Kenny Evil

Correction: there will be 11 Nikolai Dante trades altogether. Also, Tom has elephantmen posters in his room.

Happy birthday to the co-host of the 12th sexiest podcast on the site and the keeper of the 9th unknown horcrux! For your birthday I found this gif showing the start of literature and film's greatest love story.

It is. Buuuuhhhhh. Long day. Sun has baked my brain.

Seeing a whole bunch of these with John Williams' score substituted in and it really works well. Particularly with the Marlon Brando voiceover http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGYvRHTvXP8&feature

Mark Hamill doing Bane's Gotham speech as The Joker. Amazing. Needless to say spoilers.

I've got a friend in Corn.

Interview with John Wagner, co-creator and main writer of Judge Dredd.

X-Factor vol 1: Proliferation Sentinel technology. Over the years, various Sentinel projects have been run all over the world with the aim of policing, containing or even eliminating mutants. In many countries though, with concerns over the legal status of mutants and therefore the legality of funding the Sentinel programs the budgets were often listed under blind black-ops accounts with very little oversight or accountability. Fortunately for the world at large, MI: 13 dedicated a small portion of the UK's budget to monitoring and tracking these projects, not only within the UK but, where possible amongst both allies and enemies. Had there been any oversight, it's likely this particular paper trail would have been eliminated before Captain Britain discovered it. Since the huge drop in Mutant numbers after the events of M-Day, the threat of mutants has fallen into line with most of the rest of the superhuman community. Indeed, given their small numbers there is less of a threat of mutants overthrowing countries as there is of those countries capturing and weaponising them. Then there is also the distinct memory of Mastermold coming to the conclusion that the Sentinels needed to police and eliminate humanity given that the x-factor mutations emerged from the mutations present in most humans' DNA and finally there was Bastion, who kidnapped and transformed many, many thousands of humans and transformed them into Prime Sentinels. To this day, the number of unactivated Prime Sentinels is still unknown, so the constant threat of someone like Doctor Doom or Magneto gaining access to them and having a large, well armed army has become too big to ignore. With all of that said, Dr Valerie Cooper introduces a task force, assembled with the help of Captain Britain, that will be dedicated to tracking down, documenting, disabling and/or destroying all instances of Sentinel Technology. Beast, Forge and Cecelia Reyes will work towards ways to reverse engineer the Prime Sentinel program, so that the thousands of victims can be free again. For Cecelia, the Prime Sentinels are very personal given that she was first outed as a mutant by them but her medical training and natural compassion means that she wants to save as many people as she can. Rogue, Lady Mastermind and Omega Sentinel will work with Captain Britain in the field. Given that most Sentinels are living weapon platforms, having Rogue one of the toughest superhumans alive with extensive experience fighting them, and with plenty of hours clocked as a leader of an X-Men team to boot, was a no brainer. For Lady Mastermind, this is a matter of redemption given her past association with the Marauders, she claims that she wants to dance on the side of the angels and dedicate herself to making the world a better place. Needless to say, Rogue doesn't trust her all that much but is willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. After all Rogue herself was once a member of Mystique's Brotherhood and turned her life around. That said, Rogue isn't likely to forget forget Regan's previous betrayal, so she's got some insurance: Karima Shapandar AKA Omega Sentinel. Since emerging from the coma she was left in after the events of Second Coming, Karima has discovered that her rewired brain is immune to telepathy, including Lady Mastermind's powers, a fact that is unknown to Lady Mastermind. Should Regan ever try to use her powers against the rest of the team, Karima's job will be to eliminate her with lethal force if necessary. Given all that the Marauders did to her, she readily accepts. That's her secondary reason for being on the team though, her first being her desire to see Sentinel Technology gone. No one has paid a more personal cost because of this technology and worse, as collateral damage in Bastion's campaigns. Her memory is gone and it doesn't look like it's coming back. Her entire world was ripped from her when she first became a Sentinel and then again and again as the virus robbed her of her memories and control over herself. Karima is willing to work as a test subject with Beast, Forge and Cecelia to try to find a way to become fully human again for herself and for the many others who have been afflicted by Bastion's zeal to eliminate mutants. That Hope managed to destroy Bastion isn't enough for Karima, she wants every bit of his legacy gone and for Bastion to be nothing more than a distant, harmless memory. Issue 1: And now you have two problems Old Sarum, Wiltshire, England. In an underground bunker UN Inspectors Brian Braddock and Cecelia Reyes make a surprise visit, surprising the MoD staff present. The base hasn't been inspected in close to five years and is mostly run by a skeleton staff whose sole responsibilities seem to be to keep the base manned and make sure all of the machinery runs. Aside from the guards' weapons, there doesn't seem to be anything there of value for the MoD. Mostly the guards seem to do six months duty before moving onto better placements and the elderly Lance Corporal Hemmings is there solely to sign off on paperwork and report back that the base is running okay. As Brian notes to Cecelia, it seems like the Lance Corporal was "promoted out of harm's way." As they get to the bottom of the lift, they find the thing that they've been looking for: a 50ft Omega-class Sentinel that seems to have gathered dust. Suddenly, its eyes light up and it says one word: "Mutants". Flashback to some weeks prior as Dr Val Cooper hosts a meeting with the UN security council outlining the dangers of Sentinel technology and introducing the new X-Factor who will be responsible for tracking down and dismantling it. The rest of the issue deals with the team's attempt to bring the Sentinel down. Lady Mastermind was able to sneak herself and the rest of the team onto the base using her power to shield them. While Forge and Karima search the files on Lance Corporal Hemmings' computer. It becomes apparent that L/Cpl Hemmings is actually the first of a previously unknown Sentinel type: the Monitor Sentinel, a Sentinel dedicated to administration functions within the Sentinel network. Seeing that he has no route of escape, he sends out a signal before combusting. The guards on the base suddenly turn into Prime Sentinels. Far below ground, just as the team has finished violently dismantling the Omega Sentinel, Rogue gets put through the floor. When she looks up, she sees five more Omegas. All saying one word: "Mutant" Issue 2: The team battles both the Omegas and the Prime Sentinels for the first half of the issue, completely destroying the Omegas, and trapping the Primes within an illusion by Lady Mastermind which allows Karima to manually disable them. Forge, Beast and Cecelia do some analysis on the files retrieved from Hemmings' computer determining that there's a secured network beyond those of the MoD which shares various information on projects. From that they determine that every guard who had come through the base for the last five years had been transformed into a Prime Sentinel. Forge begins work on a way to trace the network and provide the soldiers with something that can block the Prime activation signal. While only a small amount of the information available of the Sentinel Network was retrievable, what they could find was useful and worrying. The team now has a map of some of the financial routes the black ops projects were using to hide the projects, thus depriving them of a major resource and they were able to get some information on some of the other projects, the most concerning of which is just a name: The Legacy Project. Issue 3-5: Captain Britain, Rogue, Karima and Lady Mastermind travel to India to inspect various software companies listed under the Sentinel Net files. Finding that the Hardware for the Sentinels seems to be manufactured in various South East Asian countries subcontracted from various British engineering firms whilst the software is mostly done in Mumbai, the team tries to ascertain who knows what, who is criminally liable and what other information can be derived about the various projects. Subterfuge is required as the possibility of more monitor sentinels sending out alerts could kill off information streams before the team could use them. Karima also struggles with the decision about whether or not to visit a family that she can no longer remember. Forge, Beast and Cecelia work with a soldier who has just found out that he's a Prime Sentinel. He also has a hatred of mutants stemming from seeing colleagues killed by the Acolytes some years ago, leading to some major antipathy towards Beast. Over time, it becomes apparent that the soldier, Private irvine is not a bad guy but is suffering from heavy PTSD combined with the psychological damage inflicted by confronting an enemy against whom all weapons were useless. He still fears a world where mutants were as prolific as they once were but finds himself able to appreciate the hard work and friendliness of the three mutants trying to help him. The other half of the team returns from India with more information on some of the projects on the Sentinel Net, although most of it is encrypted. Karima decided to meet with her family, but couldn't talk about it afterwards. From the little she shared the meeting was mixed and difficult and it may be some time before she is able to see them again. The team also found and destroyed a cadre of Alpha Sentinels in China and subverted the hardware requirements for the factories so that the Sentinel projects were paying for high-end swingsets and climbing frames instead. They also returned with a deactivated Monitor Sentinel, giving Forge an opportunity to test if he can block the Prime Activation signal. Private Irvine volunteers as a test but unfortunately the monitor is able to adapt more quickly than Forge's machine, so the soldier must go into stasis. Cecelia spends time each night checking on Private Irvine Forge begins work decrypting the files. He can only find enough on Project Legacy to confirm that it's very much connected to the deadly virus that plagued mutantkind years ago. He also finds details on another project that worries him greatly... Issue 6: B714 This issue is mostly told from the perspective of Tim, a shy guy who is deathly afraid of mutants. This issue shows how utterly frightening the Marvel Universe can be from the perspective of a normal human being especially with the increased number of mutants over the years, leading through Grant Morrison's run where the Mutant subculture reached its zenith and then MDay where most mutants became depowered.. 2 months earlier, another user B714 joined the forums Tim frequented mostly posting in a topic where people discussed "The Mutant Problem." Eventually B714 offered to send Tim a present. When he opened it, it appeared to be empty although it did cause him to sneeze. Over the course of several days B714 stops posting and Tim finds his skin becoming purple. At the base the team discuss Forge and Karima's findings in the Sentinel Net files. Karima is barely able to contain her rage as they reveal that one of the projects heavily involved Bastion. By the time that Operation Zero Tolerance first began, Bastion had been at work for years ensuring funding and commitments for the Sentinel projects lying where necessary about the project's aims. Bastion's overriding goal is for mutants to be wiped out, so everything he'd done has been working towards that. He surmised that his death would be an impediment to his goal, so worked to ensure his own immortality. As such, he became capable of decentralising himself, so that he was no longer dependent on his own body. The software firms each individually worked on programs that ensured that his memory and personality would live beyond his death in the Sentinel Net. He was also working on a prototype nanovirus that could make someone susceptible to Prime Sentinel transformation. As they're revealing this, Tim is walking into a remote datacentre with purple skin and orange, glowing eyes. He rips out one of his eyes and plugs a data cable into the exposed socket. As he allows himself to be covered with millions of nanobots, we see Karima destroying Sentinel after sentinel in X-Factor's Danger Room howling with rage, before revealing that Tim has become Bastion reborn and more dangerous than ever. So beyond this volume the general plan would be to show how far reaching Bastion's plans are. He wants to eliminate all 200 remaining mutants, and turn them into Prime Sentinels via a biological agent made from a meld of the Legacy Virus and Cable's technoorganic virus. The team will have to find the various labs where its being worked on as well as have the science part of the team try to figure out a way to beat it before it's unleashed on the world. Eventually Lady Mastermind will end up betraying them. She initially joined the team to steal all the data on the Sentinel's brainwave scanning technology and mutant identification technology so that she could give it to the Marauders. Her further reports on what Bastion is up to causes Mr Sinister to encourage her to stay with the group so that she can find out more about Project Legacy, as the possibilities of a newly weaponised Legacy virus intrigue him.

Marvel's been trying 90s strategies for a while now. i doubt we're going to see another bubble burst like we did in the early 90s but they do need to calm it down a bit.

Fuck phonogram, I'm going to show you all what a real music based comic is all about!

I only have one tattoo, a spiderweb on my elbow. I waited a year to get that one as I always thought that was enough time to change your mind about it. I still like it and I'm glad I got it done. That said, if I was allowed to get tattoos at 15 and didn't have this rule in mind I would be covered in fucking dragons right now. I was really, really dumb as a 15 year old, though, to be fair, I'm not much better at 28.

Well, looks like we're onto the villains round then. Bastion/Sentinels. Should I outline my story now or wait until after everyone's done their pick?

So it's not that there haven't been female-heavy teams, it's just that I'm historically ignorant? Sounds about right.

I really was looking to build a female-heavy team. So many of the x-teams are such sausage fests that I thought it might be nice to break it up a bit. Edit: in hindsight that sounds a bit harsh as most of the teams have more than just a token female, but I can't think of an x-team where the gender balance is in favour of the women.

It works great in Chrome Mobile.

Final pick: Forge

Omega Sentinel.

Other people picking three of my draft picks actually turned out pretty well for me. I've now got a villain picked out and a story I want to tell.

Lady Mastermind

Cecilia Reyes

Favourite character moment for me was

I really liked this movie but I definitely agree about the lizard psychotic episode. I think the scene where the Lizard is tearing up the bridge actually makes a decent amount of sense as he was focused on stopping the Osborne lackey to the point where that overrode his concern for others. The idea that the serum itself was sending him nuts and pushed him to the conclusion that everyone would be better as a lizard but wasn't executed as well as it could have been. I certainly thought that was better than Doc Ock's "don't be evil" chip getting broken. Yeah, this was a flawed movie but I think it was better than all of Raimi's one, even though there wasn't a Bruce Campbell cameo. Great show guys. You worked well as co-hosts and I'm looking forward to more shows from you guys.

Rogue

Captain Britain.

Dan, join Hannah in ruing the day please. My number 5 pick godsdammit.