The Death and Return of Superman

I've always wanted to know what went on with that whole Death and Return of Superman storyline and thanks to this star filled youtube video now I know.

Desktop Stripper

Here's a fantastic animated short by Yotam Perel.

and another short about a guy who's pitching a show

You can find more of Yotam's shorts on his youtube channel

Clone Wars Recap S4 E17: The Box!

As part three of our current four part story begins we know that foppish lying douchebag Obi Wan Kenobi faked his own death, disguised himself as bounty hunter Rako Hardeen and is hanging out with Cad Bane. Anakin didn't know but now kinda' knows, but maybe doesn't really care. And someone's out to kill Palpatine who is probably pulling the strings anyway. Confused? Well it doesn't amount to shit because this rip-roaring episode is about cramming a whole ton of bounty hunters into a murderous box!

EMBOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Join me after the jump for more, but be forewarned that this was another great one, so if you don't want to be spoiled then I suggest you watch it first!

Book Review: Mail-Order Mysteries: Real Stuff From Old Comic Book Ads!

Books! You've heard of them, right? They're those funny paper things that they sometimes make movies out of. Well, I did an order of them recently and there's one in particular that I am jonesing to share with you. I'm talking about Mail-Order Mysteries by the mighty Kirk Demarais! A hard-hitting expose that takes vintage comic book mail-order ads and shows you the real products that were actually received!

It's a brilliant premise - I've always been fascinated by these old ads, and have endured many sleepless nights pondering just how you can buy a full-size, working, nuclear submarine for a $1.95. Well, Kirk knows exactly how, and lucky for us he's willing to share!

Join me after the jump for a whole lot more!

Thank GIF it's Friday

Lets rock it into the weekend with some Van Damme.

Rob Twizz - Milfs ft. Bizarre of D12

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Geek Mafia is a Heist Book for the Rest of Us

Paul is getting fired from his job tomorrow. His job is being the creative force behind a pretty big deal of a video game, and the rest of the top-level guys want him out. Paul ends up meeting Chloe at the Mexican restaurant he's hiding out in, and suddenly Paul is in the middle of a massive con to try and get what he's truly owed from the company.

Thus begins the wild ride that is Geek Mafia. The plot is strung together by a bunch of fun, tech-heavy heists, the characters are fun and fascinating, and the book reads like a really freewheeling action movie - this means there's not a ton of depth going on, but it really doesn't matter much in the end because you're enjoying yourself so much. Paul's a comic book nerd, and the author, Rick Dakan, worked on a number of World of Darkness RPGs and came up with the idea behind City of Heroes.

There's clearly a lot of Dakan in this book, but that's not really a bad thing, considering how fun the ride is. If I have any complaints, it may be that the author is clearly seeing himself in the main role here. Not a big problem - write what you know. However, a lot of less-than-necessary opinionating along the way kind of throws things out of whack a bit. If you dislike that sort of thing in your fiction, this may be fun enough for you to be able to let it slide, but that might be my only issue. I'm really, really looking forward to the sequel (which I already have on my Kindle).

The best news, however? The first two books in what is currently a trilogy were released via a Creative Commons license. This means you can download this free and legally for the e-reader of your choice. I paid the discounted price on last month's Amazon Kindle book sale, and I don't regret it, but I like free things, too. Especially free things this good. I highly, highly recommend this one for a great little piece of escapist con artist fun.

The Oscars 2012 Prediction Challenge!

The Oscar nominees have been revealed (OLD NEWS) and like every year, I will be predicting the winners of multiple awards for many movies that I've never seen. Just like my fantasy football team, my picks are 60% random, 30% semi-educated guesses, and %10 people with funny names.

For anyone that wants to join in on this challenge (I'M TALKING TO YOU LUKE MILTON) add your predictions in the comments. I will start with mine, but don't bite off of my winning predictions.

And together on February 26th, we will watch the Oscars, look at our lists, and see how terribly we all did!

Click through the jump for the complete list of nominees, and place your votes in the comments!

More Watchmen! DC's Plan to Stick it to Alan.

DC Comics have been waiting 25 years for beloved curmudgeon Alan Moore to get so hairy and obscured that they can slip out a new Watchmen series without him noticing. Original creator Alan Moore doesn't want it, you the readers aren't so sure about it, DC's current crop of comics are - in my wildly accurate opinion - bordering on craptacular, and yet they've decided that this is the perfect time to dip their dicks into some Watchmen prequels. Which could be good. Provided they have someone smart enough to make them.

Bleeding Cool has a pretty solid cover gallery which appear to be pilfered from other sources, so I've pilfered from them. And there's not a goddamn thing that Alan Moore can do about it.

Join me after the jump to see more covers of books you're going to both buy and bitch about.

OMFG the O.M.F.G. Figures Arrived (A Week or So Ago)

Back in the heady days of August 2011. when we were all so young and attractive with our pretty heads full of idiotic ideals, I posted about an amazing Kickstarter project by October Toys to produce O.M.F.G. a homage to M.U.S.C.L.E. - the omnipresent flesh-coloured miniature wrestling figures of our youth.

Well now they're actually here (okay they were actually here about a week or so ago) but I've got 'em, and I've got pictures to prove it! And what's more, I'm going to force you to look at them!

Join me after the jump where I completely destroy their value by ripping them out of the sanctity of their packaging and exposing them to a cruel world!

What's Out? 1st of February 2012

New Comics Day! What's coming out?

2012 Global Game Jam: Day One Recap

This is part 1 of 3 of my experience at the 2012 Global Game Jam.

Over the weekend I attended my second Global Game Jam ever, and this time in was in my home state of South Jersey! About 20 minutes from home, it was close enough that I could go in and out throughout the weekend, but still have enough time to make some games.

If you've never been to a game jam, it's a 48 hour event that lasts from Friday night at 5pm to Sunday night at 5pm. In cities throughout the world, designers, artists and programmers will all team up and make video games, apps, board games, etc… based on the theme decided by the coordinators. Last years theme was "Extinction", and I saw some great games come out of it. Out of Philly came the recently successful party card game LangGuini, and I've heard that Tyler Panian's hugely successful card game Creatures was a product of last year's event.

We all speculated on ideas for what the theme might be this year, and at one point I thought someone said it was "innovation", but that was not true at all. This year's theme was….

Stryder's Favourite Comics - Release Date 1/25/2012

Ok, so it's the day before New Comic Book day and I JUST finished last week's comics.  All sorts of real life got in the way of my TOP priority, you know, finding out what happens next to Batman, the Flash et al.  Luckily, It's all better now with some great final issue #5's to discuss!  Starting with:

Justice League #5 - Wow!  Great issue!  Darkseid attacks!  Superman and the Flash have to try and outrun his Omega Beams, but only one avoids getting hit!  Batman has a VERY serious discussion with Green Lantern and inspires him to be useful!  Good old Hal also shows some serious testicular fortitude and wins me back after 4 issues of being a complete dick!  I knew there was a reason the ring chose him!  Cyborg has NO idea what's going on, but he's ready to fight!!  Wonder Woman and Aquaman, um...stand there and look COOL!  I use a LOT of EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!  Finally, the battle is joined!

Seriously, both story and artwork in this issue are outstanding!  Without spoiling anything, I was shocked and amazed at the actions of Batman, and had to stop and catch my breath right along WITH the Flash!  I can't wait to see what happens next!!  Great book!!  My favourite this week, and maybe even this month!

But that's not all!  Find out what else I read this week after the jump!

The Book Was Better Episode Ten: Back to the Future!

WHAT IS GOING ON?!? There was an episode of BWB last week... AND NOW THERE'S ANOTHER ONE?!? Is someone messing with the space-time continuum?!? The answer is yes. We are messing with it.

Join us to discuss Luke's favourite book of all time, and find out the terrible secrets of the future that made us deliver this episode a week early!!!

Nerd History: Death Masks!

I think I'm in love with the Radiolab podcast, if only because it teaches me about such bizarre things I've never heard of. I'm somewhat late to the podcast thing, and I've found myself loving the Radiolab stuff in particular just due to the bizarre things I'm hearing from their archives. I listened to a fascinating one about a specific death mask a few weeks ago, and I find the entire idea of them kind of interesting.

So join me behind the jump for some fun death mask stuff! And regarding the twist on the Radiolab take on death masks, well...

Tuesday Bounty! Glorious Bounty Gets Confusing!

It's Tuesday again, and that means a new page of web comic Glorious Bounty, written by me and drawn by the endearingly fuzzy Mr. Edward J. Grug III!

When we last left the Glorious Bounty crew both Bruce and Deevis were recovering from having their heads blown off in a Convoluted Killbot incident. It appears their brains have been temporarily housed in PK (Perpetual Killing) robots, and PK - the crew's own PK robot - is wicked pissed! Anarchy!

Click to embiggen or why not check it out on the official site!

And if you don't know what the hell any of this is, then why not start with chapter one right here! Go get 'em, champ!

Keep Walking animated

A Johnnie Walker add directed by Shojiro Nishimi (Tekken Kinkreet designer/animation director, and Batman Gotham Knight short "Have I Got a Story For You") featuring art by Shinji Kimura (he did the wonderful backgrounds on those above films)

This is another short by Shojiro Nishimi that's also quite brilliant

Open Sesame by opifan64 on TeeFury

Like most TeeFury shirts, this one is getting lots of love and just as much hate from the community. Most just don't get the reference (I'm guessing they're too young?) and a few think it's disturbing. Others can't get past the Muppets and Sesame Street characters being on the same shirt, which we all know if just fine and dandy in the Muppet universe. There was also a weird mini-argument about whether the Muppet with it's back to us was Animal or Snufalufagus. TeeFury's community is so weird, and so outspoken.

So I'm curious what the Muppet fans think on this shirt? My only concern is the orientation of the hand. It's backwards!

Available for today only on TeeFury for $10. http://www.teefury.com/

So I Painted Some Warhammer...

So a couple of months ago I dived headlong into my very first tabletop war game miniatures painting project. I painted pirate battle game Dreadfleet and enjoyed it immensely - even though I'm still yet to play it. You can read about the completion of that here.

At the time I hinted that I was going to jump into a real Warhammer box set next, namely Island of Blood, which contains two small starter armies (over fifty miniatures). And then I went silent and never updated my progress. Well, I'm back now and let's just say I've sunk my teeth into quite a few projects. I've still never played Warhammer, and still know very little about it, but damned if I don't enjoy painting tiny plastic men!

I've tried most nerd hobbies at some time or another (I figure if a lot of people are into them there must be something fun there) and this is probably my final frontier. When I was a child I bought the odd miniature and had dreams of painting them, but never had the ability. So it's kind of cathartic now to pick up some of these things that fascinated me in my youth. But most of all I find painting incredibly relaxing. It also means I've been catching up on a lot of TV.

So to get a glimpse of some of my recent attempts join me after the jump. Let me warn you in advance... this is VERY image HEAVY. Make yourself a coffee while the images load! And don't bother opening it if you're on your phone.

Beast Mode

It's time for some kung fu action my friends! Here's a pretty rad edit of a bunch of 'eff yeah!' fight scenes

There's also a breakdown of what the movies are after the break thanks to the uploader.

I think SPL was the last great action film I saw. It's definately a good one to watch. Oh and Jackie Chan Armour of God and Police story... man I love those films

For the Win - Tasty Minstrel

 J and I got together via the internet earlier in the week and played For the Win from Tasty Minstrel, which is currently available for order via Kickstarter. How was it? watch the video and find out. When the project reaches $25,000 in backing, folks who pledge $15 or more will get the pieces for a 3rd and 4th player as well!

To back it, visit its Kickstarter page , but do so by 12:00am est on February 8th otherwise you miss out.

Local Collector's Fair Haul Megapost!

Every three months a local recreation centre here in Western Australia hosts a "Collector's Fair" and turns the gym into a crazy cornucopia of plasticky pop culture crap! If you need anything from the newest Star Wars figures to an ancient Steve Urkel doll or a shirtless Stinkor then the Nexus Collector's Fair has you totally covered! And it's become customary for me to attend, spend a lot of money, and then post images of the things I bought that I'll never ever need.

Last time I bought a Rock Lord, an ewok, and some dubious trading cards. Did I fare any better this time? Join me after the jump where you can be judgemental and shake your head disapprovingly.

KIDS ON THE SLOPE

Shinichiro Watanabe the director of Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champaloo is back with his new series KIDS ON THE SLOPE (SAKAMICHI NO APOLLON). It also reunites him with Cowboy Bebop composer Yoko Kanno.

"Nishimi Kaoru has moved from city to city and school to school because of his father's job. So the first day at his new school was just routine for him. Being intellectual and the new transfer student, he has always been seen as an outcast and all Kaoru had to do was bare it until the next time he moved. But things were slightly different this time. First, he started to get close to the class president, Mukae Ritsuko, and, secondly, unlikely as it seemed, grew closer to Kawabuchi Sentaro. Sentaro was infamous for getting into fights, skipping class and was an overall bad boy. Strangely enough, the three of them find common ground in music, namely jazz, and Kaoru finds himself actually enjoying the new town."

go here for the official site

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