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« March 2011 | Main | May 2011 » April 30, 2011Daily dose of Crom! It's the end of April, so hopefully we're done with Crom. Just to be sure, here's a few extra doses. By fnord12 | April 30, 2011, 8:58 PM | Comics| Link
Daily dose of Crom! By fnord12 | April 29, 2011, 8:57 PM | Comics| Link
Daily dose of Crom! Today we found out that despite his frequent invocations, Conan doesn't actually think Crom is very effective. I wonder if there's a Nasal-Ymir. By fnord12 | April 28, 2011, 8:56 PM | Comics | Comments (2) | Link Steven Seagal's Sex Slaves Say what now? The plaintiff, Kayden Nguyen, said she met the action star in February through an ad on Craigslist seeking an executive assistant and, after three interviews, was told to pack for a trip to New Orleans, where the A&E show "Steven Seagal Lawman" was taping. When she arrived, the lawsuit says, she discovered that Seagal had been keeping two young female Russian "attendants" who were essentially on-call for sex -- 24-seven. On that first night, Nguyen was ushered to a secluded house where Seagal was staying with his wife and the two young women. He then proceeded to treat Nguyen as his "sex toy" despite her complaints, the lawsuit says, responding to her terror as he fondled and manhandled her by saying, "Relax, we won't do anything special tonight ... I'll save that for another night." And it just goes on and on with more bizarro details. Nguyen only filed a civil suit, asking for over $1million. Odd that she didn't file criminal charges. Mostly, it's all fucked up and a little too strange to believe. But then again, it is Steven Seagal. I've seen bits of that cop show he did. He's a strange guy. By min | April 28, 2011, 12:28 PM | Ummm... Other?| Link Are you @#$&!#@ kidding me? Breaking political blogging silence briefly for this local story: The solar installations, the first and most extensive of their kind in the country, are part of a $515 million investment in solar projects by PSE&G under a state mandate that by 2021 power providers get 23 percent of their electricity from renewable sources. If they were laid out like quilt pieces, the 5-by-2.5-foot panels would blanket 170 acres. Are these people nuts? These solar panels are marring the beauty of their precious utility poles and wires? Is this a joke? And look at this poor lady: "I came back from running errands and there they were," Mrs. Olsen, 37, said. "It's not right. They should have warned us." The horror! No one expects the solar panels! By fnord12 | April 28, 2011, 11:25 AM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (1) | Link
Daily dose of Crom! Today's Crom comes from Marvel's telling of The Frost Giant's Daughter. Kurt Busiek also did a version of this story which i read in a trade that i borrowed from Wanyas. But when i went to read it, the book fell apart in my hands. It wasn't my fault! Wanyas said i didn't have to buy him a new copy, but i know that he still secretly blames me for it. By fnord12 | April 27, 2011, 8:53 PM | Comics | Comments (2) | Link
Daily dose of Crom! By fnord12 | April 26, 2011, 8:52 PM | Comics| Link Megalon? By fnord12 | April 26, 2011, 4:42 PM | Godzilla| Link
Daily dose of Crom! By fnord12 | April 25, 2011, 8:51 PM | Comics| Link
Daily dose of Crom! It's a special triple-Crom as Conan meets Elric of Melnibone! Also, it's the first appearance of Kulan Gath (sort of). By fnord12 | April 24, 2011, 8:50 PM | Comics| Link
Daily dose of Crom! By fnord12 | April 23, 2011, 8:49 PM | Comics| Link
Daily dose of Crom! By fnord12 | April 22, 2011, 8:48 PM | Comics| Link
Daily dose of Crom! By fnord12 | April 21, 2011, 8:47 PM | Comics| Link
Daily dose of Crom! By fnord12 | April 20, 2011, 8:46 PM | Comics| Link "Tickling the penguin" Requires sound. via Balloon Juice, where the post title is a Bloom County reference. By fnord12 | April 20, 2011, 4:06 PM | Cute Things| Link We Know Where You've Been and Who You've Been Talking To Got an iPhone or an iPad? Did you know it was keeping track of your whereabouts? Link The file contains the latitude and longitude of the phone's recorded coordinates along with a timestamp, meaning that anyone who stole the phone or the computer could discover details about the owner's movements using a simple program. For some phones, there could be almost a year's worth of data stored, as the recording of data seems to have started with Apple's iOS 4 update to the phone's operating system, released in June 2010. Imagine your parents getting a hold of that info. On a totally unrelated note, i enjoy that the tech consultant they talked to felt it was completely acceptable to be quoted saying "cockup". By min | April 20, 2011, 2:21 PM | Liberal Outrage & Science| Link Library Books on the Kindle "We're doing a little something extra here," Marine continued. "Normally, making margin notes in library books is a big no-no. But we're extending our Whispersync technology so that you can highlight and add margin notes to Kindle books you check out from your local library. Your notes will not show up when the next patron checks out the book. But if you check out the book again, or subsequently buy it, your notes will be there just as you left them, perfectly Whispersynced." It's about time they made borrowing books from the library possible. The best part is that it keeps your notes. I wish the lending feature where you lend books you own to another Kindle user allowed both the lender and lendee to see each other's notes. And, unlike lending between users, this library lending is going to allow borrowing the same book multiple times. What a novel idea. Stupid Amazon. By min | April 20, 2011, 2:16 PM | Boooooks| Link RU Doombot or Not? Welcome to our new semi-regular feature here at SuperMegaMonkey where, in the spirit of Fantastic Four #350, we take a look at questionable appearances by Dr. Doom and determine if it was the real deal or just a Doombot. For our inaugural post, we'll take a look at a crossover between Super-Villain Team-Up #14 and Champions #16 (Oct-Nov 1977). It starts with Magneto showing up in Latveria to discover that Dr. Doom has already taken over the entire world with a mind-controlling gas. Bored with complete domination of the Earth, Dr. Doom sets Magneto free, allowing the evil mutant to challenge his dominion. After a long plot that involves the Avengers, the Beast, the Champions, and the Hulk, Dr. Doom winds up breathing in his own mind-control gas. The results are... bizarre. "Doom... must be obeyed... but i am Doom! Why does Doom not give me orders?? Why???" Conclusion: I think we can pretty safely assume Doombot. It may have been the real Doom who took over the world, but the one who shows up at the end is obviously a 'bot that Doom sent in to end the charade once he was too bored to go any further with it. By fnord12 | April 20, 2011, 1:49 PM | Comics | Comments (2) | Link
Daily dose of Crom! By fnord12 | April 19, 2011, 8:46 PM | Comics | Comments (1) | Link Lick them batteries Obviously you do not want to try this sort of thing at home unless you are a complete moron. By fnord12 | April 19, 2011, 3:46 PM | Science & Video Games| Link Marvel Sales By fnord12 | April 19, 2011, 3:26 PM | Comics| Link
SuperMegaSpeed Reviews Heroes For Hire #5 - Good that we're done with the Puppet Master plot, but i can't say i'm loving this. It's definitely not up there with Abnett & Lanning's cosmic stuff. I'm hoping it'll get better now that Misty Knight is actually awake (and not running around in hospital garb fighting the Punisher the whole issue). But next issue ("Target: Spider-Man!") doesn't look promising. I'm hoping for a mission statement issue, not a Misunderstanding Fight. Avengers - The Children's Crusade #5 - This is well written. I think the Iron Lad/Stature/Vision love triangle thingy is being developed well. I like how both Doom and Magneto are being depicted. And we're getting somewhere with the Scarlet Witch plot. So i'm enjoying this. One quibble: "We've got Wolverine flying through the air backwards... who's powerful enough to do that to Wolverine?" Uh... lots of people? Including just about everyone else in this issue save perhaps Patriot and Hawkeye Lass? Herc #1 - This may come off sounding like heresy (Literally!). But i was thinking, maybe if we have to so drastically revamp the Hercules story, it might be better just to take this creative team and have them write some different characters. Hercules had a good run. But there's no reason Marvel needs a Hercules series in publication at all times. Nowadays we know that a series is going to last a few years at best. Maybe it makes sense to take some good creative teams and just put them on rotations of minor characters. We could have Pak and Van Lente writing a series about (and i'll just choose totally at random) Power Pack or Alpha Flight. Or how about Roughhouse and Bloodsport? Twelve issues or whatever and if it doesn't take off, move on to something else. At least it would let the characters dry out a bit between reboots. That said... i enjoyed this issue and look forward to more. Annihilators #2 - Dire Wraiths! I'm not totally sold on the art, but i'm liking this story. I've never seen Ronan the Accuser quite so snarky, but i can live with it; he's been through a lot. And... Dire Wraiths! The Rocket Raccoon/Groot story i could live without (and i never thought i would say that). Black Panther #517 - Like Heroes For Hire, this one is losing me. I liked the vaguely Coming To America set-up of this series along with the non-traditional super-villain Vlad the Impaler. And i enjoyed Spider-Man last issue. But generally i feel like there isn't a lot of personality in this book; it's been a little too plot focused (and yet also moving slowly). And if i'm not enjoying the dialogue, i'm going to be focused on things like "Christopher Priest's Black Panther would never have been tricked into a Misunderstanding Fight with Luke Cage", who, by the way, seemed totally out of character and just downright stupid interrupting the Panther while he was apprehending a murderer. New Avengers #11 - Now, let's get the continuity stuff out of the way first. The Red Skull was in suspended animation since World War II, and before Captain America was dumped in the Arctic. It's 1959 in these flashback scenes, so both the Red Skull and Captain America appearing here must be the 1950s versions: the crazy anti-commie Cap and the communist imposter Red Skull. And so far i'm not really seeing a point in introducing these pre-Avengers Avengers if all they're going to do is go after a fake Red Skull. Also, Chaykin's art stinks. But the scene of Namora straddling a whale on a tidal wave crushing the Nazi base was still pretty cool. As for the modern scenes i feel like we're padding time a bit. We don't need to drag out the suspense of Mockingbird's injury for an entire issue. I'd be surprised if they killed her since they just brought her back, but either way, let's get it going. I do like Deodato's art, though. I thought the panel with the Thing, Spider-Man, and Dr. Strange at the hospital was very good. Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters #1 - Special thanks to Wanyas for picking this up for me. But this wasn't very good. Godzilla by himself is never all that interesting; he needs to be fighting other giant monsters (and preferably performing a flying jump kick). The title (Kingdom of Monsters) is promising, as is the cover showing all the other monsters, so i assume they're coming. But the writing was terrible, and the art was just OK, so i don't think i need any more of this. On a positive note, i was pleased to see that IDW comics are building up their shared universe concept by including one of their characters from another one of their books. By fnord12 | April 18, 2011, 9:58 PM | Comics| Link Daily dose of Crom! By fnord12 | April 18, 2011, 8:42 PM | Comics| Link Whatever happened to the man of graduation? By fnord12 | April 18, 2011, 12:53 AM | Comics| Link
Daily dose of Crom! By fnord12 | April 17, 2011, 8:40 PM | Comics | Comments (1) | Link
Daily dose of Crom! By fnord12 | April 16, 2011, 8:40 PM | Comics| Link
Daily dose of Crom! By fnord12 | April 15, 2011, 8:37 PM | Comics| Link The Things People With Pets Come Up With Are kinda weird but also kinda wonderful.
By min | April 15, 2011, 3:21 PM | Ummm... Other?| Link
Daily dose of Crom! By fnord12 | April 14, 2011, 8:36 PM | Comics| Link Ladykillers by Lush
Here we go, I'm hanging out in Camden
So I say "hello" and I try to be nice
Hey you, the muscles and the long hair
So he talks for hours 'bout his sensitive soul
I'm as human as the next girl
Blondie was with me for a summer
Oh God, the boy had such an ego
When he's nice to me he's just nice to himself
When you say you love me
Ooh, you're such a ladykiller, By min | April 14, 2011, 6:39 PM | Music| Link You don't fuck with David Byrne By fnord12 | April 14, 2011, 1:13 AM | Liberal Outrage & Music| Link
The rickrolling of America By fnord12 | April 13, 2011, 11:45 PM | Ummm... Other?| Link Everybody Hates A Pen Thief During a press conference with the president of Chile, the Czech Republic's president Vaclav Klaus is videotaped pocketing the ceremonial pen which also happens to be encrusted with semi-precious jewels. Link The best part is around 32 seconds when he gets this gleeful grin on his face and buttons up his jacket in a very self-satisfied manner. Now, since I can't understand a word the Chilean president is saying, for all I know, Klaus is smiling because he just got complimented. I also enjoy the bit when he closes the box. It was said that the citizens of the Czech Republic were pretty outraged at the "theft". For his part, President Klaus had only this to say: "All I have to say is, it is not a pen but just a stylus," Klaus himself said on Tuesday, adding that he takes things all the time. By min | April 13, 2011, 10:03 PM | Liberal Outrage| Link Daily dose of Crom! By fnord12 | April 13, 2011, 8:34 PM | Comics| Link
Daily dose of Crom! First a special treat. Conan meets Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Or, at least, Fafnir and Blackrat. And now, what you've been waiting for. Your daily dose of Crom! By fnord12 | April 12, 2011, 8:31 PM | Comics | Comments (1) | Link
Daily dose of Crom! By fnord12 | April 11, 2011, 8:26 PM | Comics| Link
Daily dose of Crom! By fnord12 | April 10, 2011, 8:29 PM | Comics| Link
Daily dose of Crom! By fnord12 | April 9, 2011, 8:28 PM | Comics| Link
Daily dose of Crom! By fnord12 | April 8, 2011, 11:00 PM | Comics| Link Caveman vs Monk Chris Sims definitively answers the Whoodwin question you didn't even know you were asking... By fnord12 | April 8, 2011, 3:17 PM | Whoodwin| Link
Daily dose of Crom! By fnord12 | April 7, 2011, 8:25 PM | Comics| Link Down with Daylight Savings I hate having to change the clocks twice a year. It's stupid. And it never seems to be a good change. It always seems to result in it being darker either when i'm waking up or when i'm driving home or both. I keep hoping the US will eventually realize it's a stupid practice and just stop doing it altogether. So, yay, Russia! Leading the way in an incipient global trend that rejects the notion of changing the clocks in spring and autumn, the Russian authorities believe the move will reduce human - and animal - misery. It means Russia, which stretches across nine time zones from Kaliningrad in Europe to the Kamchatka peninsula in the Pacific, will stay permanently on summer time from this Sunday, gaining extra daylight in the afternoons during its seemingly interminable winter. The president, Dmitry Medvedev, said Russians were fed up with the time changes because they caused "stress and illnesses" and "upset the human biorhythm". "It's irritating, people wake up early and don't know what to do with themselves for the spare hour," he said. "And that's not to mention the unhappy cows and other animals that don't understand the clocks changing and don't understand why the milkmaids come to them at a different time." "During the period of the clocks changing, the number of heart attacks increases by 50% and the number of suicides by 66%," he said. Crime will also drop when the clocks are not put back in October because thieves are less active during daylight hours, Tishkov added. Do you know how many time zones there were in the Soviet Union? Eleven: By min | April 7, 2011, 10:07 AM | Ummm... Other?| Link Vegetarians Stink Less Here's an article that talks about body odors and how we perceive them. He mentions several studies that tested various aspects of our attraction/repulsion to body odor. I just wanted to point out 2 things.
My question is why the hell are you so goddamned stinky in bed? I could understand if you'd been exercising or if you'd been wearing a cotton pad in your armpit all day to absorb your stink, but why the hell are you so stinky in your sleep? What must your sheets and blankets smell like cause i know they've been on your bed for way longer than 3 days?!?!? Just ew. We win again. By min | April 7, 2011, 8:34 AM | Science | Comments (1) | Link I'm a Mosquito Magnet Given the option of biting anyone else or me, mosquitoes inevitably go for me even if i'm covered in repellent and surrounded by citronella candles. Researchers at the USDA are trying to figure out what chemicals attract mosquitoes the most in order to improve mosquito repellents - Link. What with people catching West Nile, dengue fever, and malaria all over the place, it's prolly a good idea. And they really ought to speed it up. I could be next! Asshole! Figures. By min | April 7, 2011, 8:18 AM | Science| Link
Daily dose of Crom! Since it's allergy season, we're starting up a temporary new feature here at SuperMegaMonkey. By fnord12 | April 6, 2011, 9:37 PM | Comics| Link Recap #38 Lair of the Medusas, Part Deux By min | April 6, 2011, 6:07 PM | D&D| Link Perils of linkrot This site used to have an entry on Blink Dogs, and at the bottom was a little chart on Animal Control difficulty levels which i thought was neat. Unfortunately, the page is now gone, but i found it archived on google. Preserving the chart here in case the google cache goes away as well:
Right now i've got a player with a baby griffin and she's training it. I've got her naming specific "tricks" that she can teach it, using rules around how long it takes to learn a trick and how many tricks can be taught at one time. A graduated scale like in the table above would probably make things a lot easier. I'm assuming this is some D20 thing (the numbers are otherwise meaningless to me), but it's a good concept and i'd like to adapt it to all proficiencies. I could imagine myself creating charts like this for every relevant proficiency if all my nerd-time wasn't currently devoted to my comics timeline, but i suppose i should look and see if someone's already done so. Would probably require a 'D20 to 1st/2nd Edition' conversion, though. By fnord12 | April 6, 2011, 1:15 PM | D&D| Link
SuperMegaSpeed Reviews Captain America and the Secret Avengers #1 - Well, yeah, this comic only wound up in my hands by accident, and everyone involved is truly sorry about the matter. Referring to this as a Secret Avengers issue is a bit misleading; Captain America and the Secret Avengers is downright false. What's wrong with Secret Avengers Presents: Black Widow and Agent 13? Not that changing the title would have fixed anything. The Rob Liefeld back-up reprint (from Marvel Comics Presents #53) was surprisingly not horrible. I think the Bob Wiacek inks probably helped matters but it's true that the storytelling was actually pretty clear. And i liked the fight sequence. Reminded me of an old Jack Kirby sequence, except since it wasn't Kirby, they weren't tiny little men stabbing each other with fountain pens. Captain America #616 - It's the 70th anniversary of Captain America. Is it a coincidence that it's issue 616? I hate anniversary issue because they are full of garbage. This issue has about 15 pages of actual story and a bunch of filler. Some timeline related comments on the first story: Crimson Dynamo IV, Yuri Petrovich, appeared in the Champions, 1976 publication date. That means Bucky was active as the Winter Soldier much later than i'd realized; i kind of thought he was active during the "Hero Gap" period and then put on ice. Now it looks like he was active concurrent to the modern Marvel heroes. I enjoyed the idea of Bucky having to fight a giant bear-man in a Russian prison; a little cliched but nicely drawn. I guess Ursa Major (and maybe the other members of the Winter Guard) were arrested after disobeying orders and helping War Machine fight those Skrulls? Seems odd that he'd be willing to take orders from Petrovich. Still, that was good enough. Anything else in this book worth commenting on...? Brubaker's second story was too sentimental... Chaykin's story was crappy (and ugh, the art!)... i actually enjoyed concept behind the story about the small town that agreed to hide the AIM lab but i don't think it was done very well...the Baron Blood story's art was too "indie" for me... i might have liked the Hate-Monger clone story better if i wasn't already predisposed to not liking anything in this issue... and the Union Jack story was too sentimental. Black Panther #516 - Spider-Man's a bit late; he's supposed to show up in your third issue. But i appreciate him showing up, because he's funny. Avengers #11 - I like JRJR's art, but it's so distinctive that sometimes i make associations that i'm not supposed to. Like, since he drew the Eternals series, when i first turned the page to the scene with Xavier, i was sure that the big security robot thing was a Celestial. But still, i like the art, and i didn't mind that just about every page in this issue was a splash panel. Epic scope and all that. Good stuff. Good fights, nice cosmic scene with Eternity. Bendis did a better job summing up the Red Hulk and making me like him than Parker's been doing in his own book, i think. And now Thanos. We'll see if that's for real, considering that Abnett & Lanning left him stuck in the Cthuluverse. Also, have i mentioned that i really like the Oral History segments in the back of all the Bendis Avengers books? I thought this was really funny regarding Mantis: Tony Stark: I was never thrilled with the fact that she always referred to herself as 'this one'. Clint Barton: At first I thought it was a language thing and then I realized it was just a diva thing. "This one." I always wanted to go: which one? This one? Which one does when? Secret Avengers #11 - I think i like Brubaker's Secret Avengers better than his Captain America recently (anniversary issue aside). We're delving into this John Steele from Brubaker's Marvels Project, and i'm enjoying that. I loved that weird Alien-head snake-leg thing from the Shadow Council that we got a glimpse of; first time in a while i've seen something in a comic that freaked me out a bit. Interesting stuff. And i liked (what seemed to me to be) the Beast setting up a Cerebro-like device that Cap could use to scan Steele's memories. I'll also say, and this is totally random, that i thought it was a nice touch that one of the scientists was kind of an overweight and messy looking guy; it seemed a bit more real to me. Scientists in comics are always of a certain 'type' and this guy didn't fit that mold. But mainly, i just think it's a well written book. By fnord12 | April 5, 2011, 10:01 PM | Comics | Comments (5) | Link Godzilla vs Cthulhu? After all, Cthulhu's just one of them stupid-ass Japanese Godzilla monsters. By fnord12 | April 5, 2011, 1:19 PM | Godzilla| Link
Sounds awesome to me John Seavy at MightyGodKing lays out his "One Year" concept for a Marvel series: And since this occurred during one of the most crossover-rich periods in comics history, we have plenty of mutual data points to tie the other Marvel books into a cohesive timeline. "January 1983" doesn't necessarily translate across every title to the exact same moment in Marvel Time, but we know that Secret Wars happened within that span. So Johnny and Alicia started their relationship during that year, Tony Stark lost his company and had his bout with alcoholism, the Hulk turned intelligent, and Spider-Man got his black costume. (And a lot more such happenings, which he describes...) Basically, it was a busy freaking year. :) (You may feel free to contribute further momentous events in the comments section, but I think you get the idea.) The plan for the series I want to write borrows from DC's "52"; only instead of telling a "missing" year of continuity in real time, this 52-issue weekly series would go back and retell that 365-day span of Marvel Time in real time. The reverse of decompression, it would try to convey to the readers the sheer chaos that exists in the Marvel Universe, and what it feels like to live in a world moving that fast. A year where snow fell in summer, where gods and more-than-gods walked the earth, a year where Iron Man quit and Captain America got fired, a year of destruction and creation and joy and sorrow...Marvel. One Year. I am! I am! By fnord12 | April 4, 2011, 3:54 PM | Comics| Link "He looks terrible" doesn't mean he isn't a classic In keeping with our temporary ban on political posts, here's one of those rare pictures that always amuses me: behind-the-scenes footage of a Godzilla movie where the guys in the monster suits are standing around next to ordinary people. (Click the picture to get a nice historical review of the King Kong vs Godzilla movie). In related news, it turns out there is in fact a King Kong figure in the Bandai 6.5" Godzilla toyline, but (due to copyright reasons, i assume) he's pretty rare and goes for a fairly high price on ebay. By fnord12 | April 4, 2011, 10:55 AM | Godzilla| Link
Beware the Initios of April Just a reminder, as you can tell from the snow, today is April Fool's Day, which is going to make reading blogs really annoying. I did think this one was a good one, though, even if it's an older joke. By fnord12 | April 1, 2011, 11:16 AM | Ummm... Other?| Link |