TheSteve

I do not know that The Hulk is what I would want him to do, but a non-horror comic would be pretty good in my view. I really think he would shine doing something with Doctor Doom for example. Doom has the ability to gain additional powers and abilities as needed for the plot, and that gives King the freedom to create situations which he really shines in and not be locked into character capability. The comic would likely have a dark feel to it, and if it didn't I think I might be a bit dissapointed. But I could definatly see a Doom related storyline, I mean Doom could almost have walked out of a Stephen King novel as he is, master of mystic arts, has been to hell and back literally, disfigured face, wears a creepy looking mask, nigh undefeatable, and always has one extra trick up his sleeve. King would feel right at home with Doom. Who Doom might be beating on is another story.... Maybe Doom could try to control the Hulk or some such contrivance.

Does the X-Box have wireless controllers which recharge? If so I was not aware.... and I left out one important feature.... I refuse to sell my soul to Microsoft.

This is just for fun, but if you could design the perfect console what would the specs on it be? Regardless of what games it can play, even though the games are always an important part of deciding which system to go with. Here are some of the specs I would like to see in my dream system... DVD capabilities are a must, I don't own a DVD player besides my PS2, if something is going to replace that system it needs to have DVD abilities as well. Wireless controllers, not wireless controllers that cost me an extra $50 a pop and suck down batteries like there is no tommorrow, but a set of four wireless controllers which have a charging deck, so when I am not playing they are charging up for when I play again. Hard drive instead of memory cards, there is nothing more insulting than spending $200 on a new system, $50 on a new game, $20 on a second controller, and then needing to spend another $20 on a memory card just so that I can play the game. In fact, make the hard drive big enough that I can store music on it, rip my CDs to it, or other things, which brings me to my next desire. This is mostly because of the Revolution that I would even think about this, but the ability to download games and keep them on the system. Front loading of disks, I know all three consoles are doing this now, and it makes me happy. Gamecube you could not keep in anything because it had a shape which did not fit everywhere, and it also was a top loader, preventing from stacking. I would also like to see them built sturdy enough that you can stack things ontop of them without worrying that you just broke your system. Connectivity to my computer. So that I can either play using my monitor, or do screen captures, or even record segments of the game. I know a lot of these are little bit beyond what I really need, but its my dream system I can give it whatever I want.

Kudos for Logan for being a better parent than the people who gave birth to the kids.

Spoilers for anyone who is still planning to read issues 50 and 51. Anyhow, in 50 and 51 the Exiles go to a world which knows they are coming, or at least the Brotherhood knows they are coming. Destiny in particular, and they arrange a whole set of circumstances which include replacing Blink with Mystique and having her feign loss of her powers (Blink at this time has the Tallus) and claim that the mission is to go meet the Big M (who turns out to be an evil Mimic who is head of the Brotherhood in this reality.) The Exiles of course do not know that this is the case yet, and are in full trust of what 'Blink' has to say. So it would have been a great chance to kill Mimic which is what I was really hoping for. I never got 51 because it came in while I was at school and I do not prepay for my box, so someone nabbed that one from me and I have not gotten it yet. Regardless, Mimic was up against someone who by all rights could have / would have kicked his ass, in a situation where that person would have the upper hand on them.

So when does the Suprise bonus fight get closed? Even though it looks like a winner has certainly arisen.

I trust the direction, but you still need to either go within the franchise or go outside of it, picking and choosing just makes it complex. Imagine if Batman Begins only felt that Batman, and Batman Forever counted in its continuity. Just puts too much extra work to understanding the movie. I know I will need to pick up Superman the Movie and Superman II in order to really follow the movie, since it sounds like a plot that requires some prior understanding.

This is one of the games I have been looking forward to for a while. And even weeks after it has been released, almost a month even, my local EB games is in severe shortage of them for the PS2, so severe in fact that when I went in today I could not get a copy of it. Has anyone on these boards gotten the game and given it a test drive? My sources have said good things about it, talking about hilarious minigame opportunities in the game. For anyone who is not familiar with the game here is a little bit about it. You play the alien, sent to earth to harvest the brain stems of all humankind. You can do so through any number of methods, brute force by killing all the humans outright with your giant laser guns, flying saucer, and even telekinetic powers to hurl nearby cars around causing them to explode. Or you can use mind control and subterfuge in order to control the human populace and use their brain stems as you see fit. All in all, you are the bad guy from all those early science fiction movies. Thought I would also add that the television commercials for Destroy All Humans have been particularly entertaining. And its true, I have been sleeping around with the neighbor....hood.

Here I go doing it again, pulling something from the graveyard. Although in all fairness this one has been pinned up to the top, so its like I am supposed to bring it back to life. Ok, here is what I do not get about the PSP, and I don't know if I have just been grossly misinformed or waht. The movies that come out for the PSP, they cannot play on anything else can they? I mean is there anything else out there that can take one of those disks and play it? Why would anyone buy a movie to watch it 2.5 inches wide? Movies are for bigger screens, not things that could fit in the palm of your hand. Besides playing PSP games, and playing movies on PSP disks... I heard it had a slew of other features like playing music and the like. How does all of that stuff stack up?

Maybe I am biased because I am not a huge superman fan in the first place... But man, I would have thought they could have done a better job with a character which is more recognizable than any world leader. That S is a brand name and even if I do not like that brand, you gotta respect it, and from what I can see the only respect it is getting is the casting of Lex Luthor. The emblem itself looks pretty cool, but it looks all wrong on the actor, proportions are wrong. I think they were trying to make him look beefier without actually casting someone who looks strong enough. If this guy told me and my henchmen "Give up and I won't hurt you" I would respond "If I don't give up you won't hurt me either." What is up with setting it between movies? Superhero movies like Batman Begins have it right, create your own continuity so you are not held back by the mistakes of your predecessors, and so that you can actually give us an original vision of an old favorite, not a rehash of tired image. I hate that there is a distinct possibility that no matter how much this movie sucks I will likely see it to prove to myself how bad it is. Just like the Fantastic Four.

I agree, I would like to see them lose Mimic, they had a great set up to do so in Issues 50 & 51. And although I never got Issue 51 Mimic was alive in 52, so I can only assume he survived. I gotta agree, one of the coolest things about the book was that yes, anyone can die and if you do not like the team right now... give it a little bit of time and maybe it will change. One of the best additions to the team was Beak. No useful powers, no real skills, just a giant talking chicken. With Mimic out of commision for the time being it looks like the team actually needs to work to win, as opposed to just using Mimic to kill everything.

Well... not to pull the topic from the graveyard... well yeah actually that is exactly what I am doing. I have been following Young Avengers myself and I am quite pleased so far, we are onto Issue #5 I think, don't have them handly at the moment. The characters are definatly not just young versions of the characters, the only one remotely close is Patriot, and his character personality differences more than easily make up for the similarity in powers. The others are more thematically similar. They make a show of being comparitive, but in reality are actually quite distinct. Mind you, the team of Hulkling, Patriot, Iron Lad and Asguardian does expand in more recent issues, and it is quite entertaining. I will refrain from spoilage at the moment, although I am sure I will later spill more inticing tidbits. The next story arc looks like its going to be pretty funny. From what I read it pertains to the kids dealing with their double lives, keeping that they are Young Avengers (a name which they really do not like, but were dubbed with by the media) secret, or how they come to terms with it, and how they balance home life with saving the world. I suspect a good read, but I will say more once I am done reading the next issue once it comes out.

I agree that they totally put a huge teaser to get you to buy the Spiderman HoM book. And you are right, putting the closure to that cliffhanger in a previosly blurb is pretty tooly, and they should have dedicated at least a page or two in Issue #2 to Spiderman. I have read the Spiderman HoM so I guess I overlooked how irritating it is to have something that big set up and then ignored. Still, from what I can see all plot points integral to the story are being included in the core, allthough it might have paid off to expand on what the core was and cut back on extraneous titles, perhaps including Spiderman HoM as just a part of House of M. But if we boil all of this down, it comes to one single problem. Marketing. Yes, House of M is cool and neat and gee whiz spiffy keen, but it is also meant to get people into comics which they may not have been into earlier. Its working too, TheRetreater hopped back into the Hulk because it was doing House of M. Hopefully a lot of people will jump onto Exiles during their tie in as well. Meanwhile the core set includes as its hero of the hour everyone's favorite character from a sales perspective, Wolverine. And no suprise that they try to get you to go to those tie ins with the core book either. Is it a cheap trick? Probably yes. Is it working? Yes. Will they feel bad about it? No, its working.

I have to disagree with you. From what I can see so far you really do not need to read all of the others to understand what is going on. It will give you a fuller picture, as well as make the setting feel more complete. But from what I can tell so far there have been no plot elements in the core HoM that require you to know what is going on in any of the tie ins. Because Spiderman was the person we first saw go through the white wave they needed to at some point give you a little bit of closure in the core HoM book relating to it. I can tell you that from what I have read of the tie ins, they are more useful for explaining how the world as a whole is coping with the change, as opposed to explaining the core storyline.... which as much as it pisses me off... of how Wolverine puts the world back the way it was. The only tie ins which might be important to have are the ones which actually have House of M in their title. But a lot of the questions you have from the core set are not answered yet in the others either, hinted at maybe, but definatly not answered. To be honest though... I am enjoying the Spiderman and FF House of M books better than I am the core House of M book, the core just provides me with a setting for the others.

I hang out on there periodically as well, my handle on there is the same as my handle on here. TheSteve Currently I am being a huge loser and playing custom games, like the Hero Line Wars. But I too chill around in TheRetreater's channel FI.

I may be pulling references, and I might be giving Sue a little bit too much credit, but I gotta make my case for her. She is a good character, and her major weakness is that she is unwilling to kill people. When Sue goes evil, she is a force to be reconed with, but most of the time Sue is pretty tame and is not going to go all out. True that I gave a tactic which could be used to kill anyone. But that is why it is not used often in the comics. Magneto can pull the iron from your blood, but just because he can do it does not mean he will. On the other hand, depleting the oxygen until someone passes out is a tactic which Sue *would* use regularly. A lot of people overlook the power which Sue really does have. She is quite a capable Super Hero, however it is her own inhibitions which prevent her from being the powerhouse which she really is capable of being. As an example from the old Fantastic Four TV Show she was once turned evil by Dr. Doom and he used her to take the remaining three captive, however he found himself unable to really face her when she was willing to use her powers to their full extend without regard for the health and safety of those she fought against. Oh, and for the record, some stuff was research, but at least half of that stuff I said was stuff I knew.

Well, I like to be Devils Advocate, and I think the opinion that Doom would whoop up is getting a little bit too much steam, so here are my two cents... Doom is quite the dude, yes his armor will protect him from almost anything, he can blast stuff, has super strength, and is a pretty darn smart guy. Sue is a substitute teacher who used to be an actress. She also has the ability to protect herself from almost any form of attack with her force fields, as well as being equipped with the ability to go invisible. Invisibility is not going to be much help against Doom. I mean by now Doom should have something which can detect Sue no matter what kind of force feild she wants to put up. But what is he going to do to her? He blasts, she sheilds. He punches, she sheilds. He drops a house on her, she quite possibly just drops it back. Sue is capable of maintaining force feilds which are miles across, thats a lot of power. She is also capable of creating force feilds within solid objects. Thats right, make a little force feild inside someone's head.... then expand it. *POP!* She is also known to sometimes create a force field around someone's head and wait for them to simply run out of oxygen. One will argue that Doom's armor provides him with life support enough to survive in space for a period of four hours, and by that time Sue will have tired of maintaining a force feild while Doom tirelessly batters at it (The suit is nuclear powered, and is not going to run out of juice before Sue does) This is why this sort of battle would be interesting to see occur.... in fact so interesting I am suprised that Marvel comics has not already played it out.... or have they. As I recall, and I could be off my mark, Sue HAS beaten Doom. And Doom's track record against the Fantastic Four also provides evidence to the same. Although I think Doom is one bad mutha, he was once defeated by a character known as "Squirrel Girl", and if Squirrel Girl can take him, I think that Sue Richards has a pretty good shot. Also take a look at Doom's history of loss despite serios advantage. He had the power cosmic.. and lost it. He had the power of Galactus himself... and lost it. He had the power of the Beyonder... and lost it. He had the power to send people to Hell... and he lost it. The dude would get the upper hand on Sue in this battle... then lose it.

Yep, that is it.

Not entirely sure this is where this goes, but I do not think it really qualifies as a video game. Anyone here into the Versus card game? For those of you who are not familiar, the best description I can give came from a friend of mine who is normally a tool but was kinda creative with this one "Marvel: The Gathering" Its a good game which both Marvel and DC have gotten in on, much like HeroClix. But this is cheaper and new rules have not yet sprung up that make no sense and annoy the heck out of me. Not to mention it is much cheaper to buy a deck of these cards than buy enough Clix to play a proper game. I just noticed recently that the newest set is emerging soon from the Marvel side of the world with the Avengers (X-Men, Brotherhood, Doom, Spiderman, Batman have already been put out possibly others I have missed). Thought I would see if anyone has checked them out and has any thoughts, or thoughts on the game in general, I say it is awesome and should be looked into by anyhow who has people to play with.

Well, it is becoming quite apparent that the Exiles are not ready to handle fixing universes without someone guiding them. They are managing to just make everything worse at this point. Which is good, because when they were in 'control' the book started to lose interest to me. So hopefully they will manage to use the next issue (68) to get themselves headed in the right direction prior to kicking it with the House of M in 69-71. Or better yet, maybe they will just cause more problems instead of less. Regardless, it was a fun read, especially since they are once again stuck in very difficult situations, and this time they have no one to blame but themselves. This is going to force them to respect how hard it is to put all the universes back together. Also on the plus side... Mimic is out of commission, and it might be a little while before he is rolling again. So maybe they might not have the guts to kill people off again, but they might have the guts to at least dispose of them for the time being. By the way... in the last issue something cool was revealed about Mimic's powers. I was not aware of this before, but he cannot mimic the same power twice, or even mimic two similar powers. So Sabretooth and Wolverine cannot stack for him, as an example. Apparently he is not limited to just mimicing mutant powers either... or at least that is being suggested. If it turns out to be false he will probably die.... and I will dance. I have been waiting for that sucker to kick the bucket for a while. Good character and all.... but one of the originals has got to kick it, even if it is Morph. But hopefully it will be Blink or Mimic as Morph is so much more entertaining than either of them.

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!! Ok, big day for House of M. Got myself HoM 4, which was really not that great, I mean it furthers the plot, but it makes me cry because Wolverine is fully aware of EVERYTHING. Its not even a matter of figuring it out, its just that he knows the whole deal which I feel cheapens him and the story. Its mostly a talking heads sorta thing with a little bit of action. Wolverine tells everyone in the HoM world what we already know... taking multiple pages to recap the first three issues.... incase we had forgotten what happened in issue three two weeks ago. HoM Spiderman is interesting. Jonah has become a total nutjob, and we get a look at the kind of man spiderman becomes when he is in power, and it ain't something pretty. Honestly, I am rooting against Spiderman in this. Which I feel is an incredible accomplishment on the writers part. He has managed to take one of my favorites, and make me dislike the man he becomes when he is not the underdog. Spiderman is just not right unless he is on the losing side of life, and this proves it to me. Not to mention that Uncle Ben (who is still alive) does not get to really instill that moral compass in Peter. What solidifies for Peter that 'great power comes with responsibility' is not that Ben said it... its that uncle Ben died and that is what he remembers him by. Uncle Ben does not die, its just another thing he said like "Eat your vegetables" or "Put the toilet seat back down after you are done". Without that central message being hammered home with Ben's death, Spiderman is just a kid who was abused and finds himself with powers to abuse people back with. (Just see how he treats JJ in this issue, man, Pete is a jerk) Here is something that is just plain fun, maybe it should more be in the Exiles thread... but this is leading up to the House of M tie in which Exiles has slated to start in Issue 69. Currently fighting Krakoa in a universe which is plagued by giant monsters of that sort showing up regularly the team which is back in HQ is trying to look up information on Krakoa and realizes that the 616 universe is the best place to find it based on the data stores they have. It is also the world in which they have left Nocturne months gone by, and where Beak is from (Beak who wants to go home and therefore insists on looking into 616). The problem is they are entirely unable to make contact with the 616 for unknown reasons, they assume it is a problem on their end..... but still it was a huge geek moment for me when that problem cropped up. I look forward to seeing how they interacting with 616 when they do. One other thing. I picked up Secrets of House of M. I advise against it unless you do not mind having stuff spoiled for you, wait until the whole thing is over. I think this was released way too soon and should have been held onto for atleast another month before hitting the shelves. When I opened it, I sadly found out about a few people who I would much rather not have known about yet. I closed the book almost right away on realizing how much spoiler info was present, so I cannot say if it is all that good or not. But it is basically like one of those "Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe" things, but HoM specific. And it appears it has a cute little interview in the back IC with a few notable scientists in the HoM universe and their thoughts on "Genius, is it a mutant power or not?"

Amen to the rating. Lets get some of the video games away from kids, because that is not the intended audience, nor should it be. See my comments under the Illinois thread for more on my thoughts... already wrote a good page of my own personal brand of rant over there.

I totally agree with carding people for video games, especially if it is done universally. If the ratings are going to mean something besides an advisory, make them mean something. Who cares if you have something rated M if anyone can purchase it, its not going to hurt sales. From a gaming industry point of view the M rating is probably a good thing because it makes them look edgier and makes kids want it more, expecting a GTA experience. If nationwide there are laws about how old you need to be in order to purchase a ticket for a movie, or purchase a movie, or smoke cigarettes, or drink alcohol, then I say let them put an age on games. Make it so the ratings mean something. Better yet, beat the feds to the punch, the video game industry should impose these rules on themselves. They come out looking like the good guys, they are able to change the rule as is needed without going through all of the government bullcrap, and parents are forced to look at the game their kid wants to buy. Mrs. 'Innatentive parent who equates money for love' will not be able to just give Jimmy a $50 and send him to get whatever game he wants and never see what it is. She can give him the $50, and he can get anything rated for his age... or he needs to bring her in and have her buy the game. Hopefully putting it into her hand where she is forced to look at it and realize "Hey this game features killing hookers as a serious career choice.... maybe its not right for my twelve year old." Any parent who has beef with the video game will be told "You need to be 18 to purchase it, if Jimmy got the game, it must have been through you, we would never allow a child to have that game" and the industry comes off clean. Plus, and this is a big plus, game devlopers will actually be encouraged to make games with ratings like Everybody, or Teen instead of Mature. From a sales perspective they make more money by making a game not centered on stealing ambulances to use to run over police officers, and instead being innovative in gameplay, rather than innovative in graphic violence. I don't buy games like GTA, they don't entertain me in the long run. You can only enjoy killing so many cops and hookers before its boring. I gotta back up the Retreater though. Ultimately it is the parents responsibility to take care of their kids. They should be involved in their life enough to know what video games they have, and know what those games involve. They might not need to sit down and actually play the games, but at least take an interest. Sit with the kid when they play at some point, and do a quick google search. It would take less than a minute on Google to find out GTA is not a game for children. If the parent is not willing to put in that effort, I don't want to hear them complaining about Television, Video Games, Comic Books, or Street Gangs, because their kid's bad behavior is their fault.

I like the big Marvel vs DC thing. But one problem.... where do you put people who are not exactly villians or heroes? One other thing, ground rule to be set. Some villians are only powerful as a result of their organization. Or they only pose threats when they specifically prepare themselves as such. Like Lex Luthor. While he could suit up, he wins in the big picture as opposed to in a fight fight. He might not be able to take Juggernaut in a fight.... but he could trap Juggernaut and make extensive profits off of his nice mystical toys, with the use of his financial empire. Just for a fun twist...I think this could be a cool rule as well. When someone defeats another character who makes use of a peice of gear... I would be interested to see the winner get to continue on with that little doodad. Given, this will lead to someone in Kryptonite Laced Doom Armor with Thor's Hammer, Mandarin's rings and an unstable molecule utility belt with adamantium batarangs... but on a smaller scale that would be an interesting twist. Or I might just be an idiot. Another idea... since a lot of villians do work on a global level instead of a one on one level, what about a tournament set in the business world. Dr. Doom vs Tony Stark vs. Kingpin vs. Lex Luthor vs. Reed Richards all based on financial power. (Is it clear that I mostly know Marvel yet?)

I was not dissapointed. I expected pretty much what I got. SPOILERS AHEAD Ok, so firstoff, I don't like putting Doom on the 'team' in space. I understand their need to not explain his powers as they are in the comic books since they come from more than one source (Mystic abilities learned from Monks, the armor itself and the host of abilities that come from it, his own very often overlooked and only occasionally used super power, as well as his command of an army of Doom bots). But at the same time, I feel like putting him in space cheapens him. He is not powerful by chance, he is powerful by choice. Its not a lucky break in a freak accident which made him Dr. Doom, it was his decision to become Dr. Doom that made him what he should be. Doom would never have a problem with his company hitting financial troubles, if there is something Doom can do it is manage resources, which is why in a world run by him there would be no hunger, there would be no want. It would be utopia. A man who cannot keep a business doing well cannot built utopia. Once he was in that suit, the voice over really sounded a little bit off. It was clearly a voice over and it just did not sound right. The insta-fix cosmic powers machine kinda annoys me too. Especially since it is reversible. Next time the Fantastic Four are in a bind, just grab the local mailman (Stan Lee), paperboy, doorman, etc throw him in and juice that bad boy up and you have yourself the Fantastic Forty in a matter of hours. But worst of all, that machine makes Ben Grimm totally fly in the face of one of his biggest defining character traits, even after the film set up a real feeling of agony for him being the Thing. Now, the 'uh oh, they are going to die unless I change back' is one thing, but when he is offered the chance to turn back into Ben after the fights and he is like 'nah, I like being ugly' that was so totally wrong that it made me weep right in the theater... even more than I did when I saw the trailer for Ice Age 2 show up on screen. On the bright side... Johnny Storm (pun only half intended) was so on the mark that he made other people look better just by being in the same scene as him. He was dead on for the most part. Nerd moments abounded in the film, but that was the only thing going for it. The momentary jokes and the camp (which is appropriate for the film, no argument there, I mean come on look at the bad guys the FF historically face). Everyone enjoys when the Thing says "Its clobberin time", and when Johnny says "Flame on" or little nerd out moments when Reed reaches for toilet paper and Sue has trouble controlling her powers while in akward states of dress. But sadly the moments of chuckling (which there were quite a few) were not enough to save this movie. I gave it 7 out of 10, but I demand that I get at least four dollars of that back. The remaining three were spent on popcorn.