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Messages - Professor Bear

#7591
Games / Re: XBOX 360 - 2000AD CLAN!!!
04 September, 2009, 12:40:29 PM
WoW?  Begone!
Nerds have no place on this forum.
#7592
The teen girl thing might be a wallbanger, but it also makes it sound more or less identical to the Drax the Destroyer miniseries Marvel published a few years ago, which was alright in that it subverted the 'human kid as identifiable everyman' trope by having a pronounced subtext of alienation and self-harm running throughout.

Lobo is blue now?  I thought the people who were developing Rogue Trooper as a live-action property said he shouldn't be blue otherwise he didn't look realist--
Oh.
#7593
Film & TV / Re: animes
02 September, 2009, 10:39:12 AM
Quote from: Mardroid on 02 September, 2009, 02:14:00 AM
I haven't seen all that much anime, and that I have seen mostly wasn't really my cup of tea.  There was series involving warriors with collars I enjoyed a lot though. I forget the name, but it was a sci-fi series involving a group of people forced to carry out specific missions. If they refused, their collar would be activated resulting in a 'bit off the top' so to speak.  Nasty. Actually quite a cool character though.

Cyber City Oedo 808.  The sweary version is early Manga Video dubbing, but actually lifts some otherwise stodgy dialogue.
#7594
Off Topic / Re: Disney to buy Marvel
01 September, 2009, 05:49:41 PM
Get back in the mud where you belong, offal-chomping heroin addict!
#7595
Off Topic / Re: Disney to buy Marvel
01 September, 2009, 04:07:47 PM
Quote from: Emperor on 01 September, 2009, 03:14:24 PMWellllllll I wouldn't say this was because editorial didn't like the title. All Batman Family titles were cancelled or put on hold in late 2008/early 2009 as part of the big shake-up in the characters/titles that arose from Batman RIP and played out in Battle for the Cowl and its tie-ins. The Batgirl title has just relaunched with a new Batgirl (Spoiler) and former droid Lee Garbett on pencilling duties. So it may be they were unhappy with the current Batgirl but the title being stopped was for broader strategic reasons.

Batgirl was canned after Infinite Crisis/One Year Later - several years before the current shake-up and when the title was still selling well enough to be profitable.  Despite popularity among bat-fandom (no small task given she was replacing fan-favorite Barbara Gordon and DC's fanbase being notoriously vocal and fickle), Batgirl has little support among editorial, with only DC staff writer Geoff Johns admitting her retooling as a villain was a mistake and undoing the changes when the character guest-starred in another title.
The current Batgirl book, however, is more of a sop to the growing female voice among comics readership that started coalescing around what was percieved as a needlessly-sexualised torture/death scene for the Spoiler character, and doesn't actually discount or address the accusations of aimless sexualisation (in the first issue, one character strips in a thunderstorm, another is the focus of a shower scene) or the casual sidelining of ethnic characters in the Bat-franchise (a short monosyllabic asian replaced by an angsty tall blonde).
Batgirl's not alone, however - a lot of DC books suffer from poor branding and no direction - Supergirl and Nightwing being the best examples - and it could be argued that this is a result of removing them from the demands of a competitive marketplace and leaving the creation of the titles in the hands of DC 'lifers' (in the words of Warren Ellis), some of whom allegedly have axes to grind with the newer creatives working for the company.

Quote from: Odd_Bloke on 01 September, 2009, 03:14:24 PMI would've thought it'd be 'Scots' or 'the Scotch'.  As I was using this in the 'multiple people from Scotland' sense, not the 'people of Scotland' sense, I think I'm correct.

They prefer 'The Scotch'.
#7596
Off Topic / Re: Disney to buy Marvel
01 September, 2009, 03:06:20 PM
'Scotch', not 'Scots'.  They get annoyed if you get it wrong.
#7597
Off Topic / Re: Disney to buy Marvel
01 September, 2009, 02:37:43 PM
Quote from: Emperor on 01 September, 2009, 02:02:29 PM
Since Warners took over DC the cut-off point in sales has been somewhere between 10-15k (direct sales) with some being able to dip below that (although possibly they have strong trade paperback sales to keep them afloat) and at Marvel when you go below 20k sales they start sharpening the axe. This could mean quality (but poor selling) titles, like Captain Britain and MI13, are given more of a chance to see if sales stabilise and assess the strength of the market for collected editions

The flipside of this is that DC books can and have been cancelled if editorial don't like them, as evidenced by the last volume of Batgirl getting canned despite outselling Wonder Woman, while Young Justice (a book hated by DC head honcho Dan DiDio) was cancelled outright despite being so profitable it became the basis of a fifth week event (Sins of Youth) across DCs core titles.  With Marvel, I suspect much the same thing: a lower bar for sales and less emphasis on a profitable monthly output will mean lower-quality editorial pet projects (Runaways, Loners) getting an undeserved push, while higher-quality titles with no editorial enthusiasm to back them up (Captain Britain and MI13, Ghost Rider) go on 'hiatus' or get canned outright and the characters strip-mined for yet another X-Men/Avengers title.
#7598
Film & TV / Re: animes
01 September, 2009, 12:46:25 AM
Samurai Champloo is highly recommended, as is prequel series Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is a nicely-paced sci-fi procedural, and Planetes is a good science fiction drama - and the opening credits may seem slightly familiar to anyone who's seen the opening credits for Enterprise (Planetes came first, though).

On the 'so bad it's great' side of things, Fist of the North Star and Cyber City Oedo are those rare beasts where the terrible translation and dubbing actually improves the original product, especially Fist, where each episode becomes a hilarious waiting game to see how Kenshiro royally fucks someone up.  Also: bears, apes, a tank, a train, Satan, an aircraft carrier - Kenshiro kickboxes each of these things to death at some point during the series and I am not making that up.

QuoteOther than that, not too fussed.. unless its Legend of the Overfiend  :)
The manga Video translation of that did the rounds at our school.  You're just sat there agog at the sight of nurses raped by demons until they explode and thinking "what the hell, Japan?  What. The hell?"  Kinda in the same "this has gotta be seen!" (when you're ten) was Crying Freeman, which was highly amusing for the violence and the bit where he goes to kill the lass, but tells her he's never been with a woman before so they do it right there, but crucially the first thing he does is go down on her, which we all thought was a pretty good guess for a monk.

On the manga front, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind comes recommended, but seek out a good translation, as the Viz media version I bought has some pretty damn poor printing and proofing, with the quality of repro varying wildly from one page to the next, and an overly-literal translation (noun/verb placement and dialogue balloons not correctly switched) ruining some scenes and throwing you out of the story, which is well-paced and beautifully illustrated in places.  Gunsmith Cats is a pretty good crime thriller, and Barefoot Gen is worth a read.  Lone Wolf and Cub is bulletproof, though - absolutely brutal in places, and a must-read for action-comics aficionados.  Sequel/prequel Samurai Executioner is top stuff, too.
#7599
Books & Comics / Re: Walt Disney aquires Marvel Comics
31 August, 2009, 11:22:02 PM
It's a corporate entity, Steev.  Corporations own pretty much everything you buy, the only difference with Disney is that you have a (nebulous) central brand/identity to identify it, while the likes of Nestle probably end up with more of your cash in any given year through disparate properties they own, and I'd say their record in the third world is far more troubling than Uncle Walt's in the first.
#7600
News / Re: Disney buys Marvel
31 August, 2009, 10:05:28 PM
I've heard a case made that Disney bought the Ghibli films so they could muck their release schedules around and ensure they were never in direct competition to any of Disney's flicks come oscar season.  Leaving that aside, the Disney dubs are pretty horrendous, draining even the tiniest hint of acting from even the more impressive voice casts, which is unfortunate if you can only buy the dubs - which for a time was indeed the case.  Then there's the censorship on Totorro (minor, but still...), films held back from release for years at a time (Laputa, Totorro), and the limited releases some films did receive in small numbers of theaters has generated speculation as to how much Disney actually wanted the films to do well.
Latter releases have come out pretty quickly, all the same.
#7601
Books & Comics / Re: Walt Disney aquires Marvel Comics
31 August, 2009, 04:22:13 PM
Sounds like good news to me.  Comics kids can read again?  Cool.
#7602
Film & TV / Re: Harpers Island.
29 August, 2009, 02:14:40 AM
Watched it on the Other Channel when it came out. I totally called the killer from episode one, then it turned out I didn't, except I actually did!

Ludicrous trash, but great fun.
#7603
I love you, TS.  Don't ever change.

Quote from: ThryllSeekyr on 20 August, 2009, 04:41:06 PM
"Ben Ten : Whatever" is still "Ben Ten" to me, but some of them have a extra title.besides isn't ben ten " the traddemark name next to the company name IUt's like saying that the 2000AD Megazine and Judge Dredd magazine aren't 2000AD, they srtill are. It's just that they are not 2000AD magazine.   I know that in some he's young boy, while in another he is teenager, and another he has grown a beard. other than that I don't even follow these shows to the plot or story.

Well, there's the Ben 10 franchise, but otherwise there are two distinctly different shows that only share the Omnitrix mcguffin and two principle characters.  The animation, cast, setting, story arcs, and atmosphere are different in each (the original show wouldn't show main cast members getting killed or on the pull, but the sequel does).  The beardy thing is either that one episode set in the future or you've accidentally tuned into Ulysses 31, which I heartily recommend you continue to do, if only to see where else the conversation ends up.
I only make the distinction because the original Ben 10 gets right on my tits and never seems to be off the frigging digital channels when the young uns go surfing and I want to watch Monk.

Youtube not great for telly shows, though: depending on age and public domain status, you're better off looking in Megadownload, Veoh or Google Video to see if someone's archived something you're after in a downloadable/high res file (though  there's a good chance it's the Portugese or Spanish dubs you'll end up with if you don't check the file names and descriptions).
#7604
Quote from: His Lordship rac on 20 August, 2009, 05:04:35 PM
Heh... I tried plugging HiEx there.
Once.
Never went back after the 'warm' welcome I recieved.

That'd be Hi-Ex, the major Scottish - sorry, SCOTCH - comics festival with an international roster of guests from the industry?  Yes, I can't think of a single reason for that to be mentioned on a comics forum...
#7605
Not me personally, but there's been a few attempts to plug stuff related to local moviemakers, bands and comics-related events that I thought would have been of interest to people who frequented that forum.

You get used to the freewheeling atmosphere around here, though.