Fantastic Forces: Less than fantastic distribution I'm bleary-eyed and ready for some cold meds -- I'm sleeping in tomorrow. I refuse to drag myself through another workday and onwards just so I can spend the holiday weekend recovering. No. Won't do it. On an upbeat note, after initially thinking I might only get them on Saturday and even then by having to arrange to pick them up at a UPS distribution node, my cases of Fantastic Forces arrived today . This is the first time I've had my bulk buy on the release day, and it gave me something to look forward to at the end of the workday. I do want to note that the set looks great. The new factory and process they've shifted to has made for a better looking product. I'm not seeing the bad paint jobs and pug-ugly faces (well, except where there should be) in this set. They've improved the flight base connections, too. The dark side: While I did pull a Namor super rare, I did not pull one, single Sub-Mariner of a...
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Busy Monday Two sites to watch are SCOTUS blog -- for word on the Supreme Court decisions the court's issued just before ending their session, and, with the increased likelihood that one or more Supreme Court justices will be announcing their retirements in the near future, there's the Supreme Court Nomination blog . In a different vein, though I added it to my blogroll yesterday, Tim Tjarks has let it be known that he's started his own blog, another misAdventure . The next time I'm back behind the scenes I'll try to remember to revise his link under the Legends header to reflect that, too. We're getting Ari back home today - a week after she went into the hospital - so there are Things To Do around here. I slipped in more than a day's work on Work items over the weekend so that I could keep Monday clear. H , if I haven't gotten to answer the question in your note, I will try to get to it soon. First I have to check to be sure what I have....
"Standing at the fork in the road, you can stand there and agonize 'til your agony's your heaviest load" The title line's from "Watershed" , one of the three or four songs the Indigo Girls have done over the years that I really like. (Most of their work's of little interest to me, and the two discs I impulsively bought some time back had a terribly low appeal when one averaged their tracks.) I hadn't listened to it in what at least seems a long time, so I added it and "Hammer and a Nail" to my PC's music library so it can be shuffled into the mix. Silence, silence... Another long week that's feeling like a bad rerun, and with my batteries drained through most of it I opted to let everything pass without comment. That's going to remain the case, though I'll bring you a little up to date on my corner of the universe. (Thanks for the comments on the earlier entries, btw. I simply haven't felt focused enough to do much...
Post-Bats (Spoiler-free) Too much of my day has been ill-used, and its still opening weekend for the movie, so this will be brief. As planned (though closer to mid-day) we saw Batman Begins . Though the David S. Goyer screenplay has what are becoming typical elements for him (some near-apocalyptic threat that seems to be missing a part somewhere) the characters and performances are solid, the pacing is good, and the Batman film franchise appears to be back on a good track. There are nice touches throughout, and I wouldn't dream of spoiling any of that for anyone. The story's back on track, and the potential for future movies is wide open. Christian Bale is solid in the Wayne role, though some of the Batman scenes were perhaps better lit than is adviseable; the costume doesn't hold its drama in the lights. Michael "You mean I could turn down a role?!" Caine does a good turn as Alfred. Also well-acquitted was Gary Oldman in the unusual good guy ...
Okay, some more Heroclix info Tomorrow I'll be taking one or more kids out to see Batman Begins . Really, I'll be taking one big kid out to see it, and if any of the younger ones want to tag along then all the better. Catching the first show of the day on the Saturday of opening weekend worked well for the latest Star Wars movie, and it should work similarly well here. I'm sure I'll have something to say about it by tomorrow night. Tonight I'll be digging into a little craft project that's been put off all week once plans failed to come together last weekend, and was really delayed from the week before that. But first: Fantastic Forces is due June 29th, the pre-release events will be held the weekend before, so the last of the sneak peeks will be next Wednesday. Were it not for that last bit I'd think they were just about ready to put all of the shots and stats for the set up on their site this weekend. The main images for the entire set appear to all be ...
Stagger a month in someone else's shoes Tonight was the premiere of Morgan ( Supersize Me ) Spurlock's show on FX: 30 Days . The premise is for someone to make a major life change for a period of 30 days and see what happens. In the first episode he and his girlfriend move to Columbus, Ohio and try to live for a month on minium wage jobs. No surprises from my perspective and (happily, mostly vicarious) experience, but I'm happy to see that on Morgan's Blog he's mentioned how he's going to work with FX to get copies of this first show out to members of Congress , which has failed to raise the minimum wage since 1997. Even with a church-run store that gave them many things completely free, they worked and struggled and only sank deeper and deeper into debt as the month rolled on. Meanwhile, they marvelled at some people who were forced to deal with the same situation but including the extra burden of children.
The Fear & the Finance Grant passed along a piece on a former Bush crony who lost his job as an auditor with US Department of Homeland Security once his reports began to outline and underline the goldrush mentality and nearly unregulated spending on the business of fear . Pass it along, as that's the only way, it seems, to get the "Liberal" media here in the US to pick up on stories about anything that smacks of corruption in the Bush administration. (Keep in mind that this piece is from a German newspaper, which appears to demonstrate that the US media remains asleep or so easily cowed by the "Liberal media" hokum that they're afraid to print anything critical.)
The Future of Heroclix? The following announcement was made a short time ago: The Future Is Coming! On July 7, at 4:00 PM PST (7:00 PM EST), WizKids will host a moderated chat to make several major announcements about the future of HeroClix . Every player will want to attend, and following the announcements there will be a question-and-answer session with James Szubski, HeroClix Brand Manager; Seth Johnson, HeroClix Game Designer; James Carrott, Director of Consumer Experience; and Jason Mical, WizKids’ Communications Manager. MO HeroClix, and is based on accumulated player feedback and suggestions as to how to make HeroClix better. It is not HeroClix 2.0. In fact, it has very little to do with gameplay. See you on the 7th! Hmm. Well, we'll see. Presumably some of it will be to verify the new set sizes, the elimination of super rares from the sets (it'll be interesting see the attempt at a positive spin on that), and maybe some advance info on whe...
Strange Shakes and Lumpy Carpets I'm generally not someone who follows the latest sensationalized homicides. I'm married to someone who tends to put on too many programs of the real life police and/or medical emergency sorts -- Depression TV -- so I generally flee any of the same. Still, there are times when something will pop up that has enough strange or darkly amusing elements that it catches my attention for a few minutes. Or maybe it's just a Sunday afternoon, "I've got some cleaning to do" impulse. Either way, ladies and gentlemen, I present you with Nancy Ann and Robert Kissel . Wealthy American expatriots living in Hong Kong for six years, apparently the wife decided to knock off the husband by dumping a cocktail of drugs into a strawberry milkshake - something she apparently worked on for a while, including some test-feedings - before beating hubby to death with some metal knicknack. Okay, with some $5 million in insurance money supposedly...
Getting a Life Tammy passed a piece along the other day accompanied by a fervent and naturally understandable wish that some people would get a life. The report was about a life sentence handed down in Shanghai over a murder. The reason for the murder? One gamer had loaned his virtual sword - an artifact in an online game - to a friend and the second man sold it to another player. None of this surprises me, just as it likely doesn't surprise many of you once you give it some thought. [ Clarification: I presumed we'd all be on the same page with respect to the seeing the murder mentioned above as being a wrong act. I certainly wasn't chiding Tammy for the "get a life" comment, as the man's priorities were plainly, vastly out of order. He did, indeed , need some sort of reality check. Of course, I say that with the idea, too, that exactly the same thing would have applied if the killing had been over the wrongful resale of an actual metal sword or other phy...
Give the Martians some cats? I happened on a piece concerning a potentially personality-altering parasite and humans being at risk from it via a larger, furrier parasite - the housecat . The piece - from September of 2003 - reads almost whimsically, talking about the single-celled parasite Toxoplasma gondii , presumably because in a healthy individual it's not an immediate and obvious health threat. The thrust of the piece, with its attempt to associate the behaviors with feline personality traits, is fluffy, pop-junk science, but the biological connection caught my attention. This is one of the countless microscopic creepy crawlies that are in our environment, and once one reads between the lines it appears that the message is that it's likely so common among cat owners and perhaps even the general population that the healthcare community has narrowed its vision to be concerned only about infected people who are pregnant (as this can cause spontaneous abortions or men...
Tomorrow's Plastic (Mike's parade of trivial tragedies continues) Word has reached me that Fantastic Forces (more and more full-dial updates this week, with many dropped there late afternoon and evening today) will be the last set to include Super Rares, at least as we've known them. (ie Identical in point cost and dials to the prize LEs awarded in tournaments.) Apparently the limp venue weenies, cut-throat game sharks and secondary market, collectible plastic profiteers in general have whined long and loudly enough that WizKids has decided that Super Rares are making the LEs less of a draw for venue action, threatening global stability, devaluing the currency and generally bumming everyone out, man. My expectation is that they'll see that now that they have some LE/SR pieces offering something significantly better than what's seen in the REVs (the Sue Storm and Kurt Wagner SRs/LEs to name two) that they'll see that despite being available as SRs the pri...
Wha--? Friday?! [Tapped into a melodramatic, teen angst vibe. A single spotlight on a lone chair and a figure half-slumped in it, set against jet blackness. No, it's not Bill Cosby.] This turned into another head down, keep moving week, that largely dissolved into files and details I didn't care about at the time, don't now, and I hope to Eternity I never will. Thus is a life wasted in the margins of someone else's books. I may as well be passing my days waiting at a bus stop, but the pay's better where I am and it's air-conditioned. Nothing distinctly bad happened (at least not that I'm aware of) and it was a pay week, so on my diminished scale of happiness it was a Good Week. Either way I'm left feeling drained and up for little but trivialities. Again. If nothing else, this weekend I'm going to make a sincere attempt to avoid falling into the narcosis of television. It's so easy to fine some thing to watch and end up bleeding...
Time Runners & the Chrono-Quixotes Former Legendaire and general light in the darkness, Chris Miller , recently popped up in an email to let me know that he's continued to work on his Unauthorized Chronology of the DC Universe , having just made some updates to the Modern Age section. Chris noted: Improvements to the site include: · Analysis and chronological placement of key DCU events from 2001 to 2005 ( Our Worlds at War through DC Countdown ), sorting out the many complications arising from (in particular) Flash , Robin , and Identity Crisis , among other intricately connected recent titles and stories · A concise summary timeline is now included in the Introduction, just as in the Golden and Silver Age sections · New entries throughout all sections of the site, for historical events revealed in series such as JSA , Power Company , Batman: Death and the Maidens , Nightwing ("Year One"), Green Lantern: Rebirth , and more · Analysis and inclusion (insofa...
Prelude to part II Even though I was reportedly asleep within seconds of head hitting the pillow, there was just enough time for my last thought to be how last night's ramble spoke of a comics convention but not once did it mention comics. That seems all the funnier when in my comments thread I mentioned something of a renaissance in (mainstream) comics, particularly from the point of view of someone who has a nostalgia for the Marvel style of the 60s and early 70s. I don't have the time to address this now -- I have several things to accomplish before meeting with Eric again and heading for a train station -- but I did want to at least note that I realized the seeming irony. H hit on some of it back near the end of April, as seen here in the first entry on the page. There certainly were comics there, of course, from the new to the old, along with some of the creators and panel rooms devoted to both upcoming works and techniques involved in creating th...
Pre-Dawn Patrol (Updated) Wednesday into Thursday, for some reason or reasons unknown, I was neither able to sleep much nor to concentrate sufficiently to get anything useful done. In the end I think I got a fairly solid hour of sleep between 5:30 and 6:30 am. Concentrating on calculations and reports on Thursday was something I had to do in short sessions, but I believe I cleared my work for the week. I had the sense to keep online time last night to a minimu, but lacked the sense to turn the tv off. I soon became interested in watching The Great Escape on TCM, though I was asleep soon after that. I was awake before 3am, though. (Steve McQueen would have been 75 this year, btw. It's strange to think he's been gone nearly 25 years. That The Empire Strikes Back was that long ago, too, borders on disturbing.) Today's the kick-off of Wizard World East , their Philadelphia convention. I and fellow comics fan and co-worker, the convivial Eric G., will be taking the train in a...
The Set Revealed With shots of the complete sculpts for Fantastic Forces , along with their opening dials and some information about each of them about to appear in an issue of Inquest magazine on Thursday, someone's posted a zip file of the info for all who are interested. Much was as I expected - including the new Hawkeye not only being a good piece, but the one most likely to have the move-attack-move aspects of the Transporter mechanics come to life, with his 10 Range, 3 targets and good attack values. Nightcrawler looks good, appearing in a blast of smoke in mid-air. They didn't make him a Transporter as I guessed they might, but they gave him Phasing/Teleport, leading into Hypersonic Speed, and (presumably) back into Phasing/Teleport. They surprised me (providing it's not an Inquest mistake -- there are a few obvious ones in the article) by making him X-Men affiliated, rather than from the Ultimates line; it'll be much more useful this way. Most of the sculpts ...