Miraclo Miles

"Stop calling me Bruce." Another from next month's Avengers set. This time it's Shang Chi . I'm tired and likely have another killer day ahead tomorrow, so I'm going to keep this brief and not address the covert, yo-yo release of the new rulebook, including the changes and the new Duo mechanic. Maybe I'll finally get to that this weekend. In the meantime, I just want to post the info for Fu Manchu's son, the man whose name means The Rising and Advance of the Spirit -- Shang Chi. I really am out on my feet, in need of a shower and some horizontal time. So, very quick impressions -- This is the first of the full reveals on a common for this set -- Shang comes in at #12 in the set -- and gives us the first lower middle-cost piece in the set. He's also the first piece previewed that a) we hadn't previously seen the sculpt, and b) had even seen listed before as part of the set. Looking at this and Black Panther , Seth does se...

On This Day Certainly not something I'm likely to do often, but in the pre-dawn I found myself idly wondering what had happened on this day in history. Obviously, a great deal will be missing from these lists -- I've just chosen what meant something to me for this reason or that. Born on this date: 1759 Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin writer/mother of Mary Shelley ( Mother of the Mother of Frankenstein would be a terrible title, wouldn't it?) 1886 Al Jolson [Asa Yoelson] jazz singer/silent film actor ( Mammy! ) 1907 John "Duke" Wayne [Marion Michael Morrison] Winterset IA, actor (Just in case you were wondering why so many John Wayne movies were on TV this week.) 1908 Robert Morley Semley Wiltshire England, actor (High Road to China, African Queen) 1913 Peter Cushing Kenley Surrey England, actor (Hound of the Baskervilles, Dracula, Star Wars, Dr Who) 1919 Jay Silverheels actor (Tonto-Lone Ranger) (What you 1923 James Arness Minneapolis MN, actor (Matt D...

Holy F---! While fishing around for something else entirely, I came across a piece from this past January over at Jounalista! , on Christian sex comics that were published by The Family International . I must note that this topic demonstrates how flexible and seemingly meaningless the term "Christian" has become, not that we'd need to go farther than politicians who rally people to kill our enemies and invoke Christianity in the process to see how far afield the term's gotten from anything Jesus spread to the masses. The panel up top is one of the tame ones from an issue of The Flirty Little Fishy , put out by The Family International (go to that link and scroll to the bottom for links to an archive of what they published), a Christian cult that used sex to lure in new members. While noting that they labeled them as "Adults Only" it should be noted that they defined "adult" as anyone 12 years or older.

Change of Plans I'd planned to take today off, a plan that formed loosely in the early part of the week. Regardless of other change of plans, I still took the day off; next Tuesday may tell me how well or ill-advised the move was. By mid-week the plan had been modified inasmuch that an uncommitted Friday had changed to one where I was to accompany Crypt Leak and Abbygal (who's just celebrated a birthday this Wednesday past - happy birthday! ) into Philadelphia to the Mutter Museum . Devoted to medicine, from instruments and a medicinal garden to preserved specimens, some of them venturing into the grotesque. However, by Thursday evening A had become ill - hopefully not the curse of King Tut, brought home from the exhibit they'd gone to Wednesday - so we've shifted those plans off to some other day. I wish her a speedy recovery, as it's bad enough being sick without having it eat up her well-earned vacation time. As things turned out it's just as well, as...

Anything You Can Do, He... Might Do Better Today's Avengers Heroclix sneak peek is Taskmaster . Presumably they wanted to get it out of the way before getting too close to the holiday weekend. Eventually they'll get these into the Avengers gallery , but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it. Last week's Black Panther still isn't in there. In the meantime let's jump right in. (As ever, click an image for a better view.) Initial reactions are very mixed on this one. Paying 140 points for a grounded, single target figure with a 6 range makes him immediately a tough sell. He starts off competent and reasonably solid, with his special powers only kicking in once he's taken some damage. By his third click he starts in with his Photographic Reflexes in his Attack Value slot. It essentially gives one the option of copying someone else's Attack or Defense Value if they're within 6 squares of him and he has a clear line of fire. This is fairly versati...

Sadly, parts of this are reminding me of Bendis' New Avengers ... Just get Spider-man to say "Oy!" somewhere in there and it's almost a match. (Thanks to Crypt Leak for spotting this bit of cross-cultural wreckage.)

Promotional Gold? (At least Silver ) Prepare for the search for the Silver Surfer as legal tender . (Updated 5/23) Thanks to Grant for tipping me off on this. Here's the text in case the link above is flooded: FANTASTIC FOUR GETS SILVER PROMOTION Check your change. This year, U.S. quarter collectors will not only be on the hunt for 2007’s state editions, but also the Silver Surfer quarter as well. Seriously. If it all comes off without a hitch, it’s one of the better movie promotions for a comic book film in a long time: Fox and The Franklin Mint have teamed to create a limited “Silver Surfer U.S. Quarter” (mocked up version art seen here), which will still maintain its 25 cent value as legal tender. According to the plan for the promotion, a fleet of silver armored trucks have been loaded with the coins, will leave from the Twentieth Century Fox lot to deliver quarters across the United States, and on May 22nd, 40,000 Silver Surfer quarters will be put into circulation across t...

WWE: A Guide In Progress That's Wizard World East , the annual comics convention held in Philadephia. This year it'll be June 15-17. While guests are still being added to the list and the programming is yet to be set, I thought it a good exercise to at least try to think through the event a little. To try to spare myself the minor regrets of "I should've done" this or that. If it ends up helping anyone else, all the better. (Please note that this is a working draft, posted now with the idea that people who come by it, especially if they turn out to be fans of one or more of the people set to attend the convention, will point out potentially helpful information for the possible benefit of all. It's at that dangerous stage where if I don't post it I'm in danger of letting it sit with the other drafts. I'll link back to it whenever a significant update's made. Getting more potentially helpful info in place about the guests and adding some images ...

One Nation Under..? Among the overnight emails was one from Grant pointing to a White House directive ordered up and moving into place with no fanfare. It designates the president as director and "insurer" of not only the Executive Branch, but the other two, too . I'm still absorbing it. As linked to in the main article, the statement of what they're aiming for was posted on the White House website on May 9th . On the face of it I'm unsure if all of the repetition of "Constitutional" should be taken as reassuring or Orwellian misdirection; is "Constitutional" being invoked again and again in a process that essentially redefines it in context? It seems both emphatic and vague, as if forms of "constitution" are being invoked for effect rather than meaning. It appears to leave it to the Excecutive Branch in the event of any emergency, and we're not necessarily talking about national emergency, to oversee and even determine who is...

Another Odds and Ends Post Into a new weekend. School's winding down for the kids. Less than four weeks remain, and I don't believe any of them are even full ones. They have next Friday off and, of course, Memorial Day the following week. There's still work to do, but the call of summer's becoming very real. I dearly miss the long-ago days when I could follow that call. My loose plan for next weekend is to take Friday off, too, making it a four-day weekend for all of us. The scheduled of new movies has shifted into areas I'm not anxious to go out and see, so that's not going to be on the agenda this weekend. It may be mid-June before I really want to go out and see something , and that will almost perversely hit going into a weekend that's looking rather packed. That's the weekend of June 15-17th, the weekend for Wizard World East , the Philadelphia comics convention. My three-day pass for it was bought a couple weeks ago and is sitting in the side of...

And He Shall Be... King! This week's sneak peek from late June's Avengers set is T'Challa, the Black Panther. Let's get straight to it: Okay, we have a much pricier Black Panther than the three levels we received in Infinity Challenge. Back in May of 2002, even the veteran version was only 46 points. At 92 points he costs more than his veteran and experienced versions combined. Fortunately, he's a far more capable, nuanced interpretation, too. Seth's done a fair job of giving us a Panther who can be plugged into a broad stretch of his history - depending upon how loosely one wishes to interpret matters. Some of the language on the card - the vibranium armor and anti-metal claw - can be taken at face value or attributed to other skills. Indeed, as readers of Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes II saw there's considerable room for sensible ret-conning of all manner of things, and I don't have a great problem with T'Challa having incorporated so...

Heroclix: Rerunning Some Numbers I found myself describing the lay of the land for the new Heroclix rarity/set model, which we'll see in force in late June with the release of Avengers. Having recently made a pessimistic run through the financial side of it, I figured I'd add this ultimately more optimistic look at what we might expect. My correspondent had just made the comment that it appeared to him that the new structure favored cases over bricks. I tend to think that anyone who came through the past several releases of Heroclix has come to view bricks with some suspicion while cases have generally been a surer bet, so I'm not sure how much his opinion was based on the new info. Still, depending on where the quality control is applied, the reasoning may hold. I can't count on it favoring either side now, unfortunately, as the focus has returned to the makeup of boosters rather than bricks and cases. We don't even have the collectible case model/target, whic...

LSD Guidance Counselor Sent to a post by Ben Varkentine via a related post by Mark Gibson , it was quiz time once more. "You scored as Batman, the Dark Knight . As the Dark Knight of Gotham, Batman is a vigilante who deals out his own brand of justice to the criminals and corrupt of the city. He follows his own code and is often misunderstood. He has few friends or allies, but finds comfort in his cause." Batman, the Dark Knight: 88% Lara Croft: 75% Neo, the "One": 75% James Bond, Agent 007: 63% El Zorro: 54% The Terminator: 50% Captain Jack Sparrow: 46% Indiana Jones: 46% Maximus: 46% The Amazing Spider-Man: 46% William Wallace: 38% Which Action Hero Would You Be? v. 2.0 created with QuizFarm.com