robyn Wronski, NCSN Director, at 413-559-1433 or e-mail at NorthamptonCommunityNetwork@gmail.com.

Also, please visit our GoFundMe page if you wish to make a donation or you can mail us a check payable to Northampton Community Support Network and send it to Northampton Community Support Network, P.O. Box 1526, Northampton, MA 01061.  Receipts for cash and check payments will be mailed to you within a week of donation for tax purposes.

Source: Back to the New 52: Forgetting Sidekicks

Oh, those poor sidekicks.  They were trapped in limbo.  Of course, now they are back, and I’ll get around to discussing Rebirth eventually, but right now we’re still on the initial chaos of the launch of the New 52 back in 2011.

So some of those kids were forgotten as if they never existed.  Some were rebooted.  Some were left alone.   And sometimes, depending on which title you were reading, all of the above?

So we learned that the Teen Titans history did still happen, and we learned that it didn’t.

Over in Red Hood and the Outlaws, for instance, Roy Harper remembered the Teen Titans, but Starfire didn’t.

Wonder Woman’s reboot negated Donna Troy’s existence, and Flash’s reboot removed Wally West from history.

And Cyborg was now a founding member of the Justice League, which made his debut years earlier than in original canon and with a different origin.  But was he also a Titan?  I guess it depends on if you ask Roy or Starfire?

Meanwhile, the new Teen Titans (as opposed to the New Teen Titans, which were the older Teen Titans, but not the oldest Teen Titans), were being completely rebooted.

Superboy (the clone of Superman) was a brand new hero having never been seen before.  None of his previous stories counted.  Tim Drake was now Red Robin (yum), having never been Batman’s sidekick, and also debuting for the first time.  Bart Allen was arriving now from the future for the first time, also negating all his previous adventures as Impulse, Kid Flash and Flash.

Also joining the “I’m a new kid on the block again.  Forget all the old stuff” were Blue Beetle (Jaime Reyes, leaving out Ted and Dan from the past), Hawk & Dove, and some others.

Part of the reasoning for the erasing of the past and rebooting was that whole compressing all of DC history down to a five year timeline (when pre-Flashpoint it was about 15 years).  The other reason was that DC was trying to lure in younger readers, and new readers.  So it made sense for a relaunch of their young heroes, with no prior history, so that new readers could be introduced to them for the first time.

I said I wasn’t going to talk about Rebirth yet, but I will say that DC has found a happy medium in Rebirth, restoring those parts of DC history that we older fanboys were outraged to lose, while maintaining the reboots that were the most popular with the new readers.

So next I’ll talk a bit about DC’s New 52 historical and future settings.