Mod Post: Off-Topic Tuesday

[icon_uk]

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.

Artemis II arrived safely back to Earth, though apparently Mission Contgrol chose not to all put on ape masks

The beloved internet meme "Neil Banging out the Tunes" celebrated it's 20th Anniversary

And speaking of rats doing improbable things (without the charm of the above) POTUS47 managed a remarkable week even by his usual, unbelieveably low, standards. Trying to save face when his chaotic Iran War went horrendously badly, to the extent he's now blockading a blockade that only exists because he set in motion the events which caused it in the first place. Milirary historians will be documenting this one for years.

Suffice it to say that when you manage to post an AI image so offensive that your own Christian Nationalist supporters come out on the side of the POPE in an argument (even momentarily), you HAVE to know you've buggered things up.

Comments

[tripodeca113]

I've been sick. Ended up missing the last week of work before the holidays. Was kind of worried about how that would effect things but then incredibly the other company I don't work for and have never worked for fucked up again and have once again started paying me for work I haven't done.

Oh yes there was another leak for the Aang movie (about 90% of updates on that movie have been via leaks at this point). Some guy uploaded three minutes worth of footage allowing to finally see what the artstyle looks like in motion.
And then the next day he posted the whole movie online.
huh looks like Legend of Korra Book Three's airing schedule is no longer the biggest fiasco in the history of this franchise.

Malcom In The Middle returned to us in a beautiful but all too brief moment.

Smiling Friends is over (for now at least) but at least we got another Dolly Dimpley episode to see us off (and Alan's Muse received the recognition she deserved).

Well it looks like another company just copied the Transformers Wiki wholesale rather than writing a proper description, and used one of their hilarious captions as if it's an iconic phrase.

(just in case it's not clear he's saying "My insanely awesome body in which I never appear!")

In other news I was checking out the wiki's page on unreleased Dreamwave issues and was surprised to see that a couple of years ago the artist released three new pages from the unpublished issue eleven!
There was a sense of closure in that the issue was probably as complete as it was even going to get, and it resolved the shocking cliffhanger we'd been stuck with since 2010.

And then when I was trying to find the earlier pages from that issue, I found a guy on a forum had posted 13 whole pages from issue twelve!
The Transformers Wiki never mentioned them so I had no idea these even existed. And we got to see some of the plot threads advance ever so slightly, with it ending just as Optimus Prime is finally going to learn the secret history of Cybertron the whole series has been building towards.
(Now naturally I was wondering where the Hell this came from, especially since issue eleven was released in chunks over about 18 years, and it turns out the artist just uploaded them to his Devintart account 20 years ago and they've been there ever since)

oh yes last year also saw Pat Lee make his unwelcome and undeserved return to Transformers when Hasbro China hired to draw some limited edition pictures. Naturally one of them turned out to have been copied from the card game Battle Spirits.
oh that Superstar Funana
(Did you between now and the collapse of Dreamwave because he embezzled money to fund his own lavish lifestyle rather than paying his employees he's been involved in NFT's and since at least 2018 claimed that he created the original American Transformers comic ...)

[iamrman]

This week’s comics ramblings:

Amazing Spider-Man. More specifically, the original Clone Saga. Poor Gerry Conway. He had no idea of the can of worms he would be opening when he came up with the whole clone thing. That’s not on him, though. Writers just can’t leave certain things well enough alone.

Avengers by Kurt Busiek and George Perez. The best Avengers since Roger Stern. Not that it had much competition since then. The early 90’s were not a good time for the Avengers.

Avengers West Coast. In which Master Pandemonium takes the phrase “baby hands” far too literally. Also, Tigra has been shrunk and is promptly forgotten about. She doesn’t even get turned back to normal in the main book. It gets relegated to an issue of Solo Avengers/Avengers Spotlight.

Azrael. The more I find out about the Order of Saint Dumas, the less I like them. But what do you expect from a cult of religious zealots?

Batgirl. Cassandra Cain Best Batgirl. Thankfully, DC has learned from past mistakes and has given Cass her own series again. I’m still not sure how I feel about her new blood powers.

Batman: Knightquest. I’ve said it before and I will say it again, the new villains suck. The latest ones are a pair of assassins and the husband looks like he stole Cyclops’s visor. The Stars and Stripes bandana is a lot too.

Booster Gold. It still feels weird to see Booster as a competent hero. He is still a corporate shill, but he is actually good at being a hero. What makes it even weirder is that this series was being published at the same time as the JLI. Talk about a tonal whiplash.

[metadronos]

Knightquest: The Crusade was a chore for me to get through, at least up to the Joker-as-film-director story. Besides the assassin couple you mentioned, there were also those super annoying Three Stooges wannabes.

As for Abbattoir... gah. I get that they wanted a villain with more staying power than usual so that tracking him would also track Azrael's descent into hallucination-driven inner conflict which would prove his undoing. But couldn't they have come up with a bad guy who wasn't a walking "psychotic serial killer" stereotype?

Also, the "former nerdy bookworm turned grimdark antihero disovers women and doesn't know how to handle it" thing with Azrael was pointless. Didn't the poor, mixed-up, subliminally brainwashed dude have enough on his plate?

I did like those separated-at-birth, "born in the wrong century" bank robber twins. Sure, they were entirely superfluous to the ongoing story, and as I recall just kind of stopped appearing, but they were so charming I was this close to rooting for them.

[iamrman]

Yeah, the new Trigger Twins were the only new villains that were remotely memorable. The Joker as film director was the best bit though.

[skjam]

Oldest niece getting married soon.

Went to Minicon 59, was fun though the commute sucks. I review a book by the Guest of Honor, Patricia C. Wrede, here: https://www.skjam.com/2026/04/06/book-review-dealing-with-dragons/

Also check out my other new reviews!

Next year is Minicon 60, and two of the Guests of Honor are Phil and Kaja Foglio, woo!

Approaching senior citizen status, though I can't retire just yet. Turns out I do qualify for a tiny pension from my old job at Target, which I can have as a monthly trickle or a decent sized lump sum. I have to admit I am not enthused about their long-term prospects due to mismanagement.

[skjam]

Oh and Marvel Puzzlequest update. Last month was Women's History so we got the Brunnhilde Valkyrie and War (unh! What is she good for? Absolutely nothing!). This month to fit April Fools it's "Grin and Bear It" with the first new character being Drop Bear.

[deh_tommy]

Any hope Hasbro remakes the rest of Beast Wars Neo like they did with Big Convoy and Magmatron? I probably wouldn’t buy any unless they go on sale (seriously, €30+ for a Deluxe class!? These are supposed to be kids’ toys!), but it’d at least be more affordable than buying them on the aftermarket. Plus they’d probably benefit from the wonders of modern engineering.

[scorntx]

Seems pretty unlikely, what with modern production costs, barring the odd retool or repaint here and there, and then mainly the Preds.
It's a shame, because while £50+ for a new version of Elphaorpha would be nuts, it'd still be rad.

[scorntx]

If you're gonna mess with astronauts by pretending the apes have taken over, go whole hog and do it in French as well.


Seems to be the week of the cancellation. Nova: Centurion the other week, Power Rangers Prime and Star Trek Lower Decks last week.

Between Nova, and also Black Panther: Intergalactic and Planet She-Hulk all being over now, this is not exactly assuaging concerns that Imperial Guardians will be lucky to get to issue 8. If it's even an ongoing.

Speaking of things ending, Ultimate Wolverine's final issue is out tomorrow.
Just leaving Ultimates, which will presumably have to tidy up and turn off the lights before it goes.
Don't know whether it's to avoid spoilers or if there's just weird communications issues, but the solicits for this series, like Ultimate X-Men, have pretty much nothing in common with what actually happens inside.
(aw, look at that cover, pretending Black Widow was an important character.)
Still got the creeping suspicion it's going to end with Logan and Jean being together. [angry sweary muttering]

Marvel's doing anniversary covers for Civil War for some titles.
So far we got; Cyclops fighting Wonder Man, Cap vs. Sentry, Wasp vs. the Invisible Woman, Wolverine vs. She-Hulk and Punisher vs. Tigra.
... these do not seem like remotely fair fights.


Details for Daredevil Born Again season 3 show we got Luke Cage coming back. Yay!
Also Danny Rand, but it's hard to get excited about that.
Though the fact it's Luke & Danny together offers some hope. Colter and Jones do the double act very well.
And hey, who knows, maybe time and a different writing team means a chance to study the pitfalls Iron Fist made and avoid them this time around?

There's also a thing going around asking who Daredevil would be up against if Kingpin's off the board, and it's a good question. It can't be Matt's own self-destructive tendencies every time, and the old shows kind of buggered up the Hand but good.
Maybe do some turnaround? If Iron Fist takes Matt's foes, have Matt, Luke and Danny go up against Chaka Khan (CRIME LORD OF ALL NEW YORK!)
... or Deadly Nightshade, I guess. That works, too.
C'mon. Daredevil, Power Man and Iron Fist fighting werewolves.


Got the next instalment of Rom's Epic Collection.
Woof. That got dark immediately.
Steve may have been a jerk, but he really deserved better than that.
Hybrid returns, once again trying to use freaky mind-control on women. This time, Brandy and the gals of the New Mutants.
... between that and the outfit he puts Brandy in, starting to wonder if a certain someone snuck into Bill Mantlo's office while he was out and made some "contributions" to the annual's script.

[thezmage]

The crowdfunding campaign for the Dungeon Crawler Carl RPG and card game has started and is already more than $2million. I've yet to play the original Unstoppable but it has been topping lists of best 1 and 2 player card games since it's release and the original is sold out, so this might be your best chance to get a copy of the standalone Carl version

https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/renegade-game-studios/dungeon-crawler-carl-rpg-unstoppable