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.

In a move which should probably have happened a long time ago, following the Apricot Hellbeast's latest control grab by evicting CNN, Politico and MS NOW from White House press briefings (for not saying only nice things about him), the White House television Press Pool suspended coverage of Trump.

It will probably annoy the Minister who requested it, a survey of youth mental health in the UK has identified that it's NOT young people being snowflakes, it IS a much tougher world to live in. Which I think many of us could have told them but it's good to see the the figures and analysis to back it up.

So I went to see a The Transformers: The Movie 40th Anniversary screening and, apart from a pretty damned ropey looking copy of the movie on our not terribly large cinema screen, the "Optimus Prime: Awakening" short afterwards was A) sparsely attended because the cinema put the lights up as soon as the movie credits started to role and half the audience walked out, B) beautiful to look at, and C) almost totally cryptic, but it was nice to see it was dedicated to Peter Cullen. (And for those looking for a more comprehensive history of the man, beyond "just" his role as Optimus Prime, Chris McFeely's excellent Transformers related YT series: "The Basics on..." has just released a proper memorial piece.

Comments

[mastermahan]

I started watching Lanterns. Their version of a Hal Jordan is a massive jerk, and their Guardians are sketchy lying bastards.

This might be the most faithful comic adaption of all time.

[zachbeacon]

Fox did a pretty good job of making sure the X-Men timeline was incomprehensible.

That was pretty faithful too.

[scorntx]

Don't forget the excess of focus on Wolverine.
Also quite faithful.

[iamrman]

This week’s comics ramblings:

Incredible Hercules. I keep forgetting just how obnoxious Amadeus Cho was in the early days. Sure, I agree with a lot of things he says, but there’s no need to be an ass about it. That being said, wanting to burn everything down after his coyote pup gets seriously injured is perfectly understandable.

Infinity, Inc. Mr. Bones is deeply silly in his early appearances. It’s a wonder how he ever lasted to lead the DEO. Whatever happened to the rest of the Helix weirdos? Were any of them even notable enough to become Crisis fodder?

Iron Man. While Rhodey is away having a Secret War, Tony has a Very Special Issue. The homeless woman he befriended while on the streets goes into labour in the middle of the worst snowstorm in years. Tony doesn’t seem all that upset when she dies. His first thought when he wakes up in hospital is about himself. As long as he is okay, I guess.

Iron Man: Director of SHIELD. It always weirds me out when superheroes are modelled on real life people. This time it is Tony Stark as played by Timothy Dakton. It doesn’t help that I just watched License to Kill, so Dalton is still fresh in my mind.

Knights of Pendragon. It’s all gone a bit X-Files with people getting bumped off in suitably ironic fashion. A whale hunter is hacked to death with a harpoon and a farmer using pesticides is minced up and spread on his strawberries. Nobody tell X-Men Green, they will only get ideas.

Legion of Super-heroes. I watched a video about the history of Cosmic Boy's bustier costume and it inspired me to give the Preboot Legion a other try. I'm sure reading both the Preboot and Reboot Legions at the same time won’t get confusing at all.

Journey into Mystery. The Manchester Gods are all very Discworld, with their living cities and such. Always happy to see Captain Britain appear in other comics. Although, it did feel weird to see him say “bally”. I knew Brian was posh, but I didn’t think he was *that* posh.

Man-Thing. There is a madman running about spouting toxic masculinity and now the locals are getting het up about sex education. Of course, nothing like that could possibly happen in real life. *cough*

[icon_uk]

Yes, Mr Bones migration from "Weird rhyming guy who started out a villain in the Helix, tried to reform, was used as a murder weapon by Solomon Grundy to kill Skyman (aka the former Star Spangled Kid) and vanished off" to "Head of an entire Government Department devoted to tracking metahumans" was one of the more "What the hell?" reveals of the 90's.

Right up there with Sunspot going from "Hot headed member of New Mutants and X-Force2 to "The guy who is so smart he runs the behind the scenes side of the Hellfire Club and buys AIM"

I'm not even sure the other Helix members made it far enough up the food chain to be killed off in a Crisis, I recall some of them being referenced as casualties of Roulette's "underground metahuman fight to the death club" in Geoff John's Justice Society run, along with a bunch of the New Guardians etc.

[iamrman]

"I recall some of them being referenced as casualties of Roulette's "underground metahuman fight to the death club".

Yeah, that's what I figured happened to them.

[scorntx]

Didn't Brian (and also Betsy and Otherone) grow up in a mansion of some kind?

They're landed gentry and all that. Sounds like they should be that posh.

[icon_uk]

They're from landed gentry yes, but it's also incredibly dated.

I think the last person I heard use "Bally" as an expletive was either Bertie Wooster, or Terry-Thomas in a WWII movie about pilots.

[thanekos]

It'd fit him as a Beano character, at least.

[leahandillyana]

Unfortunately my living situation remains as it was, and maybe even has gotten worse, as full body pain prevented me from doing any sort of excercises this week, and the everpresent brain fog prevented me from reading any new stories, and were only slightly more successful with anime I’ve watched. I tried to at least take care of my garden, with an ambitious planting and barking regimen. Me and my mother have planted some more croquises, this time yellow and cream coloured to add a variety to early spring blossoms, as well as a few yellow and red-and-yellow tulips for the same reason, though maybe it’s better to say that my mother planted things and I helped a bit. We have also planted a wide variety of ornamental and fruit-bearing bushes: a white hydragea, a red rose, a hardy variety of common fig, an elderberry, two cornels (they are supposed to cross-polinate, with one having red fruit while the other having yellow fruit), a Japanese raspberry, and a wine grape I’m particularly excited about, as it’s the proper European wine, with large fruit, rather than the Siberian one we have, which is very hardy but has small round fruit. Additionally, mother planted a beautiful specimen of alumroot, with spring green almost yellowish leaves with striking darker patterns. I also found a few tomatoes and a watermelon growing in the forest behind my house, that’s kind of weird. I have sadly realized than none of my four willows survived the two heat waves, I had such high hopes. More bulbs will arrive this week, so I’m planning on spending the next weekend planting too if I won’t be in too much pain.

The anime season is starting to end, with some of the series I have been following having already finished airing, making me feel relieved as if a burden was lessened for me (that’s not the way you should approach anime, probably). Exceeds was technically flawless, but they majorly chickened out by not making Shiina and Towa a canonical couple in the last episode – their every interaction runs on anime romance tropes, and the franchise already has an extremely popular and borderline canonical lesbian couple in NanoFate, this is what the fans came here for! Speaking of couples, the last episode of Jaadugar made me think that the series may indeed be a slowburn yuri. From the beginning, Fatima and Toregene were an excellent ship, but the season finale really codes them with a lot of romantic subtext, and given that what little we know of the historical women can be interpreted as a lesbian couple, I don’t think I am looking here through shipping goggles. Oh and further on the topic of romance, Kaiju Otome Caramelize perfectly paced its plot to have a finale that is both exciting regarding the story reveals, and satisfying for character and relationship development. In any other season, this might have been best series, but we are finishing a spectacularly good season here so it can at best hope to be in top ten series of the year. The one series that may rival Jaadugar for the tile is Goodbye Lara, which kept being a quality series to the very end. While many viewers online consider the romantic resolution for the story to be a friendship ending, I do think it's pretty explicitly yuri, and in the end Lara is not leaving Mari and her friends for good - she would have to find herself as Lara and not mermaid princess who has to find true love. Given that the episode references Revolutionary Girl Utena even more than it usually does, I'm sure Lara will return to Mari. For fall 2026 season, thus far I am planning on watching the third season of The Apothecary Diaries, From Far Away, Magical Girl Raising Project Restart, Magic Knight Rayearth remake, maybe also Cyberpunk Edgerunners season 2 for the sake of patriotic feelings and international cooperation spirit, and a few specials: new Minky Momo, My Happy Marriage, Made in Abyss, Takopi’s Original Sin, and the apparently yuri-adjacent anthology movie Grotesque.

I was thinking about adding something to my daily habits as an easy source of dopamine that requires less attention than reading an actual novel/comic/visual novel. I thought I may check out Infinity Nikki if only to see what the controversy was, and put a lot of effort into freeing the necessary 2GB memory to fit the game on my smartphone – only for the first thing the game did was asking me to download 23GB of additional files for it to work! I was massively annoyed by what I consider to be false advertising on the developer’s part, to say nothing of me firmly believing that no game should be heavier than 1GB. Instead of Infinity, I ended up redownloading my two old favourites, Love Nikki and Shining Nikki. Love Nikki honestly seems almost abandoned by the devs, with only two new chapters having been added since I last played the game over a year ago. At least those chapters reintroduce characters we haven’t seen in a VERY long time, resolving a relationship crisis that was in the air for real time years and giving more mature new designs to the characters in question. Nikki’s character model in Shinning Nikki has been redesigned since last time I’ve seen her, with the new Nikki having very childlike features, kinda uncanny to me. I remembered why I loved both games so much and I think I’ll stuck with them happily. In Nu: Carnival, I am now well above 80k diamonds and I’m feeling confident I will get Aoba’s unit (if he appears in that manner in the collab). In Magia Exedra, I realized that I’m 20 gacha pulls away for getting a quaranteed cosmic unit (Madokami or Akumura), but there’s no way I’ll farm enough diamonds by myself before the banner ends, and the required amount would be very pricy to me. I mean, I already have Madoka and Homura as characters so I have their full personal stories and it’s not like I wouldn’t be able to get far in PvP arena or extra high difficulty challenges without either, but it’s a sunk cost fallancy you see. Eh I wish I had time to read proper visual novels, I want to read my space mecha war yuri, my mermaid yuri, my magical girl detective yuri, my crossdressing prince yaoi, let along any long-form novels with complex storylines*! I don’t want to be working on Saturdays ;___;

I'm feeling pissed off becuase on twitter there's currently a big discourse that a romance novel must have a happy ending to be a romance, and this is such an absurd americanism! Like, nobody but an American who never reads romance novels translated from other languages can say that!!! And people are dead set on this point to the point the reject both popular buildingsromans like The fault in our stars or absolute classics like Anna Karenina as romance!!!! And they are so smug about their own closed-mindedness!! There's a lot of things that anger me, like non-fujoshi lesbians claiming that fujoshi lesbians must actually be bisexual event if they aren't into men irl and bisexual women are men-centered and actually just spicy straight and this pisses me off so much, you only know me from my eroge obsesssion because that's what I post about on my blog, how dare dictate my identity (just an example, I am actually not a lesbian because I am not a woman, but I a pals mostly with queer fujins). I feel tempted to break up main couple at the end of my story purely out of spite, but the story is already stretching definitions of a romance a lot plus they are landfill lotura so I feel deeply about them as a couple

* Those are, respectively, Heaven will be mine, Out of the ocean, Lock and Key: A magical girl mystery, and Once upon a throne of thorns. I hope to read them during my long holidays next month if I manage to find time between my priority long form reads (Slow Damage, Tokyo Onmyouji, Like an Angel).

[tripodeca113]

yay! I found a somewhat less expensive copy of the Fury Road comic.
With that all the movies, and the Mad Max video game I now have all the Mad Max related media.

Well my Avatar The Last Airbender 20th anniversary rewatch continues. Have started the Ba Sing Se stuff, which makes up 70% of the live action show. (I did notice a few minor elements that got expanded by the live action writers, but there's a lot of details and plot points which got left out which results in things being a lot more disjointed)

Watched Night of The Living Dead. What a classic.
I'm sure ever since the movie was released audiences have argued about if Ben (who wanted to fortify the house against the zombies) or Cooper (who wanted to hole up down in the basement) was right. After careful consideration I have decided that Cooper is technically right but is 70% responsible for everything going wrong.

One detail I found interesting is that at first the news broadcasts tell people to REMAIN INDOORS, but after a while they start telling people to go to the rescue center closest to them, and it's only when the characters try this advice and leave the house that things start to go wrong. It makes sense on paper (they have food, medicine and armed guards) but doesn't really account for the danger in getting there, which is the kind of mistake I can see the government making.

Also the zombies are caused by radiation a space probe brought back from Venus (well it's about as realistic as every other zombie origin...) Or at least that's what two of the scientists on the news say. There's an army guy there as well saying now we just can't know what's caused the zombies at this point, but I'm pretty sure he's just trying to pretend that the US government isn't responsible for the zombie outbreak even though society is on the brink and this benefits no-one else.

The zombies were also a bit more intelligent than the stereotypical zombie ended up being, since they were smart enough to pick up rocks to smash windows.

[zachbeacon]

So weird watching UK Weekend Update have a backbone when modern US Weekend Update gave us Colin Jost's smug centrism and Dan Crenshaw's entire political career.

https://youtu.be/hFMq4bw2cW8?is=LiU3Qg-xNjJtMu1m

Looks like SNL UK is on Peacock.

(OMG, Peacock has a third show!)

Haven't watched any (beyond that clip) but was scrolling through and I recognized about as many "celebrity" hosts as I do on the American one now.

(Much happier thinking "I don't know who that is because I'm not British" than "I don't know who that is because I'm old")



My Paramount+ expired last week.

And the only thing I still regularly watched on it is the Daily Show.

And they've only just returned after a five week hiatus.

Maybe not everyone needs their own steaming service.

(Though it seems their Trump-allied boss has managed to bribe enough states that the HBO merger is going through)




I haven't seen the Disenchantment crossover yet but the whole Hulu era of Futurama really feels like fanfiction. We've already had a perfect ending (after some less perfect endings) and now half the episodes are "what if the Planet Express crew were toys or mathematical concepts or the cast of Gilligan's Island". Sure, I appreciate seeing forgotten characters like Zoidberg's girlfriend but those just feel like GOOD fanfiction.

[scorntx]

Didn't know there was a Disenchantment crossover ep. Hold on a 'mo...
*one hour later*

Well, that was... definitely something, I suppose?

Just off a random sampling between that and another episode in the batch, they do seem to have a problem with the plot dragging.
More than half the episode to get to what the actual plot was.
Like watching an episode that's been made from the first draft, without any touch-ups at all.

[zachbeacon]

Okay, I saw it and ...

Look, Bean is stupid but I don't think she's "would believe Fry is a wizard (/"stientist")" stupid.

She still comes out of this looking better than Dagmar, though.


It's interesting that we kept getting hints the two shows take place in the same universe only for Dreamland to be a literal dream land only accessible from a "sideways" universe.

(I've lost track of which Futurama universe we're in now but at least it wasn't another "rocks fall, everybody dies" episode)

[cygnia]

Heading on a cruise to Portugal/Spain & Morocco next week and am worried. One, my father-in-law has some major health issues with his blood pressure and platelet count. And two, always worried that the orange idiot's gonna do something to cock world relations up even more that fucks up our flights to & from out of the country.

And I don't fly well to begin with.

In happier news, last weekend our friend who's recovering from cancer surgery came out to see us and catch the Rush concert to boot. Annika Niles is awesomesauce. Neil would be proud.

[thanekos]

The could've been of Gold Key Columbos.

[cygnia]

Hee!

We've just started watching the Complete Columbo series the hubby got me for our anniversary.

[scorntx]

You know when you get one of those really weird trains of thought sometimes?
It went something like this:
Earlier was thinking about Kieron Gillen's Once and Future and how he seemed more interested in the gran as the main character, which led to thinking what an adaptation would be like. Which led to thinking, given the sheer amount of cosy murder mysteries, whether there was anyone from there with nothing to do.
So basically it looks like typical British tea cosy murder-mystery turning into one of their characters fighting a mythological apocalypse and zombie King Arthurs.
And the thought of Jo Martin or Meera Syal doing that sounds kind of awesome...


Despite Britain's usual stance on their participation being that winning doesn't matter, it's taking part, a bunch of MPs are launching an investigation into just why Britain's got such a bad losing streak.
Can't make this stuff up. Sometimes, though, you wish you could.


The Hickman Avengers re-read goes.
Meet Ex Nihilo, a cheerful naked guy who created the Shi'ar. Thanks for absolutely nothing, bud.
If you only uplift races you find worthy, and the best you produce is the freaking Shi'ar, you probably need to revise your standards. Or just stop.
... you know how sometimes he really can't write women? Because sometimes he really can't write women.
Spider-Woman is mostly just here to be Black Widow's sidekick, and half the time she's not even there for that.
Smasher is an odd one. She's... eerily enthusiastic about working for an expansionist empire. (The end of her introductory issue does sort of suggest Gladiator is keeping her in the dark on some of the Guard's shadier actions, but give the Shi'ar Empire's... entire deal, not sure how that works. Seems like any cover-up would only last until lunchtime.)
Over in New Avengers, T'Challa makes the odd claim he's never listened to any advisers ever.
I think Zuri would either be hurt or annoyed if he weren't dead.

[iamrman]

The more you tell us about the Hickman Avengers, the less it makes me want to read it. I think I would rather read the Harras Avengers.

[scorntx]

Yikes. No need to go that far.

(I'd recommend his Fantastic Four. It's pretty good.)

[thezmage]

You might be interested in checking out some actual plays of the RPG Brindlewood Bay. It's a Murder She Wrote inspired RPG that eventually reveals a Lovecraftian cult

[cainofdreaming]

"If we stopped uplifting species that commit war crimes on days ending in "y" then none of the current space superpowers would exist. No Shi'ar, no Skrulls, no Kree, no Chitauri, no Brood... And this would be..." *checks notes furiously* "Bad?"

[skjam]

My relatives have been having illnesses, so my vacation visit to Mom and the family birthday gathering got cancelled. Maybe in October sometime.

Work beginning to ramp up a bit but next month is when busy season starts.

Finally got my Medicare Part A established and my work insurance modified, will test it out soon.

Marvel Puzzlequest: They've added Banshee (so the standard roster of the All-New X-Men is filled), Firebird (most of the West Coast Avengers) and Power Man (the new Hispanic one.) Speculation is rife on who's coming in for the Doomsday movie.

Over at my blog, I look at the first season of a cooking competition show with a twist (the twist being that the protagonist is a villain): https://www.skjam.com/2026/09/20/anime-review-iron-wok-jan/

[shakalooloo]

Well, finally managed to get that Chromedome!



The crew assembled, albeit not really posed yet.



Really need to get a better Rodimus, I think; no way he's so dull compared to the others.

[scorntx]

Titans Return Hot Rod might work. He's the right shade of red, and his proportions are close enough to MTMTE Roddy.

... also looking at this the thought occurs it's been a while since we've gotten a Drift.
(There was that Japanese exclusive Drift for RID, but he's probably super-expensive by now...)

[shakalooloo]

What prompted this is that we're finally getting a Nautica (not a redeco!) and a Drift next year.

[scorntx]

I knew about the Nautica, but that we're getting a Drift is news.
(was thinking it had been quite some time since we got a G1 Drift...)

[thezmage]

So I checked DC's December solicitations and apparently Stephanie Brown is now going by Clu. Occam's Razor suggests that someone at DC wanted to get people to stop laughing at Drake by giving someone a more ridiculous name

Also both the Joker and Lobo are getting Christmas Carol riffs this year.

Humble has an Astro City bundle going on right now. I understand that some people enjoy this series? https://www.humblebundle.com/books/kurt-busieks-astro-city-30th-anniversary-image-comics-books

[xdenyer]

Nice spot! Early Astro City I'd definitely recommend and that looks like a good opportunity to catch up.

[scorntx]

-Stephanie Brown is now going by Clu-

Quick, hide the ISOs!

[xdenyer]

Nice to see someone enjoyed the Awakening thing. The trailer with Bumblebee isn't making me rush. Personally think it'd have been great do to: movie ends, UK voice over "...and the greatest Autobot of them all - Optimus Prime - will return!", new bridge Awakening animation with the funeral barge launch and Quintessons diligently patching Prime back together, then play an abridged (or full) version of the original broadcast of Dark Awakening.

[lissa_quon]

Managed to see Coyote vs Acme when it first came out - and then my friend and my household all caught COVID and were half dead for like two weeks.

It was still a good movie. 9/10 would see again. Also awoke the portion of my brain that is just full of animation knowledge and trivia. Which is a surprise.

Trying to get back into working on art or writing or just creative stuff in general. I've been taking care of my elderly and ailing parents and been too burned out to. So I'm trying to get back into some habits - scared that this means the sky will fall on my again. Cause it always does when I try to do something that isn't being miserable.