Iron Man Versus Philosophy

Oh no! Kwirkegard is making everyone sad with the truth about life. Someone stop him before he can reveal more!




Whew! Thank goodness there were kids playing near a supervillain hideout stuffing their face full of those deliciously sugary hostess treats, otherwise Iron Man might have had to face the truth about his sad existence.

Those kids however will learn the truth of onset diabetes soon enough...

How not to get out of jail

And that's why Luke Cage never got parole.

Kurt Busiek and Ernie Chan's PSA can be found in Power Man and Iron Fist #100 by

First Issue Spectacular - Hellstorm: Prince of Lies

Oh the nineties, you tried so hard to be so cool and edgy, but you just ended up just being lame and dull. Case in point: Hellstorm: Prince of Lies



Hellstorm here, was a product of a good sized fad. At the time the whole dark and supernatural thing was huge, what with the successful Midnight Sons books, that a revival of Hellstorm seems pretty academic. The big problem with this book is that it panders to that fan base so much that it alienates any new fan who would dare pick up the issue.

The issue starts with the apparent birth of our titular hero, and then promptly focuses on some other random characters. For the majority of the book we follow around this guy:



Gabriel.

He's your standard 'down on his luck', alcoholic, retired demon hunter who is pulled back in the game when he gets an ominous anonymous letter about a Satanic Cult starting up.



Apparently, that was just the kick in the pants he needed to get back in the game, and spends the rest of the issue tracking down this cult.

Meanwhile, bums are being kidnapped throughout San Francisco to be used in Satanic sacrifice with guess who leading the charge:



So, of course, Gabriel infiltrates the cult (somehow), and ends up at the site of their latest sacrifice where the cult is about to cut into a homeless woman. Being our defacto hero, he leaps into action, and takes on the ringleader, Daimon Hellstrom.

Then it gets weird.

As Gabriel is getting his ass handed to him, who rides in to save him other than Daimon Hell-STORM.



Hellstorm defeats Hellstrom by making his trident appear in Hellstrom's chest, which sends Hellstrom back to hell. As it turns out, well... How about we let the man explain it in his own words:



Uh... Yeah.

Anyway, with this our titular hero has a newfound vigor for... something and flies off, but not before taunting our issues hero:



So yeah, apparently Gabriel is supposed to be the Son of God... I guess.

Alright, so the book is confusing, over-reaching, with muddled art and no clear purpose, this couldn't have lasted all that long, right?

*Checks the Interwebs*

TWENTY-ONE ISSUES?!?!

Ugh.... Stupid nineties...

Things I learned from Terminator Salvation

I saw Terminator Salvation last night and learned some things.

Lesson one: Never see a Terminator movie not directed by James Cameron.

For everything else I learned, there will be spoilers.



- John Connor is a Schizophrenic. One second he's trying to kill you, the next he's betting his life on you. And then he's yelling at you again.

- Whenever you need something, just wish really hard and it'll appear. An axe in a tow truck? Sure, it's right next to the grenade launcher.



- The T-600's look like fat pirates.

- Even in a robotic new world order, the robots still need access panels for easy reprogramming



- You can survive a nuclear blast as long as you're in a helicopter

- It's never a bad time to text, especially when you're infiltrating SkyNet.



- John Connor is a huge CB Enthusiast.

- Terminators HATE rock music



- Motorcycle Terminators are pretty sweet.

- Skynet apparently has netflicks, rented the original Terminator movies, and learned who John Connor was and who he was going to be, because they really had no reason to believe that a mid-level resistance guy was going to be such an issue for them.

Ugh. Just awful.

Special thanks to my friends for unwittingly contributing to this list while we griped about the terrible-ness we just witnessed.

Planet of the Apes: Salvation or Conquest of the Planet of the Terminators

I think the Terminator movies are the contemporary versions of the Planet of the Apes movies.



In a meta sense, I mean. Check this out:

Both series start with a:
New world order involving robots
New world order involving primates

But then:
a time traveling robot appears in a human society
a time traveling human appears in ape society



Who then try to:
Change the past, but in doing so plant the seeds for the human resistance in the future
Destroy the future, but in doing so plant the seeds for the primate resistance in the past

Leaving the hero of the series to became:
The brain busting paradox that is John Connor
The brain busting paradox that is Caesar



revealing that:
The new world order of robots is inevitable
The new world order of primates is inevitable



So I guess the question becomes: Who do you want to be your future overlords, Monkeys or Robots?

Me, I'd angle for for the Monkeys for one simple reason:



I mean, I don't see anyone making out with a robot...

Comics I have to own: Robot 13

I just read about this on Super Punch and I can't wait to read the whole thing. It's everything I love about comics: Robots, Monsters, and Big Fights!

Here's the synopsis according to the website:

ROBOT-13 has no idea what or who it is, nor where it came from. All it knows is that it has an instinctual and irresistible drive to protect mankind from mythological creatures of destruction...(a) monster mash-up of the Frankenstein creature and Greek mythology

Awesome!

I'm certainly keeping my ear to the ground about it. As soon as I hear more about it, I'll be sure to post something.

And rest assured, when I do find it I'll let you know how amazing it is.

Ben Grimm

Attention whore.

Steve Englehart and Kevin Pollard expose the truth in Fantastic Four #328

The Ten Year Old Menace

I remember the lead up to The Phantom Menace, I got really caught up in all the hype. I bought most of the toys (before I was really a collector), the collector editions of magazines, and soaked up any small bit of information I could find floating around the internet at the time.



And then it came out.

I specifically remember when it came out. It was the era before fancy early midnight showings and online ticketing where there was a real danger something might be sold out when you got to the theater, something made even worse for a kid like me who lived a good thirty minutes from the nearest quality theater. So I sent my Dad up earlier in the week to secure tickets, and god bless him he came back with eight of the hottest tickets this 17 year old had ever seen.

The day it came out the excitement was palpable. The wild rumors had been tempered a bit by the trailers, action figures, and early news reports to give us a better idea of what we would see.

Lord how wrong we were.




We were all hyped, I tend to recall, to see a Star Wars we could call our own. Something that we could proudly tell future geeks, "We were there when..." and not in an ironic sense. What we got was an over-hyped, exposition-heavy, toy-driven movie that was trying way too hard to be exactly what we wanted it to be.

Quickly The Phantom Menace became the butt of many jokes, a pox on all things Star Wars. But in the past ten years I noticed something: people started to like it.



Or at least, started to appreciate it more.

A few years ago I found myself watching it again with a group of friends and everyone was enthralled. Sure, the jokes still didn't work and Jar Jar was still as annoying as ever, but like that cousin you can't quite get rid of, it was oddly enjoyable, and not in an ironic sense. And when pit against Episode II (which, when it came out was seen as much more in line with what people wanted out of the prequels), The Phantom Menace was deemed much better.

Who knows, maybe in another five to ten years people will be proudly wearing Jar Jar shirts, pontificate on Qui Gon's forbidden romance with Shmi, and be complaining as loud as we did when they release the Episode I Special Edition.



Or maybe not...

My new favorite character of 2009

Throg!

All the grandeur of the God of Thunder in less than one-hundredth the size! What's not to love? Screw Marvel Apes, bring on Marvel Amphibians!

Catch the frog fever monthly in LockJaw and The Pet Avengers.

And then there was that time that Ghost Rider fought Aliens...

...on motorcycles!

Personally I think all of Ghost Rider's villains should be on motorcycles. What do you think Johnny?



I'm sure he'll come around...

eventually.

Kudos to Ghost Rider # 33, Roger McKenzie, and Whirlin' Don Perlin for introducing the most underused aliens in the Marvel Universe

What is Nick Fury Hiding?

Nick Fury is a man of secrets, right? The ultimate information broker, only telling you what you need to know so you'll work into his grander scheme. Paranoid to all hell, knowing that he's a target to everyone everywhere.

But what else is he hiding?

Did you see what I saw?



Is that a... Cockpit?

Bendis, Hickman, and Casseli start the new mini conspiracy in Secret Warriors # 4

The Touch, redux

Have you seen this:



Ugh. Just... Ugh.

I don't know whether to pity or to be pissed at Stan Bush.

I mean, on the one hand he did write some of the greatest songs for one of my all time movies. On the other, in a blatant cash grab move, he totally sold out, making a great rock anthem into nothing more than whiny generic rock.

Sigh.

Luckily, I guess, Michael Bay doesn't give a shit about the classic Transformers stuff, so the likelihood of this version ever making it to theaters is incredibly low. Or at least, I hope it is. Now it's just a waiting game until this thing gets lost in the annals of internet history.

In the meantime, I'm going to try to wash my ears of that garbage the only way I know how:



Now that's more like it!

The Emotional Spectrum of Star Wars

Over on the new scans_daily someone posted these great mashups of Star Wars and Green Lantern.

For the uninitiated, the Green Lantern books are currently embroiled in an epic story line about the nature of the emotional spectrum where each color represents a different emotion. It breaks down like this:

Green is willpower (not an emotion, I know, but that's DC for you)
Yellow is fear
Red is anger
Orange is avarice
Violet is love
Blue is hope
and Indigo is compassion

And for the most part, the artist here did a great job giving the Star Wars characters their rings. Luke up here represents hope, so a blue ring of course. Darth Vader is an embodiment of fear, so give the man/machine a yellow ring. It goes on and it's great

Except for Yoda.



I mean sure, I'm sure using the force and keeping yourself super disciplined takes a lot of willpower, but one of the central tenants of being a Jedi is compassion, something that Yoda here just exudes.

Here's a guy that has forgone everything, including civilization to focus on his studies, and when someone does finds him, he does everything to make them comfortable.

Plus he would totally fit in with that Indigo Tribe"

Lousy space hobos.

Who asked for a return to Heroes Reborn?

So this picture just blipped on my radar, and apparently its supposed to be the Heroes Reborn Bucky, Rikki Barnes.

Who? What? you ask.

Back in 96 Marvel gave up creative control of the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Captain America, and The Avengers to Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld for a full year. In that year the creators had the freedom to do what they needed to do to reinvigorate the characters without the shackles of continuity. It was kinda like a trial run for the Ultimate Universe.

Anyway, Liefeld really liked the Bucky/Cap Dynamic and decided to make it more 90s by making Bucky a girl



In the years since, the heroes were returned to their native universe and the 'reborn' universe became a 'real' place as the Counter-Earth, which is one of those troubling continuity traps of the Marvel U.

Honestly, I'm intrigued by this idea. As much as I love the new Captain America (and I do!), I think he works better when he's really forced into that mentor role. And what better sidekick than effectively him from a different world, it ought to be fun. I trust Brubaker and I know that he'll make this the best storyline of 09, but I can't help wondering if it's a bit too convoluted for it's own good. I worry about characters that I can't explain with less than a paragraph.

But hey, chalk up another one for Rob Liefeld's enduring characters, who woulda known.

First Issue Spectacular: X-Force

What better way to break in the new blog than with what broke me into comics: X-Force.



Shut up, I was 11.

It was a different time in the summer of 1991, and the industry was driven by the next big thing. Every new issue that came out was promising to be the one that would make you rich, and everyone (myself included) was gullible enough to believe it.

So, in an effort to capitalize on the superstar 'talent' of Rob Liefeld, Marvel canceled the New Mutants and replaced it with a more extreme version of the team with Liefeld behind the steering wheel. Let's see where he takes us.



The story picks up, to my best guess, six months after the events of New Mutants # 100, with the titular team about to raid a stronghold belonging to the Mutant Liberation Front. The MLF are basically the 90s version of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, but more extreme as seen by their leader, Stryfe:



Anyway, fighting ensues, but the bad guys slip through our young heroes fingers. Leaving Cable to mutter what should have been the 'Fresh New Catchphrase of 1991':



The team heads back to their headquarters (an old Sentinel lab) where the kids can train while Cable generally acts like a dick and keeps information from them(Which really, upon thinking about it, isn't that out of line seeing how almost half of the team has some kind of mysterious past that they aren't talking about). Oh, and suddenly Cable has telekinesis.



Honestly that's probably the best part of mysterious characters, you can give them new powers whenever you want and just say they were keeping it to themselves.

And that's pretty much where the first issue leaves our team, just chillin' at home with a leader who isn't telling them anything. This ride never slows down!

It's hard to believe that this series lasted like it did, but I guess it goes to show that you can't underestimate the staying power of Rob Liefeld characters, no matter how much you want to.

Re-reading it, I can't help but to get nostalgic for my favorite X-Team (Shut Up!) even if it encompasses almost everything that was wrong with the X-Books in the 90s.

I'm still waiting until I can sell my three copies and buy myself a yatch....

F1RST POST!!!11!!!

Hey there and welcome to Platypus Robot, my foray into true blue blogging. I was trying to think of a really effective, compelling first post but I couldn't think of one. Instead, I decided to piggyback on that facebook meme from a while back and tell you 25 things about me (and or my blog). Enjoy?

1- I read comics like it's my job
2- I have an uncanny ability to remember really minute details about the comics that I read. I've often wondered if I've squandered too much of my life
3- I'm a HUGE Marvel zombie.
4- I tend to love the lower tier characters and their often-short-lived series'
5- There are plenty of characters I want to like, but just can't seem to click with
6- While I'm reading comics constantly, my weekly pull list is actually quite small
7- I gave up on comics in 1999 after The Twelve saga. To me, that was the peak of the X-Men in the 90s, the culmination of all the story lines reaching back to the mid 80s and while I understood everything that was going on, it just felt WAAAAY too convoluted for it's own good. I got pulled back in two years later, but I don't think I missed all that much
8- I love digging through dollar (or cheaper!) bins and reading comics from way back when; it's like holding a piece of history.
9- I don't read DC because I can't connect with their major heroes. Batman and Superman, I understand are untouchable, but in my opinion Barry, Hal, and Ollie should have never come back.
10- The first comic I remember looking at in a news stand was at an airport on Phoenix,Amazing Spider-Man #347 , but I didn't buy it. Instead the first comic I ever owned was some crappy GI Joe issue. I still haven't got around to buying that issue of Amazing...
11- I started reading comics in 1991. I started reading around the time of Spider-man #1, and just before the Blue and Gold X-Men split. But the first series I really started following was X-Force, because Cable is awesome!
12- I inherited seven long boxes when a friend of mine moved away a few years ago, and then a huge run of Fantastic Four from another friend shortly after. I'm like a comic book Salvation Army.
13- I try not to have any 'sacred cows' when it comes to comics and I feel like I can enjoy the books more that way
14- I think Grant Morrison's New X-Men was the best run on the X-Men ever. It's too bad it all got erased.
15- I did a couple of shorts involving Galactus a few years ago, and people seem to really dig them. Check out the first one here and the second one here, I did the voice.
16- I used to be a big toy collector, but in recent years (read: since Hasbro took over the Marvel license) I've limited myself to just Art Asylum's Mini-Mates, one of the most cohesive and comprehensive lines I've ever collected.
17- Even though I've mainly talked about comics in this, I intend this blog to encompass all kinds of geeky things.
18- I'm a firm believer that the best video game music EVER comes from Mega Man 2. Go listen to Wily Stage One and try to disagree, that shit ROCKS!
19- I'm one of the few people around that will defend the Prequel Trilogy. I don't think it's as good as the Original Trilogy, but I don't think it's as bad as people make it out to be.
20- I like to make fun of Dungeons and Dragons (and it's fans) for no real good reason other than it makes me laugh. So try not to take it too personally if I throw a jab your way
21- I collect bad sci-fi movies on VHS. My policy is the cooler the cover, the worse the movie. I haven't been let down yet!
22- I think the Infinity Gauntlet is one of the finest storylines that Marvel has ever done, and if they ever released a life-sized Gauntlet, I'd be all over it like white on rice.
23- I fall on the Pirate side of the argument.
24- This isn't my first blog. I run a tumblr blog with a friend of mine called itsatrap, and yes I think you should add this to your blogroll too.
25- This took me way longer to fill out than expected. I need a drink.