Friday Night Fight! Part Three!

Because Bahlactus Commands it!

The Vision Vs....


And the Amoeba wins!
With it's amoebaey powers of... um, being single-celled. Yaaah.
To be perfectly honest. I can't remember for the life of me what issue of Avengers this panel comes from. It is, obviously, the best Avengers story ever written. Obviously

Comic Review: Fantastic Four 548

I said earlier that I would write a post about why I'm loving the Black Panther & Fantastic Four issues coming out right now in which T'challa and Ororo have joined Marvel's first family.

I lied.

I'm going to write multiple posts.

Cause it's just that awesome.

This post is about FF#548, and more specifically, how awesome Paul Pelletier is. He's the one currently doing pencils on the FF book, and they are amazing! How amazing?

He makes Hydroman look badass:
HYDROMAN.
Of course, we also get this look at hydroman...
That expression is priceless.

Also, his Ororo is fierce:
Speaking of 'Roro, I love the way her & Black Panther's relationship is being written (by Dwayne McDuffie, who is also teh awesome.) It's obvious that they're newlyweds, and there's some very awww moments between them, but for the most part they're as confident and understated about their relationship as they are naturally. I love that, I'd hate to see the characters changed by their relationship, especially if they were all gooey and mushy all the time. Not that I don't like mushy relationships, otherwise I wouldn't love Wanda & Vizh as much as I do, but for Storm and Black Panther it would be wildly out of character, and would justify all the people who said that their marriage was a cheap ploy for publicity and/or exploitative. (PS. I don't care if it was or not, but it works, so I love it!)

Finally, here's the Wizard looking scary while Reed's face melts:
That is some disturbing stuff there...

Need another reason the book is awesome? This panel:
Thoom indeed.

Now go read FF!

Quickie post... LOL!

This moment of Tigra torture brought to you by the West Coast Avengers, Defending Los Angeles since NO ONE CARES!

Xavin in City of Heroes

So City of Heroes free weekend just ended, which sadly is responsible for my blogging absenteeism.

Some friends of mine who play the game more than I do and I got into a conversation about which archetype and powerset available in City of Heroes various comic characters would be. We got very excited about what we came up with for the Runaways, so we decided to make them as avatars. (Yes, yes, I know you're not supposed to do that, I won't tell if you won't.)

It was a hard choice (being that all the characters are so freakin' awesome) but I decided to go with Xavin, Karolina's alien fiance/Super-Skrull-in-training. He looks like this:


And this:


but he actually looks like this:

Pictures from Runaways V2 #20

For anyone who doesn't know/care, Skrulls are a shapechanging alien race from the Marvel Universe. The whole boy/girl aspect of Xavin's character and his relationship with his/her bride-to-be is a story for another post. Also the pretty shiny one next to him is Karolina, again for the uninitiated.

I thought I would have it easy, as Xavin's the only Runaways character who actually wears superhero tights! And his clothes were very easy to replicate. Unfortunately it was his face that was the trouble. No, I wasn't trying to recreate the ribbed chin thing the skrulls have going for them, I was trying to make him in his "first" form, of a young African-American boy (That is, it's the first form he appears in, I suppose technically his Skrull form came first, but I'm doing the numbering here.) I should have remembered, especially from this essay that I read way back in the day (about a year ago), about (among other issues) the lack of African-American features in the character creation section. Since then there's been more choices added, but there's still very few options.



I'm gonna skip the hairdo issue, as the males in this game just have way to few hairstyles to choose from, especially compared to the women, and this one's not too bad. It's neutral and looks good for Xavin.

The big issue is with the face. The one I found works well, i guess. It appears to be the default African-American face. However, I had found another face that worked even better for Xavin: It looked youthful and the expression was more "I am so not amused by you." But when i tried it on him, it looked bizzare. The eyelids were colored in light, directly contrasting with his dark skin color and making it look like he was wearing frosted eyeshadow! WTH? I was very disappointed.


I'm sorry, I have to wait til I reactivate my account for a month (probably tomorrow) to post pictures of the AV i ended up with.

So here's Xavin getting his butt kicked! (From Young Avengers/Runaways #2)

An interesting 'racial' exchange with Xavin and Teddy, a character who is Half-Skrull himself

edit: to add pictures of the avatar I ended up with, and the face I'm talking about. Also, a picture of my friends and I with the characters we've made so far.

Xavin, Victor, and Nico in CoH form!

Friday Night Fight! Take Two!

Magneto smites the Wasp with a pen --

--because Bahlactus commands it!

And because I hate the Wasp.

Thursday Night Thinking

A cerebral prelude to Friday Night Fights, Diamondrock presents Thursday Night Thinking! Here's my contribution for the week!


Tony Stark thinks dirty thoughts.

Comic Review: Marvel Tarot (oneshot)

Truly this book is like a gift unto my very soul. The Marvel gods have smiled upon me, and they have created the Marvel Tarot Oneshot out of pure awesomeness.

The book is a tie-in to the wholly under-hyped Mystic Arcana mini, which features the sorcerer Ian McNee's attempt to save all the magic in the universe by collecting the four "cornerstones of creation": The Sword of Bone, the Ebon Rose, the Serpent Crown, and the Dark Mirror. Each of these magical artifacts has a hero of the Marvel U. attached to it, (Magik, Black Knight, Scarlet Witch, and Nico Minoru, in order) and so each issue of the mini is also a small backup story about said hero. When this was announced, I literally jumped for joy, as my love for the Scarlet Witch is boundless, and I also squee for Nico and Dane.

Dr. Strange uses the First Tarot

The Marvel Tarot is supposedly a log written by McNee about the First Tarot, a magic artifact in the Marvel U that is "Linked through enchantments to every living thing on earth, the First Tarot chooses from amongst all those possibilities the single best representative for each card's Archetype." However, now, the deck, like magic, is broken, and this comic is Ian's record of how and possible explanations as to why.

In actuality, it is a collection of such awesome that I can hardly put it down. The second two pages are a "Catalogue of Correspondences" which is a list of "objects, beings, or concepts" and how they relate to each other, based around the four items and heroes mentioned before

Sister Grimm is associated with the mirror, fire, the suit of spades, the tarot suit of wands, etc.

Not only are normal mystic concepts included, but tons of marvel quartets are associated with each other. It's hypnotizing for someone like me, who has multiple books of lists which do just this thing. I'm still stuck staring at it. There are some puzzling choices though, for instance Nico is associated with Chaos while Wanda gets Hate, but for the most part they're really intriguing.

There's also the choices of which Marvel heroes appear on each tarot card. I was pleased to see Cloak and Dagger cast as "The Lovers", as they really embody the whole yin-yang aspect of the card. I'll try to update with a scan of that card later, as well as a "poster"of the Traversable Planes Ian apparently found at a head shop. It glows under black light.

The thing i was most excited about was the Priestess card, which is shared equally by three women; Agatha Harkness, Wanda Maximoff, and Ororo Munroe. Ian is just as puzzled by Storm's appearance as we are: "[Ashake's] present-day descendant [is], Ororo Munroe. Ms. Munroe (or Mrs. T'challa) must have great mystic potential, but she has not tapped it. Has clearly not needed to... Nevertheless the cards are desperately seeking their archetype..."
He also makes some good points on Agatha: "Agatha Harkness was the Priestess for a loooong time. Now I think she is dead. But I thought she was dead and then she wasn't dead, but actually she was. Aunt Agatha is confused. I am confused. The deck appears to be confused about her as well."
And here's what he has to say on the subject of our lovely Witchie: "Agatha was grooming Wanda Maximoff to replace her as the Priestess, but the Scarlet Witch went Red Queen mad and started shouting, "Off with their heads!" Where did it all go wrong? She wore the serpent crown for a time. Was it the old wyrm whispering in her ear that set her off? I am more inclined to think that "The Other" one was the cause. From the beginning he has groomed her to be the end. She is strong. There is still hope for her. The cards think so anyway."
There damn well better be hope for her!