New Avengers #15

New Avengers issue 15 is a little bit of a return to the Avengers stories that fans are used to. A nice combination of both new and familiar faces, and the always classic public introduction of the new team.

Tony Stark has a lot on his mind. The old Avengers run came to a rather abrupt end, and he has high hopes for his new team, made up of members like Luke Cage, Spider-Man and Wolverine, all members who have never played on Marvel's biggest team. He doesn't want anything to go wrong, so while Captain America is busy talking to a visiting Ms. Marvel about her new role on the MU, Tony has to make sure that Luke Cage, Spidey, Wolverine and Spider-Woman all know what to expect when they step out onto the stage in front of the hundreds of reporters who will all want a comment or two from the new team. After all, Tony has done this song and dance a few dozen times.


New Avengers had a lot to prove when it debuted 14 issues ago. True, the "old" Avengers hadn't been tearing up the sales chart, but it was a beloved, 40 plus year old franchise with tons of history and even more fan affection. Coming out with not only a new series, but one where only two characters from the old guard are given play, was a tough sell for fans.


But, for the most part, Bendis has done a good job of selling this new team. The interaction between members is great, and the use of some C-list heroes and villains (Spider-Man and Wolverine not included) has proven to be engaging. Bendis does fall into form, with story arcs lasting too long, and some issues being almost entirely dialogue. But with issues like 15, he delivers.

One of the big highlights of issue 15 lies in J. Jonah Jameson, publisher of the Daily Bugle, being given a pretty good offer, although one that is ethically suspect....



Other highlights?

• Wolverine refusing to make public appearances.
• Captain America letting Ms. Marvel know that she always has a place in the Avengers.
• Spider-Man trying to convince the team that is a PR liability.

Low lights?

• Frank Cho's generic art when it comes to rendering women. The guy can draw a gorgeous woman, but it's pretty much the same woman every time.

All in all, though, a very strong showing, and for the first time since issue one, this book finally feels like an Avengers comic.

X-Men: Deadly Genesis #3

Over the last few months, I've grown to really love Ed Brubaker's writing. His run on Authority: Revolutions was grade A stuff and his Captain America run has been the best since Mark Waid's first run back in the mid '90s. But X-men: Deadly Genesis, to me at least, just hasn't been Brubaker's strongest showing.

Maybe it's because it seems more about shock value than actual story. A six issue mini-series, so far, the three issue could have been condensed into one. There's a new villain who, so far, we know nothing about save that he's enjoying tormenting Cyclops and Marvel Girl, old secrets kept by Professor Xavier, missing since the wretched House of M crossover, are coming to light though, again, we know nothing of them, and characters are getting killed off.

Okay, not just any characters. One of my all-time favorite, most underused X-Men got the ax in a spectacular yet truly pointless death (yeah, I realize that in the MU, death is meaningless, but still why did they have to blow up poor....?).

Issue three picks up right where two ended. The blackbird was hijacked and crashed into a passenger liner, and Wolverine and Nightcrawler are still trying to find their missing team mates. Meanwhile, the government has come down hard on the X-Men, blaming them for their badly misbehaved jet, and all the while, the villain of the piece, who's identity is still unknown, is giving everyone hallucinations of past events.


I guess my biggest problem with Deadly Genesis is the fact that it's been promoted as one of those "Everything will change!" events where, really, nothing ever changes. Characters are trashed, "big revelations" are made, and no one is the same. At least until a new editor comes on board.

Jason Todd

A lot of fans got upset when DC made the decision to let Jason Todd return from the grave. Me? I thought was a great idea. Former friends make the best villains, after all, and a former side kick who thinks that his mentor let him die should be a phenomenal villain.

For those who don't know, Jason Todd used to be Robin. Not the original one. No, he was the kid who Batman tagged in to take the place of Dick Grayson after Dick got too old for the tights. Jason was a little bastard, though, and decided that he knew more than Batman. This piss poor attitude led to a spectacular ass beating from the Joker, armed with a crowbar, and subsequently being blown to little bits. The best part of all? Fans got to decide whether he lived or died. One issue ended with Batman showing up just as the warehouse Jason was inside blew up. What followed were two 900- numbers. One to call for Jason to live. One to call for Jason to die.

The fans spoke, and the next issue featured one of comics' greatest, most haunting images.


It was one of those defining moments for Batman. It was the second greatest failure of his life, right up there with the death of his parents. For the last two decades, the site of Jason Todd's costume in a lonely case in the Batcave has been an ever present site, a reminder to both Batman and the reader of the cost of being a super hero.

But now, Jason is back, with a mad-on for Bats. He's taken the identity of The Red Hood, and is blowing up all kinds of criminals, and he's doing a great job of getting under Batman's skin.

Some have criticized the recent use of Jason Todd. They don't think that it makes sense that he would go after Batman, since really it was his own dumb ass that got him killed. To me, though, it makes perfect sense. Ask many adults about why their lives didn't turn out the way they wanted, and chances are, mom and dad are going to get the blame. It's an easy out. Blaming dad for not taking you to fair to justify why you're stuck at a crummy job is an old game. It takes the pressure and responsibility off of you to do anything about your life.

Then there's the fact that Jason Todd hasn't made the full descent into villainy. So far, all he's done is killed a bunch of criminals and blown there strongholds up. He's dabbled a little in crime himself, but so far it looks like he's all about the end result being the removal of the rotten elements from Gotham. He even went as far as to tell Batman that he's about to go farther than Batman ever could when it comes to stopping criminals. He plans on making sure they never commit a crime again. He's every kid who felt like he had to not only out do his father's accomplishment, but bury them as well.

It should be interesting to see where DC takes the newly resurrected Jason Todd. They haven't revealed how he beat death yet, but if they keep playing their cards right, they'll have one of the strongest new "villains" in years.

Superheroes are real?

I know that some of you read the A.S.S. blogs (yeah, I know... the Reverend's on extended sabbatical).

But the real superheroes hang out on this forum.

I've got to talk to the inimitable Officer Sly to see how real cops would deal with jokers like that - no pun intended.

Good Guild = more fun

OK, for those who don't know, I play Guild Wars. I play GW instead of World of Warcraft (WoW) cause it is free* to play (*$50 for the game, but ZERO monthly fee). I've been playing this game, for probably nine months or so. I'd played online games before this, but it had been a few years. If you remember many older online games (like MUDDs or whatever) some "people" lived damn near their whole lives in these games. These "people" made it impossible for people like me to ever really advance, since I am only willing to sacrifice small parts of my life to play. These "people", or at least too many for my taste, have a sick sense of humor, in that their character is uber-powerful, yet they delight in killing others uber-pitiful characters, or just killing beginners who will quit playing cause of ASSHOLES. I don't want to psycho-analyze these "people" but I imagine there behavior comes from having a small penis, and getting picked last in gym class.

Let me re-focus and get back to my point a bit. I was skeptical to get into online gaming again, because of these "people". I have since found that most people who play online games, now, are more like me. They play to have fun, but don't live to play, and they hate the aforementioned ASSHOLES.

This brings me to my main point. Guild Wars contains organizations called Guilds, SURPRISE!! These guilds are simply groups of people that may or may not have anything in common, accept the guild. I have changed guilds several times since I've been playing GW. I've been in very small guilds, and I've been in bigger guilds. Let me tell you, having a good guild with people you can get along with is very important. If you want to play, but are just bored and want to goof off, your guild mates can really help. Cause they may need help with a quest, or they may just want to go with you to kill bad guys.

Wow, I'm really starting to ramble.

Anyway, my current guild is great, and it has renewed my interest in the game. I WANT to play, and I look forward to playing now because I know my guild will either help me with a quest I want to do, or at least joke around with me while I'm goofing off.

$130?!?!??!!?!?

DC COMICS' 52

DC Comics has announced that 52, its weekly series starting on May 10, will feature a cover price of $2.50. Aw, screw that. That may be too much for me to pay 52 weeks in a row.

The weekly DCU series is written by Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka and Mark Waid, with layouts by Keith Giffen and covers by J.G. Jones. Damn. The line up of writers though...

The first four issues will feature art by Joe Bennett and Ruy Jose. In addition, beginning with Week 2, the series will include the 10-part back-up feature "The History of the DC Universe," written and pencilled by Dan Jurgens with inks by Art Thibert.

"This is one of the most extraordinary and challenging projects ever to come from DC Comics," said Dan DiDio, Senior VP -- Executive Editor, DCU. "We are the only publisher that has the ability to deliver quality and excitement like this on a weekly basis." We'll see if they actually make it in the stores on time for 52 consecutive weeks...

"We've been working with Diamond and the retail community to help retailers stock 52 appropriately and to make it an event that will bring fans into comics shops each and every week," said Bob Wayne, DC's VP-Sales. "With that in mind, we will not collect or reprint any chapter of 52 until the final issue is published in 2007." So if you don't get one in your box and you store is sold out, you're pretty much fucked. Great.

I dunno. I'm still thinking that I might just wait until all is said and done and then buy the collected version when it comes out. $130 is a lot to spend on something that could potentially suck, or may not totally do it for me. We'll see. I'll probably break and get it like usual.

It's about freakin' time!

JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED UPDATE

Originally targeted for late spring/early summer, new episodes of Justice League Unlimited will now air beginning in February on Cartoon Network.

The first new episode will air Saturday, Feb. 11 at 10:30 p.m. Nine new episodes, Nos. 31-39 of JLU, are expected.

Cartoon Network has yet to release specifics for the schedule.

A few skeletons in my DVD closet:

The request was made to add this one here from my other blog.

So I was trying to find a movie to watch the other day and noticed something about my recently downsized DVD collection: I still have some pretty bad movies in there.

I mean, some of these are legitimately BAD movies or were ones that were panned more than California during the Gold Rush when they first came out. Some were so bad that most people didn't even know (or desperately tried to forget) that they came out. While I don't have any Uwe Boll movies (*shudder*), I do have a few winners (that would be sarcasm):














Showgirls- I picked it up in Best Buy for like $8 as a joke and have had it ever since. Can't decide if I want to sell it or not. It's almost a point of disturbing pride, or an ace up my sleeve for certain situations. I can 1 up someone when they mention having a crappy movie by saying "Oh yeah? I have Showgirls." I said it was "disturbing" pride, damnit.
Every time I see it sitting there I get a flashback of Elizabeth Berkley singing "I'm so excited" and losing her shit on Saved By The Bell. That and boobs.





















Ready to Rumble- I remember vowing never to watch this movie when it came out because WCW actually awarded David Arquette the WCW title to help promote the movie. I think Ric Flair cried that night. 16 times.
And yet here I am with it in my collection. And I can quote almost the whole damned movie. It's really not ever going any where either.



















Bubble Boy- Again, swore to God I would never see it. Saw it on tv one day & couldn't stop laughing. Promptly went on a hunt for it, and I do mean "hunt". Back in the day this wasn't the easiest movie to track down because it was so bad (to others anyways). I've only met 1 other person who actually liked it. And it wasn't Jake Gyllenhaal.
I do like the user comment on the IMDB page: "Not as Dumb as it Looks". That's actually what I tell people, and maybe it should have been the actual tagline for the movie. Couldn't have been any worse than "Life Is An Adventure. Don't Blow It."

And the winner and undefeated champion of suckiness.....


















Planet of the Apes (Mark Wahlberg version)- Jesus. All I can tell you is that it was cheap as hell when it first came out and I hadn't seen it so I figured "What the hell?". And even that isn't enough to let me off the hook. I watched it twice, which was 1 too many times. It has one of the most retarded and confounding endings ever, and even the special feature's little time displacement map thingy didn't help one fucking bit.
I tried to sell it to Blockbuster but they wouldn't take it because it was missing some outer sleeve that I didn't have anymore. Thinking of using it as a shiny, coaster now.

So there's a peek into the depravity that sits in my living room. I bet that if I was burglarized, those would be a few of the items left in the apartment that they didn't want, along with a note that said "Dude, what the fuck?". I need to seriously reconsider what I buy on DVD now.

What's the worst that you've got?

D

Allrighty then...

Well now. This issue ought to be pretty interesting.

Cover for Green Lantern #9:




















Now we finally get to see if Batman can actually wield Hal Jordan's power ring. We've already seen that Olliver Queen can, if only once. But still there's always been a huge debate about who's will was stronger: Green Lantern or Batman.

Let the battle begin. Maybe I'll post the concensus after we've all chipped in.

D

My first kill...

I'd done about all I wanted to do in the Wetlands. I'd fished, killed stuff, done quests, and ran away from the occasional high-level Horde players who found their way into the area.

I wasn't always successful in getting away. A few times I got "ganked," killed in about one hit by some level 60 guy who was looking for kicks.

At the time I was level 26 - pretty easy prey in World of Warcraft, where nearly everyone has a level 60 character.

Everybody but me. My boy's working his way there slowly. I have an actual life outside of the geekdom.

So I was doing a little exploring. I headed north, into the Arathi Highlands, looking for adventure. I knew next to nothing about the area.

I was about to learn.

First, I was greeted by honest-to-God dinosaurs as I crossed into the highlands. Giant spiders. Some 50-foot-tall rock giant thingie. All these things could eat me in about one gulp. Luckily, I play a mage. Since our armor is made of toilet paper, we specialize in being able to get away from stuff that'll kill us.

I played it safe and tried to keep far enough away from critters to keep them from attacking me. When that didn't work I ran and hid.

Thing was, the big threat wasn't critters. It was other players. I play a character in the Alliance, the confederation of humans, dwarves, elves and gnomes (that's me, the short dude). Our sworn enemies are in the Horde - the orcs, undead, tauren (think big ol' cow-people) and trolls.

I don't want much of a part of the war that's raging. In fact, the only reason I chose a server where you can be attacked or attack someone in the other faction anywhere, anytime is because I have friends playing there. Up until crossing into the Highlands, I'd never even gotten into an honest-to-God fight with another player. I'd gotten ganked a whole lot, though.

First, I run across a level 60 undead priest. I'm heading north up the road, he's going south. Since Horde and Alliance can't speak to one another, I do what anyone who didn't want to die would do - I drop to my knees, clasp my hands and beg him.

He laughs, and goes on his merry way.

The same thing happened a couple of other times. Turns out the Arathi Highlands are home to a large Horde city, as well as one of the ever-so-popular battlegrounds where huge groups of Horde and Alliance go to duke it out.

I'm continuing to (cautiously) explore, when I run into an orc warrior on the road. He's level 24. I've got a couple of levels on him, but hey, I'm a peaceful little guy. I'm just lookin' around, not looking for a fight.

I bow to him, wave, and continue heading up the road.

That's when I hear it. The tell-tale sound of a warrior's charging, rushing, knock-that-damned-mage-on-his-butt attack.

Thanks to piano and a job that involves lots of typing, I've got fast finger reflexes. As soon as I heard it, I hit "mana shield," which gives me a limited amount of invulnerability to his attacks, making the damage subtract from my mana (which I've got a lot of, since that's the stuff that you use to cast spells) and not from my hit points (which I don't have a lot of).

He's swinging away, but he can't hurt me, at least not for a couple of seconds.

That was all I needed. I pulled out the real big gun in any mage's arsenal.

I wiggled my finger, and turned that asshole into a sheep.

He couldn't control his movements, he couldn't attack, he couldn't do anything. I had 30 seconds to plan exactly how I was going to take this impetuous orc apart. In the meantime, I pictured some 14-year-old in Des Moines screaming in impotent rage, biting his keyboard into two pieces.

What to start out with... what to start out with... How about... PYROBLAST. Balling my hands together, I unleashed a wicked bolt of fire that took out about a quarter of his health in one smack.

The attack broke the sheeping, so he was back to Orc form, hurt and on fire (in fact, setting him alight took his health down to about 50 percent within a few seconds). He immediately attacked.

BOOM! Instant fireblast. It hit, and hit hard - I got lucky, and scored a critical hit on him. His health was down to about 25 percent, and dropping rapidly.

He was swinging at me, but mana shield was still up. It could absorb about 200 points of damage and he wasn't there yet. If it went down, and he starting connecting with his hits, there would be almost no way I could get a spell off to finish him off.

I had to think quickly... Fireball? Nah, three second casting time. Ice? No, not yet...

The wand. The BURNING WAND.

It shoots fire. Heh.

The orc (whose name was "Deathaxe" or something else that sounds really intimidating in a ninth grader's notebook in spiked, boxy, handwritten letters) knew he was in trouble at this point.

He almost got smart. He starting running circles around me, swinging with his axe.

Dammit... dammit... dammit... Had to get him in front of me to pop him with the wand or a spell!

Now it's ice time. With a single keystroke, I froze his feet to the ground.

"You, stop moving for a second."

Yes, by now I was talking to the screen. My heart was beating quickly. I was going to win this fight, my first evenly-matched battle against another player.

He was rooted to the ground, still trying to take my head off. With a whack, I saw a chunk of my health disappear and I realized that mana shield was done with. Time to take a couple of steps back to get out of his swinging range while he was stuck in one place.

"How's about we melt that ice, Deathaxe?"

Fire leapt from my wand, once, then twice. The orc doubled over, then lay still on the ground.

He was dead. I wasn't. I caught my breath, then got on the general chat channel.

Pithecus --> Holy crap, guys! I just killed my first Horde! Some orc warrior named Deathaxe!
Other Alliance guy --> Way to go, he's been ganking newbies all night.

I smiled.

Personal politics have a lot to do with it

In the spirit of Dante and Randal's conversation from Kevin Smith's masterpiece, "Clerks," I will begin this new weekly section.

Simply put, there are a lot of instances in some of our favorite films that leave us asking "Why?" Being that we, the audience, have somewhat of an outside perspective on the stories of countless films, questions develop over the years that challenge the actions and outcomes of many infamous occassions in motion picture history. I'll be the one to play devil's advocate in this case, and leave it to you, the reader, to consider and comment.

After a rousing game of Star Wars: Battlefront this past Saturday in which I controlled the Imperial army as it advanced on Echo Base on the ise planet of Hoth, I began thinking deeply of this famous encounter.

For those of you who's memory may be a little fuzzy, it went something like this: Vader takes the majority of the Imperial fleet into orbit around the planet after discovering traces of a base from video sent by a probe droid. The Rebels raise a shield strong enough to deflect any bombardment, and force the Empire to march on the base in the elephant-like machines called AT-AT's. Their mission is a simple one - destroy the power generators so a full attack can be possible. The Rebels, valiantly yet pointlessly, line up in trenches dug in the snow firing rifles and an array of larger weaponry at the Imperial walkers. T-47 "snowspeeders" are also employed to stop the walkers, but the blasters are determined to be far too weak to be effective. All in all, the Rebels find themselves in a situation in which they can only hope to slow the advance, and evacuate essential personal and equipment form the planet before the Empire destroys the main power generator and overruns the base.

Now, everything the Rebels have on the ground won't work. If it wasn't for the amazing flying of Wedge Antilles and dumb luck of Luke Skywalker, all three of the walkers would have beared down and left the Rebels no time to evacuate. While one of the single most epic ground battles of the Rebellion is taking place on the planet's surface, transports escorted by two X-Wings each are making their way through the planet's atmosphere.

So here's my problem: why wasn't a single X-Wing used in the defense of Echo Base? Blasters were far too weat to penetrate the armor of an AT-AT, but a salvo of proton torpedos would have brought down the entire advancing force. It would have been just a slight detour for an experienced pilot to fire off a couple of rounds before heading off to guide a transport off to the rendezous point. The ion cannon did most of the work to begin with (If you notice, the X-Wings escorting the first transport did not have their S-foils in attack position).

Again, the Rebels had no chance of defending their little frozen base form the might of the Imperial navy circling the planet, but it would have at least given them more time to get out. Leia could have gone with the rest of the fleet, Han could have fixed the hyperdrive in time, and countless members of the rebellion could have avoided certain death from an AT-AT laser blast to the face.

You tell me.

Godland

Six issues in, and Godland is still proving to be one of the most unique and fun comics on the market today. Joe Casey tells a story that harkens back to the style that Stan Lee used for 100 plus issues of Fantastic Four back in the 60s and artist Tom Scioli must have Jack Kirby haunting his house, because the art is straight up King.


Godland follows the story of Captain Adam Archer, a former astronaut who led an ill-fated research team to Mars. Bad things went down for most of the team once they got to the read planet, and Archer himself even expected to die. until, that is, he stumbled across Cosmic Fetus Collective, some ancient alien beings that pushed the fast forward button on Archer's evolution. He came back to Earth with, surprise, fantastic powers.


Godland feels like something that could have been published by Marvel back in the 60's. There's a sense of urgency to every panel, and energy abounds all over, not just from Archer's fists. However, where this comic differs from the cosmic stories of decades gone by as there's this ever present, hip feeling about the book. Yeah, it's intentionally retro, but it's also progressive. Go figure.


Never in a million years would Stan Lee or Jack Kirby dream up a villain like Basil Cronus. Cronus shows up on Archer's first mission when both are trying to get to an alien that has crash landed on Earth first. However, Cronus doesn't want to creature due to designs on world domination, rather, Cronus is an uber-junkie looking to get high off the alien's blood. In fact, Cronus thinks the whole idea of super hero versus super villain is an out dated concept that belongs in the 20th century.


Godland also revels in modern pop culture. When S&M obsessed villainess Discordia is captured after nearly torturing media darling and government manufactured hero Crashman to death, her trial is watched by millions all over the world. And Archer, who's been told that he's kind of expected to bring the rest of humanity up a few rungs on the evolutionary ladder, finds that in this modern world, justice isn't always the name of the game when he peaks in on the jury.


Casey has always been a writer I could take or leave. I liked his run on Wildcats, but more often than not he gets bogged down in heavy handed political discussion and allegory. However, in Godland, he seems to have struck a balance. Add to that the fact that he's managed to update that sense of dire emergency that Stan Lee made every panel without coming across as kitschy.


Godland is for anyone who has ever loved big cosmic adventure and misses (or missed) the feeling of awe and wonder that came with a Jack Kirby book. witty, sophisticated and outlandish, it's almost a perfect super hero comic.

She-Hulk #100

Shame on any fan of Marvel Comics who isn’t reading this series.

Issue 100 just came out and it just proves that this is the comic that is dedicated to celebrating everything that has made the company such a fun place to be for the last 40 plus years.


Issue 100 wraps up an arch that found She-Hulk on trial for tampering with the time-stream. Seems she tried to tell temporally displaced, and presently dead, super hero Hawkeye that he was destined to die and instruct him on how to avoid his fiery death.


The trial is handled by the Time Variance Authority, a group that operates to make sure that all the heroes and villains with time machines don’t screw things up too badly when going back and forth through time. Since She-Hulk makes no apologies for trying to save a friend's life, she pleads guilty. Since there’s no point in having a trial, issue 100 deals with her sentencing. However, her transgression is one that comes with a fine or 90 days in prison. Rather, she could very well be wiped completely from history with the “Retro-Active Cannon.” To make sure this doesn’t happen, a parade of character witnesses are pulled from various points in She-Hulk’s past to testify why someone like She-Hulk should not be wiped from existence.

For anyone not familiar with the character or her history, it should be said that the character is more often than not played for laughs. Sure, she's a lawyer and many of her adventures do have their share of heart break, but for the most part, a good time is had by all. In fact, the series reads like Boston Legal with spandex.


Writer Dan Slott has a wicked sense of humor, and is very conscious of the things that make comics books so fun, and so silly. Like when a super villain gets a hold of the Retro Active Cannon.


Knight Man and Dr. Rocket aren’t Marvel Heroes of course, but Slott has a little fun explaining that there were heroes that we SHOULD know, but sadly were removed from the history books.

Some of the big joys of the series though are the cameos that abound. Where else in other books can you see guys like Howard the Duck, Razorback, and Power Princess used to such great effect? Add to that the fact that Slott gets away with making fun of some of Marvel’s most recent controversial stores and you’ve got yourself a pretty irreverent comic.

Not everything is played for laughs, though. It's when Slott has you laughing the hardest when he pulls the emergency brake and hits you with something heavy, often tragic. But don't worry too much for She-Hulk. One of the great things about the character is that it seems that she is one of the few fictional characters that realizes that her entire life is being penned by some distant writer, and every once in a while, she'll actually talk directly to the reader. The character is aware that not only are people watching everything that she does, but she has a quiet acceptance that all that happens in her life, no matter how wonderful or bizarre or terrible, is beyond her. In fact, it seems she almost embraces it. That’s something you don’t see Spider-Man do too often.

Nukes!

Hey, remember that time that India and Pakistan engaged each other in nuclear war?

No? Well, that just means it's time to take look back at history and head on over to Astounding Comics! See what happened three years ago when Reboot villain Megabyte made a prank phone call overseas. It's good, clean fun from yesteryear compliments of Astounding Comics!

We gotta go to the crappy town where I'm a hero.

OK, kiddies, it's super-happy-math-learning-fun time!!!

one of the most underrated Sci-Fi shows of all time that got cut short
+
a great & potential blockbuster movie that didn't do what it should have done
=
a potential new season of Firefly?

Wait wait wait...that math has to be off. Let's see:

millions in TV DVD sales
+
millions in movie DVD sales
(carry the hot selling comic book mini)
=
Maybe

Well, I'll be damned.



Ummmm...somehow I don't think that all of the cast members are gonna be returning.






D
"Big Smash Bang With Boobies"? I woulda seen it. Sounds kinda like porn though...yeah, I'd still see it.

Under the Hood

The Nerduary: Thanks for taking time to join us today, Cobra Commander.
Cobra Commander: Thanks for having me.
TN: I figure we'll jump right into this. It was reported Monday that the DOW Jones closed at an all time high since taking a big dip due to 9/11. Has that affected you?
CC: You know, the stock market is a funny thing. A lot of companies were having to down size and lay a lot of folks off. Then you had all that shit go down with Enron. But at Cobra, we really don't follow the same trends you see other businesses married to. We don't operate along similar lines.
TN: Well, you do run a terrorist organization.
CC: Exactly. Our goals aren't so much to make money, per se, but to put the world under out total control. That said, we have to be careful. We don't want our employees to see their 401k's wither away. But we have two really good financial guys to handle that.
TN: Moving on. You're known for your elaborate schemes...
CC: The bigger the better, I always say.
TN: Kidnapping scientists, satellite lasers, and germ warfare are all tactics you've used in the past to varying results.
CC: And all classics.
TN: But then there are the fun houses and the mock alien invasions.
CC: Jesus, I knew you were going to bring those up.
TN: My question is "why?"
CC: Look. I like mass destruction. Love it actually. Nothing gets me harder than a massive body count, you know? Kids bleeding from their eyes, crying for their dead mothers in the street, ovens being filled with the corpses' of my enemies. Mass graves. That shit gets me out of bed in the morning and puts a smile on my face...
TN: But...
CC: BUT, I also like to give the guys a break every once in a while. Yeah, luring government agents to a death-themed fun house may not strike terror into anyone, but when we did that, you should have seen what it did for company morale. Hell, Major Bludd was outright giddy the entire week before the fun house got going. We had our fun, the guys got to get creative and when it was all over, we got back to building a death ray.
TN: So Cobra is all about letting the employees have a good time here and there?
CC: Yes. I'm not a monster. Okay, I am, but not to the boys who out their lives on the line every day to see that my dream of global terror is realized. They're heroes and should be treated as such.
TN: You've been at the terror game for more than 20 years now. How are you holding up?
CC: Fucking great, that's how. Look at me [lifts shirt]. See these [pats rock hard abs]? This is clean living, kid. I don't mean to be rude, but how old are you?
TN: 26.
CC: 26! I'm way older than you and could kick the shit out of you right now!
TN: Moving on...
CC: Seriously, do you even know what a gym is?
TN: Let's do some word association. Mother.
CC: Fucker.
TN: School.
CC: Napalm.
TN: Puppy.
CC: Cute.
TN: America.
CC: Nuclear winter.
TN: God.
CC: Cobra Commander.
TN: Destro.
CC: Backstabbing, chrome plated, cock sucker.
TN: The Baroness.
CC: Dirty whore.
TN: Serpentor.
CC: Fuck. You.
TN: Well, that's all the time we have for now. Cobra Commander, thanks again for your time.
CC: It's been my pleasure.
TN: Any closing thoughts before we leave?
CC: No, I think we've covered everything. COBRAAAA!!!

The Ultimate Showdown

For all the fans of the Nifty Nerduary Showdown, here is a flash video of what we do here at the nerduary.

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/285267


You fools know we hold it down Old School style. Word to your Mother!

Teach me!

I like villains. I can honestly say that if I were given super powers tomorrow, I would not become a champion for justice, but rather a powerhouse of evil, subduing the little guy, toppling governments, and just having a good time at the expense of a few thousand lives.

But every newbie has to have a role model. You can’t just jump into any field willy-nilly and assume that you know all there is to know. Friends, you need to have a mentor, or maybe several. So who would I try and latch onto? Well, here’s a short list…

Lex Luthor

When it comes to sheer evil genius, you can’t get a better teacher than the man that has toppled with the man of steel for more decades than he’s probably willing to admit. Lex Luthor has got it all when it comes to vile, sick, twisted schemes. He doesn’t look at people as, well, people, but rather cogs in a machine that he constantly plots to make work for him. Luthor would teach me how to really focus my obsession. Sure, he could cure cancer and all that bullshit, but why do that when there’s a superman to kill?


Magneto

Magneto is a man with a cause, and folks there ain’t nothing more dangerous than that. Guys like Luthor don’t really believe in anything, and as such, will really only go so far. But Magneto? Fucker will go all out if he has to, consequences to himself be damned. This is the guy who looked the Soviet military industrial complex in the eye and then sank it’s nuclear submarine. This is the guy who decided that it was time to stop screwing around and floated through New York City, bringing everything down around him. Why? Because he has a cause baby!


Thanos

Thanos could teach all would-be super villains a thing or two about thinking big. Thanos doesn’t have time for shit like robbing banks, or seeking revenge on his old college roommate or any of that garbage. Nope, because Thanos has a force of nature to woo, folks. To a guy like Thanos, killing a few hundred people in an afternoon is small time. Come talk to him when your personal death toll reaches billions of billions.



Darkseid

Yeah, he and Thanos are basically the same character only in two different universes, but fuck it, both are badasses and thus both will share with me their knowledge and wisdom. Besides, where Thanos is a guy worried about impressing a girl, Darkseid has an operation to run. That’s right, millions of mindless slaves depend on the efficiency of Darkseid on a daily basis. Sure, he can go out every once in a while and look for the anti-life equation, but he has to keep in mind that the fire pits of Apokolips.


Starro, the Starfish Conqueror

Trust me. Any starfish that can get its shit together enough for a full on assault against the Justice League of America has got my attention. A fucking starfish people. A fucking starfish.

2006 is looking better and better...

This is why 2006 will rock.

New Futurama?

Get ready to stone me to death, boys and girls, but I’m going to drop a big one here: I’ve never really been a fan of The Simpsons. Oh, I like the show well enough. I’ll watch it if I stumble onto it, but it never really did that much for me.

But Futurama did. I loved me some Futurama and when it was taken off the air, I cried like a bitch. On the inside at least. I don’t cry in real life.

Anyway, it was announced this week that, due to the renewed success of The Family Guy, Futurama will likely make a return to television. This is great news as Futurama never got the respect it deserved until it started airing on Adult Swim.

Reno 911: Miami!

No friends, this is no spin-off. On Jan. 23, filming begins for the Reno 911 movie. Reno 911 is one of the funniest shows on TV and as proof of how spot on it is, whenever I run into reruns of Cops on FX, I get excited for a few minutes because I think I’ve hit the Comedy Central show.

Jon Stewart hosting the Oscars.

How can this not rock hard?

Yo Joe!

I had forgotten all about Hollywood making a live action film for G.I. Joe due to the more prevelent chatter on the Transformers live action adaption.

But LatinoReview.com has a script review up with some extra good tidbits too. Thankfully, it doesn't look like it'll be a stinker as they give it an "A-". Pretty impressive.

Now if they can just keep the Transformers movie from sucking ass.

D

The masses have spoken!

The votes have all been cast in the Best Geek Moment of 2005 poll, and things were close.

Anakin going to the Dark Side took 18 percent of the votes, while some Smallville fans turned out to give Brainiac some love with 12 percent of the votes. And the Association of Semi-Superpeoples blogs took home a whopping 24 percent.

But in the end though, the best geek moment of 2005, as decided upon by 31 percent of The Nerduary, was Serenity flying to the big screen.


Thanks to everyone who voted and keep a look out for the next Nerduary poll.