Marvel Legends: Heroes Reborn “Iron-Man”

Build a figure collection: Ares series 2008

www.hasbro.com

Made in China

“Only at Wal*Mart”… that should have been the deterrent right there. Building “Ares” should’ve also been a red-flag. The fact that none of these little plastic ass-holes ever leave the box/packaging makes the “Build-a-figure” collection pointless for me. Alas… the compelling figure of Tony had to be purchased.

Like a stuttering idiot as soon as I saw it, admist all the poopy-handed minorities, Prometheum armor, Prometheum armor, P-p-pp…fuck yeah! Considering the figures humble origins it looks really good. The armor suit is painted fair.The medium gold cables over his crimson armor plates are definitely noticeable. Best shown of course, in the pose that its been packaged in. They even painted the center of his hand where his pulsar laser is.

The packaging is display friendly which is another bonus. Four popular strips run down the side of the posed figure, giving the buyer a little insight to what the comics looked like so you could compare your new toys authenticity/continuity. A cluttered mess of accessories for Ares is a drawback, but its not really distracting and usually goes unoticed.

I’m going to give this one a thumbs-up! It was dirt cheap when I bought it and its value is sure to go up giving its “Build-a-figure” origins. If you’ve got it, keep it.

Or sell it to the dumbass trying to put that shitty excuse for Ares together.

I had my Kindle for about a week before it got scratched up. It doesn’t matter how much I baby it I will always drop my gadgets. To help protect my Kindle I got a DODOcase last week. Amazon has tons of cases but nothing about them seemed worth the money. The DODOcase claims that they are 37% lighter than Amazons, while I don’t know exactly I can say that the weight is barely noticeable.  The case is made from Moroccan fiber that mimics leather and has a carved bamboo insert that you place your device into to hold it tight in place. The cases are hand made in San Francisco with old fashioned book binding techniques which I think gives them a much better feel, I like having the book feeling with the ability to carry thousands at once.It makes it feel less…impersonal. They also come with an elastic to keep the book closed much like a Moleskin notebook and that is really what they remind me of. Along with the Kindle case they also have a full case for the Ipad as well as what they call BookBacks which are backings for your Iphone 4 or Ipad that are made from the same fiber for the outside of the case. If you want to add a little bit of protection and style to your Kindle or Ipad I highly recommend you pick on up at dodocase.com

Deadline is reporting that Kevin Costner is close to coming on board for an undisclosed role in Zack Snyder’s Superman.

Since we know so little about the story it’s impossible to know who he’s playing for sure, but we can make some pretty educated guesses.

1. Pa Kent – I think this might be the most likely choice for Costner.  He’d be perfect for that role if there’s a place for him in the script.  It wouldn’t surprise me, either, if Pa Kent were already dead in this draft.  But if this film is taking place pre-Lois Lane, as has been rumoured, it’s not only entirely possible, but an inspired casting choice.
2. Lex Luthor – He’s been in just about every Superman film and I’d love to see Costner play a bad guy.  On the other hand, the fact that he’s been in every Superman film you can remember is a good indication that Snyder will avoid the Lex route altogether.
3. Perry White – Though I think Frank Langella was the perfect choice for the role with Superman Returns, and remains perfect for the role, Costner could knock this out of the park as well.  But with signs pointing to no Lois Lane will the supporting cast of The Daily Planet even factor into the film?

I can’t think of anyone else that would be fitting.  The last thing Costner was in that had a high profile in any meaningful sense was Rob Reiner’s defecation of a film “Rumor Has It…”  Could a spot in a big time comic-book franchise be exactly what his career needs to come back?

What do you guys think?  Who would Costner be perfect to play in the new Superman franchise?

Welcome back to the fifteenth issue of Convention Sketches!

We feature a convention sketch here every week. We’ve got a whole pile of our own, but we want to see yours, too. Email us convention sketches you want to show off and let us know what website you’d like credited for it. (bigshinyrobot(at)gmail.com)

This week we have a Ryan Ottley original from a batch of convention sketches he did at an Arizona con.

This is his take on Queen Amidala, which I thought our Star Wars audience would love.

Ottley is the artist on Robert Kirkman’s Invincible and his work is second to none.   You can check out his website here.

Anyone who knows me also knows that I am an unabashed fan of the Marvel Family. They also know that I feel that the characters have been constantly mis-handled in the normal DCU for the past, let’s say five years or so. That being said, when it comes to DC’s all-ages line of books, the Marvels have gotten a pretty fair shake, even if their book wasn’t a best seller. A big part of why the Marvel Family succeeds in these books owes a lot to the efforts of Art Baltazar and Franco, so when I saw the solicit for Tiny Titans #37  starring the Marvels, I was understandably stoked. The question remains, will the characters thrive in the elementary school world of Tiny Titans? Let’s break it down.

If you’ve never read Tiny Titans before (and if you haven’t, shame on you), all of DC’s younger heroes attend Sidekick Elementary School, and generally hang out and have fun. It’s a simple premise that works exceedingly well. Each issue is broken down into a bunch of smaller stories, with a common theme uniting them all. This issue’s theme of course, is the Marvel Family. The first story shows the various Marvels (including the often neglected Hoppy, the  Marvel Bunny) saying the magic word “Shazam!” to transform into their super-selves. All except Freddie, who says “Captain Marvel!” instead. Superboy asks Freddie why that is, and Freddie explains that Cap is the inspiration for his powers. This causes Superboy to yell out the inspiration for his powers, with hilarious results.

The second story is probably my favorite, for a couple of reasons. Psimon wants a cool lightning bolt shirt like the Marvels so he asks them how they got theirs. The answer of course, is more magic word goodness. When “Shazam”, doesn’t work for him, Psimon tries many variations including one that brought a smile to my face.

The third main story involves Mr. Tawky Tawny, the world’s most educated Tiger, being the new teacher at Sidekick Elementary. This leads into the last installment of the issue, where the Tony Titans have another meeting of their Pet Club. Mary Marvel is a shoo-in with Mr. Tawky, while the world’s most insidious worm, Mr. Mind tries to convince Psimon to adopt him as a pet so they can infiltrate the club. It is equally great.

It goes without saying that I enjoyed this issue. What surprised me is how much I did. It is clever, cute, and a great introduction to the Marvel Family stable of characters. I would read a monthly Tiny Titans-style Shazam book in a heartbeat. So in closing, If you want a fun book to read, where you don’t have to worry about pesky things like continuity, or mature themes, pick this up. If you happen to have a little one, absolutely pick it up, they’ll love you for it.

Oh! I didn’t mention the one-page stories in the book, but they are by far the cutest thing in the entire comic. I’ll leave you with a single image from those.

Dawwww.

Tiny Titans #37 is on sale now at finer comic shops for $2.99

Oh manny! Last time, the Hornet was knocked out with a wrench and the car he was in careened into a gas station. The station exploded and we saw a body! I dunno about you guys, but I have no idea how the Hornet is going to get out of this scrape. I am on the edge of my seat. Turn down the lights and watch Chapter 5: The Time Bomb with me, won’t you?

Jedi Master Even Piell has been captured and is being held in a stronghold known as The Citadel.  It was originally created to hold Jedi and is reknowned for having the best defenses of any prison.  Obi-Wan and Anakin lead a team to break Master Piell out of the prison.

In order to get into the system without being detected, Artoo Detoo has reprogrammed a group of Battle Droids to pilot a stolen Seperatist shuttle and frozen the team in carbonite to evade any life scanners on the planet.  From here the episode plays out like a thrilling combination of the Endor strike in Return of the Jedi and The Guns of Navarone.  They even have to scale a rock wall, just like in Navarone, but instead of having to destroy a gun, it’s a rescue mission.

In fact, as soon as I saw the rock wall I was counting the seconds before a member of the team fell to his death or broke a leg (as Anthony Quayle did in Navarone.)  When it happened, it brought a smile to my face.

I was smiling a lot through this episode.  It was very fun and felt like a Saturday afternoon matinee adventure.   It was lighthearted, there was plenty at stake and the action was tremendous.  And it ended on a brilliant cliffhanger.

I’m sure you’ve all noticed that “Captain” Tarkin is featured in this episode, and he’s important since he holds half of the code the Seperatists are trying to torture out of Even Piell, but when Piell is rescued, he insists they need to rescue Tarkin as well.  You’ll remember Tarkin as Peter Cushing’s character from Episode IV – A New Hope (and briefly in Episode III) and he’s the only Imperial Officer we saw Vader take any orders from.

He also blew up Alderaan.  Bastard.

But we see the introduction of these two characters and I’m excited to see the seeds of their relationship grow in the coming episodes in this arc and to see the evolution of it. It’s a secret I’ve ALWAYS been curious about, and I think it really is going to be revealed.

It feels as though they’ve pulled out all the stops on this half of The Clone Wars and I’m dying to see what they’ve got cooking for the rest of it.  Can the animation and writing get better?  I wonder.  This episode had one of the coolest fight sequences on the show, where a squad of Commando Droids face off against four Jedi and a group of Clones in a magnetized hallway.

And seriously, the Commando Droids are so fun to watch, I hope they use them on the show more.  Same with C-3P0.  It was great to see him back on the show and I think they use him more, too.

The lighting in this episode has taken a step forward as well.  There was a moment in particular where Ahsoka is coming out of a vent and looking down a hallway that struck me as very impressive.

I do have one gripe about this episode, though I think I’ve already come up with a rationale to ignore it.

In The Empire Strikes Back, Lando is pretty concerned about Vader putting anyone in carbon freeze.  “We use this facility for carbon freezing, you put him in there it might kill him.”

And Vader shares that concern and doesn’t want Skywalker damaged, so he orders it be tested on Captain Solo.

There’s a very real threat that Han Solo won’t survive the freezing process, but this episode had none of that worry here.  For the life of me I’m trying to figure out why.  The only thing I can think of is that maybe the Cloud City facility isn’t designed for freezing life forms and the ones the Jedi use are designed for such a procedure.

In any case, this was a very fun episode and I can’t wait to see how they get out of the prison.  My only disappointment is that we have to wait two weeks for any resolution.

Three years ago today our first post went live.  It was a poorly written essay about how Batman could work on television and a list of shows I want to see.

You can see the original article, “How Batman Could be the Greatest Scripted Drama on Television” here.

There’s still one show on that list I’m still dying to see, and it’s a Gotham Central show.  Here’s my original rundown of it:

GOTHAM CENTRAL: It seems that just about every show on television is either Law and Order, a Law and Order spin-off or some type of Crime Scene Investigation. Well, Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka’s real-world take is that entire sort of thing only better and with the Bat. Imagine a show where cops are running down leads, and trying to get their job done and well, only to have the villains wrapped in a bow by Batman. This only serves to annoy and demoralize them. And really, who watches over the city during the day when Batman sleeps? This is that story and it would quickly become must-see TV. Killing Joke would be great to see from this perspective as well.

It’s taken us three years to get here.  And more people this month so far have visited the website than in our entire first year.  Going back through those original articles it’s pretty obvious we’ve grown considerably.  We’ve learned a lot about writing and content, we’ve learned a lot about what people want to see, and we’ve learned a lot about ourselves.

But when Lucas Ackley (Kill-tacular-tron) and I started Big Shiny Robot!, it was so we could have fun and disseminate our opinions on the geeky news of the day.  In the intervening three years we’ve grown from a website that simply gathers news into a website that originates it.  Because of Big Shiny Robot! I’ve been able to meet George Lucas and ask Jon Stewart questions, Lucas was able to interview Ernie Hudson (thanks to his love of Ghostbusters), and many of the other contributers that have volunteered their time to the site and in return been able to create some pretty great moments for both themselves and the site.

In three years we’ve had more than 2.2 million visitors, we’ve published almost 3,500 articles (almost 1,100 of which I’ve written personally) and we’ve had more than 30 contributers.

Lucas and  I want to take this time out to thank all of the people who write for the site and those of you who read it for helping us get to where we’re going.  We do it because we love it, and it’s fun for us, but we hope you love it, too.

I can’t wait to see where we’re at for our 4th anniversary.

We’d also love for you to come celebrate with us.  I’m sure most of you have heard we’re having a party this coming Sunday.  You can get the full details here. But more than anything, we’re going to drink (a favorite pastime of robots we learned best from one of our patron saints, Bender B. Rodriguez) and watch one of our favorite movies about a Big Shiny Robot!, Brad Bird’s “The Iron Giant.”

Thanks again, and we hope to see you there!

Big Shiny Robot! has a weekly column in the Salt Lake City alt-weekly IN Magazine and every week we bring it to you on the site.

If you live in the greater Salt Lake area, you can pick up a copy of IN Magazine up from one of their ubiquitous newsstands, and we would highly suggest that you do.

You can read the online version of the story here.

This week was the “Queens” issue, and so we were asked to introduce readers to The White Queen.

Every week for about 2 1/2 years the fellows from the Geek Show Podcast have been bringing you an excellent, hilarious, geeky hour of geekiness every week. For almost two of those years, I have been producing a video version of their show for Xfinity’s Utah On Demand system. Their licensing agreement was such that the content was exclusive to them, but we’ve since worked it so that it is only a window of exclusivity and now we’ll be getting the show every week on the internet.

Be sure to check out their website and subscribe to their podcast. The show’s regular panelists includes Kerry Jackson, host of X96′s Radio From Hell, Leigh George Kade from Grimmleigh’s Fiends, Shannon Barnson, my co-host at the Pub Quiz, Jeff Vice and Jimmy Martin from the Big Movie Mouth-Off, and Scott Pierce, television critic for The Salt Lake Tribune.

The Geek Show will be putting the video up on their website, and we’ll be putting it up here as well.

This week, I was a guest on the show.

As a warning, these appear in their original NSFW form.

Part 1:

Part 2: