Mod Post: Off-Topic Tuesday

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In the comments to these weekly posts (and only these posts), it's your chance to go as off topic as you like.

Talk about non-comics stuff, thread derail, and just generally chat among yourselves.

The intent of these posts is to chat and have some fun and, sure, vent a little as required. Reasoned debate is fine, as always, but if you have to ask if something is going over the line, think carefully before posting please.

Normal board rules about conduct and behaviour still apply, of course.

It's been suggested that, if discussing spoilers for recent media events, it might be advisable to consider using the rot13 method to prevent other members seeing spoilers in passing.

The world situation is the world situation. If you're following the news, you know it as much as I do, if you're not, then there are better sources than scans_daily. But please, no doomscrolling, for your own sake.

Hope those hit by the winter storm in North America have been taking care of themselves.

SCOTUS struck down Trump's Trademark Tariff plan, which he responded to by re-imposing them using an even more obscure law, providing a loophole.

In the UK, the Andrew formerly known as Prince was arrested (on his birthday no less) for Suspicion of Misconduct in Public Office, following his links to Epstein. A government grandee, and Lord, Peter Mandelson was likewise charged. Given that Norway has also arrested a prince of their country, people are starting to ask when the wheels of justice will grind Stateside.

In a truly deranged ramble, even by his standards, Trump also said he was sending two US Navy Hospital ships to Greenland to deal with the residents who were "not being taken care of by Norway". Both Greenland and Norway have declined, pointing out that they both already have free nationalised healthcare, which is more than America has. Greenland also just provided medical assistance to a US submarine, where a sailor had been taken ill, so... that was awkward.

The Winter Olympics drew to a close, and next up we have the Winter Paralympics.

Starfleet Academy gave us our first canon gay (and occasional skirt wearing) Klingon: Jay-Den Kargg who is in a cute relationship with the cheerily upbeat (and much shorter) Kyle. This caused the usual pearl clutching from people who probably keep spare pearls to clutch on hand in case of emergencies, but we can ignore them.

Comments

[iamrman]

This week’s comics ramblings:

 

Impulse. Every member of the Flash family needs their Reverse-Flash and Impulse has Inertia. At least he doesn’t claim responsibility for all of Bart's problems. Most of Bart's problems are of his own doing.

Incredible Hulk. The Hulk brings his love Jarella back after an adventure, only for her to immediately get fridged.

Infinity, Inc. The children of the Justice Society think the way to join the team is to barge in to a meeting and demand membership. Needles to say, it doesn’t work and they go off in a huff to start their own team.

Infinity Warps. Some Infinity Nonsense that I actually like. It helps that Jim Starlin is nowhere near this and it is all about merging people together as opposed to killing off half of all life like a bloody edgelord. The Iron Man/Thor merger being written by Al Ewing is a big bonus for me.

Iron Fist. Colleen Wing gets mind controlled by the villains, because of course she does. Yep, this sure is a Claremont book. Also, one of the generic Middle Eastern goons says “hey-up.” Halwan by way of Yorkshire, perhaps?

Iron Man. These issues were written by Dennis O’Neil, yet nobody is preaching about the Very Special Issue’s theme. Then again, Tony Stark is the sort of person that Green Arrow used to rail against.

Poison Ivy. I want to like this Janet woman, but then I remember she used to work in H.R. and immediately lose all sympathy for her.

[cainofdreaming]

Merging everyone was, unfortunately, just the first half of the plan of Infinity Warps. The other half was feeding them all to an edgemonster.

[iamrman]

Ah, I missed that part. I only read the Infinity Warps minis, because they were the only parts that interested me.

[scorntx]

Eh, you're not missing anything important.

[iamrman]

I get the impression it was just dashed out to cash-in on the Infinity War movie.

[mastermahan]

Besides the Warps, Infinity Wars wasn't great. But the followup, Secret Warps, is great fun.

[scorntx]

(still holding out hope for follow up on Korvos the God-Titan and his leg quest.
Only been six years!)

[iamrman]

Yep, read those too and can confirm that they were indeed great fun.

[numeronone]

My sourdough starter made for a not great loaf on its' first outing, and now refuses to rise in its' jar. I will continue to feed it and hope for the best.

Surprising very few, the practice of Agrivoltaics - growing crops under a protective barrier of solar panels - <ahref="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/climate/alaska-solar-farm-food.html">is proving remarkably productive.

We watched "Armageddon" and "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial" the other day in a double bill. Bizarrely, I felt the same level of nostalgia/affection/wonder for either of them, which is to say...very little.

[mister_terrific]

I'm envious; my wife refuses to let me make a sourdough starter because of the mess and smell. I'm hoping to make a batch of cinnamon swirl bread when things settle down here a bit.

[numeronone]

It can just keep in the fridge if the smell worries. And as a bonus, you won't have to feed it as often since the cold will stall fermentation!

[mister_terrific]

I'm a wee bit nervous at the moment; my sister is flying in from Texas this morning for a two-day visit. The place has never been cleaner, and we're taking her to EPCOT tomorrow (her only visit to Disney World was my first visit in 1973). She's flying back to Texas on Thursday.

I"m just actively praying that at no point she turns to me and says, "So there's something I need to tell you about..." If nothing else, she'll catch me up on all my relatives' shenanigans, because she knows it all.

Comics: my daughter handed me a small Image graphic novel called "Stray Dogs", by Tony Fleecs and Trish Forstner. Plot (no spoilers): Vg'f nobhg n frevny xvyyre jub oevatf uvf ivpgvzf' qbtf ubzr jvgu uvz nf gebcuvrf. Gur qbtf qba'g erzrzore jub gurve bjaref jrer hayrff gurl pbzr va pbagnpg jvgu crefbany orybatvatf.

It was...something, I'll say that. This coming from someone who loves "Beneath the Trees".

[bradygirl_12]

The wheels of justice in the Epstein case in the States? *😝 cynically*

How can there be when the current leaders are up to their necks in that scandal? The current occupant of the White House has broken the law numerous times but is still in charge.

As for the country's 250th anniversary, I will celebrate because the 300th anniversary is out of reach. I won't let the gangsters in Washington ruin an important anniversary. If we as a nation could celebrate in 1976 after the messes of Vietnam and Watergate, we can celebrate the ideal and point to the thugs as dictatorial pretenders. Hell, His Orangecy put his name on the Kennedy Center, a memorial to a slain President and the only President to be awarded a Purple Heart while Cadet Bone Spurs stayed safe at home. Dictators slap their names on everything. 🙄

[cyberghostface]

The official Batman instagram page compared Batman and Joker to ‘Heated Rivalry’.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DU4kxUeDEsR/

[scorntx]

Taking advantage of the fact it's not raining for the first time in weeks to do some gardening.
Five whole minutes of it.


In celebration of the fifteenth anniversary of Xros Wars, the Digimon Reference Book's finally gotten around to adding some of the Shoutmons. Woo!
(Still no sign of X5S, so maybe they're saving that for later? Not really expecting any SuperDarkKnightmon or RampageGreymon, but perhaps one day...)


Solicits up for Avengers: Armageddon reveal the writer is... Zdarsky?
Not who I was expecting.

Solicits for the Civil War anniversary are up.
Oh, hey. Tigra's getting a story.
Remember how memorable and important her plotline about infiltrating the anti-reg crowd was? All two scenes of it? Really tied everything together, didn't it?
And Tony gets shown a dystopian future which "changes everything he thought he knew about the consequences of the registration act".
Even though most of the event was everything telling him "Tony, this is a ****ing stupid idea" and him ignoring them. (Or Tony going, "yeah, I know it's terrible, but if I don't create a murder-bot clone of Thor, the government will do worse!")

Ultimate Spider-Man ended. So now we've just got Ultimates and Ultimate Wolverine left.
Still a lot of mixed feelings about the series, which can't be summed up in some snarky precis.
Poor Harry, but he did come out of it better than I expected. Also more alive.
It's... hrrn... it's just an odd thing about this series that rather than praising it for the things it does, it's more praising it for the things it doesn't.
Not so much zigging instead of zagging, but just completely avoiding either entirely.
(Am a little worried about the solicits for Endgame hinting super-hard they're going to kill Peter, but we'll see if that's true or just solicit mindgames.)


Odd article the other day going on about The Mandalorian and Grogu (or is it & Grogu? eh.)
Whoever wrote it seemed unusually fixated on one character, thinking that because they were getting a bunch of merch they were obviously going to be The Big Thing.
Just sitting there thinking how Phasma got a huge push for The Last Jedi and was only in the film proper for five minutes. (And they cut out her best scene.)
Don't trust the merch.

[cyberghostface]

I think at least Phasma was intended to be a significant villain for the trilogy in the first film but then Rian Johnson did away with her like he did Snoke because a lot of his goals were to tear down what the first film established.

[skjam]

Got teeth pulled again a couple of weeks ago. The operation itself went well. I paid out of pocket for nitrous and saw the first hour of Casino Royale while the dentist worked, much better than most dental appointments I've had. Post surgery pain was manageable but I've still got some soreness.

My oldest niece is getting married soon so I will need to dig out my good suit.

Gearing up for my official senior citizen status though I will not be able to comfortably retire. Work is going to a new software so there's mandatory training soon.

Marvel Puzzlequest added the new Falcon and the old Toad to their roster.

Over at my blog, I posted my first giallo review https://www.skjam.com/2026/02/24/movie-review-death-walks-at-midnight/ but you may want to click back as I also looked at Adventure Comics #500.

The new Precure series, Star Detective Precure, combines detective work (mysteries suited to their middle school girl audience) and time travel as a girl from 2027 is sent back to 1999 to ensure that she gets born in the first place. It's cute.

[tripodeca113]

well Friday was rough.
First I find that Discord has reclassified me as a teenager again. So I had to get that sorted. They said you could contact them, or verify your age by taking a photo of yourself but those don't actually seem to be real options.
So you gotta let it scan your ID. And I have to say whatever software their using is very fiddly refusing to recognize my ID card, and constantly shifting around so that the edge of the phone screen cut off most of it (and since it forces you to use a phone for this there's no excuse).
But I finally manage to get it to scan both sides, and it says the process is complete. But nothings happened.
'Was it because I left without clicking the Done button?' I think. Because a) that's fucking stupid and b)it didn't seem to actually work.
I go through that nightmare again only to have the same issue, so I figure it's probably fucked on their end and give up.
(They fix it later and say it was a glitch.....)

Also Onedrive turned itself on again, which used up the rest of my storage space so I had to clear that out. Which wasn't fun

And then that afternoon I get to work and they ask why I'm there because they need me to fill in at another place which is an hour's drive away. (They did message me as I was leaving, but even if I'd seen it I still would have gotten there at least twenty minutes late)
I should have said no. I did say no, but then I guess I felt bad for the understaffed people so I said I'd do it.
Anyway I'm never going to that for them again!

So I watched Raya and The Last Dragon. It was okay, the humour was a bit hit and miss and it seemed a bit out of place with the more serious tone. Also the message about trusting others was odd because the main characters get betrayed and manipulated by people who are taking advantage of them a lot. It seems like there should be a second part to it like 'You gotta take some risks in life, but some people don't deserve out trust' but there isn't.
Still compared to Wish it is a goddamn masterpiece