Miraclo Miles

And it's a weekday/workday, so the horror's built in! That's just about all I have the time for this morning. Now if only these tools could say the same... What's the motto they're shooting for? "Christians: There's nothing we can't bring down"? Why am I not surprised that The American Tract Society is Texas-based? Speaking of Christian tracts, tools and Halloween, I can't help but link to Jack Chick's Halloween message . Always good for an unintentional laugh. Who better to point to as a source of horror than a man who's been publishing for 40 years scare messages intended to scare the sin (and any rational thought) out of people?

"I want to play a game." That seemed the most appropriate catch phrase for this Saturday. Operating on precious little sleep, I went to and participated in the Supernova pre-release at the Comics & More in the Plymouth Meeting Mall . Groggy, but spirited, a good time appears to have been had by all. Aaron ( Azs of HC Realms and Wizkids' boards) in particular is to be commended for all he went through to make it a fun experience and to pack the event with prizes, including bringing many of his own to supplement things. Wizkids' limitations saw this hoppin' venue only get a single case of Supernova , so the event ended up capped at 24 people, and we all got to buy two boosters of the new set and one of our choice of an earlier Marvel set. The price was the standard retail -- $7.99 es + tax -- so the buy-in was $25.41. I opted for Armor Wars for my third booster -- why I can't say exactly. Sinister probably would have made more sense, as it would have...

Saturday, In the Dark Parental matters I won't be going into here find me up (still) at this hour of the morning, so I thought I'd at least do a short post before I attempt a brief nap before launching into my Saturday. An e-check having recently cleared, the last of my recent auctions being sent off will be the first of the day's out-of-house tasks. After that, I'll be off to a local Heroclix venue (arriving 90 minutes to two hours early to help assure my spot and maybe play a couple just-for-fun matches) -- I'll bring something to read and my Mobi-Blu with me if I want to tune out the outside world during part of the wait -- and then, if matters go as planned, get a first, likely limited crack at Supernova. Wizkids appears to be on track for making this pre-release a debacle in some respects, primarily by limiting product so it seems all but certain that at a busy venue such as the one I'll be headed to we won't be able to get three boosters of Supernova...

Supernova Safelist (With luck, Blogger's allowing this - which was originally sent up on Saturday - to come through intact.) So, I'm still avoiding information on the clix to be found in Supernova boosters -- and I'm not going to aggravate myself by looking at the prize LEs at this stage -- but over the course of Friday, it appears, Wizkids unveiled all the card elements, the two new objects in the set, and the Doom clixbrick mail-away figure, all of which I consider game to pore over. Starting with last first, we have Doom . Harking back to one of those events that is probably best recalled through the veil of childhood nostalgia -- Marvel Comics' 1984 limited series Secret Wars -- one of the earliest, intentionally limited series, initially intended to launch a related toy line from Mattel. To be fair, though, this wasn't handled as simply a marketing tool, but was the first of the company-wide crossover events that would eventually become a staple of the comi...

Today's Top Story Blogger sucks. ...making it a microcosm of life! A mangled Supernova post - "Supernova Safelist" kept appearing despite my clearing caches and going to some length to be sure that it's saved only as a draft, there to await my bothering to make the necessary fixes. It finally disappeared once I posted this snip. This just makes it par for the course this past week has been around here. Well, back into the silence with me.

Searching for Life I decided to take a look over on You Tube for recordings of David Bowie 's song "Life On Mars? ", and I came up with a few performances I wanted to collect in one spot. First is a 1973 video, a lip-synched affair that suffers both from the overdone makeup and the minimal visual repertoire of the director. More disturbing for me, though, is that the powder blue suit he's wearing is uncomfortably similar to the one I wore to a prom six years later. Nothing like that on the makeup front, though, happily, and my pupils usually more or less match, too. Next is a performance from over 30 years later. A very different performance (including somewhat different lyrics), with what is at times an Anthony Newly-ish delivery and less on the high end of the scale. Still, it grew on me despite some of the keyboard flourishes. Then there's an MTv Storyteller's performance -- significantly briefer, but with its own charms as Bowie is far more relaxed and na...

Tom Mabe Pranks Telemarketer With Fake Death Scene My leisure-time hero du jour . Audio only. The only negative side to this is that I feel bad for the cold-caller because I'm sure this isnt' a job he'd aspired to, and I suspect that giving out the location of the facility was the sort of violation that could get someone fired.

Who? (Something I was pointed to by Mark Gibson .) You scored as The Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) . The Fourth Doctor is your favourite, as well as being the longest running Doctor. Was it his eccentric wit or Leela in a skimpy costume that swayed your judgement? Which Doctor Who are you? created with QuizFarm.com It's really more of a quiz using various attributes of the each doctor and his supporting cast to come up with the matches to the Doctor one does or would like most. All those questions and no mention of Jelly Babies ? Tags : Doctor Who , Jelly Babies , quiz

Heroclix at the End of the Week (Sales, space, a demigod and dark denizens of next spring) A few items on the Heroclix front for this week. A quick note on business to start: Several of my Heroclix auctions have already concluded, thanks to the Buy It Now option, which was a new twist for me. A time-plucked trio of Captain Americas are accompanying Orion to a spot in Brazil, for instance, while Nimrod's apparently found a target in Indiana. A little over two days left to go, and I'm obviously hoping for much more action as the weekend proceeds -- preferably more sudden purchases from those who don't want to wait for an auction to run down. (Not that I don't appreciate the several bids currently in place.) Okay, I probably should talk about the upcoming space-themed map meant to accompany Supernova's release. It's a very cool set-up, its coolness likely in direct proportion to how fondly one remembers Jim Starlin's cosmic space operas. (This applies especia...

The Longhand Wave Goodbye Having come up through Catholic school back in the days when the sisters wielded rulers, yardsticks and pointers with the skill and intent of samurai, I don't have especially pleasant memories of what passed for instruction in some areas. One of those was cursive writing. Spending portions of some early grades copying letters, page after page, capitals and lower case, from some Palmer instruction guide was tedious and definitely the sort of thing many of us wanted to give up for Lent. I can only imagine how much worse most of this was for the left-handed students, especially as the angle and direction of tilt to each letter was a matter of great importance to some of these fastidious loop and line nazis. The tortured poses some of these sinister fellows have to adopt in order to achieve the requisite tilt without punching holes in the page with the pen or pencil tip can be something to see. In my case I can report that the cursive instruction wars didn...

In Today's Episode... Today Sleestak mentioned a fun flip side to what for some would be a paranoid fantasy: Assuming he's always under observation . No, it's not some 1984-ish/Homeland Security affair, but, in his case, something more passive -- voyeurs from the future. Since another passerby admitted to similar antics and I very often do the same thing, it started me wondering how many of us do this? For the past few generations we've been raised in a culture of voyeuristic entertainment, and since we all ultimately tend to think of life as The Me Show it really shouldn't surprise us that we'd be mugging it up in front of a two-way mirror hanging on the fourth wall. Sleestak, as mentioned above, puts on a show for "researchers" from the future, in the process making of himself a star of the future. Meanwhile I find myself attempting to suck up to lurking entities that might skew the odds in my favor or otherwise lend an assist. In a pinch they'...

Blade Staked? The "news" is now at least 11 days old, but I've only just noticed that Spike TV has decided to pass on a second season of Blade: The Series . This is one of those shows I was aware of -- Spike was pushing it back in June, prior to the series' launch, at Wizard World East (I even have some sort of themed tote bag and some cards to show for it -- but the most I saw of it was a few minutes in passing. Goyer had pretty much run the franchise into the ground for me with Blade: Trinity , and there was frankly little left in my reservoir of interest to see me wanting to follow the story week to week... though I never wished the series ill. Variety's always a good thing.., and who knows? I initially passed on Buffy and Angel only to have each become one of my top ten favorite tv series. Reportedly New Line is still behind the series and some shopping around is being done, but I have no idea what its prospects are. Any fans of the show passing by this wa...

Iron Man cast grows Back on September 29th we learned that Robert Downey Jr. had been cast as the lead -- Tony Stark/Iron Man -- for 2008's Iron Man movie , and today we have it confirmed that Terrence Howard has been cast as James Rhodes , chopper pilot, sometimes bodyguard and general right hand man to Stark. Director Jon Favreau us thusfar doing a fine job of casting, starting with a nuanced actor such as Downey and then adding an Academy Award nominee/rising star in another strong (well, I'm presuming that's the case -- it isn't as if I've seen the script) role is making this a film to watch for come May 2, 2008. My sole reservation to date remains that no mention is being made of the armor being at least initially required as life support for Stark. Take that element out too soon and one has a billionaire in a suit of armor that grants him super powers. This would leave the screenwriter looking for some other angle for tragedy/angst for the character, which ...

Should I bother to ask "why?" No, it's too obvious. Something I saw last week as it was unfolding but haven't previously commented on is the upcoming change to the Marvel series Thunderbolts . Essentially, starting with issue #110, Warren Ellis and Mike Deodato become the new creative team , and both the cast and the mission of the series takes a sharp turn. When one cuts through the crap, what we have is a situation where Marvel is using the Civil War arc as an excuse for turning Thunderbolts - a series focused on villains disguising themselves as heroes only to find that for some of them the role of hero truly appealed to them - into that of DC's Suicide Squad , where villains are given little to no choice in the matter and are used as tools by a government agency. Moreover, the selection for the team is done less for the idea that this would be an effective, controllable force and more simply because they know that the likes of Bullseye, Venom and the Green G...

Once More... Monday! Obviously this past weekend wasn't one where I felt a great desire to communicate. Nothing especially ominous in the silence, just a less than creative stretch. Though I'm showing no signs of the benefit of it this morning, I did at least seem to get a great deal of rest this weekend, though to say that I laid and sat around watching too much television would be closer to the truth. While the first episode of NBC's Heroes didn't hold my attention, I caught the second episode during the Sci Fi Channel's Friday lineup and found it more interesting. I suspect that the secret conspiracy against the emerging superpower elite will be the thing to most erode my interest in the series. I had no patience for it on X-Files , which was why I never became a fan of the show, and I won't have much more for it here if it becomes a long, drawn-out mystery. I'll likely continue with it for a little while on Fridays, though, as it's a lead-in to Dr. ...

The "O" Face of Planetary Abortion Supermassive, intensely energetic stars 100 times the mass of Sol essentially rip apart the disc of matter surrounding neighboring stars, potentially destroying a star's capacity to form planets . The process, photoevaporation, essentially turns the particles in the disc into mini-comets, wearing them away with their stellar "wind" of energy and particles. Simultaneously, a similar bit of work is being done to the smaller star as it's own "wind" is being blown away by it's aggressive neighbor. This is all information being added to the ongoing, constantly under revision, estimate of the number of extra-solar planets in our galaxy. (And, I suppose, the universe, depending upon how typical we think the goings-on in our galaxy are.) This is another of those possible indications that planets are more likely to form out in relatively low density portions of a galaxy (such as where we are) and is one factor in favo...

Invasion! Much alarm Tuesday afternoon back at home, as shifts in the weather have triggered large numbers of stinkbugs to start looking for ways into homes for the winter. Having been enjoying the fall weather we had our windows open and when these beetles suddenly swarmed yesterday they found a few open spaces around the edges of screen frames, apparently. Dozens were killed or caught in the late afternoon and evening, and even the kids (who did most of the catching and killing before I came home) were creeped out by it after a while. A few beetles are annoying, but finding several in every fold of the drapes and having some of them taking flight around the room -- it's not what we're used to indoors. I told her to close the windows and put the AC back on (something I was planning to do for a day or so anyway as our temps are heading back up into the 80s today with rain coming on) and have the kids continue taking care of what they could find. I decided to pick up insecticid...

Supernova : Just about as close as I get While steering clear of the sculpts and dials I've still been indulging myself with Boneyard 's list... and he's just updated it. Unless he still has an error in there this is the full 40 slots filled - the entire set in terms of characters - presented in alphabetical order. My comments will be in red . And any additional notes or changes in green . CONFIRMED CHARACTERS: Aleta/Starhawk (Defender) (One-Who-Knows LE) [So the Guardians are being given the Defenders TA, too? Okay, I can deal with that. Maybe they're one of the ones getting an alt TA card, which could help bring some flexibility to Defenders teams, too. All speculation at this point, though.] #48-50 Ant-Man (Avenger) (Hank Pym LE) [It'll be nice to see.] Badoon Commander/Warrior/ Guard (Skrull) [Interesting TA choice, but since they made great use of cloaking technology I suppose it's not too far off if they had to choose from an existing Marvel TA] Binary (...