Tuesday, October 27, 2009

I know, I know...

Postings have been pretty sparse lately. Can't blame my sidekick for that this time. This time it's 'cause I've been posting away over at my other blog, The Mighty M4!! I find it's tough to offer commentary while generating imagery.

Rest assured this blog's not dead.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Sidekick training

Postings here have been pretty sparse, I know. What can I say? Sidekick training takes a lot of time, and often a lot of computing power.

BTW, you truly need to witness the true Wisdom of Batman.

Friday, October 16, 2009

Martian goodness


I love DC Showcase presents Martian Manhunter Vol.2.

Be warned: I found a series of articles at The Absorbascon warning about the Pure Lunacy inside.

I say this is one of the main reasons to read it.

I'm looking forward to volume 3!

Friday, October 9, 2009

Back in the saddle again!

... For this weekend anyway. Paragon Studios is offering a free-play double-XP weekend for their City of Heroes games. After not playing for more than 3 months or so, I've reloaded my software and took the game for another test drive!

Quickly found out that Virtue Server is truly the place to be as two quick PUGs (Pick Up Games, for you non-players) and I raised my brand new character to level 16 over the course of about 5 hours of play! Pretty sweet! It was really just a matter of playing follow the leader as the team leaders quickly ran through different missions to get as far as they could in as little time as possible. No time to enjoy the scenery or even to read what the objectives of the missions were... Just bash badguys and collect XP.

Which reminded me of one of the reasons I don't play anymore. It's such a well-worn linear path up the XP ladder. Nothing new to challenge us. Great new special effects for powers with the new Power Customization options, and some new power combinations to explore. Just no new opponents. No new in-game models. No costumed villains. Sigh... That's one thing Champions Online has over COH: a World-of-Warcraft-like variety of opponents both in character models and in the physical size of the opponents. It was always discouraging to go up against an arch-villain in COH and the Huge-sized Tanks and Scrappers would surround the villain and defeat them before I got a chance to see what this nemesis looked like.

Anyway...
I'll play when I can this weekend. I don't think it'll change my mind about playing COH anymore but we'll see...

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Yes, it's true...

The format and images on my Mighty M4!! blog are indeed influenced by the comic book corner symbols I admired as a young lad.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Parallel world playtime!


OK. We've got the Squadron Supreme, Marvel's alternate world version of the Justice League. They inhabit Earth-712. (Man, and people complained when 52 limited the alternate worlds in the DC Universe to only 52!) Hyperion is the leader of the Squadron and is analogous to Superman.

Meanwhile, on Marvel Earth-616, we have the Imperial Guard. As Wikipedia describes them:
The Imperial Guard has many intentional resemblances to DC Comics' Legion of Super-Heroes. The Guard is headed by Gladiator, who is the team's analogue to the LSH's Superboy and, to a lesser extent Mon-El. Oddly enough Gladiator's real name is Kallark; a combination of Superboy's real names Kal-el and Clark. Most of the other members are direct equivalents in super-powers and have similar details of costume design to specific Legionnaires (such as Oracle matches Saturn Girl, Electron matches Cosmic Boy, Mentor matches Brainiac 5,and Flashfire matches Lightning Lad), but there are a number who differ greatly from their counterparts or who have no counterpart at all. The original Imperial Guard members seen in X-Men #107 were designed by artist Dave Cockrum, who had previously been best known for his work on the Legion of Super-Heroes, and all had direct counterparts among the Legionnaires. (Nightcrawler was intended to be in a Legion spinoff team book, but Cockrum left the book before he could be introduced, so he brought the character over to Marvel.) Later Guardsmen, beginning with the members introduced in X-Men #137, moved away from the Legion pastiche and began introducing characters with no Legionnaire counterparts. New Guardsmen corresponding to the LSH would not be introduced until the 1990s' Avengers crossover "Operation: Galactic Storm". Kree guardsman Commando's real name is M-Nell; a nod to LSH member Mon-El.

My "What If?" question is whether there's an Imperial Guard team on Earth-712. If so, then did Hyperion encounter the Imperial Guard when he was a less experienced adventurer (the Wiki entry describes him as an Eternal, so I'm not sure if he would have had adventures as a young boy)? Or perhaps Earth-712's Gladiator met Hyperion as a young man? Did Hyperion travel to the Shi'ar empire and have adventures there?

There just seems to be lots of room there for play. Much in the way that was done with Sentry in their Age of the Sentry miniseries.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Will review for free stuff!!

I'd just like to say that if anyone wants to send free stuff my way for review, I'd have to tell everyone about it.

Seriously.

Books. External hard drives. New iPhone apps. Comics. Video games.

Anyone?

Freebies?

Hello?

Thursday, October 1, 2009

Scary Dark Knight

Sometimes I wonder if Batman has become too familiar to scare people anymore.

Then I saw this:

That design just gives me the willies! Even if I were on the Justice League, that look would make me stand on the other side of the room from him!

Found on the Internet!

The Composite Man!

Surely, one of the most stunning characters of the Silver Age is the Composite Superman. The Absorbascon has an excellent article here.

Well, in poking around, much to my surprise, I've found that there were multiple composite characters. I'll be taking a look at some and posting their images as I find them. In the meantime, here's an image of the Composite Legionnaire:

Free SF - Leigh Brackett


Via Wikipedia:
Leigh Douglass Brackett (December 7, 1915 – March 18, 1978) was an American author, particularly of science fiction. She was also a screenwriter, known for her work on famous films such as The Big Sleep (1945), Rio Bravo (1959), The Long Goodbye (1973) and The Empire Strikes Back (1980).

Pictured above with her husband, Edmund Hamilton.

Free SF has links to some of her free works on the web. Some appear to be teasers for complete volumes for purchase. Her work is definitely worth exploring. I came across her work in a couple of paperback collections of her short stories. I felt her Mars stories to be amazing, surpassing some of Edgar Rice Burroughs' work in their evocation of mood and loss and decay in the Martian environment. Wikipedia has a wonderful article about her unique solar system she had created to house her stories. Truly, a delightful playland of adventure worth re-exploring.

Free SF even has a link to the script for The Big Sleep, a screenplay she worked on with Jules Furthman and William Faulkner.