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.

I'm not even going near the political situation in the UK this week, but I'll leave a link to Jonathan Pie (a journalist character created by a comedian) giving a fairly accurate summation of it for the New York Times.

The Ukraine situation is reaching a worrying level of brinkmanshp.

The Winter Olympics are underway in Beijing.

In a rather more heartwarming tale of football than I usually find, when big-name team Crystal Palace played opposite significantly less influential Hartlepool, the Crystal Palace team paid for nearly 5000 Hartlepool fans to come down and cheer their team on, AND raised over 70000 pounds for the Hartlepool manager's wife's chemnotherapy treatment.

No time for more from me at the moment, but away you go.

Comments

[iamrman]

This week's comics highlights:

Vampirella Masters Vol. 1: Grant Morrison and Mark Millar. Let's just say that I have mixed feelings about both creators's work. Not that it really hampered my enjoyment of the issues collected in this trade. I was all about the artwork any way. Hehehe.

Fairest Vol. 5: The Clamour for Glamour. The main plot was about Reynard the fox getting up to various hijinks in the Mundy world. That was pretty fun in itself, but I also enjoyed the subplot about the lottery where the non-human Fables had a chance to win a spell that would give them ability to turn human.

I was particularly rooting for to poor old Pussycat, who was depressed because it had been centuries since she and the Owl had travelled anywhere in their beautiful pea green boat.

I also have a new favourite Fable, Dormouse Juggler. She's not from a rhyme or story I am familiar with but come one, she is a cute little dormouse that juggles. How cute is that!

Ant-Man/Giant-Man Masterworks Vol. 1: As you could probably tell about my post a few days ago, I have also been reading some Silver Age Ant-Man/Giant-Man. I have come to the conclusion that Hank Pym isn't a very good scientist. In the very first story, he tries to escape the ants by hiding in the anthill!

Also, the creators seemingly don't know how ants work. Apparently these ants store honey like bees and several were said to be male. Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't most of the ants in a colony female? If I'm going to continue with my theory that Hank Pym is a terrible scientist, then I suppose I could put him down to calling the ants male to be him not knowing what he's talking about.

[zachbeacon]

I really need to finish Fables,

"Hank Pym isn't a very good scientist"

I feel like this is the downside to Marvel scientists not being specialists. He knows just enough about entomology, AI, robotics, physics, ect to be dangerous in all of them.

Now I'm imagining the first time he uses that insect-control helmet as a horror movie for ants.

"The call is coming from inside the Anthill"

(seriously though, I think the real problem was that Stan Lee didn't know much about science. Didn't Hank have winged ants? Wasn't a lot of Stark's tech "powered by" transistors?)

[shakalooloo]

I found the 'Reacher'; series on Amazon to be surprisingly good. Great acting, tight scripts and slick production.

[lordy_co]

I don't have much interest in watching it but whenever I see a picture of the cast I'm left in awe at how big the main actor is.

[deh_tommy]

How does one go about requesting a new tag, might I ask? I was hoping to ask for one for Evan Stanley, she does a lot of work for IDW’s Sonic the Hedgehog.

[icon_uk]

Tag housekeeping is an ongoing struggle to be honest. We have 5000 total available and you'd think that would be enough, but it never is.

There s semi-regular pruning by whichever Mod has the free time to do it, but it's one heck of a slog. I'll see what I can do about removing a few of the lesser used tags in the next few days to free up some space.

[skjam]

Still alive, still working.

Shouty neighbor actually came to my door. Seems that someone slipped a note into her apartment asking her to be more quiet but in less polite terms, and she was making a tour of the building to gripe about how un-neighborly and rude this was, as she's a "good person" and a "good neighbor" who "helps people." Turned out she was also the one who blasts music outside the front door at my bedtime (One of my windows is close enough to the front door so I get the whole benefit of her dubious taste in music.) Yes, management is aware.

Magu-Chan, God of Destruction ended in Shonen Jump. Very good final chapter.

Over at my blog, I look at a more popular manga: http://www.skjam.com/2022/02/08/manga-review-komi-cant-communicate-vol-1/

[onsokumaru]

My weak willpower vs not bingewatching The Office.
I'm losing this fight. What will I do when it's over?

Still watching Titans S3, and it's still a trainwreck. It confirms that I'd enjoy the DC universe way more if everything Batman related was removed from it.

Attack on Titan keeps blowing my mind. It's not so often that characters can be so right and also so horribly wrong at the same time.
Demon Slayer is a delight for the eyes. For some reason, I can't get 100% into it like I do with One Piece of BNHA, but it's worth watching just for the animation of the fights.

Finally got a blueray player and ordered The New Mutants. To think that 2 years ago, I thought I'd only have to wait one month to watch that movie. I'm still mad. And even mader when I think about all the Not New Not Different X-Men movies the MCU will likely go through before eventually giving a second chance to the NM.

[malurette]

I'm waiting impatiently for Spring to come so I can Plant ALL The THINGS--truth to be told, my gardening ambitions may be over-flowing from my sole personal garden boxes and teetering on ecoterrorism lite.

[janegray]

Is that an Hakkai avatar?

[zachbeacon]

The new update on the Comixology site doesn’t outright say it but it looks like the changeover to Amazon will happen in the next month (“If your comiXology wish list does not appear by end of February, please contact customer service for further assistance”, “Pre-orders for books with release dates starting February 17 will be cancelled”, ect).

We finally have concrete answers on the system requirements (iOS 12, Android 5.0, and Fire OS 5.0). Compared to the recent Marvel Unlimited changes (that made some of my old devices obsolete), this seems better for Fire users, worse for IOS users, and the same for Android users.

I’m still fuzzy on what the “improvements” (mentioned in previous communication but not this one) on the new app are. I just hope they don’t take too much functionality away. I like being able to search by genre, creator, or publisher and see which individual issue is part of which collection.

We’ll need to redownload comics once the new app goes live but I kind of expected that. It will keep track of reading location data (and Whispersync will track across Kindle AND Comixology.) so it should be easy enough to jump back in on my Green Arrow reread. I’m less clear on if it still marks books as “read” or if I’m going to lose my place on some long-running comics because I bounce between things a lot.

(Note to self, start with Witch Hat Atelier v5 next time you’re on a manga kick. You have read every HMA volume you own but you have not touched the spin-offs)

Given the way the DRM-Free books will work going forward, I’m kicking myself for ever buying any Image, Valiant, Oni, ect books from the Amazon Kindle store because I’ll only be able to get the PDF/CBZ files for books I bought from Comixology (even though my accounts have been linked for years).

InStockTrades (my primary source for ordering physical comics collections) has moved back to Indiana and – given the ongoing supply chain issues and the general state of the Post Office, I was thrilled to have them back in the same state as me …though the tracking indicates the orders still go out of state for sorting. The Post Office is baffling.

(Oh well, at least those orders actually got delivered. That still puts USPS ahead of Amazon. Also IST packages their books really well whereas I’m pretty sure Amazon pays someone at the warehouse to stomp on paperbacks.)

I watched Promare this weekend. I’m probably holding other Hiroyuki Imaishi projects to too high a standard by expecting them to be Gurren Lagann all the time. Obviously, a two-hour movie isn’t going to achieve that but I certainly enjoyed it more than Kill la Kill (I don’t think I even made it to the third episode on that one). The way they mixed 2D and 3D animation while sticking to the same art style was particularly impressive.

Putting aside my issues with it apparently being set in an alternate reality where Covid never happened, I’ve actually enjoying How I Meet Your Father. Some of the new cast have traits in common with the HIMYM cast without mapping on one to one (because you probably couldn’t get away with a Barney today). I am a bit disappointed that – when someone finally hailed a cab instead of getting an Uber – we didn’t get to see Ranjit; maybe he retired.

I know the last several years of South Park have been wildly uneven but the season 25 premiere (“Pajama Day”) was just terrible. It started out as a metaphor for inconsistent messaging regarding masks and then it completely lost track of what represented what. Anyway, it eventually boiled down to the usual “both sides are equally stupid for believing strongly in something” message that this show tends to default to.

Doctor Who Series 12 is thankfully a HUGE improvement over 11. I was very happy to see a returning face (and some new faces on returning characters). The solution to the Regeneration question was interesting and I’ll be curious how they follow up on it.

PS: It’s been nearly a week and I haven’t really settled on a Wordle starter. Yesterday I used “comic” and that seems on brand. Now that I think about it, “Anime” (or “Maine”?) might be a decent word too.

[janegray]

The Post Office is baffling.

I once ordered something from Germany and the stupid thing saw more countries than Phileas Fogg before it got to me.

I watched Promare this weekend.

I overall liked Promare. And obviously, the way fire people were treated was horrific and unacceptable.

But I must admit, it really baffled me that the fire people were basically like "I set things on fire because the voices tell me to" and this was... not nearly as questioned as it should have been...

Like OBVIOUSLY imprisoning and murdering people for existing is wrong. DUH!

But I feel like the fact that those people basically turn into bombs and kill everybody around when they are upset is... maybe something worth doing something about? Something more than just go "let's all get along! :)" and, I dunno, pray you aren't flambed when one of them breaks an arm or something?

[owlbrigade1]

The best description of the political situation of the UK I saw was a Simpsons meme with Chalmers pointing to Skinner's kitchen and captioned "What the hell is going on in there", with a Union flag photoshopped onto the kitchen door.

Yeah that is the best I can explain it too. Baby Trump has even tried to have his own version of Jan 6th, by setting thugs onto the Leader of the Opposition and this is supposed to be fine and normal. Plus all the usual anti-Muslin, Anti-Trans, Anti-poor, Anti-travelling community stuff... We're a very normal country save us.

[donnblake]

I read Stephen Graham Jones's Night of the Mannequin. The guy really does love his slasher structure. Didn't care for this one as much as My Heart is a Chainsaw and The Only Good Indians, though.

Finished all the Murdoch Mysteries currently available to me, and started on Endeavor, with a young version of long-running tv detective Inspector Morse solving all of the opera and crossword based crimes in 1960s Oxford.

Low level Pathfinder is really swingy. An enemy type the PCs had handily dispatched as part of a mixed group of enemies in one session was individually capable of routing the party with one nearly dead the next. All in the rolls, I suppose.

[scorntx]

More or less finished Legends: Arceus.
Just need to catch 'em all now.
The credits start in a very odd place, storywise... especially since the one actually responsible for the plot doesn't get fought 'till after.

Still, it's a fun game.
(Though right now my ire in on Manaphy. Little bastard refused to get caught and cost me a Max Revive. Those things don't grow on trees!)

The changes to certain types of evolution is... odd. Now trade 'mons like Kadabra and Machoke don't need to be traded.
It's good, but it somehow feels like cheating.
... glorious, glorious cheating.


Small slew of Transformers reveals on Friday. Turns out most of the repaints of the Beast Wars characters were just hiding in the next toyline.
Sneaky Hasbro...
I think Nightprowler's probably winning the "most obscure character to get a toy" sweepstake for this one.
And one of the others is a new version of a Botcon character.
It's an obscurity smorgasbord.
(C'moon, Fractyl and / or Packrat!)


Got a trade version of Bullet Points (the Marvel series).
An interesting premise. Not wild about the art style, but the biggest gripe is that at five issues there's not a lot of room to explore the setting or characters, so it feels really rushed in a lot of places.
also Bruce Banner becoming Spider-Man is just stupid.


Meanwhile, this week in The Mandal-... no, wait, it is still The Book of Boba Fett, apparently.
If you say so, Disney+.
... CGI That Person remains completely terrifying, for reasons that should be obvious. And it's never not going to be terrifying.
(The credits say they're played / voiced by their original actor, but... I'm having a hard time believing it.)
... look, I wasn't terribly wild about the idea of Boba Fett playing mob boss to begin with, but it's a bit concerning that the writers seem to have gotten bored with that halfway through.

Some weeding went a bit wrong and dug up yet more bricks, rubble and roofing tiles.
... was kind of hoping there was a limit of buried bricks that could be found in a garden, and that it had been reached.
Not helping that the debate on what to do with these bricks included "dig a hole and put them in it."
That's how we got into this mess in the first place!

[iamrman]

Watching folks stream Pokemon Legends inspired me to go back and play Pokemon Sun again. Then I remembered how much the post-game content sucks and the only thing left for me to do was to defeat the Elite Four with every single Pokemon I had in order to get the ribbon.

I could usually sweep the Elite Four because my Pokemon were max level (most having been transferred from previous games), but I really struggled with the first teainer. It didn't help that only one of my Pokemon had a type advantage over fighting. That's what I get for formung a team around a theme instead of a worthy fighting forc3.

[leahandillyana]

Very afraid. Can't help but mourn the world already. I don't care much for myself, but my boys woulnd't be able to survive by themselves, and I dread something bad happening to them.

[mister_terrific]

Forgive me for what's to come--I have to keep relatively quiet about this so the employers don't see it, but the last six weeks have been grrrrr.

So...this year my employer finally gave us a hearing aid allowance. Of COURSE they waited until I was about to retire, but hey, I had two months, should be easy peasy, right? So I called our insurer (Useless HealthCare for lack of a better word), and said hey, we got this benefit, how do I get the ball rolling?

"What? You don't have that benefit."
"Our guide says we do."
"...I'll have to check on this."

A few days later the guy calls back and confirms that yes, we do have that benefit. That should have been a warning, but hey, I try to be positive. So I contact my ENT and tell them I'm covered and I want to get a pair of the fancy aids (Bluetooth!). They come back a few days later and tell me that these are going to be managed by company A and company B, and they don't deal with either of those. I want aids from them, it's out of pocket.

So I contact A, which is a subsidiary to Useless. All goes well until they try to file the claim, and it comes back with no benefit. Agent calls and is told no, they don't have any record of my company having that benefit. So it's back on the phone to Useless, who contacts A and learns that NO ONE TOLD THEM TO ADD IT TO THE BENEFITS LIST. But that'll get taken care of, you bet!

I send a rather exasperated message to my company's HR department, who basically says "that's not our problem, that's Useless's, good luck we're all counting on you."

So I heard back from A's agent yesterday. "It's still not going through, and they told me it might take up to a month to get it added." Well, that's nice, except I'm retiring at the end of THIS month. So I send a contact request to company B, who says "call us".

Talked to a very nice lady who took down my information and offered to set me up with a local group, but I stopped her. "Before we go any further," I said, "I want you to confirm that my company's benefit is in your system."

She more or less froze. "Ooooookay?"

"I've had some bad experiences."

So she submitted the request, I have to call them back today or tomorrow, and we'll go from there. The one thing that keeps me sane is that when I retire, I'm moving over to my wife's provider, and as fate would have it, they also have a hearing aid benefit--better than my company's, in fact--and wouldn't you know, their agent is...company B.

After yesterday's calls, I went out to the family room, stared at my wife, and muttered "JFC." She laughed, because what else can you do?

[llordllama]

Challenging day today, as I dropped Lady Llama off for big surgery, following months of treatment, at 6.30am local. Outcome sounds good - but thanks to the covid precautions I can't go visit - just collect in a couple of days. Lot of treatment ahead, but things are looking okay for now. Looking forward to welcoming her home and pampering her extensively!

On the plus side, before she went in, she told me I could watch whatever I liked (up to and including the Book of Mandalorian finalé tomorrow) while she's out of action. No greater gift has a wife given...

Comic wise, I've been ploughing through and thoroughly enjoying the current Green Lanterns series, although now I've hit #50 and there's a change of creative, I'm not sure it's going to be as good. I might be wrong though - so let's see.

My delayed TNG re-re-re-^7 watch of TNG has reached S3, and I couldn't be more grateful for the arrival of the full collar outfits.

[janegray]

Best wishes to your lady!

[cyberghostface]

Oscar noms are in. Don't have that strong of an opinion on any of the noms this year but a few surprising snubs.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/oscar-nominations-2022-nominees-list-1235088770/

[tinygaylaura]

Watched Catwoman: Hunted today and it was every bit as good as I hoped it would be. All the Kate Kane/Selina Kyle shipping goodness was every bit as fun to watch as I wanted it to be and it made me hope that we get a sequel in the near future with these two "Teaming up" again

wink wonk

Was also great fun to see Barbara Minerva treated like a serious threat and the animation style was enjoyable

Euphoria Season 2 has been great so far. I really hope we're going to get a season three at some point

Also been watching The Witcher season two which I've been loving :)

[zachbeacon]

I was wondering what you'd make of Haunted. I haven't seen it (I am SO FAR behind on the animated movies) but most of the pre-release discussion was people complaining about "queerbaiting".

Considering Batwoman was one of the parties involved, I'm not sure those people know what that word means.

[stubbleupdate]

A quick round up

It's a country version of Limp Bizkit's Rollin' with three female vocalists. It's neat

You might remember that months ago i was asking about an artist who took a deposit and then didn't do anything. I wrote it off in about November, then found out last week that not only did she receive none of my emails, but I also received none of her emails. She hadn't done any commission work in the near year since i booked my slot, but now I'm close to the front of the queue.

I've cut my comixology pull list down to only Saga and Becky Cloonan's Wonder Woman, and that might not even last to the big crossover.

I'm torn on ditching Hell Sonja and the anthology series, but Dynamite really pumps out some half arsed shite

[thezmage]

I take it these characters are not supposed to be ghosts?

[thezmage]

Looks like I’ve established a pattern of two Bond films a week and reporting on them briefly here

You Only Live Twice was… okay. Bond goes undercover as an Asian man and meets Blofeld for the first time in a volcano base in a script by Roald Dahl. So I hate pretty much everything about their portrayal of Japan but I suppose that’s par for the course for the time period. Also Blofeld has the absolute worst employee management policy. I frankly feel he could’ve succeeded had he been more focused on shooting Bond than his own henchmen and not kept an open pool of piranhas just lying about for dramatic firing purposes

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was pretty good actually. Maybe it’s just my lowered expectations as I always remembered Lazenby as being the joke Bond (well, other than the Woody Allen version). According to Google he had a seven picture deal that his agent convinced him to get out of because spy movies were going out and hippie movies were the next big thing. Needless to say, hippie movies did not seem to have the same staying power as the Bond franchise.

Bond is told over and over again that the person he’s impersonating “doesn’t like girls” and yet still will not stop flirting with the young ladies at the mountaintop resort. I don’t think they really did enough to sell that Tracy was the one woman Bond would (rot13) zneel but here we go. I might want to complain about fridging but, let’s face it, the time to complain was at least three movies ago. It’s rather endemic to the franchise. At least this one is relatively surprising

I’ve got a Monster of the Week game this Friday and it’s going to be my first run on a new character. I’m a little apprehensive as I chose a character more to fit a niche in our group and less because I had a deep need for it and the character really hasn’t been living in my head the way my other characters have. I’ve been going for kind of a Chuck meets GI Joe super soldier type but I’m usually the guy causing problems in my group more than solving them. I don’t know if I should change my mind or if this is just my depression talking.

Loving The Afterparty on Apple TV plus (which I’m pretty sure I’m still getting for free). Lots of play with different genres though all of it in the comedy framework

[stubbleupdate]

Fridging? Bond?

Don't get me started



Vesper deserved much better

[tripodeca113]

I had a bout of existential dread recently, but thankfully I was mostly able to overcome it once I realized I wasn't responsible. I was kind of in a bit of a rut lately, but from what I can tell the solution is to do things you enjoy and spend time with people you like.

I've been rereading The Sandman. I hope Gaiman explains more about this 'League of Justice' someday. He introduces it in the first volume and after that I don't think he ever mentions it again.

Comixilogy is having a sale on IDW Transformers comics. If there's any gaps in your collection, this might be a good time to fill it in. I don't know if they'll get harder to find once Skybound takes over, but I wouldn't like to risk it.

In the Boba Fett show, one of my least favourite Star Wars characters made his unwelcome return. Yes, Perrcl PTV Znex Unzvyy. And get this he sbhaq Lbqn'f yvtugfnoer juvpu ur bssref gb Onol Lbqn.
I'm becoming increasingly fearful that The Mandalorian season 2 episode 7, was the last good episode of a Star Wars TV show. The animated shows seems to have gone downhill, and the live action ones seem to have adopted a bunch of trends I don't like.

Also in the last couple of months we've gotten a bit more behind the scenes information on Star Wars Resistance. Apparently the reason season two was so bland, is because they had to drop all their interesting ideas for fear of potentially contradicting Rise of Skywalker.
If that show had gotten a third season it would have tied into that movie.

I must try and write some more things. My story has had over 600 hits.

[thezmage]

Yeah, I can definitely see why they wouldn't want any interesting ideas to show up on account of that contradicting Rise of Skywalker's devotion to doing the least interesting things possible.

[lordy_co]

Got a new job, which will pay double the money I earn from my college tuition. Very good, but my schedules will be completely fucked up.

Played both Until Dawn and PT this weekend. The first was enjoyable, even if I felt some of the charcaters were underdeveloped. Made me interested in The Dark Pictures Anthology tho, which of course is mmade by the same people. PT is very, very different from anything I'd ever played; not mechanically, but on the...idk, the aura it carries, I guess. Maybe it's because we know what it could've been, but playing it with my friends really did feel like an EVENT of sorts.

Re-watched some episodes of Love Death Robots with a friend of mine who had not seen it. She's a Black lesbian lady, I'm a bisexual White guy, so I gave her the obligatory "This show was clearly made by a bunch of edgy White straight dudes" disclaimer before we started and told her to skip some of the more sexist episodes; she ended up enjoying the ones we watched, which made me happy since we hadn't spend some time together in a while. I still wish she had watched The Witness, though; yeah, it's real sexist, but the visuals and the ending twist are just SO GOOD that I feel she would've enjoyed it.

I've been feeling...weird lately. I guess I know what it is but I can't really spell it out cuz of that old "it becomes real if you name it" rule. Let's hope the new job helps me feel a little better and forget about the things I can't change about myself.

[tinygaylaura]

Thanks to Snapcube I cannot play Until Dawn without cracking up

"I WILL LIVE ON IN THE VIBES

I PUT A HEX UPON YOU"

[numeronone]

There isn't actually a single comic I want to read this week, so I started that Mark Russel Flintstones run. It's nice! Like microdosing on pure despair.

[stubbleupdate]

It;'s really good.

My local comic book shop reckon that the omnibus edition has been quietly shelved, which is a bummer

[numeronone]

Oh, and I can heartily recommend Elsinore as a videogame. It's action-lite and intrigue-heavy, and does a lot of interesting work in fitting modern-day issues into a very old story.

[laughing_tree]

Just discovered that someone's hacked into my email account, thanks to notifications of unusual activity. First thing I did was change the password. Checked my bank account and everything seems normal there, thank god.

The one thing I know for sure they tried to do was, of all things, access my Steam and Humble Bundle accounts?? I got an email saying I requested a password reset for the former and an email saying I requested my purchased keys for the latter.

Anyone have any advice on this sort of thing?

[cyberghostface]

Change all your passwords and maybe set up 2-step verification for Steam/other services that have it.

[tinygaylaura]

In depressing news some of the neo-nazi parasites that are the Republican party are trying to introduce yet more bigoted bullshit making education in this country even worse than it already is

"https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2022/02/gop-bill-ban-teachers-talking-lgbtq-people-offends-christian-values/"

If this ban passes I sincerely hope that every single teacher in the state breaks it, repeatedly and proudly. Because when the law is wrong, the only right thing to do is to break the law.

I find it laughable that their reasoning for the bill is that LGBT people might "Offend" people who are the kind of braindead scum who have a problem with LGBT people

For one thing: Anyone who is the kind of bigoted piece of shit who doesn't support the LGBT community deserves to be offended and I don't care about their hurt feelings. Nor should anyone else

And for another thing: this is the real world. Not a fucking hug circle.I don't give a shit if something hurts someone's feelings or "Offends their values" or other such meaningless bullshit. I don't want some cotton wool bullshit world where any time some bleating Helen Lovejoy dipshit screams about their hurt feelings we all have to pretend they matter

[thezmage]

Futurama just will. not. die.

https://www.cbr.com/futurama-revival-hulu-groening-west-sagal/

[tinygaylaura]

I really hope this revival doesn't totally undo the lovely ending they gave the show