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I finished Live A Live last night, which took me longer than I expected. It’s a HD-2D remake of a mid-90s JRPG by Square which was released only on the Super Famicom. It’s a staple of the SNES fan translation canon though, as it was translated by the early 00s. Given it didn’t leave Japan, I was a bit surprised it got a modern remake and English translation.

It purports to be a short story anthology with 7 tales set in different time periods – Prehistory, Imperial China, Twilight of Edo (Shogunate Japan), the Old West, Present Day, Near Future and Far Future. Although the base controls and combat system are the same between them, each has been designed by a different team and has a different focus. Far Future has only optional combat (until its final boss) and is instead sort of a survival horror thing, very Alien influenced, whereas Present Day is pretty much all combat, as you take a guy through duels against various martial art masters to steal their moves (it’s a bit like a Megaman boss rush mode but you’re playing as a Blue Mage).

Combat’s pretty cool. It’s turn based but with a time-based system (so kind of the Active Battle System in contemporary FFs,) but grid-based, so you have to think about attack distances, patterns etc, as well as charging time and elements.

As you might expect, there’s more to the game than just those seven stories as it adds an 8th when you finish them, which highlights a linking theme that’s run across them. You then get a final chapter where you build a party from the 7 protagonists and take on the 8th. That all ran a lot longer than I was expecting to be honest, which did temper my enjoyment a bit (I was hoping to get it done before a certain day). The bigger issue with it is that the linking theme and narrative just doesn’t entirely make sense. I don’t think it really adds anything to any of the stories as they were and it requires you to kind of ignore bits of them for it to hang together./

Still, over all this is really enjoyable. It looks gorgeous, it plays well and it just feels like something different in a genre than can be quite formulaic.

Robert Kirkman’s licensed the Gold Key characters, so I guess this means we’re mere weeks away from Turok: Dinobot Hunter.

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lorcan_nagle, Todd, Ben

New Zealand was going to do it first, as well as reducing the amount of nicotine in cigarettes (which seems like a pretty good policy even if you don’t want to ban them) but backed off it when the government changed.

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Todd

The 4K restoration of the TVM came out yesterday, which I completely forgot about. The Beeb’s put the restored titles on YT and man, that ominous last line of the voice over and that version of the theme tune still gets me, like I’m 9 years old again.

And they got McGann to do the subscription beg for the end of the YT upload too.

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Todd, lorcan_nagle

But food, even junk food, has a positive benefit of being, you know, food. It’s misuse (and in some cases not even that) which causes obesity. You could even argue alcohol has the same limited positive health benefits when taken in moderation. Cigarettes don’t. It’s an artificial product we created entirely for a recreational activity that causes damaging health effects.

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lorcan_nagle, Ben

njerry wrote:

Arjan Dirkse wrote:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/apr/21/bill-banning-people-born-after-2008-from-buying-tobacco-clears-uk-parliament

This is probably my fault; just the other day I saw a cigarette display in some shop and said to my UK cousin “I’m surprised people still smoke, knowing what we know about the health risks.” Maybe my cousin has a connection with the NHS.

Honestly, anyone under the age of about 45 who smokes is an unmitigated idiot. It has been common knowledge for that long that cigarettes are incredibly harmful to health. To choose to take up smoking at any point since the late 90s ish is just a moronic decision and your resultant health issues shouldn’t be the state’s burden.

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Todd, njerry

Various bits of Japanese Beast Wars tat
So I’ve discovered an affordable (for the moment at least) Japanese proxy shipping service and have mainly been using it to get vintage Beast Wars merch. First amongst these were a set of character magnets, chibi versions of the original 10 characters from the show (unfortunately, Black Arachnia, Inferno, Tigatron and Airazor didn’t figure into any of the BW merch Takara did back in the day). And two from BWII, which seem even harder to find. Pointless? Maybe. But fun.

Speaking of, the other pick up I’ve really found myself falling in love with are these soft vinyl finger puppets, made by the same company, Harveston, and also available in capsule machines back in the day. Sofubi finger puppets like this are a thing in Japan it seems and I just think they’re neat. They’re really characterful in their SD style and just nice to pick up and fiddle with. I’ve got eight of these so far, with Scorponok on the way. Just need to find Waspinator (who I’ve spotted on eBay, misidentified as a kaiju and very cheap, except for postage, because it’s in Thailand).

Harveston did a five pack in the same style for BWII, but candy company Kabaya also did some of BWII and then BW Neo and I’ve got most of the Neo ones (with the rest and all of BWII on the way). These are about the same size, but of a harder vinyl. The holes in them are far less circular and thus harder to get a finger in, if you’re so inclined. The stylisation is less SD and more chibi. So they’re not as nice, but they’re still fun.

I’ve really been won over by the finger dolls and have been looking into ones of other licenses. Final Fantasy, Street Fighter, Pokemon (where they seem to have done literally every Pokemon over the years), Marvel, Disney, even Thunderbirds. Although weirdly, the Thunderbirds ones are named as “lighter covers”, to put a Bic lighter in. Seems a very mixed message and maybe not a great idea to put something that can melt on a lighter?

The last of the BW tat I’m going to talk about (but not the extent of what I’ve bought) is Tamagoma. These are the answer to the eternal question of “what if Beyblades were egg based and featured Beast Wars characters?”

They’re by Takara and a year before they came up with Beyblades, so do feel like a rough take on the idea. Each egg can split in two and have a little BW pvc placed in it. The bottom half has a gyroscope in it and you use the included ripcord to set that spinning, so it can balance on its rounded point bottom and then… well, not do much. The packaging suggests that the idea is that it’s a game and you win by your egg hitting the release switch on your opponent’s egg. But they don’t have anywhere near enough lateral movement for there to be any chance of them moving towards each other, let alone hitting each other, unless you put them right next to each other. It also says you have to set it going while holding it and then gently place it down on the play surface, which seems a world away from the “let ‘er rip” nature of Beyblades

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Todd, lorcan_nagle, Dave

Blokees Transformers Defenders
I got really into Blokees when they first started but that burned out pretty quickly after half a dozen of the Galaxy class models. But the Defender line has started adding in Beast Wars characters and I am a sucker for Beast Wars (more on that later). So after getting Cheetor as a test, I bought a full case of wave 6, netting me Megatron in robot and beast modes and Optimus Primal in robot and beast modes (plus loads of others to sell, Maybe). And they’re really cool!

Defender is a smaller size scale, coming out about the size of a Battle Beast, and with more chibi proportions. It works really well, they feel more distinctive than the Galaxy ones and, crucially, cheaper. I’ve ended up keeping Shattered Glass Rodimus, Ultra Magnus and Perceptor from wave 6, picking up Shockwave, Scourge and Cyclonus from previous waves and got in a full case of the brand new wave 7, from which I’ve kept Lio Convoy, beast mode Lio Convoy, Magmatron, BW Galvatron, Gigastorm and I’m still on the fence about Ratchet. Oh and Big Convoy, though I had to get him separately (my case came with the evil Big Convoy variant, the one variant of the four possible I didn’t want). Another instance of having to reign myself in a bit. I’ll definitely get any BW character they do, but with G1, I think want to limit it to some of the big hitters and characters I care about (and Perceptor, it seems). Maybe the Lost Light crew?

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Andrew, Todd, lorcan_nagle, Dave

MOTU Origins

200X Skeletor

It’s ironic, given I’ve been slowly trying to sell off my 200X collection, that I’m finding myself really into these 200x cartoon collection figures. I picked up Skeletor first, from the Entertainer (which seems to be the only High Street chain stocking them) when I intended to get Panthro. I figured there was less chance of Skeletor hanging around long term (I feel like there’s so much 200X Origins coming out just now that it’s going to be short run and cleared out quickly, possibly to make space for the movie stuff).

Skeletor has an incredible face sculpt. Lovely colours. And just all over, he nails the look of the cartoon. He comes with his havoc staff, which is also great and his dual swords. Unfortunately, the swords didn’t get paint apps, so the blades are just the bare purple and orange plastics. The bigger issue is that they’re just not a great design. The idea is that the two peg together to make a dual handle and two pincer like blades. The original 200X ones kinda worked, but these hard plastic ones are too thick, so the handles and blades end up off-set. Plus, they were warped in the pack and even a couple of heat treats haven’t straightened them out. But Skeletor doesn’t even need swords, really. He’s got a stick! With a skull on it!

Moss Man

I’m not sure why, but when I saw the 200X cartoon collection was coming, Moss Man was the first one I was like “oh yeah, I need that!”. I think because he wasn’t in the original 200X line and was such an interesting redesign of the original (which was just Beastman covered in flock). This figure captures that redesign nicely. Lovely shade of green. Great head sculpt, with the elfin ears and dirty hippy beard. Accessory is just a plain green stick thing, but it’s got a subtle wood grain sculpt detail that sets it off. The use of a poncho piece helps disguise the stock torso and change his build. Really successful figure.

Herman
This (and Skeletor) isn’t the first attempt at a 200X Herman in the Origins line. The first came out a few years ago and was a weird bastardisation of the regular He-Man figure with 200X accessories. This new cartoon collection version really shows off how having a new buck style helps match the intended style, while still feeling part of the Origins line.

Again, there’s a really nice head sculpt on this, which captures the face (and hairstyle!) of the 200X He-Man. His clothing mostly feel right, though weirdly his furry loincloth (Kilt? It has a sporran) is covering over a brown crotch piece that has a furry loincloth and belt sculpted into it. And I’ve just noticed that his back has a copyright notice for WEB and Wolf, so it’s actually just Lion-O’s chest from the T-Cats line reused. Same on Moss Man. That’s funny.

The only disappointing thing with He-Man is his weapons. The power sword is a good sculpt, but completely lacking in paint apps, let alone the silly twisty thing the original did. And then he doesn’t come with anything else. No axe, no shield. Which isn’t a dealbreaker, but a little disappointing.

I am going to have actively reign myself in on this line, especially as they’re releasing such a glut of them all in quick succession (the sub-line started a few months ago and there’s already over a dozen figures). But I’m probably going to get Teela, Evil Lyn and Merman. Maybe Roboto and Man-At-Arms. Zodac too? And Beastman’s cheap on Rarewaves already. But not Orko. I draw the line at Orko.

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Todd, lorcan_nagle, Dave

Here’s a big dollop of things I’ve picked up in recent months and again keep forgetting to talk about.

MOTU x Thundercats

I ended up getting the rest of the proper T-Cats from this.

Tygra – who is mostly good. He comes with loads of translucent green Eternian parts. I don’t really know why (presumably a reference to… something?) but they’re nice enough. Didn’t stop them ending up in the tin with the rest. The head sculpt is brilliant especially. Unfortunately, the stripe paint apps on the arms weren’t dry when I got him, so they’ve smeared a bit. The bigger problem is his weapon. It’s the tri-ball bola thing he originally had, but Mattel have decided to give it a real fabric cord for most of it, which is just entirely unwieldy. Far too long, no ability to pose in any way and he can barely hold it at the fabric, so you’re mainly just left with “puddling on the floor” as your only option.

Lion-O – this is the wave 3 redeco which is the… cartoon version? I think. It’s nicer. Less yellow on the chest, forearm and muzzle patches. The Eternian accessories are now gold rather than metallic blue (in the tin, so moot) and his basic hair is a different shape too.
Overall, a nice figure. I really like the details on the eyes (helped no end by Mattel doing face printing now, like Hasbro does on 6” figures). The gauntlet he comes with is not quite the one in the original cartoon/toy, it’s more Eternian. It’s quite clever how it’s designed though – it’s just a replacement hand rather than a snap on accessory. It can also peg onto his belt, though not very securely.

Panthro – also the wave 3 cartoon redeco, which is more grey than blue. His Eternian bits are gunmetal grey rather than gold, but again, all in the tin. Beyond those, he has a spiky wrist strap, (such a goth), which is maybe slightly too large, and his nunchuks, which are good. Another solid figure which captures the spirit of the original.

Sorry, stock photos for all these guys. I’ve really enjoyed this line, it’s made me remember how much I like Thundercats when divorced from the original cartoon (which, opening titles aside, is awful). I hope they do some more after the MOTU movie passes. Wilykit, Wilykat, Pumyra, Bengali and Jaga feel kinda essential.

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lorcan_nagle, Dave

[Martin Smith]

You’re assuming the boycott will be over by next year?

Edit: The other concern with Discord is its push to AI, such as adding hidden scraper bots to servers without users knowledge or permission. Currently that can be mitigated but the owner of Discord seems like he’s drunk the AI kool-aid.

Also there’s an issue that we wouldn’t have full control on moderation/banning. I’ve seen stories of people having their full Discord accounts limited or banned due to decisions taken  not by that community or its users/mods but Discord’s (including an AI moderation system scanning posts and DMs), especially for political content.

• This reply was modified 1 week, 3 days ago by Martin Smith.

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Todd, Ben

I have my reservations about Discord (the age verification stuff, the push for Nitro) but it is functional and has been a decent enough fallback for the other former-message-board-community I’m part of. It’ll be a shame to see the Carrier go, one of the last of a dying breed of old style forums, but I get that it makes sense financially. There is always proboards as a free alternative option though…

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Todd, lorcan_nagle, Ben

I’ve been helping to clear out my parents’ lofts (yes, weirdly there are two for the one house) recently, and floorboard the main one. Amongst the various forgotten junk up there was a bag with a few PC mags from 98/99. Three PC Formats (the boring mag that would have articles about how to use Internet Explorer etc) and two PC Zones (the games mag, which Charlie Brooker used to write for).

I had a quick look on ebay and surprisingly they have some value, the Zones certainly (and slightly less surprisingly), so I put them up for a speculative £10 each or best offer, fully expecting to a) get haggled down on the Formats at least and b) take a while to sell them, if at all.

But no, been less than two days and three have already sold, at full price. And more Formats than Zones. One of the Formats is even going to the Netherlands. Baffling.

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Todd

Colbert very succinctly spelling out what will happen with the Trump IRS slush fund.

 

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Todd, Ben

Ben wrote:

For a change, a RefUK by-election candidate has been suspended in advance of the election, and not after.

Speedrun record achieved.

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Todd, Ben

Arjan Dirkse wrote:

What are people’s main complaints about Starmer, concretely? Is it reasonable to expect another candidate from the same party would do a better job?

My problem with Starmer is that he is completely lacking in principles and backbone. He stood to become Labour leader on a very clear set of pledges, heavily playing on Corbyn’s existing platform and support, and immediately abandoned pretty much all of them. I’ve highlighted in green the ones he’s actually followed through on.

Then as leader of the opposition he went into the general election with a completely different set of pledges. He got elected with a massive, if fragile, majority which  gave him the opportunity and ability to make big, meaningful changes to the country. Instead, he’s doodled around in the margins mainly, while spending most of his energy immediately courting Reform supports.  Most of whom are never going to vote for him anyway, whose vote he wouldn’t need for five years anyway and, if he actually spent his time focusing on positive, meaningful changes that other people liked, he wouldn’t need because his own base would be stable if not growing.

While his Labour government have done some good things – removing non-dom status, the Renter’s Rights Bill, reducing NHS waiting times a bit – these are always pretty milquetoast in ambition and overshadowed by Labour’s own actions on largely meaningless distractions. For instance, renationalising the railways, the only bit of his leadership renationalisation pledge that’s stuck, has gone for the weakest, most drawn out option of just letting all the current private contracts lapse and then be handed to a publicly owned operator, but does nothing to renationalise the rolling stock, so there’ll still be a private entity involved unnecessarily hiking prices. His move to abolish hereditary lords has been walked back to letting some of them stay anyway. Some people give him credit for not getting us drawn into Trump’s war in Iran, but given we’re letting the Yanks launch missions from our military bases, it’s an entirely arbitrary distinction and one that the, crucially, the Iranians don’t accept.

Even the social housing thing; yes we’re building more houses (at the expense of green spaces, wildlife etc) but these are still developer led, not being built by councils. They’re cramming low quality houses in a tightly as possible, doing the bare minimum to meet regulations on things like sizes of rooms and solar panels (some new builds near me have two small solar panels inset into the roof, meaning that you’re not going to get much from them and there’s no ability to add more without completely redoing the roof) and then being put onto the already high market at a premium. The threshold for what counts as “affordable” is completely screwed up and we’re not replenishing our council housing stock properly (though right to buy is supposedly being scrapped, finally, which is a good move). So Labour have basically given housing developers the power to push through new developments on pretty much any land they want with no right of refusal to locals or even councils so they can put them onto a broken market with no hope of that ever driving prices down. It’s essentially state-endorsed participation for private companies profiteering in the tulip mania being sold as a chance for poor people to maybe get a bulb if they’re lucky,

Starmer has also proved himself to be a terrible politician. Farage and the right wing press constantly play him like a fiddle, dictating talking points and the narrative of the country. He is brittle and reacts terribly to criticism. He constantly comes across as a complete tool in PMQs and he is obsessed with shows of “strength” when dealing with dissent in his party – removing the whip from multiple MPs within weeks of getting elected over a minor revolt on the two child cap on tax benefits that he eventually lifted anyway – that are in reality total over-reactions that make him look fragile AF.

This comes with an authoritarian streak that surprises people who think his work as a lawyer was just human rights and ignore that he was director of public prosecution for years. His push for digital ID (which seems to be back again lately), the online safety act and the proscription of Palestine Action shows a contempt for personal liberty, privacy and freedom of expression. Rather than “review all UK arms sales and make us a force for international peace and justice” as he originally pledged, he has stamped out all dissent about our arms sales to Israel, who are engaged in a genocide and disingenuously frames all criticism of that as anti-Semitism. We have people who tried to sabotage an arms manufacturer’s facility, for which they were fairly convicted of criminal damage (and in one instance GBH) being sentenced as terrorists, despite this not being included in the charges, not being told to the jury that deliberated their case and kept from the media. We have defendants not able to present for parts of their own trial because witnesses are being allowed to present secret evidence that defence lawyers aren’t even allowed to tell their clients about.

The one thing his government seems to be actually focused on is eroding trans-rights. In the last few years, the UK has gone from the top of the most LGBT-friendly countries in Europe to 22nd. His government has pretty much revived section 28 (the law that prevented any positive acknowledgement of homosexuality in schools) but for trans-people and consistently failed to ban conversion “therapy”. Deaths of trans kids is sky-rocketing, due to both increased hostility and a health service that is now designed to intentionally fail and undermine them.

And that’s without getting into the nonsense with Mandelson and all the graft of freebies.

Ultimately, Starmer got the easiest landslide general election victory in history, it would have been impossible for him to not win that election. And yet two years in, the country is for the most part not better off for him being in charge. We’re not happier, healthier, wealthier or more secure.

Will any of the alternatives be better? Streeting won’t be, given he’s the architect of this trans-hostility and a Mandelson acolyte. Interesting that he’s saying the UK should rejoin the EU, because it seems a pretty transparent attempt to find a policy that might actually get people to like him. Rayner would probably be better, but is undermined by her tax snafu (even though she was cleared of intentional wrongdoing on that recently and I think it presents a good springboard from which to campaign for reform/simplification) and frankly general background misogyny and class prejudice. Burnham, might be better. He’s not as left wing as people are painting him, but he does seem to at least give a shit about people. Oh and Miliband… erm, don’t know really. He floundered quite a bit as leader last time, clearly letting himself be led around by advisors too much. But he’s seemed re-energised since that, so maybe he’d make a better go of it this time.

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Todd, Arjan Dirkse, Uncle Retrospective, Christian, lorcan_nagle, Dave

[Martin Smith]

Dave wrote:

Martin Smith wrote:

Not that I want to cheer on the further descent into chaos of the UK political scene, but it would be quite funny if Burnham lost his by-election and Streeting didn’t get enough supporters to enter the leadership challenge or went out in the first round.

I think there is a definite sense of voters being taken for granted when someone like Burnham gets dropped into a supposedly safe seat like this. As though his election as an MP is a foregone conclusion, regardless of the democratic process. For that reason alone it feels like it would be nice for him not to get an easy win.

I think with Burnham, the fact that this constituency that’s been vacated is within Greater Manchester makes the move less odious than it if it was Kent or something. And I don’t think the aspiration to go from GM mayor to PM is that bad. I mean, obviously, it is self-serving and opportunistic, any attempt to become PM is, but I think it can plausibly be sold as “I want to do more for this area as PM, do for the rest of the country what I’ve done here” etc. And there’s an argument to be made that these metro-mayors not having any position in parliament (and thus necessitating these shenanigans) is a flaw in the system to begin with. Not that being PM and a metro-mayor seems particularly compatible, but then I don’t reckon many PMs get chance to do much MP work for their constituencies either. They can do blunt force stuff – “no, I don’t think we will have that unpopular landfill site built in my constituency” etc – but it’s not like they’re out there helping Sharon from down the road stop getting exploited by her employer or pushing the council to fix some bad potholes on the council estate.

EDIT: Plus, the guy moving aside for Burnham is Josh Simons, who was behind getting a PR agency to investigate journalists that looked into his Labour Together think tank and then reported them to GCHQ for pro-Kremlin activities. So no great loss to parliament and democracy, frankly.

• This reply was modified 2 weeks, 3 days ago by Martin Smith.

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Uncle Retrospective, Todd, Dave

Martin Smith wrote:

Wes Streeting’s resigned, now let’s see if he can 81 (or however many it is) Labour MPs to publicly admit they want him to be PM.

I saw polling earlier, of the Labour membership, which suggests Starmer would lose to Burnham, Rayner or Ed Miliband, but beat Streeting.

Burnham’s now found a Labour MP with a safe seat in Manchester who will stand aside for him. He just has to hope that a) he wins the by-election (everyone will be gunning for him) and b) it happens before any leadership election.

Not that I want to cheer on the further descent into chaos of the UK political scene, but it would be quite funny if Burnham lost his by-election and Streeting didn’t get enough supporters to enter the leadership challenge or went out in the first round.

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Todd, Dave, Ben

Wes Streeting’s resigned, now let’s see if he can 81 (or however many it is) Labour MPs to publicly admit they want him to be PM.

I saw polling earlier, of the Labour membership, which suggests Starmer would lose to Burnham, Rayner or Ed Miliband, but beat Streeting.

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Dave, Todd

I’m currently reading Iron Man epic collection Age Of Innocence, which covers Timeslide, Teen Tony and Onslaught. I read the Teen Tony stuff in a different trade a few years ago and back then I thought it was better than its reputation. This time around, with the added context of Timeslide, well, it’s crap. But I still think it’s a concept with potential, a young version of a “great man” having to live in the shadow of his own achievements and failures. Unfortunately, Terry Kavanaugh doesn’t really manage that and none of the Timeslide stuff makes sense: the Avengers go back in time to get a young Tony Stark to defeat evil current Tony, for reasons never adequately explained. Teen Tony’s parents get killed and he ends up in the present/his future. He runs into, Meredith, the girlfriend he was with at the time and he continually refers to having disappeared on her for ten years, but there’s no way that can be the case, because Teen Tony is in a timeline where original Tony didn’t disappear into time, so from Meredith’s perspective they probably just broke up at some point. It’s also weird that Teen Tony’s just running around under his own name, doing his own thing, while adult Tony Stark has publicly died (yet hasn’t been revealed as Iron Man) and his company and armours are scavenged. Why is no-one having Teen Tony just be Tony and passing it off as some kind of time mix-up/reverse ageing experiment gone wrong? It’s the Marvel Universe, no-one would doubt that.

Anyway, all moot because it gets derailed after a few issues for Onslaught. I’m just at Marvel Universe: Onslaught now and, incredibly, in 25 years or so of reading American comics, this’ll be my first time reading it.

I did wonder though: if instead of the Image out-sourcing, Teen Tony and Waid’s Captain America and whatever else had been given a fair shake, would the MU have recovered as much as it did? Heroes Reborn (which I’ve also never read) is by all accounts not good, but it allowed for a hard reset of so many characters, a sweeping of away of so many crap 90s costumes (pouch-hemmed tank top Giant-Man, actual wasp Wasp, non-god Thor, alien armour War Machine) for something more traditional, mostly in Busiek’s Avengers. Without that, would they have recovered as well? Or would they have just kept throwing ever more wild shit at the wall to see what stuck, as the X-Men did in this period until Morrison revamped it?

Dave wrote:

Martin Smith wrote:

Would I need to have seen the first one to follow it?

I’m not sure how serious this question is, but no, not really. There are a few characters that return from that movie and a bit of backstory but it’s all recapped in this one.

There wasn’t even a fighting tournament in the first one – that happens in this one – so in retrospect the whole first movie feels like a glorified prologue for this one.

It does mean though that there isn’t much of Scorpion and Sub-Zero in this sequel as they were the focus of the first movie.

It was a serious question, though I realise it sounds a bit silly, as I’ve not seen the first but I understand it focused on some new character (Cole?) rather than the ones from the game.

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Dave

Would I need to have seen the first one to follow it?

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Dave

Oh, one more thing: that clipping BB opened of Ben writing about Fisk; that can’t have happened, surely? Fisk wasn’t outed as a crime boss before he killed Ben, was he? He killed Ben after Ben found his mother in the care home, which was when Fisk had outed himself as a philanthropist, but before the crime stuff was broken, IIRC.

I’d be disappointed if L&O is cancelled, but it’s really not as good as the original run. I watched a random episode of that recently (Everybody Loves Raymondo’s, I think it’s called) and every scene was dripping with wit and charm. The new one… not so much. And as much as I like Maura Tierney, I don’t think her lieutenant character works that well. They’re trying too hard to give her more to do than the squad commander usually gets and it just feels try hard. They should have just hired her as lead detective.

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Todd

That sure was a lot of stuff that happened.

Only thing I really found interesting was Heather’s unravelling mental state.

Hopefully that Punisher thing next week will be better, as will whatever it might be (if anything) that picks up with Luke and Jessica (and Danny?)

lorcan_nagle wrote:

Ben wrote:

Trump and Putin are going to die, and you can bet neither have any succession plans.

I know I keep saying it, but the satirical movie about the power vacuum after Trump dies we’re going to get in 20-30 years is going to be spectacular.

There’s definitely going to be a scene of his flunkies tearing off the shoes he makes them wear and putting on ones that fit, certainly.

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Todd, Ben, lorcan_nagle, Dave

[Martin Smith]

University of Sussex overturns £585,000 fine as high court rejects free speech breach claim.
The University of Sussex has overturned a £585,000 fine from England’s higher education watchdog after the high court rejected claims that the university breached free speech regulations in a case involving a former professor.

The ruling is a damaging blow to the credibility of the Office for Students as the court rejected the regulator’s lengthy investigation involving Kathleen Stock’s 2021 resignation, which came after protests over her views on transgender rights and gender identity.

Mrs Justice Lieven found that the regulator’s decision was biased towards punishing Sussex as an example to other universities.

Lieven wrote that the OfS’s final decision to fine the university a record £585,000 “was vitiated by bias because the OfS approached the decision with a closed mind and had therefore unlawfully predetermined the decision”.

The judgment also found that the OfS misapplied concepts of freedom of speech and academic freedom, exceeded its regulatory powers and refused to consider any changes made by Sussex or similar cases at other universities.

“The evidence supports a finding that the OfS had closed its mind to anything that would lead to not finding breaches and being unable to therefore sanction the university,” the ruling concluded.
…
The judgment was highly critical of Susan Lapworth, the OfS’s previous chief executive, saying she wanted to investigate Sussex to send a “strong signal” on freedom of speech to other universities, and that Lapworth’s “mindset from the outset appears to have been that she wished to use the university as a tool to incentivise the rest of the sector”.

…

The result also calls into question the role of Arif Ahmed, the former University of Cambridge philosopher who took over the investigation into Sussex as the OfS’s first director for freedom of speech and academic freedom.

The judgment referred to correspondence between Ahmed and Stock before Ahmed’s OfS appointment in 2023, with the pair exchanging compliments and criticising a non-binary US academic. It also showed that despite concerns about Ahmed’s potential conflict of interest, the OfS eventually enabled him to take a role in the investigation.

Lieven cleared Ahmed of influencing the final decision, saying: “The die had already been well cast by then.” But the judgment noted: “If Dr Ahmed had been the decision-maker I would in all probability have found that he had predetermined the decision by reason of having a closed mind.”

 

• This reply was modified 1 month ago by Martin Smith.

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lorcan_nagle, Todd

The thing with the governor in this last episode summed up some of my problems with this season. Fisk needs the governor out of the way so he can have her compliant Lt Gov installed in her place. So instead of digging up dirt on her (admittedly they said she was too clean for this, but given she’s working with Shaggy from the CIA, that seems unlikely) or entrapping her in a compromising position as he did so much in s3 (like with Foggy’s brother the butcher) he just has someone go and kill her. It’s so… dumb, even if you take Fisk’s grief not making him think clearly and artfully, it’s just really fucking dumb.

Similarly, in the previous episode, why did Matt go to the mayor’s residence to confront Fisk. What was the point of that other than to set up a completely arbitrary fight scene?

I genuinely didn’t know Newsarama was still going. I’ve not heard anyone mention it in years.

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Dave, Todd

The single issue market is insane now. Surely it’s not in any way sustainable for much longer and they’ll need to switch to an OGN format?

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Todd

I’ve been increasingly underwhelmed by this season. It definitely hasn’t been as entertaining as the first. While there’s been some highlights – Swordsman was fun, especially his Reign of Terror commentary on his trial – it’s far less than the sum of its parts and feels like it doesn’t actually know how to escalate tension or stakes really. Matt and Karen just seem to be in a constant holding pattern, even when they’ve been doing stuff.

Jessica’s appearance this week was particularly limp. Given they put her in the promotional material before the series (which even trying to avoid things, I saw) I was expecting her to be more of a factor, part of Matt’s resistance movement (which the end of s1 really felt like it was setting up to be this big network and it’s really just Karen, Matt and occasionally someone else). But not turning up til episode 6 and then just doing a completely arbitrary fight scene? And her house arbitrarily attacked by a random CIA wetworks team for no fucking reason? What was the point? I can take or leave Jess having a kid now (it really doesn’t tally with MCU Jess, but I guess it’s been a while since we’ve seen her) but it seems like they had no idea how to actually use her in any meaningful way. Which is what this showrunner accused the original s1 team of doing to the Punisher, IIRC, and they rewrote those scenes. Maybe Jessica will prove more relevant to the plot in the next few episodes, but at this point I’d rather they hadn’t bothered.

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Todd

Porsche’s new Gen 4 Formula E car for next season (starts end of this year/beginning of the next). I think this is just a test livery – the dazzle pattern is a bit of cliche on that front and kinda pointless given the series has spec body work that all the teams get from the same supplier – but still, it looks gorgeous. Big improvement over the Gen 3 and almost as nice as the Gen 2. I hope Porsche stick with that shade of purple for one of their teams.

Gen 4 is a big opportunity for FE. The cars will have 600kW of power (over 350 on the current cars) which is about 800 brake horsepower, 0-60 in about 1.8 seconds and it should get up to about 200 mph. In a period where F1 has alienated a lot of people with its new ruleset, hopefully FE can capitalise. Probably not, given that electric power is being made the scapegoat for F1’s problems, so an all-electric series likely won’t appeal to people put off by it, I guess.

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Todd

I’ve been buying a lot of stuff from Japan recently. Mainly Beast Wars tat, video game stuff (GameCube controllers in Japanese exclusive colourways but also a complete copy of Kid Icarus for the Famicom Disk System. I do not have a FDS), but also blu-rays of the Ginger Rogers & Fred Astaire canon.

I first watched them all around 2012, when BBC filled the resultant void of putting all its kid programming only on the dedicated channels with old movies, and really loved them. Ginger Rogers especially is a brilliant comedic actress. Weirdly, of the 9 films Rogers and Astaire did together, the only one that’s had a blu-ray release in the West is Swing Time, in the Criterion Collection. I rented that a few years back and was surprised by how much I remembered being in it wasn’t. In Japan though, most of them have been release on blu-ray by IVC. I took a punt on getting one in my first proxy shopping shipment and it turned out to be region free, so I’ve scooped up most of the rest (can’t find a copy of Top Hat unfortunately and I might just get the Criterion release of Swing Time, as the restoration on these Japanese releases isn’t stellar).

I watched Shall We Dance last night, and turns out, all the stuff I’d thought was in Swing Time – the dance on roller-skates, Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off, Fred dancing with loads of women wearing creepy masks of Ginger – it’s in Shall We Dance. Which is fine, just a fluke of my poor memory. But it does make me question even more why Swing Time is the only one that got the nod from Criterion. It can’t be a rights issue, because all but one of them (which they did for MGM years after all the others) are in the RKO catalogue, so have the same ownership. So they must have purposefully picked Swing Time, even though it’s not the most famous (Top Hat), arguably not the best (Top Hat or Shall We Dance) and has a whole blackface dance routine they have to acknowledge. Or maybe that’s it. Maybe they picked it *because* of the blackface routine so they could do the commentary and special features about it.

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Todd, lorcan_nagle

Uncle Retrospective wrote:

Martin Smith wrote:

It’s almost like airing shows out of order is never a good idea or something.

I watched the first season when it aired and gave up because I had no idea what the fuck was going on.

What the fuck is wrong with these people?

You’d think that people who work in television, of all people, would understand the importance of being able to coherently follow a TV series, and yet…

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Uncle Retrospective, lorcan_nagle

I’ve started watching Don’t Trust The B In Apartment 23, which is a delight. Unfortunately, I got about halfway in in before I realised Disney+ has got the episodes out of order (they’ve gone with air date order and ABC showed them in a seemingly random order it seems). It completely messes up the running plot threads, the build up of relationships etc. I can see why anyone watching it at the time would have been thrown by that and how it could have led to its cancellation. You know, like it did for Firefly. It’s almost like airing shows out of order is never a good idea or something.

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lorcan_nagle, Uncle Retrospective, njerry

Arjan Dirkse wrote:

Argos is a radio show/ podcast in the Netherlands

Wow, that’s weird they branched out to that from the shops they have over here.

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Dave

Who is that Artemis Four pin-up by? I can’t make out the signature.

Dave wrote:

Karolina looks like she’s standing against her will.

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Todd, Dave, lorcan_nagle

https://www.channel4.com/press/news/channel-4-extends-its-reign-uk-home-taskmaster

Channel 4 has extended its deal for Taskmaster and, crucially, expanded its selection of international ones. NZ, Australia and Canada all to stream, including on the C4 youtube channel.

I had a set of the Narnia books as a kid, which I skimmed (I was terrible at reading as a kid) and there’s two bits from The Last Battle that stick with me: The dwarf that is in heaven with them all but thinks it’s trapped in a dungeon or something so can’t appreciate/acknowledge it, which even as kid I found kinda spitefully written. And then that because Susan got into *gasp* wearing lipstick she’s too much of slut to go to heaven with the rest of them. Which again, even as a kid I found dodgy..

Weird they’re printing that Kyle Rayner GL collection again. I don’t think they even bothered with the solicited v2 and 3 last time.

lorcan_nagle wrote:

Todd wrote:

Christian wrote:

I’m interested in this IQ drop issue,

A cognitive neuroscientist testified in front of US Congress, attesting to the fact that Generation Z (and Generation Alphas after them) are the first generations ever to decrease in cognitive abilities.

And it’s worth noting that in the US, this is by design.  The education system has been thoroughly sabotaged over the course of decades by the religious right

That and a very misguided approach to teaching kids how to read for decades.

Pakistan are apparently negotiating a ceasefire between the US and Iran at the moment (no mention of Israel in the reports I’ve seen, which seems like a big omission). And, honestly, the Iranians would be mad to agree to anything. There is practically no chance the Americans will stick to anything they say. Trump has already shown the worth of his word on all those “trade deals”, like the one with the UK, which suddenly became irrelevant the next time he had a tantrum and wanted to change tariff rates.

I’m no fan of the Iranian regime, but it’s hard to see how they’re really at fault for much of anything in this conflict. The Americans have achieved the impossible in making the Iranian government seem if not sympathetic then at least in the right. I kinda think the Iranians should just stick it out and wait for the Americans to crumble. Trump’s negotiating position is highly dubious.

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Todd, Ben, Christian

Christian wrote:

I’m interested in this IQ drop issue, so I’ve had Perplexity give me a quick overview

::sideways look at camera::

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Todd, Ben, Dave

Ben wrote:

£100k cap on political donations and Reform be squealing foul.

It’s as if Megatron went into politics, he who cares not for rights now pleads for them.

Another potentially really good bit of (lower case) reform is a public interest test for all contracts over £1m for public services, to see whether they’d be better served kept in-house rather than out-sourced. Which admittedly still might not do much if people just hand-wave through the test, but if applied properly, it could really cut down on the out-sourcing empires of the likes of Capita etc.

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Todd, Ben

Sean Robinson wrote:

Originally developed by Chinese alchemists in the 9th century who were trying to create an elixir of immortality, it was later discovered to be explosive.

The one thing they didn’t want it to cause!

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Sean Robinson, Todd

Todd wrote:

Tongue depressors and popsicle sticks become craft supplies

Right, but people still have lollies. And tongues.

I woke up today thinking about pipe cleaners (no, I don’t know why and I think it’s probably not even worth investigating). It took me years to realise they’re for cleaning tobacco pipes. Whenever they were used for crafts on Blue Peter or Smart or whatever, I assumed they were for cleaning pipe pipes, you know plumbing, which was confusing, because they’re far too small. I think I only made the smoking pipe connection while watching Bargain Hunt, where someone was showing off some pipes.

Anyway, what this led to me think about is how strange it is that an ancillary product that existed solely to service something else has ended up with an entire other life and purpose (as a staple of fair naff kids crafting items) while the main product is practically extinct. I’ve been trying to think of other examples of that, but am coming up blank. Anyone got any?

I wonder how much Hungary’s shithousery to Ukraine is affecting Orban/will be an element in the election.

I enjoyed s2e1.

lorcan_nagle wrote:

Huh.

You missed a few letters from your huzzah there, Lorcan.

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Todd, njerry

Wonder Man is getting a second season! Huzzah!

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Christian, Todd, Dave, Uncle Retrospective

Dave wrote:

It also feels like they haven’t really reworked the style of comedy for a British audience either,

Maybe it should be half an hour a week

So it should just be every other British sketch show ever made?

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Todd

Oh, I thought it was a screen cap of Andrea Martin from Great News at first glance.

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Sean Robinson

SNL UK launched last night and I thought it was pretty good actually. My main concern had been Weekend Update feeling a bit pointless given all the other topical comedy around in the UK, but by keeping it relatively short and also going quite dark and borderline bad taste, it actually felt valid.

The rest of the show was solid. A few wobbles, the usual SNL thing of not always knowing how to end a sketch, but it certainly wasn’t an embarrassment to the format or any kind of demonstration that the format won’t work over here. The fake ad was an all-timer, the cold open was pretty good political satire, Boovies Goes To The Films was good.

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Todd, njerry

I am getting increasingly hyped to see those “new” episodes of Dalek’s Masterplan at Easter (when even is Easter?!). I hope they haven’t screwed them up “restoring” them with AI though. The season 21 Collection blu-ray came out this weekend and that is apparently as badly afflicted as season 13, even though they said they’d “taken on feedback from the reception to 13” and adjusted it accordingly. I’m still vainly hoping it’ll be corrected before the standard edition releases (with replacement discs for everyone who bought the LE – sounds crazy I know, but they’ve just done that for season 20, which had some issue with juddering on certain players. Anyone with the LE can get replacements of pretty much every disc in the set, which are just the ones in the SE release).

The other three episodes comprise a brand-new box set (release date to be confirmed) in which the Tenth Doctor teams up with some of his other incarnations.

I wonder if one will be the 14th Doctor.

Huh. Well, I doubt anyone predicted that. Will it work though?

Curious as to how bad this must have been to not ever air.

Zhao seems a terrible choice for it though. Admittedly I’ve not seen her other work, but Eternals was dire and the MCU has, broadly, a very similar tone to Buffy, so if she couldn’t manage to work in that, I don’t see how she could have done Buffy successfully.

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Todd

Great news!

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lorcan_nagle, Dave

I’m actually getting somewhat optimistic about SNL UK. There’s some great people involved. Grainne Maguire and Humphrey Ker on the writing team, for instance.

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Todd

The UK version of the Floor ended last night and it was a final episode that rather highlighted the flaws in the premise.

The actual gameplay – two people naming things in pictures on a chess clock – is fine. Fun to play along with at home. And one duel last night, on US states, showed how good it can be when competitive. The winner only had two seconds left and I genuinely wondered if they were going to run out of states.

But that was one duel and a lot of the others showed the opposite end of the scale and how the show can struggle: when one or both people don’t know anything about a certain topic and have to muddle through. A key rule of game and quiz shows is that they’re not very fun to watch if the person playing is completely useless at them. (There are exceptions to that, of course: Taskmaster, House of Games.) That really is true of the Floor, especially when it’s a subject you’ve been looking forward to for the whole series. Formula One was on the board and finally came up last night, but played not by the person who brought it, but instead one guy who happened to know a lot about it and one guy who really did not. It’s not that fun watching a guy say “Damon Hill? Oh pass.” half a dozen times in a row having clearly given up the will to live. Even worse was a woman, who had dominated the last two episodes, defending on countries and not being able to recognise Canada and Brazil on a map.

This really came to a head in the end game. That is structured as best two out of three, on each of the subjects the contestants are holding and then a “neutral” third as a tie-break. Both contestants last night had inherited categories – cricketers and James Bond – and it became immediately clear that they’d given up on those and just wanted to go for the tie break. The guy with cricketers just didn’t even try on James Bond and passed his way through (and he really could have named some of them if he’d actually thought about it), while the woman struggled on cricketers for a bit, saying some random surnames a few times, before just giving up and doing the same.

So the whole series just came down to UK Tourist Attractions (which weirdly included 10 Downing Street, which I would argue is really not a tourist attraction, but heigh-ho), with the guy winning. “You’ve earned £50,000”, Rob Brydon told him, to which my reaction was, well, had he? Because he’d taken part in the second duel of the first episode and then fuck all til midway through the final episode. I mean he did a lot of great standing around! But ultimately he won largely from random chance rather than skill, which doesn’t really feel right. He gets £50k for winning three rounds, whereas other people did five times that and got, in some cases, nothing (or £5k an episode for having the most floor space). There were people who got to the final episode having literally done nothing. It made the whole thing feel somewhat arbitrary and chaotic, in a bad way. Less than the sum of its parts. The Risk-esque domination format is interesting, but flawed, given it repeatedly just ended up with the biggest area changing hands on a single round. The “name-the-picture” gameplay is fun, but doesn’t feel… weighty enough, I guess, to be what the tactical stuff turns on. Contestants bringing their own categories is a cool idea, but the way it’s structured means you’re too likely to end up with people who don’t know anything on one floundering entirely.

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paul f

It does look cool, although the head just makes me think it’s Grimlock. Isn’t it like £30 though?

I picked up some stuff last month that I keep forgetting to talk about.

So Mattel has been going cross-over mad lately. There’s Transformers Hot Wheels and Hot Wheels Transformers (that is Hot Wheels cars of Transformers alt modes and Transformers figures of, erm, “famous” Hot Wheels cars), Turtles of Grayskull, which asked the pressing question “what if a lot of He-Man characters had random mutations and some Turtles characters lightly cosplayed as He-Man characters” and MotU x Transformers, where some He-Man characters are cosplaying as Transformers (which look fucking awful but props for doing Scareglow as Starscream, I guess).

But there’s also MotU x Thundercats. Which initially I dismissed out of hand as being the same as Turtles of Grayskull – entirely inessential and rubbish. The only figure that caught my attention initially was Battle Cat Man, which is Battle Cat as a Thundercat, a brilliant idea. Not Mattel’s own, it must be said, as someone’s been making customs of that concept for years now.

I thought I’d missed out on BCM though, as I could only see it available from import dealers at an eye-watering £30~, but then it popped up on Amazon and a couple of other places (I ended up ordering it from Rarewaves). And in looking into that, I gave a closer look to the rest of the line and realised it’s actually better than I thought. Because while there is a He-Man with a cat chestplate and slightly leonine hair, most of the figures are Thundercats characters. But they’re not really cosplaying as specific MotU characters, they just have Eternian styled accessories, which you can just entirely disregard, leaving you with MotU Origins style Thundercats figures. Which it turns out I am into.

Cheetara is the perfect example of this. Here she is with all the Eternian bits.

And they look pretty rubbish, frankly. But throw those in the bin and you get:

A classic Cheetara. And it’s really good. Mattel have totally got the articulation pattern down well for this line (it helps that they reuse so many parts, I guess). The ankle jointss are a little weak and I think I stressed the feet swapping out the lower leg parts (will definitely heat treat to loosen them next time), but otherwise it’s great. And having it in scale with the MotU Origins figures is nice, even if I only have He-Man and Skeletor (and who else do you really need? Well, She-Ra and Hordak, obvs).

Skel-Ra is slightly more involved. He’s a bigger figure and the concept is Skeletor getting the powers of the Ancient Evils that Mumm-Ra uses or whatever.

Which is fine, I guess. You have to pull the figure apart at the waist to swap out his loin cloth, which is a bit daunting, but again, a nice thing about Origins figures is that they’re designed for exactly that, for some reason. Pop off the nice Skele-head, reverse the bat wings and add in some other accessories and you get:

A pretty fucking rad Mumm-Ra. That’s a great head sculpt. He’s bigger than the other figures, which is a good feature (no idea if Origins has been doing figures this size much – I assume not). Just a really solid figure.

I got both of those off Amazon Italy (worked out cheapest – Skel-Ra was in a damaged box) and they arrived before the main event: Battle Cat Man.

He’s a simpler figure in that there’s no real “transformation” element. You can remove his armour, but frankly, there’s not much point, as he just looks naked (maybe if they’d added a Cringer head it would have more appeal). Still, the concept alone, and the solid execution is all you need. I maybe would have liked another weapon, as the claws – which are based on Battle Cat’ armour of course – are a tad underwhelming and connect only in a fairly vague way. But that’s nitpicking.

There’s three waves of the series so far, with the aforementioned naff He-Man, Tygra, two versions each of Lion-O and Panthro (cartoon and toy deco versions) and a redeco of Battle Cat Man as Panthor making up the rest of the line. I’m definitely looking to get the rest of the T-Cats. Hopefully they’ll go on and do Wilykit, Wilykat, Pumyra and others (that guy who is a blue redeco of Tygra seems an obvious choice at least) but there was no news of the line at Toy Fair, so I fear it may be done, which is a shame. Would have been interesting to see what they’d done with Snarf. Maybe dress him up as Orko?

These figures have renewed my interest in MotU Origins somewhat. I bailed after that first He-Man and Skeletor as I was a bit pissed off with the way all the promo images showed He-Man with a proper sword, but then he only came with half a sword that combined with Skeletor’s (which looks naff) which was then switched to a proper sword in a running change. But I might dip back in and get some of the cartoon classics, especially the 200X ones they’re doing at the moment.

I’m also a little interested in some of the first He-Man Origins cross-over figures they did: Masters of the WWE Universe, which is classic WWE wrestlers with He-Man gimmicks (so the New Day as Man-E-Faces, which is genius). They’re all OOP and expensive though. Turns out they’ve done another WWE line in the Origins style though (called, unhelpfully, WWE Superstars, which is impossible to search for online successfully), which are just straight gimmick-less figures. They also seem to have ended and are also stupidly expensive online (about £30+ per figure) but I happened upon Tatanka, of all people, for £10 in a small chain toy shop in Worcester recently. He’ll do for designing resin stands for those figures at least.

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Todd, Dave, lorcan_nagle

I feel like if it came from any other country it’d have a decent chance at coming about 8th or 12th.

Hasbro teased a Studio Series 86 Prowl but haven’t delivered. A weird omission given how far into the weeds they’ve gone on characters from it now.

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Andrew

I’m watching that Chevy Chase documentary. Incredible really that, in a documentary that he’s fully involved in, he comes across as such an asshole. Not even in a warts-and-all historical sense, even in the bits of him interacting with the (off-camera) director/interviewer.

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njerry, Uncle Retrospective

Arjan Dirkse wrote:

Prison abolition lefties when there’s a school shooting: we have to jail his family!

I’ve never seen a “prison abolitionist leftie” say that after a school shooting.

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Uncle Retrospective, Todd, Al-x, lorcan_nagle

This is quite surprising: Richard Osman is leaving House of Games after the next season (which is currently filming). They’re going to replace him as host, but it’s not an easy role to fill, as Pointless has proved with its guest hosts. The hit rate on those is quite low, as there’s a fine balance to be struck between banter (or schtick in some cases) and being informative. Even some people I really like or you’d assume were safe pairs of hands for TV light entertainment have been awful at it (Konnie Huq always springs to mind for that – you would not believe she’d been on Blue Peter for over a decade with her work on Pointless, where she seemed so unprepared and frazzled it was like she’d never been on TV before). Even the ones who are decent at it rely too much on the canned facts from the laptop (which I suspect they’re pushed to do). Weirdly the best of the Pointless co-hosts IMO has been Alex Brooker of all people.

House of Games has a similar delicate balance. It’s really not a typical game show presenting job but you need someone who can be personable with all the guests without being too luvvy. The only suggestion I’ve seen that feels like they’d work well is Dave Gorman. But it’ll probably be Paddy McGuinness.

<arrested development open marriage meme>

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Ben, Todd, lorcan_nagle

Nothing like a pointless war in the middle east to show everyone how well your Presidency is going!

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Todd, Uncle Retrospective, Ben, njerry, lorcan_nagle

Uncle Retrospective wrote:

There’s going to a new Neon Genesis Evangelion series!

https://x.com/d0nut2x/status/2025919964444557448

Argon Genesis Evangelion?

Neon Exodus Evangelion?

Neon Genesis Evangetiger?

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Todd

lorcan_nagle wrote:

the biggest thing it did was light a fire under me to check out Strikeforce Morituri, which I’d been meaning to do for the longest time…

I read the first tpb of that a year or two back and was really surprised by how great it is. There was an omnibus released last year, which – despite really not being an omni guy – I’m tempted by.

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Todd, Dave, lorcan_nagle

Has anyone heard about those new solar-powered postboxes the Royal Mail is rolling out?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgln72rgrero

One has just been installed in my village. It’s replaced the post box that’s outside the Post Office, which seems slightly less useful than elsewhere in the village, but given that the running of the Post Office has gone to shit over the past few months (all the competent people left and now there’s always a massive queue) it seemed like it’d be a nice quick alternative.

However, I thought the solar-powered element was in order to create proofs of postage, so you can get the benefit of the Post Office experience at the post box. It isn’t though. The solar panels are powering a barcode scanner, but that’s solely just to unlock the drawer to let you put the parcel in. Nothing else. If you want a proof of postage, you have to use the RM smartphone app. That needs to use location services to recognise that you’re by a post box and then… well, I’m not sure, because it wouldn’t acknowledge that I was standing directly beside a post box. There’s an option for not providing a posting location, but that just says “we’ll provide a proof of postage when your item is scanned within our system”. You would think the barcode scanner on the solar postbox would count for that, but seemingly not.

So all these solar powered post boxes actually do is lock access behind a barcode scanner. They don’t actually offer anything useful beyond a normal, non-solar powered parcel postbox (which aren’t very common, but do exist – there’s one in the industrial estate outside my village). Think I’ll stick with the Post Office.

Is Grant the one that has been involved with the Dave revival or the one that hasn’t?

I finally watched Sinners, which I enjoyed. But pick a fucking aspect ratio, my dude.

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Todd, Uncle Retrospective, Dave

The Day The Earth Blew Up finally got a UK release this weekend and I saw it today.

It’s a mixed bag. Animation-wise it’s a tour de force. There’s a whole musical section in a Soviet workers propaganda style (I’m blanking on the name of the movement) which is great.

The story though is a little underwhelming. Not bad, but it wasn’t nearly as laugh out loud funny as I’d hoped.

Worth seeing if you get chance though.

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Todd

Yeah, same. I’ve seen them as “set dressing”, essentially, in a barcade and well… beats Pop Vinyls, I suppose.

Pre-order listings have gone up for these on Entertainment Earth. They’re ReAction+ figures of Leoric and Darkstorm. From what I can tell, ReAction+ are basically just o-ring figures like 80s Joes and indeed Visionaries (although Visionaries were 4″ and these are 3.75″) and is what they do for their Joes now, as well as TMNT and Back to the Future. And they don’t look too bad?

That’s from some idiot’s YT video, comparing them to the original ReActions (and complaining that they’re “very smooth” seemingly missing the fact they’re meant to look like the cartoon versions). Seem to have all the poseability of “proper” O-ring figures. Faces are a bit bland, but not awful. Oh damn, am I getting mildly optimistic about these?

I’ll be interested to see what they do about accessories and holograms. I imagine they’ll just do shiny stickers like the Revolutionaries Leoric – which I’m fine with but I know some chuds will complain about – but the power staffs will probably have to be scaled down to stay within the budget for these (as most figures don’t have any accessories).

 

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Todd, lorcan_nagle

Yeah, Super7 figures generally suck. They’re either the ReAction ones, which are basically “hey, what if this thing you liked was a shitty 5 poa figure from the 70s” or the 7” Ultimates, which pale in comparison to figures in that kind of scale by Hasbro, Mattel or others, but are stupidly expensive.

Oh, on a related note, Super7 also have the Visionaries license now. Pray for me.

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Todd

The biggest news from the Toy Fair.

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Todd

I’ve been reading DC Finest: Hawkman – Wings Across Time recently. Still got a little bit to go, but I thought I’d talk about it and how weird it is.

So, Silver Age DC super-hero reinventions were all about science fiction. The Flash went from a guy who might as well have been magic to a scientist with pseudo-science powers. Green Lantern went from having a literal magic ring to a space guy with a super-science ring that might as well have been magic. Atom went from being an angry short man to a guy who used pseudo-science to change size and density.

The key thing about all those reinventions was that the original creators weren’t involved. New creative teams had free reign to completely rethink the characters. That isn’t the case for Hawkman (and Hawkgirl) though. The GA Hawkman was co-created by Gardner Fox while the SA Hawkman is created by Gardner Fox, along with Joe Kubert, who drew the Golden Age strip near the end. I think it’s fair to say Fox doesn’t achieve any distance from his creation in the update process.

The GA Hawkman is Carter Hall, an archaeologist who finds Ninth Metal, which allows him to create a pair of wings, which he uses to fight crime, along with priceless archaeological treasures “weapons from the past”. He’s assisted by his wife Shiera, who becomes Hawkgirl.

The SA Hawkman is Thanagarian police officer Katar Hol, who along with his wife/partner Shayera, comes to Earth chasing a criminal. Their police uniforms coincidentally include a big pair of wings powered by Nth Metal, which lets them fly and looks otherwise identical to the GA Hawkman and Hawkgirl costumes. Arriving on Earth, they meet the police commissioner of Midway City, who suggests they take human identities and jobs in order to learn Earth policing methods. His brother has just retired as curator of the Midway City Museum, so he sets Katar up with that job (immediately get a sense for how Midway City is run) and Americanises their names as Carter Hall and Shiera. They fight crime under the names Hawkman and Hawkgirl and, arbitrarily, decide to use “weapons from the past” (ie any old shit lying around the museum) to aid them.

It’s a bit of a mess really. The sci-fi elements are constant – their Thanagarian ship hanging around in orbit gets a lot of use, as does their Absorbascon, which summarised and implanted all knowledge from Earth in their heads when they arrived – but they don’t really add that much. It really feels like Fox just wanted to seamlessly carry on/revive the original Hawkman in the new era – as the characters that hadn’t gone away like Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman etc had – but had to bolt on a few contrivances to appease an editorial mandate. As a SF focused reinvention of the character and concept, it’s weak as hell.

But it is late 50s/early 60s DC, so my expectations weren’t high, especially for a Gardner Fox comic. He had a special talent for writing the most scientifically illiterate nonsense possible and then presenting it as if it’s the biggest, galaxy-brained thinking imaginable rather than just a contrived twist. If you wrote a summary of the plot of one of these issues and had someone read it, they would have you sectioned. And yet, Fox is drawing on real science at times. There’s one story where he utilises thermal wake from submarines. Another where the plot hinges on “cold light”, which is silly in how it’s presented, but is really the concept of low-energy lightbulbs decades before it became mainstream. It’s an odd mix of arrant nonsense and the occasional smart idea.

Even having read some Silver Age Gardner Fox comics before though, nothing could prepare me for the fact that Hawkman and Hawkgirl can talk to birds. I had no idea this was part of their power-set! How on Earth do they get a free ride for this while Aquaman is constantly ridiculed for telepathically commanding whales? At least Aquaman’s not dressed as a giant fish.

As I often do with mediocre old comics, I find myself thinking about how this could have better. And I think there is the bones of a decent concept in here. There’s too much that’s just hand-waved away or given a ridiculous explanation. For instance, the Thanagarian police uniforms being giant wings and hawk helmets is explained in a story where it’s revealed the wings were invented by Katar’s father to help fend off a race of space-faring giant birds wearing human face masks that were looting the planet. The police service was set up in the aftermath of this, using the wings and wearing hawk helmets to… remind them of their origin? It’s just silly. I think they’d have been better off breaking the fourth wall a little (as Flash had already done) by having Katar and Shayera get to Earth, use the Absorbascon thing – with possibly it not working correctly – and they chose to emulate the costume and wings of the GA Hawkman and Hawkgirl that they learned of from comics. They’re essentially play-acting their lives anyway in the Carter and Shiera identities, why not go the whole hog? Or the weapons from the past conceit could be the result of them only having remote, out-dated information about Earth so they’ve only previously researched/trained with ancient weapons, not guns or whatever.

Which isn’t to say what is here is terrible. I’ve ragged on it, but the stories are largely enjoyable in a hokey way, it’s nice seeing Hawkgirl be almost Hawkman’s equal and the art by Joe Kubert and Murphy Anderson is pleasant. But neither of the leads have any real personality, it’s all very low stakes, there’s next to no continuity. There’s so much potential for something more interesting here.

One hypothetical that often crops up in comics communities is the old “if you could swap two characters between Marvel and DC” thing. Usually that’s taken as happening now, but I’ve always thought it would be more interesting if looked at a hypothetical for when the characters were created. And in that context, I think Hawkman would be a prime candidate. This would have been great if done by Lee and Kirby. Ok, Hawkgirl probably wouldn’t have come out of that as well as she does here, but it would have rocked.

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njerry, Todd

Christian wrote:

He’s making the categorical mistake of reducing the writing to the dialogue and captions, though. The writing is the art of telling the story, and if you don’t do that, a portfolio is indeed what you are left with.

This is what annoys me when artists say they’re the most important part of a comics creative team (not necessarily untrue) and that they don’t need a writer. If you’re making sequential pictures that form a story, guess what? You’re the writer. They haven’t eliminated the need for one, they’ve just taken it on themselves.

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Vikram, Al-x, Todd

Better than MacFarlane, I guess. And as Mattel have the DC licence from next year or so too, we might get some fun cosplay crossovers.

ToyFair this week, so there’ll probably be an announcement of who’s getting the TMNT license after Playmates lose it (assuming anyone does, given dozens of companies already have one at the moment anyway).

Also, Hasbro have announced they’ve got a wide ranging Harry Potter licence, for anyone wanting to get TERFy wizard figures. I’m curious as to whether they’ll be doing a line with likenesses to the movies or if they’ll go for the new HBO series or just stylised ones.

The one thing they didn’t want to happen…

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Dave, Todd, lorcan_nagle, Sean Robinson

I probably go with dee-kal, because it’s only a term I hear Americans use for the most part.

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Todd

Oh, also, it may just be a hollow rebranding (reversing a previous hollow rebranding) but it’s nice to have the name Sky One coming back.

The ones in there I’ve heard of, I like. Of course, for true SNL, they should mostly be unknowns (though that’s never been entirely true through SNL history and increasingly isn’t, with new hires having online careers). I’m not confident in the show working, but I’m willing to give it a go.

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Todd

the companies insist that the beer is not only safe to drink, but actually tastes good.

Always a great footing to start your campaign off from.

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Todd

Nice to have Mock of the Week back tonight. Works well at an hour format.

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Dan, Dave

Sooo… Trump shat himself in an Oval Office presser the other day. You can hear it happen in the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_6kGluvINg

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JRCarter, Todd

Was it Cory Booker who did that filibuster last year for no particular reason and then still voted to confirm Trump’s nominees?

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Ben, Todd

I finished Wonder Man this evening. I was a bit concerned by them burning it off in one drop rather than weekly (which is what they did to Echo, which was also part of the vague Marvel Spotlight branding IIRC), but I loved it.

Abdul-Mateen is great and Trevor worked surprisingly well long form (though Kingsley’s bad Scouse accent got grating at times). I thought they did really well taking the essence of the character and applying it to a reinterpretation of his actor status quo from the 80s. I’m curious and excited to see what they do with him next.

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Ben, lorcan_nagle, Todd

njerry wrote:

Wait…did Martin just post part of the redacted Epstein Files?

Far more explosive and ill-tempered.

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Todd, Ben, njerry

Walz has been increasingly disappointing over the past month or so.

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Uncle Retrospective, Todd, Ben

I finally played Return To Monkey Island across the last few days. I was little hesitant about it because I was burned by Ron Gilbert’s last adventure Thimbleweed Park. It had been really enjoyable, but then absolutely disappeared up its own arse, making a load of not-as-clever-as-it-thought-it-was meta-commentary about the limitations of the game and the quirks of Kickstarter stuff so for instance one of the Kickstarter rewards was getting your name in the town phonebook, which a lot of people did. In the game’s finale, this is called out as one of the things that doesn’t make sense about the world as the game, as the phone book has far more people in it than the population of the game. This is as the world of the game is revealed to be a video game and your player character turns it off. There’s also a thing where the sheriff, the coroner and someone else are all the same person using different vocal tics, which works as a kinda fun weird quirk of a strange town, but then at the end the character that’s seen through the fourth wall points out that it’s a limitation of the game’s budget or somesuch. It was really unsatisfying to spend hours invested in a game and then have it just go “oh none of its real! None of this matters!”

But with my PC upgraded, I thought it was time to return to Monkey Island, a series I adore (except Escape, obviously. I’m not mad). Gilbert wouldn’t burn me twice would he?

I really enjoyed it for the most part. The art style absolutely isn’t what I would have picked, but it is undeniably well made and animated. The voice acting is mostly excellent, with a huge amount of returning actors (the only problem I had is the replacement voice for LeChuck. Weirdly, minor character Gullet sounded more like classic LeChuck than new LeChuck did). There’s some properly funny lines, as you’d hope, and the puzzles were generally pretty good and not too obtuse. I made good, steady progress and was entertained.

But then I finished it tonight and my immediate reaction was “oh fuck off“. Because yes, Ron Gilbert did it again. Does the story have a satisfying conclusion? No because Ron decided that rather than actually craft a proper ending, he’d just do another bit of pseudo-intellectual msaturbation. As Guybrush descends through Monkey Island after LeChuck to open The Secret, he arrives back on Melee Island, but it’s a theme park type place with characters you’ve met previously just cardboard cut-outs and animatronics. Stan appears and gives you the keys to turn off the lights and lock up. You open The Secret and it’s a t-shirt (a callback to a running gag in Monkey 1) and Guybrush goes off with Elaine, like a middle-aged sadsack leaving an escape room/low rent pirate Westworld. It then cuts back to the framing narrative, of Guybrush talking on a bench to his kid, who complains that the ending doesn’t make sense and Guybrush spouts some bollocks about the nature of story telling and the Secret means different things to different people and… just fuck off Ron.

It’s not that I’m expecting some grand reveal of what the Secret Of Monkey Island finally is. I’ve not been on tenterhooks for 30 years to learn that or anything. It’s clearly a macguffin that can never have any satisfying explanation/reveal. But I’m not the one who created a brand new story explicitly about said Secret. I just wanted to play a fun pirate adventure story with some characters I love, but apparently I need to get some condescending bit of homespun “the journey is more important than the destination” bollocks instead of a satisfying conclusion to the narrative I’ve been engaged with. Which I’m not convinced Ron actually knows how to do. It’s like he’s stuck living in the shadow of barely anyone understanding the ending of Monkey Island 2 – which he very obnoxiously taunts people with here by having the opening seemingly pick up from it, only to turn out to be Guybrush’s kid and his friend play-acting the story of Monkey 2 in the future – and keeps leaning into it in the hopes that, I dunno, people will get this one and hail him as a deep thinker or something?

Seriously, going “ah but the true value of a story is not the ending, but what you take away from it” is not big or clever. It’s the cheap way out of actually giving your story a meaningful ending. It’s absolutely worse for video games where you have to be more actively engaged and for longer than you would a movie or possible even a book.

[Martin Smith]

Thoughts on a few things I’ve bought recently.

Transformers Legacy Metalhawk

I’ve been on the fence for this for ages. I like the character, but never felt compelled to pick this up. Then it got recoloured with nicer greys and I still didn’t pick it up. Both versions have been hanging around on mild clearance for a while and I needed to suggest something I’d want for my birthday.

And I picked the “wrong” one. I’ve got the one with the lighter greys rather than the charcoal ones and… look, it’s fine. I’m not sure that darker grey would actually be better, but there’s something about this lighter shade of grey that just makes it feel like it’s unpainted. Maybe it’s all the resin I’m printing in the exact same colour.

That colour scheme is mainly a problem in alt mode. I don’t think the colour design for that works at all really, as you get a blue jet with red highlights and then just random grey panels. It’s far less of an issue in robot mode and Metalhawk is a cool figure. I’d forgotten that he’s a retool of Kingdom Cyclonus and that’s a good base to work from.

So yeah, it’s nice, it just feels a like some metallic paint/plastic would have boosted it.

Transformers Age of Primes Quickstrike

Another one I was on the fence about because from pictures it doesn’t look that different from the original Beast Wars one. Which obviously not everyone is going to have, but I do, so did I really need the upgrade?

Well I went for and I’m glad I did because it’s awesome. It’s bigger than the BW original (which was a basic class figure), about twice the size and with that a lot sturdier. It is the same basic transformation pattern, just with ~30 years of improvements in design. It’s replaced the translucent plastic of the original with a nice shade of goldy-yellow that gives the impression of being metallic without actually being metallic (except when paint on the chest).

It looks absolutely look the character did on the show and there’s a variety of blast effect and 5mm ports (not that I have much of any to put in them), replacing the water squirting element from the original. A really great figure.

TMNT 88 Remastered 6 Pack

Last year, possibly 2024, Playmates released four “remastered” 88 Turtles, a bit like Transformers Missing Link. These were recreations of the original Turtles figures, but with better articulation. They also gave them nice stands and, for some reason, horrible textured skin. I passed (easy to do given, as with so much of Playmates stuff, it wasn’t available in the UK).

Late last year they revealed this 6 pack. It’s the four Turtles figures again but with smooth skin and joined by Splinter and Shredder. I found a place importing the set (a Target exclusive in the US, I think) for £50, so went for it. And then waited several months while it kept getting delayed, only to turn up almost out of the blue.

The Turtles themselves are pretty great. They really look the part as the original 88 figures (which I’ve bought most of in the last year or so – just missing a Raphael) but with nicer articulation. The originals had swivel joints at the neck, shoulder, elbow and then a more flexible one at the hip. These have ball joints or rotating hinge joints at the neck, shoulder, elbow, wrist, hip, knee and ankle. They’ve all got the same body with different heads, which is fair enough. The belts have been redesigned a bit, so that they’re not connecting on the buckle. Their signature weapons are all included, now in accurate colours (with colour coded handles) rather than uniform orange-brown. No stands, but given they’ve all got flat feet now (rather than a mix of flat feet and tip-toes) and more articulation, they’re not too hard to get to stand (although weirdly I’m finding it harder to get Don nicely posed on the legs than the others, which is weird given they’ve got the same bodies).

I did have to get a heat gun out to reform most of the hands (softer plastic than the originals) so they’d hold their weapons properly, mind.

And then there’s Splinter and Shredder, who are… weird.

Splinter is really cool. Vinyl kimono rather than the original cloth. Has his stick sword and bow and arrow (no paint apps on the bow and arrow, but it’s a really nice sculpt with a surprising amount of flexibility). Really great head sculpt too. What it isn’t though, is anything to do with the original figure. Completely different mould entirely. And as I said, it’s not a bad mould, but it’s not really a “remastered 88” one. It’s just a completely new figure in the style of the early card art, maybe the cartoon.

It’s the same with Shredder, just with worse results. The new Shredder figure fixes some of the problems with the originals – brim of the helmet painted correctly and not as his forehead? Check! Able to stand upright rather than in a persistent back-breaking hunch? Check! But it’s not great. It just feels really weedy. The paint apps on the face are weak and bland (just eyebrows and black dot eyes on white, but there’s no expression there). As with Splinter, the original cloth cape is replaced with a big heavy, wide vinyl one, which mainly serves to highlight how thin the body feels. Oh but they did keep the weirdly posed left hand that looks like it should be for holding a shuriken but doesn’t really hold them well.

It’s just an odd choice. 88 Shredder is, I think, the one figure that would most benefit from a Missing Link style remaster. Proper paint apps on the helmet, a hinge joint in the chest and some knee joints, so he stand up straight for once. But instead, there’s just this entirely new, bland stand-in. Maybe it was a scale thing? I imagine straightened out 88 Shredder would tower over everyone else, even later human figures from the original line, but still. Just feels an odd choice.

Shredder comes with a couple of swords (and I had to heat his hands too). The set also has one each of that weird pizza looking stabby thing in the above picture (which I always thought was a bit of pizza, as a kid), one of the bigger punch daggers (which I always thought was some kind of pie slice for pizzas), a five pointed shuriken and a four pointed shuriken. And that’s it. Feels slightly miserly for six figures, but honestly, who is ever going to display a Turt holding those if they’ve got the signature weapons? It feels like a required formality. The proper punch dagger is much smaller than the original though.

Overall, £50 for four really good Turtles, a nice “imposter” Splinter and a so-so “imposter” Shredder isn’t bad. I’d be interested in more of these (Rocksteady and Bebop, April, Usagi – basically the ones I’ve bought originals of recently) but I guess that won’t be happening given Playmates have (despite literally everyone else on the planet having one) lost their Turtles license from 2027 on.

• This reply was modified 4 months, 1 week ago by Martin Smith.

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Dave, lorcan_nagle

Kash Patel is coming to the UK for a meet-up of Five Eyes (the joint intelligence sharing association of the UK, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand). But instead of going to offices (in secure buildings) for his meetings, he wants to do them while off having jollies. He’s demanding that he (and his girlfriend/secretary) be taken out jetskiing and to Premier League matches for these meetings. Yes, this genius wants to have classified intelligence sharing meetings in football stadiums and on open water. I despair.

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Ben, Todd

Finally, a good riff on the pagliacci joke!

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lorcan_nagle, Dave, Sean Robinson

To be honest, given it’d been in development for 7.5 years, that Prince of Persia remake wasn’t sounding too encouraging. It shouldn’t take that long to spruce up the game (which is all it really needed).