Poll of the Day > Days of our Geekery Past

(+) Yeah! (+)

It's been maybe 2-4 days since the Geek topic purged, and maybe close to 10 or 12 days since it closed. I was waiting for Wave to start a new one, but he's missing and presumed disinterested. So now instead of a Geek topic, there's a Geekery topic >_>

Since so many Geek topic regulars have vanished over the years, I wanted to create a DOFP spoof image featuring nods to all of the PotDers who either left the Geek topics, Gamefaqs, or were hunted down by the mods... but every time I started I realized it's a lot of effort and my artistic skills are low. So then I was going to just repurpose the Cornette territories one, but I'd need to add some graphics programs to this laptop and... meh. Then I googled DOFP spoof titles and found a ST:TNG that looked alright.

At any rate, I wound up Wonder Woman 84 which was... meh. The Themyscira flashback was pointless and shoehorned in there either just to add an action sequence (and not even a particularly great one) or to fulfill some contractual obligation with some of the actors. The opening scene with WW crime fighting was pretty fun, but the actual movie didn't have that same energy; instead, it just meandered all over the place.

I liked Kristin Wiig as Barbara Minerva, even if it kinda felt like they were almost channeling the Burton Catwoman at times. The effects were neat, although the final fight sequence had paced poorly and was underwhelming for much of it. I'm going to blame a lot of that on the fact she was set up more as a secondary antagonist/foil, and seemed to mostly be there to give WW a fight or two.

I enjoyed the kinda quirky Max Lord at times, even if it felt like a major departure from the character and was solidly in the realm of camp. The usage also kinda ensured a weak, unsatisfying ending. (Although the first WW also kinda struggled with the ending.) And, of course, the fact that they just randomly had Simon Stagg -- who had no real connection to his comic shit -- I think caused me to spoil something for myself when I checked something on the wiki (since I was really curious why he was there, but the answer was apparently that they just wanted to use a named DC character rather than create an original character).

I can't remember if I talked about the Shazam movie in the last topic finally, but it was fun. Unfortunately the Hulu one was a tv edit (which I didn't realize at first) which kinda threw off the feel and made it seem choppier. I loved most of the cast. I think Pedro was the only one I disliked, but they didn't give him much personality or dialogue (I think his hero version talked more). It was also nice seeing John Glover once again playing a future-villain's dickish, emotionally distant father again.

I still haven't go around to the other recent DC films. I also new New Mutants listed on one of the streaming services, so I might watch that at some point.

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Today's poll was about whether respondents still regularly read comics.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/8481-do-you-regularly-read-comic-books-or-graphic-novels

I answered not any more, not thinking that manga/manhwa/webtoons might count.

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Commenting here to follow, as per normal.

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what poll?
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I go on Twitter for the first time in a while and see that Magneto is trending.... only to learn it's because of some clip about an anti-vaxxer claiming the COVID vaccine causes magnetism. This is why I never bother with Twitter... ffs

In general, it'd be awesome to see that platform shut down forever, but I imagine all of the dumbshits should just go somewhere else... although they'd probably go to Reddit since they're already used to terrible formats.

Krazy_Kirby posted...

what poll?

The poll was literally in the link!

...o u

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I mentioned in a different topic that I stopped reading new comics after my last subscription expired back in 2014, but I still go retro from time to time. And I count manga as a separate hobby.

Big subject of my geekery as of late: Got back into Magic: The Gathering. This might be a mistake, but the wife and I are both playing Commander and having a good time. Getting a play group lined up, too.

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I_Abibde posted...

I mentioned in a different topic that I stopped reading new comics after my last subscription expired back in 2014, but I still go retro from time to time.

I can't recall whether I've ever had a subscription (my brother was a GL guy for a while), although I had hit up comic stores at one point. I haven't found the traditional comic book format all that appealing, but I'll still enjoy them when they're put in a TPB. Granted, I'm not sure anything has been done in the last five years or so that interests me all that much. (Although if you go ten years out, there were a few things that piqued my interest -- like the Forever Evil storyline and the Shazam relaunch.)

I_Abibde posted... And I count manga as a separate hobby.

It's weird, isn't it? In principle, it should all be the same, but for whatever reason everybody (myself included) views it as some separate thing. There's not much precedent for it with other media. For instance, j-horror is still seen as being a part of horror. When people think of musicals, they don't necessarily balk when Bollywood comes up. But I'll be reading a superhero manga or webtoon and I'll view it as something fundamentally different.

I_Abibde posted...

Big subject of my geekery as of late: Got back into Magic: The Gathering. This might be a mistake, but the wife and I are both playing Commander and having a good time. Getting a play group lined up, too.

While I loved MtG, I just can't see myself ever getting back into it. Besides some of the weird design changes and the directional shift, I kinda got spoiled by the YGO video games and I'm not sure I could ever get used to the idea of purchasing cards again. If WotC ever released MtG games akin to what... whoever did with the YGO games, I could totally get into those because it'd be fun to experiment with decks and get the same experience without the cost and, quite frankly, storage & management issues.

Granted, I guess the other side of it is that I haven't had a local group in years... or a local group for a lot of my geekery (although a few geek friends kept bugging me to join their p&p rpg stuff, which doesn't really interest me in the least). Most of my friends these days are... I don't to say muggles, but honestly we still don't a better work for non-geeks (and, although some of them enjoy sports, I wouldn't exactly call them jocks).

My brother apparently went geek again. I knew that he'd occasionally been reading fantasy novels, but apparently he went hardcore into audiobooks (which he listens to on the road, while out walking, and even while going to sleep). Back around Thanksgiving, I asked him how much he know about Brandon Sanderson and I think he wasn't even familiar with the name (he recognized the Wheel of Time, which he hadn't read). Then when he stopped by in December, he's already gone through a bunch of his books and a few months ago he was going into a long discussion about alomancy as a magical system.

Meanwhile I wound up reading some of Sanderson's prose and I just wasn't feeling it. And, on the subject of things not doing it for me, I've decided to go through my library to see what I probably won't ever read. It started when I got one paragraph into The Hero and the Crown (which I think I just grabbed at a library book sale when filling a bag) and I just couldn't imagine reading the rest. I think I probably have a lot of titles like that in my library.

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Zeus posted...

It's weird, isn't it? In principle, it should all be the same, but for whatever reason everybody (myself included) views it as some separate thing. There's not much precedent for it with other media. For instance, j-horror is still seen as being a part of horror. When people think of musicals, they don't necessarily balk when Bollywood comes up. But I'll be reading a superhero manga or webtoon and I'll view it as something fundamentally different.

I suspect that might have developed from the "anime is not the same as cartoons" mentality that prevailed during the late '90s anime / manga boom.

Meanwhile I wound up reading some of Sanderson's prose and I just wasn't feeling it. And, on the subject of things not doing it for me, I've decided to go through my library to see what I probably won't ever read. It started when I got one paragraph into The Hero and the Crown (which I think I just grabbed at a library book sale when filling a bag) and I just couldn't imagine reading the rest. I think I probably have a lot of titles like that in my library.

By coincidence, I have been considering a reread of The Hero and the Crown, since the last time I picked it up was for a book report in 5th Grade, and I did not understand a lot of things about it back then.

I would consider Sanderson to be a great worldbuilder, but not necessarily the best at turning such a world into a great story. Probably a top-shelf Dungeon Master, and I like him all right as a writer, but I feel like there are others who are above him on the authorial totem pole (... most of them dead).

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Yo, Wave better not be dead. He loves 2D Metroid, he's gotta come talk about Dread.

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CyborgSage00x0 posted...

Yo, Wave better not be dead. He loves 2D Metroid, he's gotta come talk about Dread.

He's logged in a few times, but he never made a new Geek topic and iirc hasn't been back to the Kayfabe topic (which I told him would make way more sense if he called it the Mark or Smark topic since it would fit the general theme).

When he last posted, he mentioned being busy with some home repairs or something.

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Next Transformers movie (I think I'm at least two films behind, since the last I saw was DotM) apparently has a Beast Wars tie-in:

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/next-transformers-movie-based-on-beast-wars-here-are-the-robots-in-it/1100-6493166

It mentions Air Razor by name and, tbh, I was tempted to pick up an Air Razor the other day. Apparently the MSRP for Transformers (the standards, I forget the classification system) is $20 now, although Gamestop -- which does wonky shit with pricing -- had some Cheetor for $23 and Air Razor for $17 because... Gamestop.

I also finally saw in-person the most recent version of the non-transformers Transformers figures, which do look pretty neat. I kinda like the concept because the robot designs can look a bit nicer. Hopefully the line will get to some characters I care about being being canceled.

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First episode of the new season of Rick & Morty is up on YT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYCEXg4_lCM

Kinda meh, with some predictable moments (ie, such as when the guy from the time dimension leaves it I instantly figured that's where they were going with it, although they just kept going a lot further with it... and then I saw, "hey, they're building a nemesis for Morty," but then the wiz kid died, then the terminator died, and then the whole future world was destroyed)


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Game Stop does occasionally have good deals on Magic cards, though. They had a Buy 2 Get 1 sale on booster packs when I was there the other day. Unfortunately, their prices on Modern Horizons II stuff are as bad as they are everywhere else. Great set, too expensive.

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Surprisingly, Gamestop sometimes has their Mystery Minis cheaper than other places. The MSRP for most sets is about $6 but they'll sometimes sell them for $5 even without a promo or clearance. And they wind up clearancing them more often than other places, which usually just run the stock down.

In general, they're kinda funny with pricing where they'll go over MSRP on some stuff, under on other stuff, and then have "clearances" where the price is the MSRP but sometimes there's a % off promo.

That same day I was looking at the McFarlane DC figures (Mattel lost the license a few years ago after they let the brand spectacularly implode), which is still all kinds of wonky. Apparently they're doing BAFs/CNCs now but those figures have a $25 MSRP instead of the usual $20 (wtf?), which is particularly egregious with some of the smaller figures (like Scarecrow). Their handling in general has been kinda weird, because McFarlane went super-heavy on Batman and Bat-family variants, as well as just sticking to variants of the big-name heroes. So there are a lot of Batman figures, but very rogues of any kind.

When I was at a Wal-Mart recently, I saw a gold variant of the HellBat marked down to $16 and I figured I'd just pick it up since, as an armored character, it wouldn't look as out of scale next to my DCU figures. The jointing is pretty decent so it poses okay for something that size, although the gold they used is just atrocious. I'll probably pick up the TT Cyborg at some point and, if they get around to some of the other TT characters, probably those as well (and I had previously though about getting the JLU figures at the start of the line). I don't think I'll ever get big into figure collecting again, though.

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I watched Lake Placid: Legacy over the weekend (which was lousy), and it got me thinking about franchise evolution/decay. The movie bears no real resemblance to the first two films, and it might just be a cash-in on the name. At this point I'm still wondering if the film has some grounding in the previous movies and how much of this was newly introduced. Either way, it doesn't feel like a Lake Placid film, whereas the synopses for the others still feel like it's in the general wheelhouse.

Oh, and it's annoying how Rick & Morty's streaming is handled. I guess none of the major platforms offer the current season as it's running, and you can't get it just on the AS site either. I kinda got hooked by the Planetina opening. After watching AS's recommended clips, I wound up just reading the synopsis. I might have enjoyed that episode.

I guess the other option is try actively avoid anything until the season wraps, which I've usually been better about doing.


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And it looks like my sojourn into MTG is coming to a premature end, since my new job will make it all but impossible for me to join that play group. Unfortunate, but my wife and I can still play.

I have started a rewatch of the Marvel movies, since those have started turning up in theaters again. Not feeling too eager to see Black Widow, but that is only the first one in the hopper, after all.

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I_Abibde posted...

I have started a rewatch of the Marvel movies, since those have started turning up in theaters again. Not feeling too eager to see Black Widow, but that is only the first one in the hopper, after all.

I know I've probably said it before, but Avengers 1 killed my interest in Black Widow and I went from liking ScarJo to disliking her.

In general, I'm kinda wondering what the turnaround is going to be on these movies going from theaters to D+.

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Brother forwarded me the news that the next Hasbro Kickstarter is a 32" Galactus.

https://hasbropulse.com/collections/haslab/products/marvel-legends-galactus

That's a lot of Galactus... perhaps too much Galactus. Compared to the Sentinel, the price point isn't terrible -- he's like $50 more despite being bigger -- but I just don't care enough about Galactus. It's also worth noting that they need 14,000 backers, whereas the Sentinel only needed 6,000 (and they got 21,000 -- possibly because some people army-built with them... which I kinda kick myself for not doing but.... meh).

Oh, and the Penguin is apparently appearing in that new Batman movie?

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-batman-colin-farrell-confirms-the-penguin-only-has-5-or-6-scenes/1100-6494057/

Actually, Gamespot had a few interesting stories I found when trying to find that article again:

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-good-places-jameela-jamil-throw-kicks-in-she-hulk-training-video/1100-6494083/

Tahani from the Good Place is playing Titania in She-Hulk, which... well, interesting.

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/dcs-black-adam-has-officially-wrapped-filming/1100-6494064/

I'm not sure how any of the DC films fit into each other any more. idk, I'm still excited for it. Also, it'd be neat if we saw a ton of villain-centric DC films.


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Hello, I'm still alive, I took a break from the internet, also looks like this site has a new owner, I was expecting this site to shut down but close enough, how are you fine folks? Dang this topic is slow.

Zeus posted...

First episode of the new season of Rick & Morty is up on YT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYCEXg4_lCM

Kinda meh, with some predictable moments (ie, such as when the guy from the time dimension leaves it I instantly figured that's where they were going with it, although they just kept going a lot further with it... and then I saw, "hey, they're building a nemesis for Morty," but then the wiz kid died, then the terminator died, and then the whole future world was destroyed)

Thanks for this Zeus, I don't have hbo max right now, so thought I was gonna have to wait till I got it next time to watch any of this season.

I agree, it was meh, but still nice to see.

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Korruptor posted...

Hello, I'm still alive, I took a break from the internet, also looks like this site has a new owner, I was expecting this site to shut down but close enough, how are you fine folks? Dang this topic is slow.

Eh, even before Wave vanished it'd slowed down. And then when I realized Wave was going to be gone a while, I decided I'd make the new topic since nobody else had done it... although at times it feels more like a journal than a discussion =p

And the I think Red Line or Red Venture or Red Foxx or whatever bought the site (or network) like two years ago. They're very different than the last owners.

wolfy42 posted...

Thanks for this Zeus, I don't have hbo max right now, so thought I was gonna have to wait till I got it next time to watch any of this season.

I agree, it was meh, but still nice to see.

Unfortunately, HBO Max isn't even doing the season as it airs. I was really hyped for the Planetina episode (based on the opening with Rick riffing on Diesel Weasel, etc) -- which I've since learned probably isn't as good as I imagined -- but it looks like there's some thing where you'd have to use your cable provider's information on the cartoon network site or something. Kind of a pain in the ass. Here there are so many legal streaming platforms and they're doing wonky shit like that.

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Weird I just went to adult swim and am watching season 5 episode 2 right now. Not sure why I can do that, but I'm not complaining.

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Really? Maybe it's a timed thing then? Because there was a little lockbox icon next to it when I looked.

But yeah, I remembered seeing previous seasons on CN itself so I was surprised that I couldn't when I checked.

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It only let me see the next episode, then it wants me to log in. Oh well, the next episode is only meh as well.

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Anyone here watch Doom Patrol? I'm wondering if it's worth subbing to HBO Max for a quick binge.

Side question: favorite Doom Patrol character?

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Brendan Fraser is funny

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Terminonatator posted...

Anyone here watch Doom Patrol? I'm wondering if it's worth subbing to HBO Max for a quick binge.

Side question: favorite Doom Patrol character?

I like the live version of teen titans (even if it took a bit to get used to the new starfire), but I still have a hard time with Doom Patrol.

I guess I like the chick with multiple personalities the most.

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wolfy42 posted...

I like the live version of teen titans (even if it took a bit to get used to the new starfire)

I was more put off by the original "Fuck Batman" trailer. It kind of implied to me that the show was going for a very specific sort of tone, and it was a tone I wasn't really interested in.

Not that I was going to watch it regardless, as there was zero chance in hell I was ever going to sign up for DC's streaming service. And I won't be watching any new seasons either, since I let my HBO sub expire a while back
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Titans is not good, but a couple of the costumes look surprisingly decent

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Terminonatator posted...

Side question: favorite Doom Patrol character?

Timothy Dalton as the Professor is inspired casting, IMO.

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