Random Crap

Transformers Cartoon Season 1

I got around to watching some of the first season of the Transformers cartoons from the 1980's, and I must say outside of a few glaring animation gaffes that were on the original tapes they held up pretty well. I did not watch Transformers when I was younger because I had to get up and go to school early and we did not have a VCR at the time. That made it all so sweet when we would get to stay home because of Holiday breaks or teacher inservice days and watch the episodes. So some of these episodes I am seeing for the first time and I can kind of see the weaving of a larger story arc into the episodes. I heard from my older brother that the last two seasons of the Transformers cartoons are bad. I don't know if his definition and my definition of bad are the same, or if he was just spouting off some opinion that he read on the internet, but I'm willing to give them a shot. I'm going to go ahead and finish off the first season today along with the other things that I have to do and maybe do a little reviewing of the episodes from the original three parter to the end of the season. I'm glad that Shout! Factory put the Transformers episodes out on DVD in their original form rather than the remastered editions that Rhino Home Video put out that tried to trick them up. Now if they would get the rights to and put out the Jem cartoon then I would be a happy man. I'll admit Jem was a cartoon character that I had a crush on when I was younger. It was because she had really light pink hair as Jem and platinum blonde hair when she was her normal self. She was billed as being "truly truly outrageous." I bet I could take her cartoon boyfriend now if he was real.

HeroClix Brave and the Bold

Wizkids put out their latest expansion to the DC HeroClix game Wednesday and I finally got a look at some of the stats and molds of the minis and I must say I like some of them. They introduced a couple of new concepts in this expansion, one is a throwback to Hammer of Thor with minions and the other is the Alter Ego mechanic. So far there are only four minis with the alter ego mechanic and that is Batman, The Demon, Superman and Wonder Woman. Their alter egos are common while the minis they become are either uncommon, or in the case of The Demon; rare. I like the Alter Ego mechanic and hope they use it a lot in the future. The Minion mechanic I don't like so much. It encourages people to buy up a lot of the boosters just to get the common army builders like the Parademons and Checkmate characters that are in Brave and the Bold. It's not that I want those commons for myself, but it seems that army builders are becoming en vogue for both miniature games as well as action figures. If I wanted to fight a horde of Parademons or Checkmate characters then I would be more than happy to do so in a friendly game, not a competition. The gimmick with this set this time around besides the Alter Ego and Minion ones is that a good chunk of this 55 figure set is dual figures. In other words, they are either a single round base or a dual peanut base with two figures on it. This is a throwback at least to the Crisis set where there were Trickster and Pied Piper minis on one base. Most of the two figure ones are Super Rare and consist of parings like Green Lantern and Flash or Green Lantern and Green Arrow. The ones I want though are the Fire & Ice, Booster Gold & Blue Beetle and Mister Miracle & Oberon combos. All I am waiting for now is a Maxwell Lord mini so I can give Wonder Woman someone to Knock Out. Overall the sculpts in the set work (although the Lex Luthor and robot Brainiac one not so much.)and the paint jobs are improving. They are still better than what I can do on my own so I'm not going to put down that as a negative. I just think they should have released the new rules and Powers and Abilities Card along with the rest of the Blackest Night starter first before this set so there would be some time to read over the new rules before we got a new set.

Star Wars Figures

Last week I put in a bid on a Zuckuss action figure from the Return of the Jedi line of figures on E-Bay and I won. I also had bids on a Empire Strikes Back FX-7 and a Return of the Jedi 2-1B, but the FX-7 jumped up to well over $75 in the final two hours of bidding and I lost it, and I lost the 2-1B auction by a dollar. I am okay with losing those two because it got me to thinking that maybe I should really focus on one set of characters and collect those. Since the big players like Han, Luke, Leia and Chewbacca are going for big bucks no matter what condition, I decided to focus on Bounty Hunters. Boba Fett is way too popular so he was out. Bossk, Dengar and IG-88 are out because I really do not like their back stories; so that just left Zuckuss and 4-LOM. I really liked the story presented in the Tales of the Bounty Hunters Anthology about how Zuckuss and 4-LOM saved an evacuating Rebel Transport from Hoth from being captured by the Empire. After searching around the internet for a while I managed to gather up all the releases of Zuckuss and 4-LOM in action figure, bust, statue and miniature form. It's a relatively small amount, but those statues are over $100 a piece for something that is over 11-inches tall. I also swore to myself that I would never buy a bust, but they look really good so I'll be saving my quarters to get all those. The only drawback is that I, on impulse, bought a Lando as Jabba's Palace Guard from Brian's Toys. Anybody want it?

HeroClix Brave and the Bold Reflections

After reading some websites and other people's opinions on the Alter Ego Mechanic in the latest HeroClix expansion, Brave and the Bold I'm not as sold on it as I was when I read about it earlier this week. My problem with it is that even though you might get a Superman or Batman for 40 odd points rather than the 200+ for Superman and 70+ for Batman their dials are so shallow and not as juicy as they are if you are playing with them at full points and full strength. Some of the paint jobs are not as good as I first thought. This is the Fire and Ice dual figure from the latest set. Look at their faces. They have no personality. It looks like someone just used a black sharpie and made little dots where their eyes are supposed to be. I call this Sharpie Eyes. Other than that I think Fire is supposed to have a bit of a darker skin tone because she's Brazilian, but everything else is spot on with their costumes. The base also lacks the Justice League of America team ability which is something they need because they were long running members of the Justice League International (JLI). Yes, they do have the Justice League International Keyword meaning they can use the JLI Feat that is available to players as prize support at tournaments or via print and play on the HeroClix web site, but that does nothing for them since they have no team ability. The one thing that bothers me is that Fire has a clear green flame in her hand, so why not have have a clear blue icicle in Ice's hand? One of the pieces I ordered from MiniatureMarket.com that I am glad that I purchased is Martian Manhunter on a throne of Choco (Oreo) cookies. They made a good sculpt of that one and the look of it is so dynamic. He also suffers from what I call Sharpie eyes, but for Martian Manhunter that seems to be okay. It makes him look alien and for a character that is named Martian Manhunter that works. I like how you can almost make out the individual filling in the cookies of the throne. The Choco he's holding that he is about to eat is in such a position that it looks like he's got facial hair growing around his chin, and he is stroking it. I would have gone without the glass of milk in his hand since it does not look like a glass of milk, but just a round white thing. I would have gone the extra step and somehow crafted something clear around the milk glass so it looked like a glass of milk, and not a white cylinder.

New Warhammer Fantasy Battles

I was going through my e-mail this morning and I had received an e-mail from Games Workshop advertising the newest edition (I think it is 8th) of Warhammer Fantasy Battles due out in July. Rumor has it coming out July 10th but that was not confirmed by the e-mail. This throws a monkey wrench into some of my fellow gamers plans because some of them that wanted to get into Warhammer Fantasy went out earlier this year and bought the 7th edition rulebook. Some people might think that five to six months is a good amount of time to learn the rules of a new game. It's not. Not only do you have to learn the rules of playing the game, but you also have to learn everything about the army you are playing in the group's Army Book. Then you have to paint up all the miniatures you need to have your 1500 point (more or less) army ready to play. If you are really good you might get through some (about 20 miniatures) in a weekend, but for some armies you need 20 of a lot of the army so you are looking at a whole lotta time eaten up by painting and assembling little plastic miniatures. It was this reason that I held off on getting the old Rulebook until I could have it confirmed that a new one was on the horizon. This is the confirmation that I have been looking for. My only concern is that what about the Army Books that has been released for 7th edition? I'm planning to get a Skaven Army together at some point and they just had the release of a new Army Book and miniatures for them. Are the 7th edition army books going to be backwards compatible or will I have to go ahead and plunk down the cash on both the army book and rule book at one time? I may wait until the beginning of next year when things have been ironed out with the new rules and everyone gets the new rules down before I decide to play a game.

Carl Macek Passes Away

On Saturday April 17th Carl Macek passed away from a heart attack; he was only 58 years old. You may remember Mr. Macek's name from the opening credits of the Robotech cartoon from the 1980's. He was the driving force behind Robotech and many other Anime shows coming to the United States up to this point. He was not without controversy. It has been said that he hated subtitling Anime and the company he founded with Jerry Beck, Streamline Pictures, only released one Anime title with subtitles and that was the movie tour de force that is Akira. He also had a hand in dubbing current shows like Bleach and Naruto for audiences here in the states. It has also been said that without Robotech there would have been no Ren and Stimpy cartoons and without them there would be no Adult Swim block on Cartoon Network. Say what you want about the man, he left a big imprint on those of us that grew up in the 1980's with Robotech. He somehow seamlessly blended three totally different shows; Macross, Southern Cross and Genesis Climber Mospedia, into one big story and even tried to bring his own story into the Robotech mythos with The Sentinels that only got three episodes before the money ran out. He showed that storytelling was not dead and also introduced pretty much everyone who is between twenty-five and thirty-five to Anime with Robotech. This also drove a lot of people that were young and had any interest in gaming to the Robotech Role-Playing Game (RPG) books. My older brother and I played a lot of Robotech Macross and Sentinels campaigns when we were younger. You might say that the Robotech RPG was a gateway drug for me and my older brother to things like Dungeons and Dragons and White Wolf's Storyteller system of Role-Playing Games. I was not that into White Wolf's games, but I gave them a shot and found I just did not like the atmosphere of the system. The Robotech Role-Playing Game still holds a place in my heart for the sheer fun of playing it. I tried to do a couple of things with the game. First I tried to integrate the MOS idea from the Southern Cross book into the rest of the game books, but I was not that successful (it never got off the ground). The second thing I tried to do is streamline combat in the mecha kind of like the Dungeons and Dragons 3.0 and 3.5 base attack bonus (again, it never got off the ground). I think the system was hampered by the Palladium system of Character Creation and choosing of skills rather than just making it all about combat because that was what the show was all about to me when I was younger. Now that I am older I can look back on it and think to myself that it was a really good story that was being told. Mr. Macek I salute you sir, and wish you a good trip to see Roy Fokker in heaven.

Star Wars on Blu-Ray?

At this past week's C2E2 convention in Chicago, Steve Sansweet let a couple of things slip about two projects that George Lucas is working on. The first of these is that both trilogies of Star Wars will be coming out on Blu-Ray sooner rather than later. According to Mr. Sansweet they will not only contain High Definition copies of the movies on the disks, but they will also contain some of the dailies that were shot, but never made it into the movies. I like this idea. Not only do I like the Blu-Ray idea, but the releasing of the dailies of the movies as well. It would help explain a few things about the movies and give us insight into the whole process of putting these movies together. That and any more Star Wars goodness that adds to the movies is something that I enjoy. There's also going to be outtakes on the disks so you can see various missteps, gaffes and just blowing of lines that these actors did over the years. I wonder if they will have anything with Grand Moff Tarkin going on about his miniatures army. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the Blu-ray is out in time for the holidays 2010 so they can make excellent Chanukah or Christmas gifts. The other thing that he let slip is that they are going to be producing a cartoon series that is supposed to take place after Return of the Jedi. There is no time table on when this series is supposed to be released, other than hopefully by fall of 2011 by some rumors. I think this has been a long time coming. Ever since the Internet has come into wide use by the general public back in the 1990's there has always been talk of a movie trilogy that is supposed to take place after Return of the Jedi. This is not going to be a movie series, but a half-hour weekly cartoon, and with the success of the Clone Wars cartoon on Cartoon Network they will probably have a success on their hands as long as Lucas does not have a hand in the actual directing or script writing of episodes. As I once read somewhere online, Lucas is a great idea man, but he just does not have the chops to be a good director or writer. Another thing that I briefly wanted to touch upon was that later this year Hasbro is going to be releasing one of their Star Wars action figure lines on the old school type of card. I think this is a good idea because I grew up with these figures and there was just a personality with the old cards. Cards for action figures these days are very generic for most of the toy lines out there. For the Star Wars line you got a big card with a full body shot (most of the time) for the figure you were buying so you knew where they came from in the movies. They had a picture on the back of the figure that had all the figures out at that point and had a couple blacked out on some early Return of the Jedi, but gave us the names of the figure so we could let our imaginations run wild on what or who they might be.

New Comic Book Day on Tuesday?

This link takes you to the Comics Alliance web site article that is speaking of the Dealer Conference that took place during C2E2. It appears that Diamond is pushing hard for new comic day be on Tuesday and a majority of the dealers in attendance agreed (it was a 60/40 split). This is kind of an odd thing. I know Diamond is single-handedly running the comic book distribution business, but in the time since about my 12th birthday back until I stopped picking them up in the mid 1990's new comic books always came out on Thursday. Then at some point between then and now they got pushed back Wednesday and now there's talk of moving them to Tuesday? Personally I like having them released on Wednesday because it gives me something to look forward to at mid-week, and if there's a holiday that means shipping is pushed back a day and then our books are not ready to be picked up until Thursday then that makes the weekends that much better. Moving comic book day to Tuesday means that Diamond can get everything shipped out on the weekend so they arrive on Monday and although most shops generally use the downtime on Tuesday to get everything ready for the next day it would mean using the semi-dead retail day of Monday to get everything ready. To me this just seems like a lot of work and inconvenience to dealers who have things set up for Wednesday. Diamond just wants to get everything out at a uniform time and arrive at the same time so there are no leaks onto the internet of storylines a day early when some dealer gets antsy and puts out new books early. Dealers also discussed a sort of policing system that they would pay into a fund to have some people go around and make sure no comic books shops were putting out their new comics early. I know a lot of other industries do something similar to this by sending in "secret shoppers" to make sure new CD's or DVD's are not out before their street date. There are fines to the stores that do, but with less smaller stores out there to deal with The Targets, Best Buys and Wal-Marts of the world can afford a fine from Paramount or some other movie or music company. This very rarely happens as most chain stores generally stick to the street dates on the boxes the items are shipped in, and keep their honest employees in this role. This would make a difference to the music and movie industries, but for something as niche as comic books I just don't see it happening. Also at C2E2 DC Comics had a panel dedicated to the Johnny DC crowd. Okay so it was for the kids and not so much for the adults, but the adults came along anyway and asked questions too. Some of the things they discussed included the upcoming Crisis on Infinite Toddlers happenings in Tiny Titans. It's not going to be something earth shattering and ruin Tiny Titans, it's going to be Supergirl trying to get all the Titans to go to sleep for the night. In the Batman the Brave and the Bold comic, there will be an upcoming appearance of Cyborg Superman. There was some Blackest Night hints in issue 150 of Scooby Doo, and that the Golden Age villain Mad Mummy in Billy Bateson and the Magic of Shazam! DiDio also hinted at a possible return of Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the Eighth Grade or possibly a Superman series some time down the line. That's all for this month; I know I promised a Deadpool review, but the Times had to go up early this month and I did not get everything written that I wanted so there's something to look forward to next month.

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