Great Comics That SHOULD Have Happened

I've always been a fan of comics (and superheroes in particular), but I haven't actually purchased a monthly "floppy" in forever. Part of that is because I'm old and destitute, and part of that is because any DC comics that aren't Batman '66 are too in love with being grim & colorless slogs. Today, though, I stumbled across a blog featuring some books I actually might consider spending my LEGO minifigure allowance on:

Comics fan Ross Pearsall has been working on a blog called Super-Team Family: The Lost Issues! and it is extremely rad. Today's issue features one of my all-time favorite real-life metahumans, Mr. T:

This got me thinking about other fun comics-that-never-were-but-shoulda-been, which of course led me to...

Comics Alliance Presents: Great Comics That Never Happened

Which are pretty much all amazing. One of my favorites, though, is the League of Extraordinary Gentleman: America 1988 cover:

Which was technically an April Fool's Day joke, but which reminded me of this... so many good FAKE comics. I know there are some amazing REAL comics on the shelves right now (*cough* BATMAN '66 *cough*) but so few with such a sense of humor and fun. Heck, the last two LOEG books weren't half as interesting as these pretend ones made by fans, but they were sure ten times as gritty!

... like I said, I'm old.

Super Mario 64 HD Needs to Be A Thing

Revisiting past titles in the Super Mario series is ALWAYS an idea I can get behind.

A computer science student named Erik Roystan Ross has recreated the first level of Super Mario 64 in high def and made it available to play online. I haven't tried it myself yet (I think I have to install something?) but I've watched the YouTube video, and it looks crisp.

It's funny how, more than anything, it's the sounds and music that bring me back. I'm a huge fan of the SNES, always will be, but I remember standing in a Target store and watching that first Mario 64 demo and being blown away by it. The music is so... peppy, and the sounds so cartoony. I think I may have to pull my N64 out of the closet this week (or at least my DS copy of the game).

According to PC World, the level isn't a perfect copy, but to me it still looks like a great revisit. Makes me wish Nintendo would return to the title and do a polished version for the WiiU with all new textures and the like. I'm sure I'd still be terrible at it; I should probably just stick to Super Mario 3D Land.

Our New Lex Luthor

I'll start this off right, with one of my (most likely) unpopular opinions: I thought Michael Rosenbaum was awesome as Lex Luthor on Smallville. Clany Brown was even better on Superman: The Animated Series. So those are my baselines for Lex Luthor on screens both small and large. Hackamn was great, but in a totally different way; Spacey was riffing on that. I think our new Lex Luthor will be more like the former two than the latter.

For those of you who haven't seen it, "our new Lex Luthor" was revealed by Entertainment Weekly last week: Mr. Jesse Eisenberg. There's not too much to see in that picture, other than he's at least bald... and annoyed... and black & white. I'm sure he'll be suitably grim & gritty.

I'm trying to get excited about these upcoming Justice League movies, since I've been a DC guy since I first saw that Super Powers Hall of Justice sitting under the Christmas tree... but they are NOT makin' it easy for me. Man of Steel almost completely missed the core of what makes Superman as a character, and little I've seen or heard recently makes me think Warner Bros. will learn any of the right lessons from Marvel.

... but when the first trailer drops, I'm sure I'll squeal with glee and change my tune. For a bit. In the meantime, I helped Entertainment Weekly out a bit with their Lex picture. Something was missing.

... or, if you prefer the aforementioned Super Powers (and who doesn't?):

Standard-Issue First Post

I think most people like to think their opinions are interesting, or at least that there are some people out there who share them; I'm no different. This blog will be my attempt to find out if either of those things is true of me. In addition, I've always enjoyed writing and telling stories, so this will be an outlet for that as well.

My plan is to translate my thoughts on various pop culture topics into text, and see if any interesting conversations arise. I'll be pushing myself to update every day or two... but I'm sure everyone who starts one o' these things says that. We'll see how it goes.

Hope you stick around for the ride.