August 2011 Archives

This is a corner of a screenshot of No More Heroes: Heroes' Paradise on PS3, as seen in one of the viewing angles you randomly see upon entering Beef Head Video. (One of the many small touches I appreciate about this game is that every interior store location has an assortment of camera angles while you're talking to the vendor.)

I don't recall if I noticed this back in the Wii version of No More Heroes (surely not; I would have weblogged about it!), but that certainly looks like a Green Lantern comic on that rack. Here's a close-up:

It's been heavily affected, and random color apps have been used to disguise the book... but I'm pretty sure that's the animated movie "Green Lantern: First Flight." The logo - and general greenness - are the giveaways. It's like in "Mr. Mom" when they put black tape on the Froot Loops box so it said OOT OOPS.

That movie hit home video in 2009. No More Heroes was released on Wii in Japan in December 2007.

Which would mean that the artwork was changed between the Wii version and the 2011 PS3 version, since the movie come out after the original Wii release.

I suppose the game artists could have just mocked up some art to resemble Green Lantern, but the layout and font choices are so similar that a coincidence, or a prophetic design vision, seems unlikely. Does anybody know if Suda51 is a huge Lantern fan? I wonder what other books/movies were borrowed and altered to fill out the shelves at Beef Head?

The hurricane served up an un-thrilling conclusion, and I am terribly thankful about that. All week, the Irene talk grew worse and worse, and I was feeling it. Here's some of the quotes from my office:

"This could be the worst storm we've seen in a hundred years."
"You think that 5-inch rain gauge will be enough? We could get 10 or 15 inches!"
"The last time we had a hurricane, the power was out for three days."
"The buildings around here were not built to withstand these kind of winds."

That's the mood that was set for me. Our region was on the edge of the hurricane's path, but everybody was still preparing like we were going to see some heavy action.

Rhonda and I made sure we had decent flashlights (bought a headset model for Clark) and we filled up all the gas tanks. Now, we didn't buy huge stocks of reserve food or board up the windows. I had exactly one concern: the sump pump. Everything else can go hang.

When we get bad rainstorms - really bad rainstorms - that pump can be shifting water for days. I mean, literal days. Our house is at the bottom of a hill; everyone else's runoff steamrolls towards us. We have had some basement cracks filled; new ones have appeared. What I can't have is a massive rain issue combined with a power outage. And that's what everyone was expecting.

During the last big rainstorm, I came home from work to find Rhonda out feverishly digging a trench to help water get away from bouncing back in a basement window. Several years ago, we had a day where the power went out and the sump pump well kept rising, and that was the sweatiest sweat I ever sweated. Earlier this year, the damn sump pump bobble got itself stuck in the well and did not rise, and a fairly normal rainstorm flooded the basement because I was not paying attention to the lack of the sound of the pump operating.

I was determined to pay attention this time.

It's my own fault that we did not already own a generator. We figured we would get one eventually, given the power+water problem. We just never got around to pulling the pin. On Thursday - and I know this was way late - I started calling around to find one. Sold out. Everywhere. Mid-day Friday, the genius thought occurred that I would have to drive far west to find one, far enough out where the local populace was not terribly concerned about being in the outer-outer-edge of Irene's strike zone.

Saturday morning, we drove (Rhonda drove, ♥) three hours west to pick up a 5000 watt generator that I bought the night before over the phone. The store staff said they had lots of people driving out from Philly and NJ to buy generators, including one who claimed to have driven eight hours (which either means that person lives that far away longitudinally, or hails from an island three hours off the coast of Jersey.)

In the car, Clark watched "Speed Racer" one-and-a-half times, most of "Rango," and played some Puzzle Agent on iPad and Batman: Brave and the Bold on DS. I had my 3DS with me, but couldn't bring myself to touch it (NOT a comment on the 3DS game library, come on.)

Then, upon owning the generator, I realized that you need the proper support equipment. Like the right oil and the right extension cables, so we had to pick up all of that (I'm still not sure I have the right power cables.) And this is all with me expecting that I'll have the worst possible conditions to dope out how to run this thing for the first time: at 3am, outside, with no power, during a freaking hurricane.

After Rhonda and Clark went to bed, I set the iPhone alarm to go off about every hour. We figured - guessed - hoped - that if the power was out for an hour, that would not be enough time to have a dead sump pump flood the basement. I unplugged all the Macs and gaming stuff and camped out on the couch. Played some Super Scribblenauts until I passed out.

And about every hour, the iPhone alarm would rouse me and I'd tramp around the house on a cycling tour of potential problem points. Back door, garage door, far basement corner by power box, sump pump corner, basement wall cracks. Even though the rain started late evening, the sump pump did not have to kick on until the middle of the night. It worked furiously for several hours, but by morning its runs were rather infrequent. By the time Clark woke up, around 7am, it wasn't even running. No more water to push.

The power went out three times that I noticed, but came right back every time.

A day later, things are still windy, but the precipitation has moved on. Our yard has some scattered branch debris, but nothing larger than what you would use to roast a marshmallow. We were lucky. But we were prepared. Mostly.

Absolutely, we could have weathered that storm by doing nothing (sorry, those of you who lost power for hours, and had trees hit cars, and whatever; I hope you made it through relatively unscathed.) But I know I felt a ton better knowing that, should something stupid happen, I could do something. I'm sure most of our neighbors were unconcerned (heck, one of them held a pool party that lasted until 10pm), but, like I said, our location has a History, and I have to take care of that.

Now I need to have somebody actually show me how to run a generator.

SAVAGE HAWKMAN: Weird how the text obscures the hawk icon to the point where you can no longer tell it's a hawk icon. I'd always place those merchandisable logo icons right out there, obvious and glaring.

I, VAMPIRE: Ugh.

JUSTICE LEAGUE: I am so, so happy that the limiting "of America" is gone. And not just in a general "Oh, Fourhman hates jingoistic trumped-up 'Murricans" kind of way... just that the Justice League almost always in confronting threats that effect the entire planet. Being that this is going to be DC's BIG book (and yay, the League is all about the big guns again!), the logo is curiously understated and entirely unmarketable. Most JL/JLA logos have incorporated a shield motif, or something with stars (vague Americanism), but this one is just reg'lar text on a hipster angle. Interesting.

NIGHTWING: It cries out "This is a Bat book, in case you forgot." Not as good as Batwing or Batgirl, but better than most of Batman's own logo designs.

OMAC: A surprise favorite! It stole Blue Beetle's extra tech gewgaws, and plays with transparency in a way that no other logo dares.

RED LANTERNS: That Green Lantern logo is nigh untouchable, and this is simply the phoned-in Red version. The stretched "red" is bothersome.

SWAMP THING: I am super-psyched to see this logo return! Swamp Thing had some TERRIBLE arthouse logos back in his Vertigo days, but this classic piece is a charmer. A+ Would do business with again.

STATIC SHOCK: Don't like the soccer ball O. Like everything else.

STORMWATCH: Too soon.

Naw, it's okay. The big H is dumb, but I like the radar sweep O. It reminds me a little of various attempts at Martian Manhunter icons... and guess what, J'Onn is in this book.

JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK: Hate. That "dark" is awful, and it will always, always, always bleed into the cover art no matter what colors are used. It's even an exceptionally stupid title. This is one of the New 52 that I'm really looking forward to, because I like the concept of a magic-based Justice League (y'know, like Shadowpact, I guess), but wow, what a stinker of a logo/title. And is that the same font as on I, VAMPIRE?

JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL: So given that JUSTICE LEAGUE is no longer limited to one country, why have one with a stapled-on "International"? I'm guessing this League will be the one with full UN backing, while the Batman/Superman group will be more on their own. The continued use of "Justice League" implies some connection, though, as if Dark and Int'l are franchisees of the core group. I like the map shape back there, but this tilted text thing comes off as cheap to me.

LEGION LOST: The "lost" is a little dramatic, eh? Hey, remember that tv show "Lost"?

RED HOOD AND THE OUTLAWS: Solid. Nice subtle use of the bat in the OOs.

RESURRECTION MAN: Love it. This is an old logo from the previous series, but still fun to look at.

SUICIDE SQUAD: I know I said I wouldn't snipe on colors, but why are the S and Q red? OK, so the Q is a target... why the red S? I wonder how long those concentric circles will last. I give them four issues, tops, before they get dropped.

TEEN TITANS: Unusual new Titans logo. Looks like the A is holding a loincloth over its fonty nethers. I could do without the yellow horizontal bars.

VOODOO: Fair. Doesn't say much about the character, except maybe that she has hair.

WONDER WOMAN: It's a grunged up retro logo, just like what they put on t-shirts at Target for people who never buy comics. I hope she gets some color, some outlines, something else to go on here, because her peers Superman and Batman have so much going on in their logos, while Wonder Woman seems stuck with flat black. Maybe it's supposed to be the logo for her pants.

And that's the full lineup. Come back next month when you'll hear Miss Piggy say "I'm getting all 52 #1s, so I'll have some quick impressions here on fourhman.com every week!"

BATGIRL: I like this one a lot. The slight arc to the letters avoids that stupid last-letter-gigantism problem that kills a lot of these logos. The colors on this one are really nice as well, although generally it's useless to discuss color in comics logos because they change them around all the time

BATMAN: Batman has had a lot of title logos. The letters here are a little too random for me, but it shows more character than that old big blocky BATMAN he had in the 80s, and it is less pretentious than some of the designs he had in the 90s. Not my favorite, but not the worst either.

BLUE BEETLE: A nice one, but it could use more little tech fractals. And I'd lose the blue line extension that makes the T into an F.

CAPTAIN ATOM: Good re-do of the 80s series logo. I wonder if that light effect will stay.

BIRDS OF PREY: I can't figure out what's up with those segment lines. And that E bothers me.

DC UNIVERSE PRESENTS: Doesn't really count, because I'm guessing the title logo of whoever is in the anthology will take precedence. Drop that colon!

GREEN LANTERN: Not new, but easily the best GL logo ever.

GREEN LANTERN CORPS: Another one unchanged. I've never liked the big CORPS.

GREEN LANTERN NEW GUARDIANS: Pretty good. I don't think "New Guardians" is the best subtitle for this series... not just because putting the word "New" into your title is stupid, but also because I don't like supplanting the Guardians themselves. This might perhaps be a little too punny, but I would have floated "Green Lantern: Light Brigade."

GREEN ARROW: Surprisingly less pointy than previous logos. The only thing I don't like is making the O so drastically different from the other letters.

GRIFTER: That is the cheesiest gradient. And bullet holes are way overdone.

HAWK & DOVE: Two words in structural opposition, I get that. Not bad, if rather plain. I wonder if that fat E leg will trail off the cover.

LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES: Pleasantly futuristic. "of super-heroes" is another one of those archaic phrases I'd dump. I'd either try "Justice Legion" (too much Justice in the line?) or "Legion 3011" (or whatever the year is; I liked back when L.E.G.I.O.N. appended the current year to the title back in the 90s.)

MEN OF WAR: Very obviously unlike everything else, for a war comic that be unlike everything else. A good job, could be a logo for an HBO miniseries.

MISTER TERRIFIC: I would swear Mr. T has a better title logo than that. The face in the T is odd. I guess it's supposed to be his facemask, but that T is dark.

SUPERBOY, SUPERMAN, SUPERGIRL: Unchanged. I'm surprised they didn't come up with something crazy for these (especially for Superboy, who has gradually turned into a very un-fun, miserable character), something weird with the S shield.

ACTION COMICS: I'm fascinated by logos that intentionally want to break their space. This is not a new design for Action. There will be exactly one usage where that A and N look cool, and everywhere else it will be weird. Remember when Disney Channel has that half-a-mouse-head outline that only looked good in the lower left corner of your TV, and was confusing and silly anywhere else, like in print? Luckily for Action, the One Place where those trailing lines will look slick is on the cover of a comic book.

BLACKHAWKS: I like the big hawk head in the middle, as if it's a book about a high school football team. I don't like the cracked-up font.

BATMAN AND ROBIN: Not a new logo. But a nice one.

BATMAN THE DARK KNIGHT: I'll take it. I guess the longer I is supposed to echo the bat tail that we usually get around that spot in Batman logos. But if that's the case, the off-centering bothers me.

DEATHSTROKE: I can't look at that and not read HEAT STROKE. Has Deathstroke ever had a decent logo?

DETECTIVE COMICS: I like the cropped bat symbol (see Action above), but I wonder why Batman gets to have title billing and familiar iconography on Detective, and Superman does not get to claim Action? I've brought this up before, but I think the New 52 was a missed opportunity for DC to jettison both titles. "Action Comics"? "Detective Comics"? It's just silly. Archaic. We wouldn't consider calling the next book "Demon Knights Comics" or "Scary Comics."

DEMON KNIGHTS: I probably would have included some kind of fire element, maybe some kind of silhouette with Etrigan's eyes. I think they overdid the little claw dealies, particularly on that E.

ALL STAR WESTERN: Yup, that's a Wild West logo all right. Of course, if they hadn't gone all distressed Playbill serif star with it, people would have complained that DC couldn't even pull off a proper Western logo. I like it. The curve on Western is fun.

ANIMAL MAN: Is that more or less the same logo as the 1990s series that everyone always goes on about?

AQUAMAN: This will come up more than once, but I have a real problem with logos that make the last letter as large as the first just so it looks symmetrical. In this case, I would have cropped the A and N right along the top line with all the other letters. I like the inclusion of the icon, even though that is easily on of DC's least recognizable. There's also nothing watery about it, but I know DC has been all over the map with Aquaman logos in the past. I still might have tried for a wave effect going across the top of the letters, making the icon top look like a shark fin.

BATWING: Again, why the big G? Remove that, and this might be my favorite new bat-logo. I love the fractured bat symbol and the extended W.

BATWOMAN: Not a new logo. I've never liked this one. Nothing remotely batty about it, another stupid outsized final letter, and the sharpened B bugs the hell out of me.

CATWOMAN: OK. I get it, she scratches things. She should hook up with Animal Man.

THE FLASH: Eek. Flash has had a bunch of logo designs over the years, usually all variations on the same theme of "leaning letters," but this might be the worst yet. The blockiness strikes me as too futuristic-looking. And where's his lightning bolt icon?

FRANKENSTEIN AGENT OF S.H.A.D.E.: Heh. That's a slick one. I like the built-in absurdity of taking a typical super-spy/G.I. Joe/Bond sort of logo/text and slapping the big dumb word "Frankenstein" in there.

THE FURY OF FIRESTORM: I like it, although again I wonder why no fire. I definitely like the classy circle element, rather than trying to shoehorn some element of his godawful costume in there (WTF is that icon on his chest anyway?) I don't know why we have to keep "The Fury of" in there, is he going to be pissed all the time?

Now, this is a fantastically lame article, written in cliche Product Announcement-ese, but it's news I've been waiting for: the Green Lantern movie home release is October 14.

Most intriguing: the blu-ray combo edition will come with a PS3 download code to get Sinestro Corps Batman for Batman: Arkham City. Now that's a head-scratcher. I don't imagine it's anything more than a costume change, for a game that is already overflowing with skins (even for Robin!) It's not like we're getting a yellow ring along with that yellow suit. Still, I dig the fan service.

The combo pack comes with an UltraViolet Digital Copy, which is yet another example of Warners dicking around with digital copies. (Remember the epic dumbness with the Speed Racer digital copy?) For years, some releases have included a code good for an iTunes download while some codes were Windows only. Lately, you could sort of expect the code would work on both. Now WB is jumping onto this UltraViolet Cloud bullshit, giving us yet another potential loss-of-rights problem should UltraViolet go under. What I like is how the box art routinely champions DIGITAL COPY! no matter what kind of format is actually made available to your purchase. If it's digital, it counts.

The blu-ray combo pack will also include the digital version of Justice League #1 (another question mark... is that the ComiXology/DC Comics app version? or just a janky PDF?) and a preview of the upcoming Green Lantern animated series, of which I have seen precious little.

And an extended cut of the movie? Presumably extra scenes of Hal conjuring up spaceships and grabber claws and giant scorpions, if the toy line is any indicator.

They should blow everybody's minds and tack on a scene of Christian Bale sitting in his office at the top of Wayne Tower, reading a newspaper article about the mystery man in the green suit, and going >tt<.

Tomorrow Clark will have his first day of first grade. In the meantime, here's some pictures of our just-about-first-grader clowning around at a playground.

I bought Kung Fu Rider for $5 a few weekends ago. Toys R Us had is marked down from $40 (!!!!) to $10, and on top of that they had a brief deal going for 50% off all clearance titles. So, yeah, $5. Cheaper than downloadable.

I think this secret game photo says most of what you need to know about this PlayStation Move game.

This is a game that did not benefit from the lessons of 5+ years of Wii development. You tilt the Move controller to steer, which is fine. The face buttons control attacks and shunting the vehicle from side to side. Still fine.

Where it goes off the rails is the "jerk controller upwards to jump" motion. No, no, no. This has never worked in any game ever (Hi deBlob!) and it doesn't work here. There's already more than enough motion controlling to handle with the steering and the balancing, why did they have to add an imprecise, fiddly waggle on top of it. PLUS, there's a terrible "thrust forward for speed burst" move that almost never works.

That aside, Clark digs it, so it's easily worth five bucks... one of those rounds-down-to-nothing prices. Here's a far more charitable candid photograph:

I guess that since there's a camera involved, devs feel obligated to have it take secret pictures of you (although Kung Fu Rider doesn't even save them), but it is rare that one of these games results in pictures that are worth a damn. I usually have low lighting, so they get all nasty and grainy... but even with good lighting it's usually just people sitting on a couch. Buzz did it, Start the Party did it. The Buzz shots are ALWAYS stupid; at least Party has players standing up... and if you're six years old, the potential for silliness rises dramatically.

Kung Fu Rider supports in-game screenshotting, which makes it about the third game to support that feature since Sony announced it in 2008.

iTunes had an episode of The Littles available for free. The series is on Netflix, but I have a lot of open space on the iPad, so why not. Naturally, as soon as grabbed the show, it appeared in Apple's new Cloud dealie, which is great, so it appeared in the Purchased tab on the Apple TV.

Except the thumbnail came out like this:

Tiny pinhole pupils are a leading indicator of evil in most cultures.

I think this is a warning that somebody is about to reboot The Littles as a horror franchise.

If you're having trouble finding some of the rarer figures in the line (Croc, Hawkman, Flash), this new Imaginext POP display must be killing you. We've seen this in several Targets.

We recently found the new Clayface figure. He's packaged just like the other smaller fig+vehicle/accessory sets (right there with Arctic Batman+snowcycle, Two-Face+bank, etc), although he's only Giant Clayface and Optional Hammer Hand. He's big enough to swallow any of the other figures, except Hawkman. Wings defeat clay.

Now we're on the lookout for Catwoman. She comes with a bike, so I'm guessing she'll fall on the same pegs. She's the first female figure, so this is Kind Of A Big Deal. Might be the first female in all of Imaginext, actually.

Because the Imaginext line isn't skewing young enough, there's a new DC iteration on Little People.

I can imagine cherub Hal Jordan getting that car from a cutesy-wootsy dying Abin Sur.

You know, for as anime as Thundercats was in 1985, it's impressive how much more anime was put into the new 2011 version.

The first few episodes have been made available in the Cartoon Network iPad app (and at Cartoon Network.com) under the bold new direction of requiring a cableco account. I'm not saying we did this, but should one not have cable but perhaps use a cableco account from another family member, suddenly it's like having Cartoon Network all over again. The comments on the "updated" CN app are pretty hilarious, as people who must not have cable are suddenly pissed that they can no longer watch full episodes - at all - in the app. From what I remember, the app was sort of pants to begin with, with full episodes being annoyingly rare anyway... so for us, this cableco login move is a good one. We're seeing more CN episodes now than ever. Young Justice, Batman: BnB, Adventure Time, Ben 10, and now Thundercats. The only sucky bit is that, being a streaming service, and our iPad being non-AT&T sub, Clark can't watch CN shows in the car.

New Thundercats? Instant hit in our house. The opening two-parter does some nice setup, and episode 4 (the Petalars) is fantastic. There's some unexpectedly heart-wrenching dialogue in there, as the wandering Thundercats encounter a tribe of plant people with the life span of one day.

Clark has watched the available shows several times already. So I thought I'd take him straight to the source, back to the original 1985 series. Now, you guys know that I am, in most things, a staunch progressionist. I'm not showing this to Clark under the tone of "Now THIS is how you do Thundercats, laddy! They don't make 'em like this anymore! In my day, goddamn Snarf talked proper Thunderian English and we liked it! If we had more than two frames per second, that was two more than we needed!" Nor am I going to say that to you, here in the adults-only privacy of fourhman.com... because the new show is far and away a better show, just like nearly EVERYTHING today is better than the shit we had 25 years ago, which was way better than the shit we had 25 years before that. I just thought he might find it interesting to see the show as I knew it, from when I was a kid.

What I forgot was that, for the first five minutes of the first episode of Thundercats 1985, they're all naked.

I mean, they're cats, and that's fur. So I suppose they're not really naked. Lacking spandex battlesuits, for sure. Clark thought this was absolutely hilarious and could not stop giggling throughout the entire opener.

Man, Cheetara has some kind of perspective problem, doesn't she? I had also forgotten how Bowie she was.

Even the kids! NAKED.

At the end of that scene, Jaga gives them the gift of clothes as they prepare to land on a new planet. Presumably on their native Thundara, they're nekkid all the time. (In the new show, no nakedness, even on Thundara.)

There's a bit near the end of this mostly-naked 1985 episode where one of the Mutants says "The Thundercats... are loose!", coyly echoing the classically cheesy theme song. Nice touch.

Sure, the sign says "collect all 6," but the odds of you pulling Rubber Armed Werewolf Sonic approach one hundred percent.

This is a very, very nice animation retelling the MGM Oz movie set to a hip sound sample remix. It is amazing to me how the briefest of sound samples are unmistakably recognizable from the film. The music is from Pogo, the "Upular" guy, if you remember when that one made the rounds.

Source: Cartoon Brew

"We have a new centerpiece with some smoke in it." WELL THAT SOUNDS IMPRESSIVE.

Snark finished. I am happy to see the original (somewhat) Tiki Room return to the Magic Kingdom. Earlier this year, the Iago robot caught fire, giving Disney the impetus to strip out the "Under New Management" paste job. As I mentioned previously, I have fond memories of being in that attraction with my maternal grandmother, and now the venue and the attraction are both dialed back to the when we visited.

Check out Kevin Yee's preview of the restored Tiki Room at Mice Age. No more crazy audioanimatronic goddess in the center of the room? What did they do with her? I think they should take that robot and use it for a new funky-fresh Abe Lincoln over at the Hall of Air-Conditioned Presidents.

RE: Under New Management. Yeah, I get that nobody liked it much. While I thought the UNM show did a horrible job of cutting up the classic songs, I sort of dug having Zazu and Iago around. Like, 'cause they're birds. It made sense. Disney purists aren't going to want to hear this, but the Parks' never-ending struggle has to be straddling that line between keeping old and adding new. The attractions can't sit frozen in time forever. Disney has to decide when something new is a worthy addition and when it is simple fad-chasing. (Example, Ellen's Energy Adventure is fad-chasing.) As maligned as UNM was, it tried to bridge that strange gulf between Disney-the-Park and Disney-the-Franchisee.

Did it succeed? Obviously not. But now two popular franchises have been handed a reduced status at DisneyWorld. "Aladdin" has those dumb low-rent Flying Carpets, plus Jasmine's regular walkabout Princess appearances with Aladdin as an accessory. "Lion King" has the stage show over at Animal Kingdom... which is a good show, but also getting pretty old, and it's way out in the middle of nowhere in a Park that was built with sprawl issues. Does that movie over in The Land count as a Lion King show? Iago and Zazu being quietly removed (or not so quietly, given Iago went out in flames) means less to enjoy for fans of those movies.

Although to be honest, the Iago and Zazu robots were disconcertingly not in scale with the rest of the birds. And yeah, those movies no longer enjoy the marketing/merchandising focus that currently resides with, say, Cars or the Princess sub-brand.

But when comparably forgettable stuff like "Lilo & Stitch" and "Monsters Inc" can rate big-ass attractions at WDW, you have to wonder why "Lion King" can't support a AAA ride.

Coming soon: Iago Presents the Tomorrowland Astro-Orbiter! Buckle up for adventure with Agrabah's loudest astro-NUT!

Clark and Rhonda were at an HMart when he announced he wanted to try some seaweed, and this is what they came home with. Turns out, it's really good.

This particular brand comes from South Korea, and is packaged more or less as a snack food item. You get several sheets (5g, so not many) of extremely thin, extremely crispy seaweed. Nice and salty, it actually melts in your mouth. Of course, as it is melting, it tastes like seaweed, so you have to enjoy that.

It reminds me of those 100 calorie snack food packs, except that you'd need four of these to get up to 100 calories.

This is also one of the few food products I've found where each pouch has one of those little dessicant packets inside.

Go go Gophermods, go go go.

If you're keeping score, that's already one ref of an old 1960s cartoon and one ref of an old 1970s British TV show. Two-nil to fourhman.com!

My fixed - fixed - PS3 returned to me today. The Gophermods repair seems to have gone fantastically, it fired right up and I was able to save out those last few saves that missed my last formal PS3 backup in June. 100% LEGO Pirates, 100% Green Lantern, finished Akimi Village, finished Duke Nukem, etc. I exported out my LittleBigPlanet 2 profile and imported it on my new PS3 so now even that is up to where I left it in July.

After pushing the restored saves to the Plus Cloud, I have just about filled Sony's silly cloud limit of 150meg. For some reason, the save file for Mafia II is insanely large, so to make room for the new files I had to dump that one. It's 48meg when most save files are 48k, or a single meg at the most. Is Mafia II keeping my unlocked Playboy centerfolds in the save file?

I de-authorized the old PS3 for Store video purchases, so I can (I guess) re-download and watch my purchased video on the newer model. Which, and this is odd, means that video files on my old PS3 can't be viewed at all. But if I don't de-authorize, then I can't buy or watch ANYTHING on the new PS3 slim. That is one dicked-up video service you got there, Sony.

I don't imagine any of that would have been possible had I gone with a Sony repair. Sony would have chucked the thing and sent me a refurb, making my personal HD worthless and losing that data. The Sony call center rep explicitly warned me not to include my 300gig HD should I go to them for the repair. They know what's up.

Gophermods brought my PS3 back online, beating a Yellow Light of Death into submission. Although, the warning: inside the box was a deadly serious note explaining what causes the YLOD (crappy solder) and suggesting that It Will Happen Again. Particularly if I insist on using the fixed PS3 for marathon gaming sessions.

I don't. I have a new model for that. This Original, Backwards Compatible 60gig Probably From Launch edition is now retired to the basement, hooked up to a TV so old that it doesn't even have RCA ports (RF only!) Gophermods' note says to only use the thing for two hours at a time, and that sounds about right. I'll be able to put in a blu-ray, or maybe play something short off the XMB while in my bauseauxmonte. Gophermods stresses not to pull crap like 24/7 folding@home on a fixed YLOD unit.

$60 for the repair. I hear Sony charges $150 and that's with them pulling unit swap shoulder shrug crap. Gophermods +1, would do business with again.

It was worth it to regain that lost month of saves. If my old PS3 explodes tomorrow, I'm still satisfied with what went down.

That is some seriously bet-hedging verbiage there. "Considered by some to be one of the best." Clearly there is no worthwhile organization willing to give Medievil any sort of full-on praise.

Also: it's Gothic!

What they don't mention is that, as a PS1 game, it is full of pixelized textures, extra-dark visuals designed to hide issues, and ghastly font work! And it's old enough that it doesn't support analog sticks. Holy freaking cow.

That is an absolutely beautiful action figure that isn't even in action. I don't want to own that toy, I want to sit down and ask Mr. Lee about his next film.

Source: Angry Asian Man

Number five in a series...

I like the juxtaposition here of the unanswered poll and the "eight million people like Walmart" line. What's your favorite school subject? Hey, I don't know, whatever, but I like Walmart!

From the weblog of artist James Silvani:

Damn that guy is good. His weblog is full of awesome sketches of Disney characters and pop culture mash-ups.

With Boom shutting down the Disney comics, DC should snap Silvani up for a new, fun Captain Carrot series.

So this is a thing: Japan is celebrating the 35th anniversary of Super Sentai with a blowout mega-event that unites every Ranger team ever.

The team that turns these into English-language teen dramedies shot in New Zealand with beautiful cast members have GOT to be shitting themselves over how they're going to pull this off in America.

We've had a couple cool anniversary episodes and Power Ranger team-ups already. There was that great all-Red episode of Wild Force that brought back ten years of Red Rangers back through Tommy and Jason. There's a nice DVD collection that has that one, plus the big finale two-parters that teamed up Lightspeed Rescue/Lost Galaxy. When Tommy showed up on Dino Thunder there was a killer clip episode that summarized fifteen years of US Ranger iterations. I'm a sucker for these. The idea that this excellently stupid show force-feeds strict continuity on children is fantastic.

But to bring back every single team, from Mighty Morphin on up? Ai-yi-yi-yi-yi.

Here's the Japanese trailer, which I stumbled into courtesy GameSetWatch:

I guess the current Super Sentai series has a pirate theme? Amazing.

Action Comics #1 is now available in the DC Comics iOS app for 99 cents. I have a 1980s reprint, and probably another reprint inside some retrospective issue, but it's worth a buck to have the seminal super-hero story in this remastered iPad format. I love the look on his face as he wrecks the Governor's mansion in this panel:

The I-Don't-Give-A-Crap confidence Superman exudes in his first appearance is breathtaking. Even the cover shows a guy who could not possibly care less about what's going on. Given that in this first story, the reader has no idea if Superman is good or bad, that cover of Supes destroying a car with no ethical context is mind-bogglingly fantastic.

I don't know what was going on 1938 where newspaper reporters got to be first responders to wife-beatings. Thankfully, it leads to a classic quote:

T-shirt.

Although I'll argue about that comma placement. Unnecessary. Bad form.

This next one might be my favorite panel in the entire story:

Ace interrogator Superman here reminded me of when Kent Brockman hit Apu with Gotcha! journalism on "The Simpsons."

"Apu, will you ever stop selling spoiled meat?"

While $1 for a piece of comics history done up all sharp and bright is a great deal, I wish DC would give you the FULL book for your price. You only get the 15 page Superman debut and none of the backup features. Even though the product description mentions Zatara, your in-app purchase will not include Zatara's story. From what I can tell, there's no way to get the full book, even under some hidden $2.99 price. Maybe DC has never scanned in any of that stuff. Suck it, Zatara fans!

With a Green Lantern animated series on the horizon, I suppose I'm going to have to soon stop being amazed when characters like Atrocitus show up in the toy aisle.

It's because I grew up in an era when you had to be the namiest of name brands to be turned into a toy. I just missed the fan-servicing Kirby additions to the DC Super Powers line, and super hero toys were a dry gulch for years after that. Until 1990: I remember being shocked when the Punisher appeared in the new Marvel Super Heroes series. The Punisher! Why, he's only fifteen years old! And right after that, when the X-Men line included comics-accurate figures of Cyclops and Archangel? Canaries in the cave.

To show you how much things have changed, that 1990 MSH line included an Iron Man with removable armor, and nobody gave a particular shit.

It wasn't that long ago that I was surprised to see Booster Gold show up in the animated Justice League toys. Now we get toys for just about anything under the four color sun. Thank you Adult Collectors.

Still, Atrocitus is but a babe, having first appeared in 2007. The push of the rainbow Lanterns into merchandise, well ahead of a cartoon, always gives me pause. This Trio Atrocitus perhaps the kiddiest interpretation yet of the Red Lantern. We've seen Atrocitus in the Action League two-packs, and soon he'll appear in DC Universe Online, but this teeny tiny building block iteration takes the cake.

In related news, my son has underwear with Kilowog on them. We are living in wonderful times.