Waiting for more JLU

I am so frustrated that Cartoon Network can't get its act together to show us more Justice League Unlimited. If you're not aware of this, as I wasn't until a few days ago, five more episodes have aired in other places, and are available as torrents for you to download and watch on your computer.

Given CN's history of scheduling my favorite shows directly into cancellation (Transformers, anyone?), I figure this is how I'll be catching JLU from here on out.

Since I certainly wouldn't want to be the one to corrupt you into downloading TV shows from the Internet, a practice that, even though they haven't been played in the US, is still legally questionable, I recommend you do not use the links below to download torrent files for the five newest episodes.

• JLU 5×05 - Flash and Substance
• JLU 5×06 - Dead Reckoning
• JLU 5×07 - Patriot Act
• JLU 5×08 - The Great Brain Robbery
• JLU 5×09 - Grudge Match

List of De-powered Mutants

After House of M most mutants lost their powers and unlike Iceman stayed that way. Here is a list of mutants that have been depowered. Most mutants on this list came from a variety of comics and Wizard #172. This might be a bit of a spoiler so just to make sure if you don't want to know, don't click on the link.
Click here to read the list of De-powerd Mutants.

Is Marvel really scared of Interracial marriages?

I would normally leave topics like this alone, but after reading more and more about this marriage I'm just a bit fed up. It all seems to start in February (Black History Month) with Storm #1. Normally I could give a rat's ass who Storm ends up with, she hasn't been one of my favorites in a long time. However, I'm a huge Forge fan and nothing bothers me more than the fact that they dated for a decade and damn nothing happens. Black Panther caches her eyes fighting the Red Ghost and she falls madly in love? Give me a break....I wouldn't mind that much if they had been planning this for years, but they have only devoted five issue in the past years to this build up. This seems more like a forced event then anything. This is not the marriage of Jean and Scott or for that matter Spider-man and Mary Jane. Storm leaving the X-men is so out of character. Are they trying to attract more African American readers? If so, you know there is nothing wrong with interracial marriages. I may be alone here, but I really enjoy Hudlin's run on Black Panther, I think he is a great replacement for Priest, but this event just makes my stomach turn.

Michael Turner's phobia?

Is it just me? But by looking at this image and past Michael Turner artwork is he just afraid of drawing feet? I thought Rob Liefeld was the only one with that phobia. Anyway this is the variant cover to Civil War#1 which comes out in May. Feet or no feet whose side are you on?

New team on X-men

So According to Wizard 173, the adjectiveless X-men will be getting a new creative team this summer. I'm not a fan of Peter Milligan on Superhero books and his run on X-men has been very forgettable to say the least. Larroca’s pencils are really carrying the book and they haven’t been that great since his first 12 issues of X-treme. So the new team will consist of writer Mike Carey (Lucifer, Ultimate FF/X-Men) and artist Chris Bachalo (Death, Uncanny X-men). I don’ t mind this change now…hell I probably won’t be able to tell the difference.

The part that bothers me the most is that according to Joe Quesada, in an interview with Newsarama, the new team roster will consist of:

• Mystique
• Sabretooth
• Cable
• Rogue
• Cannonball
• Iceman

Hmmm I seem to recall a team somewhere in the past that consisted of Mystique and Sabretooth…and that worked out for the best....but what the Hell? They are going to put Sabretooth on a team!!!! A rapist, a fucking killer, a baby eater, one of Wolverine's greatest foes…. great idea! Then Mystique, who killed Moira Mactaggert (the one time love of Professor X) and has tried to kill the X-men on numerous occasions. What the hell is the editorial staff thinking? Is anyone who works on the X-books required to do some research? Of course I will read it, but I really hope they mention some of this continuity like Cannonball kicking the shit out of Sabretooth for manipulating Tab. Or Rogue confronting Mystique for killing Moira or shacking up with Gambit.

Where's the love for RSS?

Why is it that none of the action figure sites I visit have RSS feeds? I visit 5-6 sites every day a couple of times, and only one of them has a feed. Of course, that one feed is from Superhero Times, and it's only there because I put it there when I built that site. They don't even link to it from the homepage anymore, and I'm not sure if the autodiscover code is in the headers (in fact, I'm almost positive it's not, but I'm still to lazy to view source and look).

I bet I know why some sites don't have it - because you can't serve copious amounts of overtly-distracting, slow-to-load banner and panel ads in an RSS feed, and that goes against everything some of the major toy sites stand for. That, and the fact that they're not aware of the technology in the first place.

Please! Tell me where I can get action figure news via an RSS feed! There's got to be a site out there I missed, or that I just don't know about!

It's Miller Time

So what was the number one book of 2005? All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder according to sales. I could believe that...maybe if it was 1997. Frank Miller gave us some of the best Batman stories ever! Batman: Year One and of course Dark Knight Returns. But its 2006 and we've read Dark Knight Strikes Again. I know this isn't DC's version of the Ultimate books, but who are they kidding? The story isn't that much different for me to enjoy. It takes alot more than: "I'm the Goddamn Batman!" to get me going. Is he supposed to be a hard-ass? I really can't tell the difference. The delay of the book hasn't really been helping my opinion. Word of mouth is that Jim Lee is not even the hold up; that it might be Miller because he is busy with Sin City 2. Wish they had teamed Lee up with Morrison on ASS!!! heh! cause I'm not a Frank Quietly fan. Ohh well, at least it beat House of M for book of the year.

You remember when Gambit was a cool mofo'?

Yes, that’s right; I remember there was a time when Gambit was a cool motherfucker! He was the Han Solo of the X-men universe…he could be trusted to an extent. Always thought to be the traitor in the mansion, he finally proved his worth with the X-men. He was sly, he always had a card up his sleeve (no pun intended) to get out of any situation. There was a time anything he did, was damn cool! The guy made it cool to fight with cards, do you realize how hard that is?!!! He was rumored to be the third Summers brother….and damn did he have a way with the ladies. The lucky bastard stole Rogue’s heart in the end. So what happened to this smooth bastard? Well for starters Jim Lee and Chris Claremont left the X-men, and Scott Lobdell took over.

That’s right, I’m not sure if most of you are aware, but Scott Lobdell is the guy that anally raped the Gambit character. He took the traitor story a bit too far, if anything his final story before he left the X-books was the trial of Gambit. In the story it stated Gambit, in his asshole days, took the marauders to the morlock tunnels, because he owed Sinister some cash or something stupid. This of course contradicts continuity, but that’s another rant. So Gambit was left in Antarctica to pursue his own solo book that lasted 24 issues. Since then he came back to the X-men and hasn’t really been in the spotlight.

So what’s the recent status of Remy Lebeu? Well his adventures now consist of him retrieving a sex tape, going blind and bitching about it for six issues, still bitching about how he can’t touch Rogue and just being in the background, saying stuff like: Good idea Alex! Rogue its’ you I love. Hell, I think he even lost his smooth Cajun accent that use to make even me swoon, and I’m as hetero as they come. He’s gone from getting any piece of ass he wanted to scoring with Mystique. Seriously, who hasn’t had Mystique in the Marvel universe? I think even Slapstick and Speedball DP’d her one time!

Which leads me to my latest rant. Peter Milligan has a brilliant idea that good guys make awesome villains. It’s worked in the past, hell Archangel was my favorite character for a loooooong time. So along with Sunfire, it seems that Gambit will be one of Apocalypse’s new Horsemen. I thought the traitor storyline was resolved with that Onslaught crap. Damn, my boy needed his moment in the spotlight, but this is a bit ridiculous. What possible reason could Gambit have to side with the big lips himself? To touch Rogue? Ohh come on! Invite Leech in for a threesome; at least you’ll be saving face that way Gambit! Ohh well can’t wait to read this and talk about it in our podcast. You can check out the eight page preview here

Marvel Solicitations-April 2006.

Looking through the April solicitations for Marvel I came to the realization that collecting comic books is getting to be a rather expensive hobby for me again. In the late 80’s and right into the early 90’s I was one of those kids that got 50 books a month! How the hell did I afford that? I only buy about 10 books a month now a days and get lots of trades. So anyway all of Marvel’s books will now be $2.99. Damn, you know when I was a kid I remembered the price increase from 60 cents to 65 cents. Those fucking thieves, how dare they charge an extra five cents an issue! Now I really don’t give a crap, this gives me more of a reason to drop monthly books and start getting more trades, which in the end are hella cheaper.
Ohh yeah, of course I have to bitch about something else…. So after issue six of Deadly Genesis, the story will continue into Ed Brudabaker’s Uncanny X-men. Don’t get me wrong I have been enjoying the hell out of his Captain America. But after a six issue stint is this guy really qualified to take over the X-men monthly book? Why the fuck not? It’s not like Marvel has a great track record of giving one of their big hitter books to great writers ahem Scott Lobdell, Joe Kelly and Chuck Austen to name just a few. I wish he was taking over the adjective-less X-men title though, that book really needs some help. Hopefully Claremont will wrap up his stories before he gets shafted off the book again. The poor guy can't get a break, in this day an age there really is no room for stories like his. You can't dangle a sub plot line for more than five issues it seems. I really miss those stories that took 40 issues to resolve, gave me something to look foward to, everything seems rushed now and there is a lack of subplots in stories.

Why Mongul is a loser

Mongul is one of the biggest losers in the DCU. Here are some reasons why.

He was created by Jim Starlin as a DC analogue for Marvel’s Thanos, who was already an analogue for DC’s Darkseid. He’s a copy of a copy of a copy, and as anyone who’s ever made a mix tape knows, by the third generation a copy is just noise.

He has never actually won a conflict with DC heroes. Darkseid wins occasionally.

His best appearance is Alan Moore’s classic Superman story, “For the Man Who Has Everything”, where he essentially served as the delivery mechanism for a hallucinogenic plant. Weather Wizard could have delivered the plant, and the story would have worked just as well.

He blew up Coast City! That’s something, right? Well, I figure that Ron Marz used Mongul, a Superman villain, in a GL story so he could have a throwaway character destroy CC. He had to figure out some way to save Sinestro for the final showdown, and Darkseid was probably otherwise occupied with reorganizing his socks. And who do we get when Darkseid’s unavailable?

Oh, oh! He was in Identity Crisis #1! That was cool, right? Oh, wait, he was just there to break up a conversation with a fight scene. Again, Darkseid probably wanted royalties, and oh, right, things actually have to happen when Darkseid appears.

There are quite a few more reasons why Mongul is a loser, but I’m going to skip straight to my favorite:

Mongul is dead. He was killed by Neron. He was replaced by his son, Mongul. NO ONE NOTICED. ‘Nuff said.

Proof that the devil does in fact exist!

Yes this is solid proof that devil does exist and Pat Lee has made a deal with him. Can someone please explain to me how a non-talented fuck like Pat Lee still gets gigs? How a man who owes over a million dollars to writers, artists, telephone companies, Diamond, Hasbro and lawyers still gets offered high paying jobs? How a man who has no concept of human anatomy is drawing monthly titles? The devil must exist and he now owns the soul of Pat-I'm still driving a fucking Porsche, so you broke bitches can eat my ass-Lee!

Now, someone had the audacity to team him up with Ron Marz(Green Lantern, Scion) on Cyberforce. I only got a few issues of the original run back in 1992, mainly because Marc Silvestri could draw Pollyana vs. Winnie the Pooh and I would still pick it up. Ok, back to the ranting, who's great idea was it to have Pat Lee pencil this new book? Have they seen the travesty over in Spider-man or Fantastic Four Vs. X-men. There are plenty of good artist right now more suitable for this job that are struggling to get their stuff published let alone land a monthly title.

Newsarama was given an eight page preview, so you can judge for your self. Click here for the preview.

The other other costume!

So I was reading this Other crossover that is going through the Spider-man titles. Mainly because I'm such a David fan. So far its been eh, anywho by the end of the arc, Amazing Spider-man# 529 to be precise, we are supposed to see a new costume. This costume is designed by Tony Stark, so a Spider-armor or something to that effect if you will. So looking through my backissues...I remembered THE CLASSIC SPIDER-ARMOR!!!!!! from Web of Spider-man 100.

I would like to think Tony Stark is more imaginitve than that. Maybe Tony is too busy staying drunk on his three month gap between issues of Iron Man but come on! We all know we want the classic Spider Armor back! Then we can spend an extra two bucks an issue on pretty covers just like this one and then they can make variants. We could all party like its 1993 again! Could the house of ideas, have run out of ideas? Who knows, maybe Spider-man will say: Stick that new costume up your ass Stark and ohh yeah I'm rollin' solo again I quit this mockery of the Earth's Mightiest Heroes! I'm Spider-man bitch... my fucking Spidey-Head Pez dispenser from my movies roll in more dough than this lame ass comic!

Update: Damn, its even worst than I thought! check it.

Some people just have too much faith!

Get the fuck out of here!!! You mean to tell me Chuck Austen hasn't been writing X-men under the pen name Peter Milligan? That he's actually been working on something else this whole time. Austen at one time was Marvel go-to-boy, so at one time he was writing almost every titlte for Marvel, that is until they figured out the guy was a horrible writer! Really, I'm not exaggerating here, the guy try to make us believe that the devil was Nightcrawler's dad and pretty much everyone's dad as well.

So according to this article found at Newsarama, Austen is doing and American manga with aritist Hiroki Otsuka for Tokyopop. This will be the second time Austen has worked with a Japanese artist (Kia Asamiya had the misfortune of drawing Werewolves kicking the crap out of the elite X-men). Boys of Summer is about baseball players trying to get laid.....damn I'm sold!!!! I'm kind of biased when it comes to manga, I like it to be from the land of the rising sun. However, I may give this a shot, I just remember at one time I liked the War Machine comics Austen did for Marvel's Max line.

I am the X-FACTOR!!!!! or Best Damn Single Issue in 2005!!!

2005 gave us many great moments in comics from the possible betrayal of Emma Frost to Batman telling Superman his ass hasn't inspired anyone since he died. From Blue Beetle getting his brains splattered all over the floor to the triumphant return of Hawkeye.....oh well, forget the last one. To summarize things we had some great moments and we had some eh why the hell am I still reading this shit moments? Then we have the best damn moment in 2005.....which was giving Peter David his X-factor book back.

At a time when Jim Lee, Whilce Portacio and Rob Liefeld were given their own X-books. The underdog book was X-Factor, written by Peter David and illustrated by Larry Stroman(whatever happened to that guy?). It was the early to mid 90's so writers were normaly overshadowed by the artist. I was a huge fan of David's Incredible Hulk run at the time so I knew I was in for a ride when he took over X-Factor. He took B and C list characters at the time and made them fan favorites with just a couple of issues. He did things on that book that most writers would think impossible. He made Quicksilver, who up till X-factor vol.1 92 was one of the biggest dickheads in the Marvel universe, into a likeable character. But, this was not to last, David was forced into doing crossovers and the editors really had too much control of his stories. So he left the book and the infamous Scott Lobdell took over, but that's a different story.

Finally about 10 years later in 2004, David got some of his characters back in a little miniseries called Madrox. Actually it is thanks to Madrox that we are blessed with X-factor. The sales on Madrox were good enough to give David his own monthly title the green light. Now we get to the good stuff. Finally after a couple of delays in December of 2005 we finally got our first issue of X-factor. This unlikely cast has some old faces and some new....really no one wanted these third tier characters.

So what makes X-factor#1 my favorite comic of 2005? Easy...David's love for the characters. He could have easily killed Rictor or Siryn in the first few pages for shock value. Instead he uses all his characters to slowly set the stage for a damn good story. Rahne screaming her head off at Rictor not to jump, because he lost his powers showed the love these characters once shared for each other. M's pompus attitude, Siryn's accent and Rictor's self centered attitude are all here. No one acts out of character, this is what we should recieve out of every writer when they take over a book. Of course the ending really sealed the deal for me; The look on Rictor's face as he is pushed off the building by one of Madrox's dupes was priceless. I am the X-factor! How bad ass is that? The art is superb, Ryan Sook follows the style set by the Madrox miniseries. Its got a dark tone to it, like a film Noir, nice little detective feel to it. If you haven't picked this book up yet go and read it!

Marvel toy license goes to Hasbro, meaing it's been taken from Toy Biz

According to this article on Newsarama, Marvel has granted master toy licensee powers to Hasbro, and has effectively ended its licensing relationship with Toy Biz.

Does this mean no more Marvel Legends? Who knows. Does it mean X-Men Transformers? I hope so.

One interesting thing about this transition is that Hasbro just lost the license for DC action figures not too long ago, in part due to the fall of the Batman lines (remember all those glow-in-the-dark Batman figures? shudder). Now DC seems to have entered a full-on licensing arrangement with Mattel. While Hasbro has never been known for super-articulated figures, if the transition from Marvel Legends to whatever Hasbro has to offer doesn't at least compare to the DC Superheroes line, there are going to be a lot of unhappy fans.