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Sunday, January 27, 2008

Occasional Links: The Wolverine Happy Feet Edition




Does DC = NO FUN?!


Need Coffee columnist Widge suggests that DC might not be producing the world's funnest comics anymore -- and a way to remedy the situation:

"...a thought struck me: how about Booster goes and snags--from the time stream, or from alternate realities, or whatever--the old Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League and they run around and have adventures, like a DC version of the Exiles. Get G & D back to write the thing...wouldn't you read the hell out of that book? Of course you would. And so would I."

In a word, Widge is suggesting...EARTH-FUN!



The Comic Britney Should Read

Rex Morgan MD Talks About Your Unborn Child




Revenge Of The Nerds (and, er, Girls With Guns)


Are geeks and girls with guns redefining the action hero?

John Rambo and other cinematic action icons like him face a far larger problem than scornful critics: They’re being swept into irrelevance by a tide of new American heroes, like the retail drone turned reluctant spy of NBC’s “Chuck,” admired more for their technical skills and a general lack of testosterone. And two new television series based on popular properties—“Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” and “Bionic Woman”—are spearheading a resurrection of the strong, hard-hitting and sexy action heroine—action figures who are tougher, less cartoonish, more relatable and just more believable than their beefed-up male counterparts.

Of course, Spider-Man's Brand New Day is not playing into this at all, with a Chuck-ified Peter Parker and Mary Jane as an ass-kicking superheroine.

You know who they should turn into a slacker next? Dick Grayson. He could be in his mid-twenties and have to move back in with Aunt Harriet.


School Bans Superhero Shirts


Several pre-school principals have banned superhero and wrestling icon clothes after a couple tragic incidents:
The ban comes shortly after three-year-old Jared Sadiq of Kensington, Johannesburg, miraculously survived a three- storey fall from his grandmother's flat in KwaZulu-Natal. It also follows the tragic death of an English child, who dived down a flight of stairs wearing a Batman outfit last year.

Of course, this brings to mind how they switched Human Torch for Herbie the Robot on the old Fantastic Four because they were afraid kids would set themselves on fire...


Video: Logan's Shocking True Desire To Become Song-and-Dance Man

11 comments:

  1. Sorry -- gonna have to call you on this one, Val. The Human Torch was replaced by HERBIE because of legal issues; he was under option from a different company at the time and couldn't have been used by the makers of the FF cartoon.

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  2. Sean,

    I told her the EXACT same thing :-D

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  3. The nerd as the action hero article might have had some credibility if Bionic Woman wasn't already canceled. And while it may have lost out to Meet the Spartans as the #1 draw, Rambo still brought in $18 mil in *January*. That article read like, "I'm so hip I'm identifying the new hot trend." It's really just grasping at straws as this Hollywood manufactured fad will die away soon enough.

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  4. I also recommend the pre-schools ban children from making airplane noises and set out poisoned birdseed to destroy the local bird population. Oh, and ban the Dukes of Hazzard - not that I have a permenant scars myself, but...

    I've watched the rise of geek to an acceptable version of masculinity with amusement. I suppose it was inevitable, with the geeks programming the sports titles and first person shooters the jocks play.

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  5. SuperVirginMary is...is...guh!

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  6. Here's a quote from the article that is an example of its poor writing:

    "“Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” debuted on Fox on Jan. 13—a mere five days, for what it’s worth, after Sen. Hillary Clinton won the New Hampshire primary."

    For what it's worth? It's worth less than nothing. It's a simple correlation of two mutually exclusive events.

    Anyway, I'm hoping the geek fad dies down sooner than later.

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  7. I hope they threw Joss Whedon a bone. Him and his magical little girls must've done something for "the cause."

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  8. I want the SuperVirgin so much.

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  9. wow... I must be the only one out there that is thoroughly enjoying the "geek" hero fad. I'm glad that the general population is finally seeing merit in what we classify as "geeks" - for too long has the beefed up image of "jocks" been the norm for any type of hero. Why does a smart man (or for that fact woman) HAVE to be a beefcake to be a hero?

    I guess it also all comes down to what you can classify as a "hero". Sure, some sports stars are going to be seen as heroes, but why can't the scientist that developed the cure for cancer (when that happens. I'm thinking positive) or the next door neighbour who rescues your pet kitten from the top of the tree because a rowdy puppy frightened it? All could be seen to be a hero in their own way. It's just a shame that hollywood trends don't follow the same theories.

    Just my naive two cents..

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  10. Kids in my country threw themselves through plate glass windows trying to re-enact Power Rangers back in the day. Okay, it was one time, but the way the media carried on you'd think it happened *all the time.*

    Kids are going to do stupid dangerous stuff (like the one kid who ended up dangling from a skipping rope trying to bungie-jump from our primary school's fort)- taking their toys away isn't going to stop it.

    Sorry, soapbox.

    And I'd love to see more nerd heroes. And girls with guns. Nerdy girl heroines with guns.

    I think I've only got two more days to get that in as a pitch to Shadowline. ^_^

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  11. I seem to remember a comic that had The Torch in a crisis of faith after a kid lit himself on fire...

    I know I barely made it through my 80's childhood trying to turn myself in a VW and a Stegosaurus alternately.

    Do the people on CSI and Law & Order count as heroes?

    The Virgin Mary is the Holy C's latest effort to embrace a pagan practices to draw new converts to Teh Faith.

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