title: South Side, Chicago

text: Many other artists have left their mark on Chicago's South Side. These include writers Upton Sinclair and James Farrell, Archibald Motley, Jr. via painting, Henry Moore and Lorado Taft via sculpture and Thomas Dorsey and Mahalia Jackson via gospel music. The South Side has many art museums and galleries such as the DuSable Museum of African American History, National Museum of Mexican Art, National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum, and the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art (known as the Smart Museum). In addition, cultural centers such as the South Shore Cultural Center, South Side Community Art Center, Harold Washington Cultural Center and Hyde Park Art Center bring art and culture to the public while fostering opportunities for artists. The Bronzeville Children's Museum is the only African American Children's museum in the U.S.


title: South Side, Chicago

text: The Chicago Park District boasts of parkland, 552 parks, 33 beaches, nine museums, two world-class conservatories, 16 historic lagoons and ten bird/wildlife gardens. Many of these are on the South Side, including several large parks that are part of the legacy of Paul Cornell's service on the South Parks Commission. He was also the father of Hyde Park.


title: South Side, Chicago

text: Chicago Park District parks serving the South Side include Burnham Park, Jackson Park, Washington Park, Midway Plaisance, and Harold Washington Park. Away from the Hyde Park area, large parks include the McKinley Park, Marquette Park, the Calumet Park, and the Douglass Park. The parks of Chicago foster and host tremendous amounts of athletic activities.


title: South Side, Chicago

text: The South Side has the only Illinois state park within the city of Chicago: William W. Powers State Recreation Area. Other opportunities for more "natural" recreation are provided by the Cook County Forest Preserve's Dan Ryan Woods and the Beaubien Woods on the far south side, along the Little Calumet River


title: South Side, Chicago

text: Various events cause the closure of parts of Lake Shore Drive. Although the Chicago Marathon causes many roads to be closed in its route that goes as far north as Wrigleyville and to Bronzeville on the South Side, it does not cause closures to the drive. However, on the South Side, the Chicago Half Marathon necessitates closures and the entire drive is closed for Bike The Drive.


title: South Side, Chicago

text: Beginning in 1905, the White City Amusement Park, located on 63rd Street provided a recreational area to the citizens of the area. Until the early 1920s, a dirigible service ran from the park, which was also where Goodyear Blimps were first produced, to Grant Park. This service was discontinued after the Wingfoot Air Express Crash. A fire destroyed much of the park in the late 1920s and more was torn down in the 1930s. The park filed for bankruptcy in 1933 and 1943. Despite attempts to resurrect the park in 1936 and 1939, by 1946 all the remaining equipment was auctioned off.


title: South Side, Chicago

text: The South Side hosts three major professional athletic teams: Major League Baseball's Chicago White Sox play at Guaranteed Rate Field in the Armour Square neighborhood, while the National Football League's Chicago Bears and Chicago Fire FC of Major League Soccer play at Soldier Field, adjacent to the Museum Campus on the Near South Side. Nine other teams—five now defunct, two playing in other media markets, and two now playing in another part of Chicago—have called the South Side home. When the National League baseball team now known as the Chicago Cubs was founded in 1870, their first playing field was Dexter Park in the Back of the Yards neighborhood. From 1874 to 1877 they played at 23rd Street Grounds in what is now Chinatown, and from 1891 to 1893 they played some of their games at South Side Park, which was located in the same place that Comiskey Park was built for the Chicago White Sox in 1910. South Side Park was also home to the Chicago Pirates of the short-lived Player's League in 1890. Another baseball field, also known as South Side Park, stood nearby in 1884 and was home to the Chicago Unions of the equally short-lived Union League. The defunct Chicago American Giants baseball club of the Negro leagues played at Schorling's Park from 1911 to 1940, and then at Comiskey Park until 1952. In football, the Chicago Cardinals of the National Football League originally played at Normal Park but eventually moved to Comiskey Park in the late 1920s. The Cardinals left Chicago for St. Louis in 1960 and in 1988 for Phoenix, where they became the Arizona Cardinals. In hockey, the Chicago Cougars of the WHA played in the International Amphitheatre, located next to the Union Stock Yards, from 1972 until their demise in 1975.


title: South Side, Chicago

text: Two NBA teams also briefly played on the South Side. The Chicago Packers played at the Amphitheatre in their inaugural season of . The following season, they changed their name to the Zephyrs and played at the Chicago Coliseum on the Near South Side. The team moved to Baltimore after that season and now plays in Washington, D.C. as the Washington Wizards. Chicago's current NBA team, the Bulls, played at the Amphitheatre during their first season before moving away from the South Side to Chicago Stadium and eventually to United Center.


title: South Side, Chicago

text: The Chicago Sky of the WNBA moved to Wintrust Arena, which opened in 2017 at McCormick Place on the Near South Side, in 2018. The venue is also home to both the men's and women's basketball teams of DePaul University, with the men exclusively using Wintrust Arena and the women splitting home games between that venue and DePaul's North Side campus.


title: South Side, Chicago

text: In NCAA Division I sports, the Chicago State Cougars represent the South Side, competing in the Western Athletic Conference. As noted above, DePaul began playing its home men's basketball games on the South Side in 2017, though most of its other sports (including part of the women's basketball home schedule) remain on or near its main North Side campus.


title: South Side, Chicago

text: The South Side played a prominent role in Chicago's bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics. The Olympic Village was planned in the Douglas (#35) community area across Lake Shore Drive from Burnham Park. In addition, the Olympic Stadium was expected to be located in the Chicago Park District's Washington Park located in the Washington Park (#40) community area. Many Olympic events were planned for these community areas as well as other parts of the South Side.


title: Academic grading in Canada

text: Academic grading in Canada varies by province, level of education (e.g., elementary, secondary, tertiary), by institution, and faculty. The following are commonly used conversions from percentage grades to letter grades, however, this is not necessarily meaningful, since there is not a uniform scheme for assigning percentage grades either.


title: Academic grading in Canada

text: In Alberta, academic grading follows a scale of letter grades (A through D), sentences to describe how well one's performance is to the curricular tasks expected of them, and percentages which are typically reserved for high only percentages are used. In francophone schools, from kindergarten to grade 9 an alternative grading system is used instead of percentages and letter grades: numbers 1 through 4 are used (4 is excellent, 3 is good, 2 is average, and 1 is below average


title: Academic grading in Canada

text: Note: not all schools utilize a +/− system when giving grades. Some just give the generic grade. Some give percentages.


title: Academic grading in Canada

text: IEA: Insufficient Evidence Available: indicates that the teacher of a particular course has not gathered enough evidence of a student's learning and thus cannot give a grade for said student.


title: Academic grading in Canada

text: WDR: Withdrawal: indicted the student has withdrawn from a particular course and thus, is given no grade because of it.


title: Academic grading in Canada

text: AMP: Academic Malpractice: Indicates that the student was placed in an incorrect class, whether it be by not having the pre-requisite or did not request the class upon registration. No mark was given.


title: Academic grading in Canada

text: P: Pass: indicates that the student has achieved the bare minimum grade to pass the class granted by a teacher due to reasons beyond the student's control. A grade of P translates into 50% when used to calculate averages for university or college admission.


title: Academic grading in Canada

text: A mark of 0–49%, is a D and under, is a failure for a class and is typically given for high school and post-secondary students only, but can be given to junior high students too, but isn't typically done. A failing grade will also result in not earning credits for an Alberta High School Diploma or any subject taken in post-secondary and typically means the student will more than likely repeat the course.


title: Academic grading in Canada

text: This is the system of grading used in high schools (Grades 10–12) in BC. Each university has its system of marking. Most elementary (Grades K–6) and middle schools (Grades 7–9) in BC no longer use grades, using a standards-based system instead.


title: Academic grading in Canada

text: P = The student has passed this course though a grade is not available (usually occurs when switching schools/grading systems i.e. moving from the US)


title: Academic grading in Canada

text: The grading standards for public elementary and secondary schools (including secular and separate; English and French first language schools) are set by the Ontario Ministry of Education and includes letter grades and percentages. In addition to letter grades and percentages, the Ministry of Education also uses a level system to mark its students. The four levels correspond to how students are marked on the Ontario rubric. The following is the levels on the Ontario rubric, its meaning, and its corresponding letter/percentage grades:


title: Academic grading in Canada

text: The grading standards for A− letter grades changed in September 2010 to coincide with a new academic year. The new changes require a higher percentage grade by two or five points to obtain an A or A+ respectively.


title: Academic grading in Canada

text: Quebec's passing mark is 60% and not 50% as compared to some other provinces. Note that it is common practice for students to pass with grades in the range of 55% to 59% at the teacher's discretion. The military pass mark is also generally 60%.


title: Academic grading in Canada

text: Note: Most schools in Quebec have now switched to percentages. The mark the students receive is the mark that is shown. The 60% passing mark remains.


title: Academic grading in Canada

text: At a high school level in [Saskatchewan], most subjects are separated into three competencies. On report cards, marks are normally shown as numbers and an average of the two marks associated with the subject will be calculated. For example, if a student achieves A, A− and B+ in a subject, teachers will calculate an average of the three marks (in this case, 85%).


title: Elliptic-curve cryptography

text: Elliptic-curve cryptography (ECC) is an approach to public-key cryptography based on the algebraic structure of elliptic curves over finite fields. ECC allows smaller keys compared to non-EC cryptography (based on plain Galois fields) to provide equivalent security.


title: Elliptic-curve cryptography

text: Elliptic curves are applicable for key agreement, digital signatures, pseudo-random generators and other tasks. Indirectly, they can be used for encryption by combining the key agreement with a symmetric encryption scheme. Elliptic curves are also used in several integer factorization algorithms based on elliptic curves that have applications in cryptography, such as Lenstra elliptic-curve factorization.


title: Elliptic-curve cryptography

text: Public-key cryptography is based on the intractability of certain mathematical problems. Early public-key systems based their security on the assumption that it is difficult to factor a large integer composed of two or more large prime factors. For later elliptic-curve-based protocols, the base assumption is that finding the discrete logarithm of a random elliptic curve element with respect to a publicly known base point is infeasible: this is the "elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem" (ECDLP). The security of elliptic curve cryptography depends on the ability to compute a point multiplication and the inability to compute the multiplicand given the original and product points. The size of the elliptic curve, measured by the total number of discrete integer pairs satisfying the curve equation, determines the difficulty of the problem.


title: Elliptic-curve cryptography

text: The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has endorsed elliptic curve cryptography in its Suite B set of recommended algorithms, specifically elliptic-curve Diffie–Hellman (ECDH) for key exchange and Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) for digital signature. The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) allows their use for protecting information classified up to top secret with 384-bit keys. However, in August 2015, the NSA announced that it plans to replace Suite B with a new cipher suite due to concerns about quantum computing attacks on ECC.


title: Elliptic-curve cryptography

text: While the RSA patent expired in 2000, there may be patents in force covering certain aspects of ECC technology. However some argue that the US government elliptic curve digital signature standard (ECDSA; NIST FIPS 186-3) and certain practical ECC-based key exchange schemes (including ECDH) can be implemented without infringing them, including RSA Laboratories and Daniel J. Bernstein.


title: Elliptic-curve cryptography

text: The primary benefit promised by elliptic curve cryptography is a smaller key size, reducing storage and transmission requirements, i.e. that an elliptic curve group could provide the same level of security afforded by an RSA-based system with a large modulus and correspondingly larger key: for example, a 256-bit elliptic curve public key should provide comparable security to a 3072-bit RSA public key.


title: Elliptic-curve cryptography

text: The use of elliptic curves in cryptography was suggested independently by Neal Koblitz and Victor S. Miller in 1985. Elliptic curve cryptography algorithms entered wide use in 2004 to 2005.


title: Elliptic-curve cryptography

text: For current cryptographic purposes, an "elliptic curve" is a plane curve over a finite field (rather than the real numbers) which consists of the points satisfying the equation:


title: Elliptic-curve cryptography

text: along with a distinguished point at infinity, denoted ∞. The coordinates here are to be chosen from a fixed finite field of characteristic not equal to 2 or 3, or the curve equation will be somewhat more complicated.


title: Elliptic-curve cryptography

text: This set together with the group operation of elliptic curves is an abelian group, with the point at infinity as an identity element. The structure of the group is inherited from the divisor group of the underlying algebraic variety:


title: Elliptic-curve cryptography

text: Several discrete logarithm-based protocols have been adapted to elliptic curves, replacing the group formula_3 with an elliptic curve:


title: Elliptic-curve cryptography

text: At the RSA Conference 2005, the National Security Agency (NSA) announced Suite B which exclusively uses ECC for digital signature generation and key exchange. The suite is intended to protect both classified and unclassified national security systems and information.


title: Elliptic-curve cryptography

text: Recently, a large number of cryptographic primitives based on bilinear mappings on various elliptic curve groups, such as the Weil and Tate pairings, have been introduced. Schemes based on these primitives provide efficient identity-based encryption as well as pairing-based signatures, signcryption, key agreement, and proxy re-encryption.


title: Elliptic-curve cryptography

text: To use ECC, all parties must agree on all the elements defining the elliptic curve, that is, the "domain parameters" of the scheme. The size of the field used is typically either prime (and denoted as p) or is a power of two (formula_4); the latter case is called "the binary case", and also necessitates the choice of an auxiliary curve denoted by "f". Thus the field is defined by "p" in the prime case and the pair of "m" and "f" in the binary case. The elliptic curve is defined by the constants "a" and "b" used in its defining equation. Finally, the cyclic subgroup is defined by its "generator" (a.k.a. "base point") "G". For cryptographic application the order of "G", that is the smallest positive number "n" such that formula_5 (the point at infinity of the curve, and the identity element), is normally prime. Since "n" is the size of a subgroup of formula_6 it follows from Lagrange's theorem that the number formula_7 is an integer. In cryptographic applications this number "h", called the "cofactor", must be small (formula_8) and, preferably, formula_9. To summarize: in the prime case, the domain parameters are formula_10; in the binary case, they are formula_11.


title: Elliptic-curve cryptography

text: Unless there is an assurance that domain parameters were generated by a party trusted with respect to their use, the domain parameters "must" be validated before use.


title: Elliptic-curve cryptography

text: The generation of domain parameters is not usually done by each participant because this involves computing the number of points on a curve which is time-consuming and troublesome to implement. As a result, several standard bodies published domain parameters of elliptic curves for several common field sizes. Such domain parameters are commonly known as "standard curves" or "named curves"; a named curve can be referenced either by name or by the unique object identifier defined in the standard documents:


title: Elliptic-curve cryptography

text: SECG test vectors are also available. NIST has approved many SECG curves, so there is a significant overlap between the specifications published by NIST and SECG. EC domain parameters may be either specified by value or by name.


title: Elliptic-curve cryptography

text: If one (despite the above) wants to construct one's own domain parameters, one should select the underlying field and then use one of the following strategies to find a curve with appropriate (i.e., near prime) number of points using one of the following methods:


title: Elliptic-curve cryptography

text: Because all the fastest known algorithms that allow one to solve the ECDLP (baby-step giant-step, Pollard's rho, etc.), need formula_20 steps, it follows that the size of the underlying field should be roughly twice the security parameter. For example, for 128-bit security one needs a curve over formula_19, where formula_22. This can be contrasted with finite-field cryptography (e.g., DSA) which requires 3072-bit public keys and 256-bit private keys, and integer factorization cryptography (e.g., RSA) which requires a 3072-bit value of "n", where the private key should be just as large. However, the public key may be smaller to accommodate efficient encryption, especially when processing power is limited.


title: Elliptic-curve cryptography

text: The hardest ECC scheme (publicly) broken to date had a 112-bit key for the prime field case and a 109-bit key for the binary field case. For the prime field case, this was broken in July 2009 using a cluster of over 200 PlayStation 3 game consoles and could have been finished in 3.5 months using this cluster when running continuously. The binary field case was broken in April 2004 using 2600 computers over 17 months.


title: Elliptic-curve cryptography

text: A current project is aiming at breaking the ECC2K-130 challenge by Certicom, by using a wide range of different hardware: CPUs, GPUs, FPGA.


title: Elliptic-curve cryptography

text: A close examination of the addition rules shows that in order to add two points, one needs not only several additions and multiplications in formula_19 but also an inversion operation. The inversion (for given formula_24 find formula_25 such that formula_26) is one to two orders of magnitude slower than multiplication. However, points on a curve can be represented in different coordinate systems which do not require an inversion operation to add two points. Several such systems were proposed: in the "projective" system each point is represented by three coordinates formula_27 using the following relation: formula_28, formula_29; in the "Jacobian system" a point is also represented with three coordinates formula_27, but a different relation is used: formula_31, formula_32; in the "López–Dahab system" the relation is formula_28, formula_34; in the "modified Jacobian" system the same relations are used but four coordinates are stored and used for calculations formula_35; and in the "Chudnovsky Jacobian" system five coordinates are used formula_36. Note that there may be different naming conventions, for example, IEEE P1363-2000 standard uses "projective coordinates" to refer to what is commonly called Jacobian coordinates. An additional speed-up is possible if mixed coordinates are used.


title: Elliptic-curve cryptography

text: Reduction modulo "p" (which is needed for addition and multiplication) can be executed much faster if the prime "p" is a pseudo-Mersenne prime, that is formula_37; for example, formula_38 or formula_39 Compared to Barrett reduction, there can be an order of magnitude speed-up. The speed-up here is a practical rather than theoretical one, and derives from the fact that the moduli of numbers against numbers near powers of two can be performed efficiently by computers operating on binary numbers with bitwise operations.


title: Elliptic-curve cryptography

text: The curves over formula_15 with pseudo-Mersenne "p" are recommended by NIST. Yet another advantage of the NIST curves is that they use "a" = −3, which improves addition in Jacobian coordinates.


title: Elliptic-curve cryptography

text: According to Bernstein and Lange, many of the efficiency-related decisions in NIST FIPS 186-2 are suboptimal. Other curves are more secure and run just as fast.


title: Elliptic-curve cryptography

text: Elliptic curves are applicable for encryption, digital signatures, pseudo-random generators and other tasks. They are also used in several integer factorization algorithms that have applications in cryptography, such as Lenstra elliptic-curve factorization.


title: Elliptic-curve cryptography

text: In 1999, NIST recommended fifteen elliptic curves. Specifically, FIPS 186-4 has ten recommended finite fields:


title: Elliptic-curve cryptography

text: The NIST recommendation thus contains a total of five prime curves and ten binary curves. The curves were ostensibly chosen for optimal security and implementation efficiency.


title: Elliptic-curve cryptography

text: In 2013, "The New York Times" stated that Dual Elliptic Curve Deterministic Random Bit Generation (or Dual_EC_DRBG) had been included as a NIST national standard due to the influence of NSA, which had included a deliberate weakness in the algorithm and the recommended elliptic curve. RSA Security in September 2013 issued an advisory recommending that its customers discontinue using any software based on Dual_EC_DRBG. In the wake of the exposure of Dual_EC_DRBG as "an NSA undercover operation", cryptography experts have also expressed concern over the security of the NIST recommended elliptic curves, suggesting a return to encryption based on non-elliptic-curve groups.


title: Elliptic-curve cryptography

text: Ethereum version 2.0 makes extensive use of elliptic curve pairs using BLS signatures—as specified in the IETF draft BLS specification—for cryptographically assuring that a specific Eth2 validator has actually verified a particular transaction.


title: Elliptic-curve cryptography

text: Unlike most other DLP systems (where it is possible to use the same procedure for squaring and multiplication), the EC addition is significantly different for doubling ("P" = "Q") and general addition ("P" ≠ "Q") depending on the coordinate system used. Consequently, it is important to counteract side-channel attacks (e.g., timing or simple/differential power analysis attacks) using, for example, fixed pattern window (a.k.a. comb) methods (note that this does not increase computation time). Alternatively one can use an Edwards curve; this is a special family of elliptic curves for which doubling and addition can be done with the same operation. Another concern for ECC-systems is the danger of fault attacks, especially when running on smart cards.


title: Elliptic-curve cryptography

text: Cryptographic experts have expressed concerns that the National Security Agency has inserted a kleptographic backdoor into at least one elliptic curve-based pseudo random generator. Internal memos leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden suggest that the NSA put a backdoor in the Dual EC DRBG standard. One analysis of the possible backdoor concluded that an adversary in possession of the algorithm's secret key could obtain encryption keys given only 32 bytes of PRNG output.


title: Elliptic-curve cryptography

text: The SafeCurves project has been launched in order to catalog curves that are easy to securely implement and are designed in a fully publicly verifiable way to minimize the chance of a backdoor.


title: Elliptic-curve cryptography

text: Shor's algorithm can be used to break elliptic curve cryptography by computing discrete logarithms on a hypothetical quantum computer. The latest quantum resource estimates for breaking a curve with a 256-bit modulus (128-bit security level) are 2330 qubits and 126 billion Toffoli gates. For the binary elliptic curve case, 906 qubits are necessary (to break 128 bits of security). In comparison, using Shor's algorithm to break the RSA algorithm requires 4098 qubits and 5.2 trillion Toffoli gates for a 2048-bit RSA key, suggesting that ECC is an easier target for quantum computers than RSA. All of these figures vastly exceed any quantum computer that has ever been built, and estimates place the creation of such computers at a decade or more away.


title: Elliptic-curve cryptography

text: Supersingular Isogeny Diffie–Hellman Key Exchange claimed to provide a post-quantum secure form of elliptic curve cryptography by using isogenies to implement Diffie–Hellman key exchanges. This key exchange uses much of the same field arithmetic as existing elliptic curve cryptography and requires computational and transmission overhead similar to many currently used public key systems. However, new classical attacks undermined the security of this protocol.


title: Elliptic-curve cryptography

text: In August 2015, the NSA announced that it planned to transition "in the not distant future" to a new cipher suite that is resistant to quantum attacks. "Unfortunately, the growth of elliptic curve use has bumped up against the fact of continued progress in the research on quantum computing, necessitating a re-evaluation of our cryptographic strategy."


title: Elliptic-curve cryptography

text: When ECC is used in virtual machines, an attacker may use an invalid curve to get a complete PDH private key.


title: Look Who's Talking

text: Look Who's Talking is a 1989 American romantic comedy film written and directed by Amy Heckerling, and starring John Travolta and Kirstie Alley. Bruce Willis plays the voice of Mollie's son, Mikey. The film features George Segal as Albert.


title: Look Who's Talking

text: Mollie, an accountant living in New York City, becomes pregnant during an affair with married executive Albert. The baby, while growing inside Mollie, begins to make voice-over commentary.


title: Look Who's Talking

text: In her ninth month, while out shopping, Mollie and her friend Rona catch Albert with another woman and he admits he does not plan to stay with Mollie. The heartbreak and stress cause her to go into labor. A taxi driver speeds through downtown traffic to get her to the hospital in time.


title: Look Who's Talking

text: Mollie becomes a dedicated single mother and Mikey continues his commentary, using an "inner voice" which can also communicate with other babies. She meets the taxi driver, James, again at her apartment building.


title: Look Who's Talking

text: Over the next year, the two develop a friendship and tentative romantic relationship. James tells Mollie that he loves her but she says she only wants what is best for Mikey, that rushing into things is how she got into trouble and kicks him out. Mollie is forced by her boss to continue working with Albert, which makes matters worse.


title: Look Who's Talking

text: At the playground, Mikey is told by his friends what "daddies" are and he realizes he wants James to be "his" father. James comes to the apartment and tells Mikey that he will not be around anymore and Mollie listens over the baby monitor as he pours his heart out to Mikey, who admits he will miss James, too.


title: Look Who's Talking

text: Mollie takes Mikey to Albert's office to meet him but when he admits he does not want the responsibility of being a father because he’s going through a "selfish phase", Mollie realizes he has not changed. She leaves Albert behind for good and makes up with James.


title: Look Who's Talking

text: Meanwhile, Mikey wanders off on his own, searching for James when he sees a taxi cab outside. After making his way out to the alley, he gets into a car which then gets towed away with Mikey inside it, while Mollie and James search frantically for him.


title: Look Who's Talking

text: After spotting him, James and Mollie give chase in his cab and eventually cut off the tow truck but discover Mikey had gotten out of the car and is now standing in the middle of heavy traffic. James and Mollie run to reach him and take him to safety, where Mikey unofficially asks James to be his father by saying his first word "Da-da".


title: Look Who's Talking

text: James and Mollie realize that Mikey already sees James as his father and they decide to give it a chance, kissing passionately while Mikey considers telling them he needs a new diaper.


title: Look Who's Talking

text: Nine months later, Mollie gives birth to her and James' daughter and Mikey's half-sister Julie, complete with her own inner voice.


title: Look Who's Talking

text: The film received mixed reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a score of 55% based on 38 reviews, with an average rating of 5.4/10. The critical consensus reads: ""Look Who's Talking" holds some appeal thanks to its affable stars and Amy Heckerling's energetic direction, but a silly script doesn't allow wit to get a word in edgewise". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Look Who's Talking

text: "Look Who's Talking" was a surprise hit, opening at number one in the United States with $12,107,784 in its opening weekend and staying at number one for five weekends with grosses over $10 million each weekend. It eventually grossed $140,088,813 domestically and a worldwide total of $296,999,813, making it Travolta's most successful film in eleven years since "Grease", the fourth highest-grossing movie of 1989, and Columbia TriStar's highest-grossing film overseas, surpassing "Kramer vs. Kramer"


title: Look Who's Talking

text: The film was released in the United Kingdom on April 6, 1990, and topped the country's box office that weekend.


title: Look Who's Talking

text: The film was successful enough to spawn two sequels: "Look Who's Talking Too" (1990) and "Look Who's Talking Now" (1993). The success of the first two films also inspired an ABC sitcom called "Baby Talk", which aired from 1991 to 1992, and featured Tony Danza as the voice of "Baby Mickey". John Travolta, Kirstie Alley, and Olympia Dukakis are the only actors to appear in all three films in the series.


title: Look Who's Talking

text: In 2010, "Fast & Furious"' producer Neal H. Moritz was planning to reboot the series, with the Mikey character now grown up and the father of the baby in the film. In 2019, director Jeremy Garelick was writing the script for the reboot.


title: Klingon language

text: The Klingon language (, "": , ) is the constructed language spoken by a fictional alien race called the Klingons, in the "Star Trek" universe.


title: Klingon language

text: Described in the 1985 book "The Klingon Dictionary" by Marc Okrand and deliberately designed to sound "alien", it has a number of typologically uncommon features. The language's basic sound, along with a few words, was devised by actor James Doohan ("Scotty") and producer Jon Povill for "". That film marked the first time the language had been heard. In all previous appearances, Klingons spoke in English, even to each other. Klingon was subsequently developed by Okrand into a full-fledged language.


title: Klingon language

text: Klingon is sometimes referred to as Klingonese (most notably in the "" episode "The Trouble with Tribbles", where it was actually pronounced by a Klingon character as "Klingonee" ), but among the Klingon-speaking community, this is often understood to refer to another Klingon language called Klingonaase that was introduced in John M. Ford's 1984 "Star Trek" novel "The Final Reflection," and appears in other "Star Trek" novels by Ford.


title: Klingon language

text: The play "A Klingon Christmas Carol" is the first production that is primarily in Klingon (only the narrator speaks English). The opera is entirely in Klingon.


title: Klingon language

text: A small number of people are capable of conversing in Klingon. Because its vocabulary is heavily centered on "Star Trek"-Klingon concepts such as spacecraft or warfare, it can sometimes be cumbersome for everyday use.


title: Klingon language

text: The language is first mentioned in the original "Star Trek" series episode "The Trouble with Tribbles" (1967), but is not heard until "" (1979). According to the actor who spoke the lines, Mark Lenard, James Doohan recorded the lines he had written on a tape, and Lenard transcribed the recorded lines in a way he found useful in learning them.


title: Klingon language

text: For "" (1984), director Leonard Nimoy and writer-producer Harve Bennett wanted the Klingons to speak a structured language instead of random gibberish, and so commissioned a full language, based on the phrases Doohan had originated, from Marc Okrand, who had earlier constructed four lines of Vulcan dialogue for "".


title: Klingon language

text: Okrand enlarged the lexicon and developed a grammar based on Doohan's original dozen words. The language appeared intermittently in later films featuring the original cast; for example, in "" (1989) and in "" (1991), where translation difficulties served as a plot device.


title: Klingon language

text: Two "non-canon" dialects of Klingon are hinted at in the novelization of "", as Saavik speaks in Klingon to the only Klingon officer aboard Cpt. Kruge's starship after his death, as the survivors of the "Enterprise"'s self-destruction transport up from the crumbling Genesis Planet to the Klingon ship. The surviving officer, Maltz, states that he speaks the "Rumaiy" dialect, while Saavik is speaking to him in the "Kumburan" dialect of Klingon, per Maltz's spoken reply to her.


title: Klingon language

text: With the advent of the series "" (1987)—in which one of the main characters, Worf, was a Klingon—and successors, the language and various cultural aspects for the fictional species were expanded. In the episode "A Matter of Honor", several members of a Klingon ship's crew speak a language that is not translated for the benefit of the viewer (even Commander Riker, enjoying the benefits of a universal translator, is unable to understand) until one Klingon orders the others to "speak their [i.e., human] language".


title: Klingon language

text: A small number of non-Klingon characters were later depicted in "Star Trek" as having learned to speak Klingon, notably Jean-Luc Picard and Dax.


title: Klingon language

text: Hobbyists around the world have studied the Klingon language. At least nine Klingon translations of works of world literature have been published, among which are: "" ("the Epic of Gilgamesh"), "" ("Hamlet"), ' ("Much Ado About Nothing)", ' ("Tao Te Ching"), ' ("the Art of War"), ' ("The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"), ' ("The Wonderful Wizard of Oz"), ' ("the Little Prince"), and "" ("Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"). The Shakespearean choices were inspired by a remark from High Chancellor Gorkon in "", who said, "You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon." In the bonus material on the DVD, screenwriter Nicholas Meyer and actor William Shatner both explain that this was an allusion to the German myth that Shakespeare was in fact German.


title: Klingon language

text: CBS Television Studios owns the copyright on the official dictionary and other canonical descriptions of the language. While constructed languages ("conlangs") are viewed as creations with copyright protection, natural languages are not protected, excluding dictionaries and other works created with them. Mizuki Miyashita and Laura Moll note, "Copyrights on dictionaries are unusual because the entries in the dictionary are not copyrightable as the words themselves are facts, and facts can not be copyrighted. However, the formatting, example sentences, and instructions for dictionary use are created by the author, so they are copyrightable."


title: Klingon language

text: Okrand had studied some Native American and Southeast Asian languages, and phonological and grammatical features of these languages "worked their way into Klingon, but for the most part, not by design." Okrand himself has stated that a design principle of the Klingon language was dissimilarity to existing natural languages in general, and English in particular. He therefore avoided patterns that are typologically common and deliberately chose features that occur relatively infrequently in human languages. This includes above all the highly asymmetric consonant inventory and the basic word order.


title: Klingon language

text: A small number of people are capable of conversing in Klingon. Arika Okrent guessed in her 2009 book "In the Land of Invented Languages" that there might be 20–30 fluent speakers. Since that time, with the appearance of Duolingo's Klingon course and the increasing popularity of video chat platforms such as Zoom and Discord, the number of conversationally fluent speakers has definitely increased; in 2021, there are perhaps 50-60. Its vocabulary, heavily centered on "Star Trek"–Klingon concepts such as spacecraft or warfare, can sometimes make it cumbersome for everyday use. For instance, while words for "transporter ionizer unit" (') or "bridge" (of a ship) (') have been known since close to the language's inception, the word for "bridge" in the sense of a crossing over water ("") was unknown until August 2012. Nonetheless, mundane conversations are possible among skilled speakers.


title: Klingon language

text: One Klingon speaker, d'Armond Speers, raised his son Alec to speak Klingon as a first language, whilst the boy's mother communicated with him in English. Alec rarely responded to his father in Klingon, although when he did, his pronunciation was "excellent". After Alec's fifth birthday, Speers reported that his son eventually stopped responding to him when spoken to in Klingon as he clearly did not enjoy it, so Speers switched to English.


title: Klingon language

text: In 2007, a report surfaced that Multnomah County, Oregon, was hiring Klingon translators for its mental health program in case patients came into a psychiatric hospital speaking nothing but Klingon. Most circulations of the report seemingly implied that this was a problem that health officials faced before; however, the original report indicated that this was just a precaution for a hypothetical and that said translator would only be paid on an as needed basis. After the report was misinterpreted, the County issued another release noting that releasing the original report was a "mistake".


title: Klingon language

text: In May 2009, Simon & Schuster, in collaboration with Ultralingua Inc., a developer of electronic dictionary applications, announced the release of a suite of electronic Klingon language software for most computer platforms including a dictionary, a phrasebook, and an audio learning tool.


title: Klingon language

text: In September 2011, Eurotalk released the "Learn Klingon" course in its "Talk Now!" series. The language is displayed in both Latin and pIqaD fonts, making this the first language course written in pIqaD and approved by CBS and Marc Okrand. It was translated by Jonathan Brown and Okrand and uses the TrueType font.


title: Klingon language

text: In August 2016, a company in the United Kingdom, Bidvine, began offering Klingon lessons as one of their services.


title: Klingon language

text: In March 2018, the popular language learning site Duolingo opened a beta course in Klingon. After it proved its effectiveness, the company offered to promote it from beta status, but due to ongoing software issues regarding Klingon's unexpected use of upper- and lower-case letters and the apostrophe as a consonant instead of punctuation, the course developers chose not to accept the offer until the problems were addressed.


title: Klingon language

text: There are Klingon language meetings and linguists or students are interested in researching this topic, even writing essays about the language or its users.


title: Klingon language

text: Klingon speakers are also referred to in non-"Star Trek" TV series, including "Frasier", "The Big Bang Theory", and "Lucifer", and was heavily featured in the "My Big Fat Geek Wedding" episode of "The Simpsons".


title: Klingon language

text: In 2010, a Chicago Theatre company presented a version of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" in Klingon language and a Klingon setting. On September 25, 2010, the Washington Shakespeare Company (now known as WSC Avant Bard) performed selections from "Hamlet" and "Much Ado About Nothing" in the Klingon language in Arlington County, Virginia. The performance was proposed by Okrand in his capacity as chairman of the group's board. This performance was reprised on February 27, 2011 featuring Stephen Fry as the Klingon Osric and was filmed by the BBC as part of a 5-part documentary on language entitled "Fry's Planet Word".


title: Klingon language

text: The 2003–2010 version of the puzzle globe logo of Wikipedia, representing its multilingualism, contained a Klingon character. When updated in 2010, the Klingon character was removed from the logo, and substituted with one from the Ge'ez script. A was started in June 2004 at "tlh.wikipedia.org". It was permanently locked in August 2005 and moved to Wikia. The Klingon Wiktionary was closed in 2008.


title: Klingon language

text: Microsoft's Bing Translator attempts to translate Klingon from and to other languages. It can do a good job with individual words, and with phrases included in its training corpus, but it is not well tuned for Klingon's system of prefixes and suffixes. For example, "You must study it" is rendered instead as "They Must Study."


title: Klingon language

text: In July 2015, when Conservative Welsh Assembly Member Darren Millar formally asked the Welsh Economy Minister Edwina Hart about the Welsh Government's policy funding research into sightings of UFOs at Cardiff Airport, a press officer in the Minister's office issued a written reply in Klingon: , which was translated as: "The minister will reply in due course. However this is a non-devolved matter."


title: Klingon language

text: With the digital-only release of "" in 2017, streaming service Netflix announced it would provide Klingon subtitles for the entire first season, translated by Klingon language expert Lieven L. Litaer. They can be enabled like any other language provided by the streaming service, and are shown as the phonetic pronunciation rather than Klingon script.


title: Klingon language

text: In 2017, a version of “The Gummy Bear Song” was uploaded to YouTube, fully translated to the Klingon language. Its title, “”, translates to English as “I am a sabre bear that is chewy.” The version was released to iTunes in 2018.


title: Klingon language

text: In 2020 the German artist Hans Solo (Äi-Tiem) released an EP "NuqneH", whose 5 tracks are completely rapped in Klingon language.


title: Klingon language

text: An important concept to spoken and written Klingon is canonicity. Only words and grammatical forms introduced by Marc Okrand are considered canonical Klingon by the KLI and most Klingonists. However, as the growing number of speakers employ different strategies to express themselves, it is often unclear as to what level of neologism is permissible. New vocabulary has been collected in a list maintained by the KLI until 2005 and has since then been followed up by Klingon expert Lieven Litaer.


title: Klingon language

text: Within the fictional universe of "Star Trek", Klingon is derived from the original language spoken by the messianic figure Kahless the Unforgettable, who united the Klingon home-world of under one empire more than 1500 years ago. Many dialects exist, but the standardized dialect of prestige is almost invariably that of the sitting emperor.


title: Klingon language

text: The Klingon Language Institute regards the following works as canon Klingon; they serve as sources of Klingon vocabulary and grammar for all other works.


title: Klingon language

text: The letters in parentheses following each item (if any) indicate the acronym of each source - used when quoting canon.


title: Klingon language

text: Klingon has been developed with a phonology that, while based on human natural languages, is intended to sound alien to human ears. When initially developed, Paramount Pictures (owners of the "Star Trek" franchise) wanted the Klingon language to be guttural and harsh and Okrand wanted it to be unusual, so he selected sounds that combined in ways not generally found in other languages. The effect is mainly achieved by the use of a number of retroflex and uvular consonants in the language's inventory. Klingon has twenty-one consonants and five vowels. Klingon is normally written in a variant of the Latin alphabet. The orthography of this transliteration is case-sensitive, that is, upper and lower case letters are not interchangeable (uppercase letters mostly represent sounds different from those expected by English speakers), although with the exception of Q/q there are no minimal pairs between case. In other words, while is incorrect Klingon, it cannot be misread as anything but an erroneous form of (which means "language"); on the other hand, and are two different words, the first meaning "be popular" and the second meaning "accompany". In the discussion below, standard Klingon orthography appears in "", and the phonemic transcription in the International Phonetic Alphabet is written between "/slashes/".


title: Klingon language

text: The inventory of consonants in Klingon is spread over a number of places of articulation. In spite of this, the inventory has many gaps: Klingon has no velar plosives, and only one sibilant fricative. Deliberately, this arrangement is very different from that of most human languages. The combination of an aspirated voiceless alveolar plosive and a voiced retroflex plosive is particularly unusual.


title: Klingon language

text: There are a few dialectal pronunciation differences (it is not known if the aforementioned non-canon "Kumburan" or "Rumaiy" dialects of "" hinted at in the novelization of "" might differ):


title: Klingon language

text: In contrast to its consonants, Klingon's inventory of vowels is simple, and similar to those of many human languages, such as Spanish or Japanese. There are five vowels spaced more or less evenly around the vowel space, with two back rounded vowels, one back unrounded vowel, and two front or near-front unrounded vowels. The vowel inventory is asymmetrical in that the back rounded vowels are tense and the front vowels are lax.


title: Klingon language

text: The two front vowels, and , represent sounds that are found in English, but are more open and lax than a typical English speaker might assume when reading Klingon text written in the Latin alphabet, thus causing the consonants of a word to be more prominent. This enhances the sense that Klingon is a clipped and harsh-sounding language.


title: Klingon language

text: Diphthongs can be analyzed phonetically as the combination of the five vowels plus one of the two semivowels and (represented by and , respectively). Thus, the combinations , , , , , , and are possible. There are no words in the Klingon language that contain * or *.


title: Klingon language

text: Klingon follows a strict syllable structure. A syllable must start with a consonant (including the glottal stop) followed by one vowel. In prefixes and rare other syllables, this is enough. More commonly, this consonant-vowel pair is followed by one consonant or one of three biconsonantal codas: /- -' -"/. Thus, ' "record", ' "poison" and ' "targ" (a type of animal) are all legal syllable forms, but *' and *' are not. Despite this, one suffix takes the shape vowel+consonant: the endearment suffix .


title: Klingon language

text: In verbs, the stressed syllable is usually the verbal stem itself, as opposed to a prefix or any suffixes, except when a suffix ending with is separated from the verb by at least one other suffix, in which case the suffix ending in is also stressed. In addition, stress may shift to a suffix that is meant to be emphasized.


title: Klingon language

text: In nouns, the final syllable of the stem (the noun itself, excluding any affixes) is stressed. If any syllables ending in are present, the stress shifts to those syllables.


title: Klingon language

text: The stress in other words seems to be variable, but this is not a serious issue because most of these words are only one syllable in length. There are some words which should fall under the rules above, but do not, although using the standard rules would still be acceptable.


title: Klingon language

text: Klingon is an agglutinative language, using mainly affixes in order to alter the function or meaning of words. Some nouns have inherently plural forms, such as ' "plate" (vs. "plates"), but most nouns require a suffix to express plurality explicitly. Depending on the type of noun (body part, being capable of using language, or neither) the suffix changes. For beings capable of using language, the suffix is "," as in "," meaning "Klingons," or "," meaning "enemies". For body parts, the plural suffix is "," as in "," "eyes". For items that are neither body parts nor capable of speech, the suffix is "," such as in ' ("stars"), or ' ("targs") for a Klingon animal somewhat resembling a boar. (However, a plural suffix is never obligatory. To say "The stars are beautiful", ' and " are equally grammatical, although the second can also mean "The star is beautiful".)


title: Klingon language

text: The words ' and ', which on their own mean "man" and "woman" respectively, can be used in compound words to refer to the referent's sex. For example, from ' ("child") this process derives ' ("son") and " ("daughter").


title: Klingon language

text: Klingon nouns take suffixes to indicate grammatical number. There are three noun classes, two levels of deixis, and a possession and syntactic function. In all, twenty-nine noun suffixes from five classes may be employed: " "for my beloved true friends". A word may carry no more than one suffix from each class, and the classes have a specific order of appearance.


title: Klingon language

text: Verbs in Klingon take a prefix indicating the number and person of the subject and object, whereas suffixes are taken from nine ordered classes and a special suffix class called rovers. Each of the four known rovers has a unique rule controlling its position among the suffixes in the verb. Verbs are marked for aspect, certainty, predisposition and volition, dynamic, causative, mood, negation, and honorific. The Klingon verb has two moods: indicative and imperative.


title: Klingon language

text: The most common word order in Klingon is object–verb–subject, and, in most cases, the word order is the exact reverse of English for an equivalent sentence:


title: Klingon language

text: An important aspect of Klingon grammar is its "ungrammaticality". As with for example Japanese, shortening of communicative statements is common, and is called "Clipped Klingon" (' or, more simply, ') and Ritualized Speech. Clipped Klingon is especially useful in situations where speed is a decisive factor. Grammar is abbreviated, and sentence parts deemed to be superfluous are dropped. Intentional ungrammaticality is widespread, and it takes many forms. It is exemplified by the practice of ", which Marc Okrand translates as "to misfollow the rules" or "to follow the rules wrongly".


title: Klingon language

text: When written in the Latin alphabet, Klingon is unusual in being case-sensitive, with some letters written in capitals and others in lowercase. In one contrast, ' and ', there is an actual case-sensitive pair representing two different consonants. Capitals are generally reserved for uvular or retroflex consonants pronounced further back in the mouth or throat than is normal for the corresponding English sounds, as with ', ', and '. However, ', pronounced like the in German "ich" or Scottish "loch", is further forward in the throat than English /h/. One phoneme, the vowel ', is written capital to look more like the IPA symbol for the sound /ɪ/, and can pose problems when writing Klingon in sans-serif fonts such as Arial, as it looks almost the same as the consonant '.


title: Klingon language

text: This has led some Klingon enthusiasts to write it lowercase like the other vowels ("i") to prevent confusion, but this use is non-canonical. Instead, a serif font that clearly distinguishes "" and "", such as Courier or Courier New, has traditionally been employed for writing Klingon in the Latin alphabet. In any case, it can be disambiguated through context, as never occurs next to another vowel, while always does. The apostrophe, denoting the glottal stop, is considered a letter, not a punctuation mark, as with a Hawaiian 'okina.


title: Klingon language

text: Klingon is often written in (in-universe, "transliterated to") the Latin alphabet as used above, but on the television series, the Klingons use their own alien writing system. In "The Klingon Dictionary", this alphabet is named as ', but no information is given about it. When Klingon symbols are used in "Star Trek" productions, they are merely decorative graphic elements, designed to emulate real writing and create an appropriate atmosphere. Enthusiasts have settled on the name ' for this writing system.


title: Klingon language

text: The Astra Image Corporation designed the symbols currently used to "write" Klingon for "", although these symbols are often incorrectly attributed to Michael Okuda. They based the letters on the Klingon battlecruiser hull markings (three letters) first created by Matt Jefferies and on Tibetan writing because the script has sharp letter forms—used as a testament to the Klingons' love for knives and blades.


title: Klingon language

text: For April Fools' Day in 2013, Nokia and typography company Dalton Maag claimed to have used "communication devices to far-flung star systems" to assist them in localizing the Nokia Pure font to the Klingon writing system. Though the explanation was of course humorous in nature, as part of the practical joke a series of real fonts based upon the most commonly used "" character mapping were in fact developed, and have been made available for free download.


title: Klingon language

text: A design principle of the Klingon language is the great degree of lexical-cultural correlation in the vocabulary. For example, there are several words meaning "to fight" or "to clash against", each having a different degree of intensity. There is an abundance of words relating to warfare and weaponry and also a great variety of curses (cursing is considered a fine art in Klingon culture). This helps lend a particular character to the language.


title: Klingon language

text: There are many in-jokes built into the language. For example, the word for "pair" is , a reference to the original "Siamese twins" Chang and Eng Bunker; a is a mid-size stringed instrument, comparable to a guitar (i.e. Les Paul); a "chronometer" is (pronounced similar to "clock"); the word for "torture" is ; "hangover" is , and the word for "fish" is "".


title: Klingon language

text: Sources for the vocabulary include English (albeit heavily disguised), and also Yiddish: for "buttocks" (from תּחת "tuches" spelled backwards), and for "ache, pain, sore" (cf. "oy vey").


title: Klingon language

text: Many English words do not have direct translations into Klingon. To express "hello", the nearest equivalent is , meaning "What do you want?", with "goodbye" translated as , "Success!".


title: Shotokan

text: Funakoshi had many students at the university clubs and outside dojos, who continued to teach karate after his death in 1957. However, internal disagreements (in particular the notion that competition is contrary to the essence of karate) led to the creation of different organisations—including an initial split between the Japan Karate Association (headed by Masatoshi Nakayama) and the Shotokai (headed by Motonobu Hironishi and Shigeru Egami), followed by many others—so that today there is no single "Shotokan school", although they all bear Funakoshi's influence.


title: Shotokan

text: As the most widely practiced style, Shotokan is considered a traditional and influential form of karate do.


title: Shotokan

text: "Shotokan" was the name of the first official dojo built by Gichin Funakoshi, in 1936 at Mejiro, and destroyed in 1945 as a result of an allied bombing. , meaning "pine-waves" (the movement of pine needles when the wind blows through them), was Funakoshi's pen-name, which he used in his poetic and philosophical writings and messages to his students. The Japanese means "house" or "hall". In honour of their sensei, Funakoshi's students created a sign reading "shōtō-kan", which they placed above the entrance of the hall where Funakoshi taught. Gichin Funakoshi never gave his system a name, just calling it "karate".


title: Shotokan

text: Shotokan training is usually divided into three parts: "kihon" (basics), "kata" (forms or patterns of moves), and "kumite" (sparring). Techniques in "kihon" and "kata" are characterised by deep, long stances that provide stability, enable powerful movements, and strengthen the legs. Shotokan is regarded as a dynamic martial art as it develops anaerobic, powerful techniques as well as developing speed. Initially strength and power are demonstrated instead of slower, more flowing motions. Those who progress to brown and black belt level develop a much more fluid style that incorporates grappling, throwing and some standing joint locking techniques, which can be found even in basic kata. "Kumite" (fighting) techniques are practiced in the kihon and kata and developed from basic to advanced levels with an opponent.


title: Shotokan

text: Gichin Funakoshi laid out the Twenty Precepts of Karate (or Niju kun), which form the foundations of the art, before some of his students established the Japan Karate Association (JKA). Within these twenty principles, based heavily on bushido and Zen, lies the philosophy of Shotokan. The principles allude to notions of humility, respect, compassion, patience, and both an inward and outward calmness. It was Funakoshi's belief that through karate practice and observation of these 20 principles, the karateka would improve their person.


title: Shotokan

text: The "dōjō kun" lists five philosophical rules for training in the dojo: seek perfection of character, be faithful, endeavor to excel, respect others, and refrain from violent behaviour. These rules are called the Five Maxims of Karate. The dōjō kun is usually posted on a wall in the dojo, and some shotokan clubs recite the dōjō kun at the beginning and/or end of each class to provide motivation and a context for further training.


title: Shotokan

text: Funakoshi also wrote: "The ultimate aim of Karate lies not in victory or defeat, but in the perfection of the character of the participant."


title: Shotokan

text: Many terms used in karate stem from Japanese culture. While many are names (e.g. Heian, Gankaku), others are exclusive to martial arts (e.g. kata, kumite). Many terms are seldom used in daily life, such as zenkutsu dachi, while others appear routinely, such as rei. The Japanese form is often retained in schools outside Japan to preserve the Okinawan culture and Funakoshi's philosophies.


title: Shotokan

text: However, many schools of JKA (Japan Karate Association) affiliated Shotokan Karate used the full terminology on a daily basis, providing translations also. For example, the KUI (Karate Union of Ireland), utilises the full and proper Japanese name for each move and kata in training, grading and competition.


title: Shotokan

text: Rank is used in karate to indicate experience, expertise, and to a lesser degree, seniority. As with many martial arts, Shotokan uses a system of coloured belts to indicate rank. Most Shotokan schools use the "kyū" / "dan" system but have added other belt colours. The order of colours varies widely from school to school, but kyu belts are denoted with colours that in some schools become darker as a student approaches shodan. Dan level belts are invariably black, with some schools using stripes to denote various ranks of black belt. Gichin Funakoshi himself never awarded a rank higher than Godan (5th dan black belt).


title: Shotokan

text: Kihon basics is the practice of basic techniques in Shotokan Karate. It includes stances, blocks, punches, kicks, various displacements and their combinations, as well as the practice of Kihon Kata like: Taikyoku Shodan, which was developed by Yoshitaka Funakoshi, the son of Gichin Funakoshi, as a basic introduction to karate kata. (Yoshitaka also developed Taikyoku Nidan and Sandan.) This first kata consists of successive restatements following the theme of gedan barai—oi tsuki, and performing three oi tsuki by following the known "H" pattern or Embusen.


title: Shotokan

text: "Kata" is often described as a set sequence of karate moves organised into a pre-arranged fight against imaginary opponents. The kata consists of kicks, punches, sweeps, strikes and blocks. Body movement in various "kata" includes stepping, twisting, turning, dropping to the ground, and jumping. In Shotokan, "kata" is a performance or a demonstration, with every technique potentially a killing blow ("ikken hisatsu")—while paying particular attention to form and timing (rhythm). As the "karateka" grows older, more emphasis is placed on the health benefits of practicing "kata", promoting fitness while keeping the body soft, supple, and agile.


title: Shotokan

text: Several Shotokan groups have introduced "kata" (form) from other styles into their training. The original Shotokan kata syllabus is introduced in Funakoshi's book "Karate-do Kyohan", which is the master text of Shotokan karate. Japan Shotokai's kata syllabus is the same as established in "Karate-do Kyohan" with the addition of Gigo Funakoshi's staff kata Matsukaze No Kon. When the JKA was formed, Nakayama laid down 27 "kata" (26 mainly practised throughout most organisations) as the "kata" syllabus for this organisation. The standard JKA kata are: "Taikyoku shodan" (sometimes termed Kata Kihon or Kihon Kata, the name has been discontinued in some Shotokan dojos) (太極初段), "Heian shodan" (平安初段), "Heian nidan" (平安二段), "Heian sandan" (平安三段), "Heian yondan" (平安四段), "Heian godan" (平安五段), "Bassai dai" (披塞大), "Jion" (慈恩), "Enpi" (燕飛), "Kanku dai" (観空大), "Hangetsu" (半月), "Jitte" (十手), "Gankaku" (岩鶴), "Tekki shodan" (鉄騎初段), "Tekki nidan" (鉄騎二段), "Tekki sandan" (鉄騎三段), "Nijūshiho" (二十四步), "Chinte" (珍手), "Sōchin" (壯鎭), "Meikyō/Rōhai" (明鏡), "Unsu" (雲手), "Bassai shō" (披塞小), "Kankū shō" (観空小), "Wankan" (王冠), "Gojūshiho shō" (五十四歩小), "Gojūshiho dai" (五十四歩大), and "Ji'in" (慈陰).


title: Shotokan

text: "Kumite", or sparring (lit. Meeting of hands), is the practical application of kihon and kata to real opponents. The formalities of kumite in Shotokan karate were first instituted by Masatoshi Nakayama wherein basic, intermediate, and advanced sparring techniques and rules were formalised.


title: Shotokan

text: Shotokan practitioners first learn how to apply the techniques taught in "kata" to hypothetical opponents by way of "kata" "bunkai". "Kata bunkai" then matures into controlled "kumite".


title: Shotokan

text: "Kumite" is the third part of the Shotokan triumvirate of "kihon, kata and kumite". "Kumite" is taught in ever increasing complexity from beginner through low grade blackbelt (1st – 2nd) to intermediate (3rd – 4th) and advanced (5th onwards) level practitioners.


title: Shotokan

text: Beginners first learn "kumite" through basic drills, of one, three or five attacks to the head ("jodan") or body ("chudan") with the defender stepping backwards whilst blocking and only countering on the last defence. These drills use basic ("kihon") techniques and develop a sense of timing and distance in defence against a known attack.


title: Shotokan

text: At around purple belt level "karateka" learn one-step sparring ("ippon kumite"). Though there is only one step involved, rather than three or five, this exercise is more advanced because it involves a greater variety of attacks and blocks usually the defenders own choice. It also requires the defender to execute a counter-attack faster than in the earlier types of sparring. Counter-attacks may be almost anything, including strikes, grapples, and take-down manoeuvres.


title: Shotokan

text: Some schools prescribe the defences, most notably the Kase-ha Shotokan-ryū, which uses an eight step, three directional blocking and attacking pattern, which develops from yellow belt level through to advanced level.


title: Shotokan

text: The next level of "kumite" is freestyle one-step sparring ("jiyu ippon kumite"). This type of "kumite", and its successor—free sparring, have been documented extensively by Nakayama and are expanded upon by the JKA instructor trainee program, for those clubs under the JKA. Freestyle one-step sparring is similar to one-step sparring but requires the "karateka" to be in motion. Practicing one-step sparring improves free sparring ("jiyu kumite") skills, and also provides an opportunity for practicing major counter-attacks (as opposed to minor counter-attacks). Tsutomu Ohshima states that freestyle one-step sparring is the most realistic practice in Shotokan Karate, and that it is more realistic than free sparring.


title: Shotokan

text: Free sparring (or free style) ("jiyu kumite") is the last element of sparring learned. In this exercise, two training partners are free to use any karate technique or combination of attacks, and the defender at any given moment is free to avoid, block, counter, or attack with any karate technique. Training partners are encouraged to make controlled and focused contact with their opponent, but to withdraw their attack as soon as surface contact has been made. This allows attacking a full range of target areas (including punches and kicks to the face, head, throat, and body) with no padding or protective gloves, but maintains a degree of safety for the participants. Throwing one's partner and performing takedowns are permitted in free sparring, but it is unusual for competition matches to involve extended grappling or ground-wrestling, as Shotokan "karateka" are encouraged to end an encounter with a single attack ("ippon"), avoiding extended periods of conflict, or unnecessary contact in situations where there may be more than one attacker.


title: Shotokan

text: "Kaishu ippon kumite" is an additional sparring exercise that is usually introduced for higher grades. This starts in a similar manner to freestyle one-step sparring; the attacker names the attack he/she will execute, attacks with that technique, and the defender blocks and counters the attack. Unlike freestyle one-step sparring, however, the attacker may then be required to block the defender's counter-attack and strike back. This exercise is often considered more difficult than either freestyle one-step sparring or free sparring, as the defender typically cannot escape to a safe distance in time to avoid the counter to the counter-attack.


title: Shotokan

text: "Kumite" within the dojo often differs from competition "kumite". In "dojo kumite" any and all techniques, within reason, are valid; punches, knife hand strikes, headbutt, locks, takedowns, kicks, etc. In competition certain regulations apply, certain techniques are valid, and certain target areas, such as the joints or throat, are forbidden. The purpose of competition is to score points through the application of "kumite" principles while creating an exciting and competitive atmosphere, whereas the purpose of training "kumite" in the "dojo" is to be prepared to kill or cripple an opponent in a realistic situation.


title: Shotokan

text: Gichin Funakoshi had trained in both of the popular styles of Okinawan karate of the time: Shōrei-ryū and Shōrin-ryū. After years of study in both styles, Funakoshi created a simpler system that combined the ideals of the two. He never named this system, however, always referring to it simply as "karate." Funakoshi's karate reflects the changes made in the art by Ankō Itosu, including the "Heian/Pinan kata" series. Funakoshi changed the names of some of the "kata" in an effort to make the Okinawan kata names easier to pronounce in the Japanese Honshū dialect.


title: Shotokan

text: In 1924, Funakoshi adopted the "Kyū / Dan" rank system and the uniform ("keikogi") developed by Kano Jigoro, the founder of judo. This system uses colored belts ("obi") to indicate rank. Originally, karate had only three belt colors: white, brown, and black (with ranks within each). The original belt system, still used by many Shotokan schools, is:


title: Shotokan

text: Funakoshi awarded the first 1st "dan" (初段; "shodan") Shotokan karate ranks to Tokuda, Hironori Ōtsuka (Otsuka), Akiba, Shimizu, Hirose, Makoto Gima, and Shinyō Kasuya on 10 April 1924.


title: The New 52

text: The New 52 is the 2011 revamp and relaunch by DC Comics of its entire line of ongoing monthly superhero comic books. Following the conclusion of the "Flashpoint" crossover storyline, DC canceled all its existing titles and debuted 52 new series in September 2011. Among the renumbered series were "Action Comics" and "Detective Comics", which had retained their original numbering since the 1930s.


title: The New 52

text: The relaunch included changes to the publishing format; for example, print and digital comics began to be released on the same day. New titles were released to bring the number of ongoing monthly series to 52. Various changes were also made to DC's fictional universe to entice new readers, including changes to DC's internal continuity to make characters more modern and accessible. In addition, characters from the Wildstorm and Vertigo imprints were absorbed into the DC Universe.


title: The New 52

text: The New 52 branding ended after the completion of the "Convergence" storyline in May 2015, although the continuity of The New 52 continued. In June 2015, 24 new titles were launched, alongside 25 returning titles, with several of those receiving new creative teams. In February 2016, DC announced their Rebirth initiative with the release of an 80-page one-shot on May 25, 2016, and continuing through late 2016.


title: The New 52

text: Following the conclusion of the "Flashpoint" limited series, DC cancelled and relaunched all titles set in the DC Universe with new #1 issues. The new continuity features new outfits and backstories for many of DC's long-established heroes and villains. An interview with DC Comics executive editor Eddie Berganza and editor-in-chief Bob Harras revealed that the new continuity did not constitute a full reboot of the DC Universe but rather a "soft reboot". While many characters underwent a reboot or revamp, much of the DC Universe's history remained intact. Many major storylines such as "War of the Green Lanterns", "" and "" remained part of the new continuity, while others have been lost in part or in whole. DC editorial constructed a timeline that details the new history and which storylines to keep or ignore.


title: The New 52

text: On August 31, 2011, Midtown Comics Times Square held a midnight event at which they began selling "Justice League" #1 and "Flashpoint" #5. On hand to sign the books were DC Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns, who was the writer of both titles, and Co-publisher and writer/artist Jim Lee, who illustrated "Justice League".


title: The New 52

text: On January 12, 2012, DC announced that after their eighth issues, "Blackhawks", "Hawk and Dove", "Men of War", "Mister Terrific", "O.M.A.C.", and "Static Shock" would be cancelled and replaced with six new titles, which would reveal more of The New 52 DC Universe. The new titles were dubbed the Second Wave: "Dial H", "Earth 2", "G.I. Combat", "World's Finest", "Ravagers" and "Batman Incorporated", which was absent from the initial line of Batman titles, and would continue Grant Morrison's storyline from before The New 52 involving the conflict between Batman and Talia al Ghul.


title: The New 52

text: On June 8, 2012, DC announced that in September 2012, the first anniversary of The New 52 launch, all titles would get a zero issue, dubbed "Zero Month". In addition, the Third Wave of titles was announced: "Talon", "Sword of Sorcery", "Phantom Stranger", and "Team 7". With these additions to the line, "Justice League International", "Captain Atom", "Resurrection Man", and "Voodoo" were cancelled.


title: The New 52

text: In October and November 2012, DC announced new titles "Threshold", "Justice League of America", "Katana", "Justice League of America's Vibe", and "Constantine". "Threshold" would be published in January 2013, "Constantine" in March 2013, while the others would be published in February 2013. DC later consolidated these new titles as the Fourth Wave of The New 52. "G.I. Combat", "Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E.", "Grifter", "Blue Beetle", and "Legion Lost" were cancelled as a result. "Young Romance: A New 52 Valentine's Day Special" #1 was published as the 52nd title in February 2013.


title: The New 52

text: In January 2013, DC Comics announced the cancellation of "I, Vampire" and "DC Universe Presents" in April 2013. To celebrate the 60th birthday of "Mad Magazine" mascot Alfred E. Neuman, DC solicited variants drawn by "Mad" artists for 13 titles being published in April 2013.


title: The New 52

text: Starting with titles released on January 28, 2013, all printed New 52 publications featured advertisements for the fictional news channel Channel 52. The two page back-ups, titled "Channel 52", appear in all books, starting in February 2013, and replaced the previous "DC Comics: All Access" features. This news feature stars Bethany Snow, Ambush Bug, Vartox, and Calendar Man as reporters and anchors on the fictional in-universe news show. The art is provided by Freddie E. Williams II. Each week brings new content regarding the current or future goings-on in the DC universe. Channel 52 and Bethany Snow make an appearance in the second season of "Arrow".


title: The New 52

text: On January 30, 2013, DC announced that all titles released in April 2013 would be "WTF Certified". Each title would feature a gatefold cover and story lines and moments that will leave readers in a state of shock, including the return of Booster Gold. However, DC later dropped the "WTF Certified" branding and did not feature it on any of The New 52 books. In February 2013, it was announced that DC Comics would launch two new politically motivated books as parts of the Fifth Wave: "The Green Team: Teen Trillionaires" and "The Movement". These would explore concepts similar to the Occupy Movement and the role money has in a world of superheroes. A wave of cancellations was also announced for May 2013, including: "The Savage Hawkman", "The Fury of Firestorm: The Nuclear Man", "Sword of Sorcery", "Team 7", "Deathstroke", and "The Ravagers".


title: The New 52

text: In March 2013, DC announced that it would launch four new titles in June 2013, making up the rest of the Fifth Wave: "Superman Unchained", "Batman/Superman", "Larfleeze" and "". In April 2013, the cancellation of "Batman Incorporated" was announced for July 2013. DC also solicited two director's cut one-shots for the "Superman Unchained" book and the "" story arc. In May 2013, it was announced that "Batman Incorporated Special" #1 would be published to finish off the "Batman Incorporated" series in August 2013. Another director's cut one-shot was solicited for the "Trinity War" story arc, along with the cancellations of "Demon Knights", "Legion of Super-Heroes", "Threshold" and "Dial H".


title: The New 52

text: In June 2013, DC announced that all titles in September 2013 would be "relaunched" as a #1, featuring a villain from that respective book, as part of "Villains Month". For example, "Detective Comics", which would have published issue 24 in September, would be released as "Detective Comics" #23.1 and "Poison Ivy" #1, with the issue being known by both titles. It was the first major crossover in the New 52 since "Flashpoint" and spun out of the aftermath of "Trinity War". Each book featured 3D lenticular front and back covers. DC also released 2D versions of the covers. Some books published multiple "Villains Month" issues, while others skipped publication in September 2013. For example, "Batman", "Superman", and "Justice League" are some of the titles that published four issues, while "The Flash" published three issues, "Aquaman" and others published two issues, and "Green Arrow" and others published only one.


title: The New 52

text: In addition to "Villains Month", a seven-issue limited series titled "Forever Evil", by Geoff Johns and David Finch, launched in September 2013 and focused on the Crime Syndicate, an evil version of the Justice League from Earth-3 in the Multiverse, as they attempt to take over Prime Earth in the Justice Leagues' defeat at the end of "Trinity War". The "Forever Evil" event ran in other titles starting in October 2013, including three 6-issue tie-in books that launched: "Forever Evil: Rogues Rebellion" by Brian Buccellato and Patrick Zircher; "Forever Evil: Arkham War" by Peter Tomasi, Scot Eaton and Jaime Mendoza; and "Forever Evil: A.R.G.U.S." by Matt Kindt and Manuel Garcia. Other tie-in titles included: "Teen Titans", "Suicide Squad", "Justice League", "Justice League of America" and the "Forever Evil: Blight" storyline in "Constantine", "Justice League Dark", "Trinity of Sin: Pandora", and "Trinity of Sin: The Phantom Stranger". "Forever Evil" #1 was also reprinted in a director's cut one-shot in October 2013.


title: The New 52

text: It was also announced in June 2013 that the "" storyline in "Batman" would spin off into an event during November 2013, which would include other titles outside the "Batman" line of titles. The event, initially conceptualized to tell Batman's origin in The New 52, was featured in issue #25 of "Action Comics", "The Flash", "Green Arrow", and "Green Lantern Corps", along with "Batgirl", "Batwing", "Batwoman", "Birds of Prey", "Catwoman", "Detective Comics", "Nightwing", and "Red Hood and the Outlaws" in the "Batman" line. The various books explored their characters' connections to Gotham City, and their first encounters with Batman.


title: The New 52

text: On June 17, 2013, DC announced two new titles, "Justice League 3000" and "Superman/Wonder Woman" as the first titles of the Sixth Wave, which began publication in October 2013. On July 16, 2013, DC announced "Harley Quinn", the third and last title of the Sixth Wave, which began publication in November 2013. In August 2013, it was announced that "Justice League 3000"s initial publication would be delayed to December 2013, following creative changes on the title.


title: The New 52

text: In October 2013, DC announced "Batman Eternal", a weekly year-long series which would feature Batman, his allies, and others in Gotham City. It was announced in January 2014 that the series would begin in April of that year. The cancellation of "Katana" and "Justice League of America's Vibe" was also announced, with the titles' final publication in December 2013, while "Green Team: The Teen Trillionaires" would end in January 2014. Following the release of "", DC announced cover variants for 20 titles published in January 2014, featuring Scribblenauts-inspired artwork.


title: The New 52

text: In November 2013, DC announced one-shot issues "Superman: Lois Lane" #1 and "Batman: Joker's Daughter" #1 for February 2014, featuring Lois Lane and the new Joker's Daughter, respectively. DC also announced that 20 titles being published in February 2014 would feature steampunk-inspired cover variants. As well, Johns revealed that the end of "Forever Evil" in March 2014 would mark the end of the first phase of The New 52, with a new phase starting in April 2014, "one that will see the introduction, and re-introduction, of a lot of characters, concepts and a decidedly new center to the DC universe."


title: The New 52

text: In December 2013, it was announced that another weekly year-long series titled "" would begin publication in May 2014, with a free zero issue for Free Comic Book Day. The series would be set five years in the New 52's future. Co-writer Jeff Lemire stated that the series was "an exploration of DC's past, present and its future." Batman Beyond made his New 52 debut in the series. Solicitations published in December 2014 also revealed that 22 titles to be published in March 2014 would feature variant covers based on "Robot Chicken", to promote the second "Robot Chicken DC Comics Special".


title: The New 52

text: In January 2014, DC announced "Aquaman and the Others", "Justice League United", "Secret Origins" and "Sinestro" ongoing series and "Forever Evil Aftermath: Batman vs Bane" #1 for publication in April 2014. In addition, DC revealed that "Justice League of America", "Nightwing", "Stormwatch", "Suicide Squad", "Superman Unchained", and "Teen Titans" would end in April 2014. It was also announced that April 2014 publications would feature a second wave of variant covers inspired by "MAD" magazine.


title: The New 52

text: In February 2014, Gail Simone revealed that her series "The Movement" would be canceled in May 2014 after 12 issues. It was also revealed that 19 titles published in May 2014 would feature variant covers drawn by Mike Allred in the style of "Batman '66". A one-shot issue, "" #1 would also be published in May, as a tie-in to a crossover story arc of the same name.


title: The New 52

text: DC later announced that as part of the celebration of The New 52's third anniversary, all ongoing titles published in September 2014 would feature stories that tied into "The New 52: Futures End". DC Comics co-publisher Dan DiDio declared:


title: The New 52

text: DiDio added that new ongoing titles would launch in June and July to be included in the event. Following the month of tie-ins, a third weekly titled "Earth 2: World's End" launched in October 2014. This title is set in the present DC Universe on Earth 2, while showcasing the events and circumstances that lead to the future depicted in "Futures End".


title: The New 52

text: In March 2014, DC announced the launch of "Infinity Man and the Forever People", the one-shot "Harley Quinn Director's Cut" #0, and the cancellation of "Larfleeze" for June 2014. March also saw the announcement of variant covers for 20 titles in June 2014, based on the DC Collectibles "Bombshells" statue line designed by Ant Lucia, the covers feature retro and pinup versions of female characters. DC also revealed two new publications for July 2014: an ongoing series "Star-Spangled War Stories" and a one-shot "Harley Quinn Invades San Diego Comic-Con".


title: The New 52

text: In April 2014, DC announced "Suicide Squad" and "Teen Titans" would be relaunched in July 2014, with the former being retitled "New Suicide Squad". A new series, titled "Grayson", focusing on character Dick Grayson following his role in "Forever Evil", and a one-shot issue "Robin Rises: Omega", tied into the "Batman and Robin" storyline "The Hunt for Robin", would also debut. It was revealed that July 2014's variant theme would be Batman's 75th anniversary, with 21 publications featuring "Batman 75" themes. April also saw the official announcement of "The Multiversity", which began publication in August 2014; the 8-issue limited series was first mentioned by writer Grant Morrison in April–May 2009 intended for a 2010 release date. "The Multiversity" was intended to pick up on storylines left over from "52" and "Final Crisis".


title: The New 52

text: In May 2014, DC announced that six titles, "All-Star Western", "Batwing", "Birds of Prey", "Superboy", "Trinity of Sin: Pandora" and "Trinity of Sin: The Phantom Stranger", would have their final publications in August 2014. It was also revealed that 22 titles published in August 2014 would feature "DC Universe Selfie" variant covers, focusing on the popular trend of taking selfies. A second "Superman: Doomed" one-shot was also announced.


title: The New 52

text: In June 2014, DC announced six new titles for their Ninth Wave: "Arkham Manor", "Deathstroke", "Gotham Academy", "Klarion", "Lobo", and "Trinity of Sin" for publication in October 2014.


title: The New 52

text: In February 2015, it was announced that following the "Convergence" storyline in May, the New 52 branding would not be used anymore, although the continuity of the New 52 would continue. That June, 24 new titles were unveiled under a newly introduced DC You initiative, and most of the 25 remaining titles of The New 52 had new creative teams.


title: The New 52

text: "The Multiversity Guidebook" #1 changed the nature of the "52" multiverse. In this book, the New 52 multiverse was the result of a phenomenon called Hypertime. In the book, Brainiac takes cities from the Pre-"Crisis", Post-"Crisis", and Post-"Flashpoint" multiverses and placed them on a planet in another reality. He leaves a portion of himself behind; this part of Braniac renames himself Telos and has the cities battle each other. Deimos of Skartaris tries to take complete control of the Telos' world but is killed by the Parallax-possessed Hal Jordan. This triggers a chain reaction that threatens to collapse the multiverse. To prevent this, Telos sends several of the heroes back to the "Crisis on Infinite Earths" to prevent the destruction of the original multiverse. Telos states "They have done it. Reality is resetting, stabilizing. Each world has evolved, but they all still exist." In an interview, writer Jeff King stated "Post-Convergence, every character that ever existed, in either Continuity or Canon, is now available to us as storytellers."


title: The New 52

text: In February 2016, DC announced its Rebirth initiative, a line-wide relaunch of its titles, to begin in June 2016. Beginning with an 80-page one-shot which was released on May 25, 2016, Rebirth also saw "Action Comics" and "Detective Comics" return to their previous numbering (#957 and #934, respectively), nearly all books releasing at , multiple books shifting to a twice-monthly release schedule, a number of existing titles relaunching with new #1 issues, and the release of several new titles. DC has used the "" and "" miniseries as examples of the basis for the initiative, which has been described as a rebirth of the DC Universe. The Rebirth initiative reintroduced concepts from pre-"Flashpoint" continuity, such as legacy, that had been lost with The New 52 and built "on everything that's been published since "Action Comics" #1 up through The New 52."


title: The New 52

text: In June 2011, DC Co-Publisher Jim Lee revealed that he and DC Art Director Mark Chiarello had enlisted artist Cully Hamner to help spearhead the redesign of characters for the relaunch of the DC Universe.


title: The New 52

text: In late July 2011, DC released "The New 52", a free preview book giving solicitations and previews of all of the new titles launching from August 31, 2011. Notable continuity changes shown included Superman's two new looks: one which consists of jeans, a blue T-shirt with the "S" logo and a cape, the other consisting of Kryptonian battle armor that resembles his classic costume. Other notable changes included the integration of the Wildstorm imprint's characters into DC continuity, with Martian Manhunter as a part of the new Stormwatch team in the relaunched "Stormwatch" series.


title: The New 52

text: "Justice League" was the first book of the relaunch, with the first issue released on August 31, 2011. The first story arc takes place five years in the past, detailing the first meeting of the Justice League members and the formation of the team.


title: The New 52

text: The initial run of first issues show a universe in which superheroes have only appeared within the last five years and are viewed with suspicion and hostility, with Superman and Batman being pursued by the police five years ago at the start of their careers. In the present day, organizations such as the United Nations and the United States government seek to exploit and control the superheroes through groups such as the Justice League International and the Justice League of America.


title: The New 52

text: The "Batman" family of titles strongly resemble the past continuity. However, former Batgirls Stephanie Brown and Cassandra Cain have had their histories erased. Additionally, all of the Robins have been accounted for, including the previously non-canonical Carrie Kelley. Stephanie Brown made her first appearance in The New 52 as the Spoiler in the teaser issue to "Batman Eternal" in "Batman" #28. Barbara Gordon recovered from the paralysis inflicted upon her by the Joker's bullet in "" and returned to crimefighting as Batgirl.


title: The New 52

text: As for Superman, his romantic relationship and marriage to Lois Lane has not transpired, and his adoptive parents Jonathan and Martha Kent have died. He was depicted as being slightly more short-tempered, retaining his American identity, and in a relationship with Wonder Woman. Various character changes were implemented, such as Starfire, Guy Gardner, and Tim Drake having their origins significantly changed. Sinestro was depicted as having returned recently to the Green Lantern Corps, where he became a villain again. Meanwhile, the Earth-Two version of Alan Scott was depicted as gay.


title: The New 52

text: The imprint titles are divided into seven families of titles, revolving around central characters or themes. By the release of the October 2013 solicitations, DC was no longer grouping the titles by these families. Instead they began releasing one larger solicit, titled "The New 52 Group". However, titles that were not participating in an event for the month, such as "Forever Evil", were still grouped together in the larger solicit by the previous family headings.


title: The New 52

text: In February 2015, it was revealed that after the "Convergence" miniseries in June 2015, DC would no longer use The New 52 name to brand their books; however the continuity established in September 2011 would continue. Dan DiDio stated, "In this new era of storytelling, story will trump continuity as we continue to empower creators to tell the best stories".


title: The New 52

text: The new titles would be about "reinventing key characters", such as Black Canary, Cyborg, Bizarro, and Starfire, with a new "contemporary tonality to ensure a diverse offering of comic books." In the initial "relaunch", 24 new publications joined 25 existing publications from before "Convergence", with new titles continuing to be added.


title: The New 52

text: In March 2015, DiDio revealed there would not be an "overarching brand on this" stating the relaunch was just "DC Comics, pure and simple." However, in May 2015, DC announced the advertising campaign DC You for the relaunch, which highlighted the four main themes of characters, talent, stories and fans. The initiative, which began in DC's print and digital comics on May 20, before transitioning to other digital content on June 3, was featured on print inserts and ads, as well as on the DC Comics website and across social media with a special hashtag of #DCYou.


title: The New 52

text: Pre-orders for "Justice League" #1 exceeded 200,000 copies. "Justice League" #1 has been sent back to press at least four times and all of The New 52's first issue titles sold out by September 24, 2011. For the month of September 2011, DC had eight of the top ten comic books, in spite of Marvel's heavily publicized replacement "Ultimate Spider-Man", Miles Morales debuting in that title the same month. "Justice League" #1 was the top selling comic book in 2011.


title: The New 52

text: Writer Warren Ellis was unimpressed with the relaunch's sales, stating that it garnered DC a half-point lead in dollar share and a five-point lead in units sold over Marvel Comics. Ellis also pointed out that the units DC sold are returnable.


title: The New 52

text: Columnist Heidi MacDonald stated that while the market share comparisons are correct, the sales figures for single issue books do not take into account the fact that returnable comics are downgraded by approximately 10%, and that DC's sales are about that amount lower than the actual sales, in order to allow for potential returns. MacDonald opined that while the sellouts and reprintings make returns unlikely, the sales will remain 10% lower throughout the period the books can be returned, which will last through December, and that actual sales would be adjusted for this factor in Diamond Comic Distributors' end of year figures.


title: The New 52

text: Writer and ComicMix columnist Glenn Hauman wrote that relying solely on Diamond's numbers, to the exclusion of newsstand, overseas and digital sales, does not provide a complete measure of the relaunch's success. Hauman emphasized that the infinite long-term availability of digital editions will mean that sales will continue on the books for weeks and months afterwards, and that the market share for that market is uncertain.


title: The New 52

text: By December 2011, Marvel Comics regained the top spot for market share in both dollars and units. In April 2013, DC's unit share fell below 28%, but rose to a 45.17% market share in September due to high orders for Villain Month. It fell back to 30.77% by January 2014.


title: The New 52

text: "Forbes", "The New York Times" and "The A.V. Club" saw The New 52 as a good editorial move from DC. "The Christian Science Monitor"s Rich Clabaugh cited the relaunched "Action Comics" and "Detective Comics" as the strongest of the first week's releases.


title: The New 52

text: In terms of the books themselves, Keith Phipps and Oliver Sava of "The A.V. Club" praised the art in "Justice League" #1, but thought its writing and structure was a weak point. In all, the two reviewers named "O.M.A.C.", "Captain Atom", "Animal Man" and "Wonder Woman" their favorite books of the relaunch. They gave "Batman" high praise, and enjoyed "Action Comics", "Swamp Thing", "", "Frankenstein Agent Of S.H.A.D.E.", "Demon Knights", "", "Nightwing", "Aquaman", "The Flash", "All Star Western", and "Voodoo". However, they both disliked "Detective Comics", "Hawk and Dove", "Legion Lost", "Red Lanterns", "Legion Of Super-Heroes", "DC Universe Presents: Deadman", "Superman", "Batman: The Dark Knight", "The Fury of Firestorm: The Nuclear Men", and "The Savage Hawkman". On the remaining titles, the reviewers were either split, or exhibited mixed reactions ranging from indifference to cautious optimism or curiosity.


title: The New 52

text: Corrina Lawson of "Wired" dubbed the New 52 "a big, fat failure" from a reader standpoint, noting that the same stories could have been told without rebooting the fictional universe. She did, however, state that the New 52 was good from a business perspective, as it led to an increased market share for DC.


title: The New 52

text: The launch of the New 52 was criticized for the lack of female creators, which had dropped from 12% to 1%, the latter figure represented by writer Gail Simone and Amy Reeder, an alternating artist on "Batwoman" who would not debut on that title until issue #6. This led to a tense interaction between fans and DC Comics co-publisher Dan DiDio at the 2011 San Diego Comic Con, where DiDio was asked by a fan about the drop in female creators from 12% to 1%. DiDio responded by saying, "What do those numbers mean to you? What do they mean to you? Who should we be hiring? Tell me right now. Who should we be hiring right now? Tell me."


title: The New 52

text: In an editorial responding to DiDio, Comics Alliance editor-in-chief Laura Hudson wrote, "Women are half of the world, and a significant percentage of the DC Comics character stable, and yet only 1% of their creators. And the way that you treat and represent half of the people in your world—and by extension, half of the people in the real world who might potentially buy your books—should be more than a marginal concern."


title: The New 52

text: On July 29, 2011, DC released a letter addressing the lack of female creators on their official blog, highlighting notable female creators currently being published by them and promising more in the future. Hudson called the letter "an enormous and very positive departure from how DC Comics has dealt with controversies about gender and race in the past, which was almost uniformly not to comment", adding, "While it remains to be seen what sort of meaningful changes in either attitudes or hiring practices will follow, it certainly leaves me feeling more optimistic than I have in some time, or maybe ever."