The problem with having a mute ninja as a member of G.I. Joe

Credit: Our Valued Customers.

That probably is annoying during a battle. Imagine if Tripwire somehow gets a grenade stuck in his pants and no one but Snakes Eye realizes it and he's frantically trying to warn him and everyone else about it, but no one's paying attention. Worse, someone does notice, but they think he's goofing off or something.

"Dammit, Snake Eyes, this isn't the time or place for a game of charades!"

Batman has 99 problems, but being in the upper 1% tax bracket isn't one of them

Credit: Nothing is Linear.

He probably just walked into the Hall of Justice wearing that sparkly cape, a skip in his step.

Superman: "Wow, Bruce, that's a...that's a nice cape you got there."
Batman: "Haha, yeah, I just bought it today. It's got diamonds sewn right into it, woo!"
Wonder Woman: "Uh...why are you so upbeat Bruce? We've never seen you this happy before."
Aquaman: "Yeah, and it's kind of freaking us the hell out."
Batman: "I just got back from my CPA and I'm even richer than fuck now! Haha! Who wants their own island? Fuck it, I'm buying a country."

He then throws his arms into the air, shouts "Batman out!" and skips away. Later that night, the rest of the JLA are at home, watching TV when they see a news bulletin about Bruce Wayne buying a country.

h/t roastbeefguy.

No, kids, this isn't dubstep, it's the sound of a dial-up modem connecting to the internet.

Ah yes, the memories. Having to hear that noise whenever I wanted to get online every five hours, because for whatever reason, the 56k modems disconnected after five hours. Then there were all the times that I was either downloading something off the net or playing an online game like Diablo II and someone would call and disconnect me. I can't count the number of times I would be about the finish a quest in D2 and that would happen, or someone would need to use the phone.

It wasn't all bad, I do have some funny memories from those bygone days. Like spending six hours (or longer) downloading a 24MB file or waiting ten minutes for a three minute video on YouTube to finish loading. I'm not joking. I honestly can't even imagine what it must be like to use the internet now with dial-up.

Fond memories, but thank god for broadband.

This VG Cats strip is my favorite comic this week (so far)

Always love a good ReBoot reference.

Check out this awesome rendition of the 90s X-Men cartoon's intro done in stop motion.

Found this on SF Signal.




And for comparison, hit the jump to see the real intro.



I dig it. It's not only cool, but it reminds me of all the X-Men figures I had growing up. They were the toys I went to after Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Batman and Superman have a bad romance

So I've been seeing this post going around Tumblr of Superman calling Batman at Wayne Manor, the latter refusing to take the call, causing Superman to hang up...and cry. I finally decided to figure out where it came from and after some googling, found out that it's from World's Finest. Maybe. I'm seeing two different issue numbers and neither really matches up for me.

I bet Clark just sat in his apartment afterward,
listening to The Cure in the dark.

Hit the jump to see the panels that came before it for proper context.

Nice wood paneling, Bruce.

Like I said, I'm not sure exactly which issue or even comic this is from. Living Between Wednesdays says #294 of World's Finest, while Scans Daily says #297. In any event, it definitely takes place after the final issue of The Brave and The Bold, where Batman got into an argument with the JLA over their policy of not intervening in the internal affairs of countries and quit the team, ultimately forming The Outsiders.

I like how Batman has all those pictures of him and Superman just hanging there in the mansion, where anyone could stumble on them. Way to maintain your secret identity, dude.

Tony looks worse for wear in this Iron Man 3 picture

He could be more kawaii desu.

Dammit, guys, don't mess up his face; it's how he makes the money.

Picture via Topless Robot.

The hell is up with The Rock's legs?

Picture via Buzzfeed.
The Rock's freakish Hulk legs
via steroids and human growth hormones (probably).

Seriously, that shit ain't right. Not even joking, the only time I've seen legs like that are in comics and no, that isn't a complement.

NASA Johnson Style is the geekier Gangnam

Speaking of Gangnam Style, the music video hit one billion views on YouTube, so that's pretty cool.

The new TARDIS interior looks sweet

There are some Whovians who don't like the redesign, but I do. It's a nice throwback to Classic Who, which is a nice touch, given the franchise's fiftieth anniversary next year. Imagine having some of the older incarnations of the Doctor, like Four through Eight standing at the console next to Ten and Eleven.

...

I think I just nerded in my pants.

Edit: I just found a picture on Tumblr of the First Doctor's console and it looks very similar to the new one:

Picture via The Mary Sue and unwillingadventurer. h/t Classic Who.

Check out this new Star Trek Into Darkness trailer

This one is more Kirk-focused.



Not much light shed on Benedict Cumberbatch's "John Harrison" character. I still don't think that's his character's real name. I also don't think he's Khan or Gary Mitchell.

I'm a few years late and a couple dollars short, but here's two He-Man music videos

How did I not know about these sooner? The first is a parody of 4 Non Blondes 1993 hit, "What's Up?" by an animation studio called Slackcircus Studios (YouTube Channel), with vocals by their employees. They eventually made the original available for remixing. You can find the truncated version, featuring just the song here.



Next up is a parody video of LMFAO's "Sexy and I Know It" and it is almost as hilarious as the first. Almost. Nothing can ever really top that. Ever.



I probably enjoyed these more than I should have.

Trek news: the identities of Alice Eve and Benedict Cumberbatch's characters supposedly revealed

First off, the trailer, since I never posted it here for some reason.



Now on to the news. Ever since the trailer came out, speculation has been rife about who Alice Eve was playing in the movie. An almost general consensus formed that she was playing Elizabeth Dehner, a one-off character from the Star Trek episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before". This apparently was due entirely because of Eve's hair in the trailer. No, really. A hairdo.

Alice Eve.
Credit: Memory Alpha.

Elizabeth Dehner (played by Sally Kellerman).
Credit: Memory Alpha.

Well, I guess she just has to be Dehner, who was obviously the only woman in TOS with shoulder-length blonde hair. Just don't tell Janice Rand and Christine Chapel. Hit the jump for the rest.


However, according to Bleeding Cool, Eve isn't playing Dehner. They're reporting that she's playing Carol Marcus instead. I'm skeptical because it hasn't been confirmed by J. J. Abrams, Roberto Orci, or Damon Lindelof and I'd like some secondary sources to back this up. Silas Lesnick, the guy Bleeding Cool cites, wrote this article about visiting the Abram's Bad Robot studio, yet doesn't actually give any details other than Eve is playing Carol Marcus. No quotes. No video clip. Nothing.

This is the same reason why I'm skeptical about this Tor.com report that Benedict Cumberbatch's character has finally been revealed.

According to them, a caption to this picture ("sanctioned" by Paramount Studios, whatever that means) IDs his character as John Harrison. Much like the Alice Eve-Carol Marcus story, I'm taking this with a grain of salt.

And the grain weighs three tons.

Here's why: As Tor themselves point out, John Harrison was a generic name used by TOS writers for when they needed to name a male extra and didn't want to go to the trouble of creating a new name every time. So, this might just be a red herring.

Credit: Toonopolis.

Who do I think they're playing? No idea and any of the guesses would probably prove to be wrong. I don't think he's Khan or Gary Mitchell, however. I didn't see anything in the trailer that really screamed "godlike being" to me. As for Khan, Abrams and Co. have said that they're not doing remakes of any of the original movies and want to make their movies separate from those. That's the reason why the movie's called Star Trek Into Darkness and not Star Trek II: Into Darkness, or just Star Trek: Into Darkness. Making Khan the antagonist in the second Trek movie would contradict that goal, wouldn't it?

On the other hand, he could be playing a wholly original character and folks are just projecting their desires onto it. In the end, I think we should just wait for confirmation from Abrams and Co. before we all go crazy and start writing Kirk-Spock-Mitchell/Khan/Harrison slash fiction.

Apparently NetZero is still a thing that exists

From a time when AOL was king and people thought the neo-swing would last forever.
Credit: Wikipedia.

That, or I was hallucinating that commercial I saw yesterday. For the people who were too young or just might not remember, NetZero was one of many ISPs that popped up during the late 90s and while it was never as popular as the former monolith that was America Online, NetZero did have a unique approach to getting customers - free internet access. Yeah, "free". In the words of the immortal Robert A. Heinlein, "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch" and NZ was no exception. Sure, they gave you free internet, but it was ad-supported, which is to say that you had to choose between a toolbar (which you couldn't disable) and a banner that displayed ads. It was an idea that resulted in big successes, as the company netted a million subscribers.

Then the dotcom bubble burst and NetZero got real...selective about their "free" service. You might even say stingy. They established a 40 hour limit on their "free" internet and anyone who exceeded it was encouraged to sign up for a premium service where they got unlimited service for like ten bucks. Not too bad, really, until they dropped the limit by 30 hours and then it just became a joke, one not as funny as the commercial they aired during the economic crash a few years ago, where they actually encouraged people to ditch broadband for their "3G" service. And by 3G, I mean dial-up. Yeah, they were not only still doing dial-up long after it had became obsolete, but they even  repackaged it in the hopes that people would downgrade back to it.



The company's proposal is just mind-blowing in its stupidity. Dial-up isn't just obsolete, it just isn't viable for the modern era of the internet. Sure, if you only use the internet for email and light stuff like that, then you should get by fine, but if you want to do anything with YouTube, Tumblr, what have you, then you're up the shit creek without a paddle or even a boat. Their play was ballsy, but much like Chiaotzu's suicide attack on Nappa, it was doomed to failure.

I was as surprised then as I was years later when I saw another one of their commercials, this time for a wifi equipment and the idea that you could doll out a gig of bandwidth to friends and family. According to Engadget, there are various data plans with the most expensive being fifty bucks a month for 4gigs of bandwidth. I honestly have no idea if that's a lot (I won't pretend to be a tech geek), but I feel like most people would blow through that like Lindsay Lohan goes through coke. That probably opens the door for them to charge you more. Additionally, and this is probably the most critical part, you have to be in a 4G coverage area.

I still can't believe that company is still around. Then again, so is AOL for reasons that may never be explained, but possibly involve pacts with the Old Gods.

Everybody in Eternia must have been nearsighted

How else do you explain no one ever looking at Prince Adam and going "Hey, he looks exactly like He-Man!" or vice versa?

A disguise so flawless, how could anyone ever suspect?

On the other hand, maybe everyone did know, but just played dumb, so that Adam could keep living out his power fantasy. You know, like what everyone does with Superman.

h/t The Thought Emporium Imperial for the pic.

The best and worst G.I. Joe vehicles.

It's been a while since we've had a G.I. Joe post, hasn't it? Well, Topless Robot and The Robot's Pajamas both have lists ranking vehicles from the toyline. Topless Robot ranks the ten least suited for the real world and includes the Mudfighter, Septic Tank (yes, COBRA really named one of their vehicles that), and the Pogo Battle Pod. I completely agree with this list; those are truly some poorly designed vehicles and in the case of the Septic Tank, poorly named. Can you imagine when one of those got blown up, what COBRA had to tell the families of the poor bastards crewing it?

"We're sorry, but your son was killed today while battling G.I. Joe."
"How did he die?"
"In a Septic Tank."

They're going to think their son was cleaning shit out of a tank when a Joe walked by and dropped a grenade inside or something.

"He took a lot of shit, but was ultimately killed by the farts."
Credit: YOJOE.com

The Robot Pajamas, on the other hand, lists the ten best vehicles, including the Tomahawk (had one as a kid!), the Moray, and the Mobile Command Center, which honestly looks epic as fuck, even though every Joe on there is hideously exposed to sniper fire. Fumbles would have a field day.

Why is there a marine in dress blues manning a station, though?
Credit: The Robot's Pajamas.