Looks like there is going to be an Atom spinoff sorta starring...the Sara Lance Black Canary?!

Just read this on The A.V. Club. I saw it earlier while Googling, but brushed it off as one of those wild rumors/clickbait that pops up all the time. Boy, was I wrong. According to The A.V. Club, The CW is planning on doing an Arrow/The Flash spinoff starring The Atom, Firestorm, Captain Cold, and...Sara Lance?

Careful with this meme, it's an antique.

No word on how they're bringing her back, unless Caity Lotz is going to play a brand new character and Mark Berlanti, Marc Guggenheim, and Andrew Kreisberg expect us to look the other way. Of course, they could easily have Oliver take Sara's body to Nanda Parbat and revive her with the Lazarus Pit. The preview for the next episode of Arrow, "The Offer", seems to indicated that the Pits exist in the Arrowverse. The article also says that there's a chance that the spinoff might go straight to series, skipping the need for a pilot. If it does, then that's a huge vote of confidence from The CW to Berlanti, Kreisberg, and Guggenheim.

Captain Cold being in the cast is an eyebrow raiser, considering he's a supervillain on The Flash. I like Wentworth Miller and the way he plays Cold, so I'm not complaining in the least. I just wonder what their team will be called, since Justice League is presumably off the table. Justice Society sounds too formal. The Outsiders, maybe?

The article also says that there's going to be "three major DC Comics characters who have never appeared in a TV series" but they haven't been named yet. Sam Barsanti wants The Question to be one of them and I totally agree. Maybe add at least another female character so Sara isn't alone in what is otherwise a sausage-fest?

I guess the only thing to do is sit back, watch, and hope that this turns out to be yet another smash for the Arrowverse. If it is, then Berlanti and company should just be handed the reigns for the DC Cinematic Universe to run because right now, they're the only ones getting it right.

Unite the Seven!

(via Zack Snyder's Twitter)

Duuuude, Jason Momoa as Aquaman is one of the best casting choices. I know there are people who either don't like his appearance or his race, but who the fuck really cares? This is how Arthur Curry should look. I do hope they keep the name Arthur Curry, though. I think what I like is how Aquaman looks like what Poseidon or some other ocean deity would look like.


I was thinking just now and you know who would have been a good second choice as Aquaman? The unfortunately late Paul Walker. Of the two (provided that Walker were still alive), I'd still probably go with Momoa.

(via Wikipedia)

5 Arrow spinoffs I'd like to see

Arrow's been on the air for three seasons and has already spawned one spinoff, The Flash. So why not more? Here's five spinoffs that I think would be worth watching.

(via Arrow & The Flash Wiki)

The Atom: This is the most likely of the five to happen. In fact, there's already talk of a spinoff. We’re seeing Ray working on the suit and he has a stated intent to use it to fight crime, so a spinoff makes sense. Plus, it would capitalize on the success of Marvel’s Iron Man movies and possibly the Ant-Man movie if it doesn’t bomb at the box office. Ray is being portrayed as a technologist in the same vein as Tony Stark after all, and he'll presumably have size-changing powers like his comic book version (white dwarf star matter was mentioned in the episode ("Draw Back Your Bow") and Ant-Man. The difference is that the writers are trying to broaden his abilities beyond mere shrinking. I like technological/scientific superheroes. Their gadgets tend to be awesome.

(via Arrow & The Flash Wiki)

Wildcat: He fought against Brick’s gang in the episode "Uprising" and he already had prior experience as a vigilante, so why not? The premise would be that The Glades is left incredibly unstable due to events over the past seasons, so Wildcat springs back into action to help fight crime there. Ollie gives him his blessing because it helps reduce his own workload.

(via Arrow & The Flash Wiki)

Black Canary: Laurel decides to strike out on her own and takes up in the defense of her own section of the city. She still helps out Ollie and crew. Like with Ted, Ollie gives her the greenlight because he realizes he needs much more help defending Starling than ever before.

(via Comic Vine)

The Question: Use his origin as a reporter who also fights corruption and organized crime. Maybe give him aspects of Denny O’Neil’s run on the character? The Sara Montoya version is another option, but she's more tied to the Batman side of the DCU.

(via Arrow & The Flash Wiki)

Thea Queen: Well, I mean, Malcolm Merlyn did give her loads of combat training and she’s quite capable of fighting, plus she has multiple trophies in archery, so she has those skills like her brother. Maybe Ollie takes her as a sidekick (to keep an eye on her) and insists on calling her Speedy. Obviously, that's not going to strike fear into the hearts of criminals, so she'd have to go with something else on the streets.

Thoughts on Leonard Nimoy

Originally posted on my Tumblr, thought I'd repost it here too:

(via Los Angeles Times)

I'm not going to bullshit and claim that TOS was what got me into Star Trek. It was TNG. But I fell head over heels in love with the TOS movies more than the TNG ones. The Wrath of Khan, The Voyage Home, and The Undiscovered Country aren't just my three favorite Trek movies, but three of my all-time favorite movies period. I think The Motion Picture is underrated and under-appreciated. One of the reasons why I love these movies is because of Leonard Nimoy. Spock's mindmeld with V'Ger in TMP is fantastic. His death in TWoK is still hard hitting and not gonna lie, I still get a little teary eyed over it. Nimoy's acting in TVH is what really makes the movie one of the best. Same with TUC.

I think it's also critically important that we look beyond Spock and directly at Leonard Nimoy himself. He was a photographer, a musician (famous for the song “The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins), writer, and director. He was also the internet's honorary grandpa. We brought joy to to millions and inspired people to become scientists.

In short, Leonard Nimoy lived long and prospered, now he rests in peace.

Thought on Blogger changing it's policy on adult content next month

So this notice popped up on my dash just now:

Starting March 23, 2015, you won't be able to publicly share images and video that are sexually explicit or show graphic nudity on Blogger.
Note: We’ll still allow nudity if the content offers a substantial public benefit, for example in artistic, educational, documentary, or scientific contexts.

Changes you’ll see to your existing blogs

If your existing blog doesn’t have any sexually explicit or graphic nude images or video on it, you won’t notice any changes.
If your existing blog does have sexually explicit or graphic nude images or video, your blog will be made private after March 23, 2015. No content will be deleted, but private content can only be seen by the owner or admins of the blog and the people who the owner has shared the blog with.

 There's always Tumblr, which doesn't have such a restriction on adult content. What bothers me is what falls under "adult content". Obviously porn does, but what about just a nude picture? Are they going to drop the hammer on a blog if someone posts a picture of a pinup or something and there's a nipple showing? What about butts?

I'm also just curious how Google is planning to enforce this new policy considering how many blogs there are on Blogger.

Achievement Hunter Weekly Update #251, TEAM LADS ACTION NEWS!

I cannot believe that making videos like this is an actual career option. What a time to be alive.

Jessica Williams as Jon Stewart's successor on The Daily Show 2k15

Stewart's leaving the show later this year and from what I've seen, Jessica Williams has all of the qualities to sit at the desk.

In terms of ridiculously attractive people, Fo Porter is certainly one

Geez Louise!

Via my Tumblr.

Thoughts on the Seth Rollins/Zahra Schreiber nude photo leaks and why it might be revenge porn

For the non-wrestling fans, Seth Rollins is professional wrestler currently working for WWE. Zahra Schreiber works for the same company, but in their development territory, NXT. Well, yesterday, a nude picture of Schreiber appeared on Rollins' Twitter and I believe his Instagram account and were swiftly deleted. At some point after this, nude pictures of Rollins himself appeared on the Twitter of Rollins fiancee, Leighla Schultz. Now whether Schultz posted all these pictures herself or if the accounts were hacked by a third-party, I don't know, but regardless it was wrong. Those pictures were posted without the consent of either Rollins or Schreiber.



To me, this is no different than when all those nude pictures of celebrities were leaked in The Fappening. Certainly none of those people consented to have what were private pictures published on the internet for people to gawk at. Now I've seen people on Tumblr claim that Rollins and Schreiber deserved it because of Seth "having" a nude picture of the latter woman. First off, how do we even know that he had that picture in his possession before it was posted? His accounts were likely hacked and it wouldn't be hard for someone to just, you know, upload the picture. The pictures of Rollins could have been ones he sent to his fiancee. I mean, it's not a giant leap that a hacker could have gained access to private pictures on their phones, that's how The Fappening happened, after all.

Now, in the title of his post, I said it might be revenge porn. It really depends on whether or not Leighla Schultz posted the pictures of Seth Rollins and Zahra Schreiber. If she did, then it's definitely revenge porn. It would be different from a guy posting pictures of his ex to "get back" at her.

What I don't think people are considering though is the effect this is going to have on the career of Schreiber and to a lesser extent, Rollins. The latter will survive because he has main event status and Stephanie MacMahon and Triple H to shield him from Vince’s wrath. Worst case scenarios for him would be a suspension, losing his MiTB briefcase in a failed cash in, or jobbing for a while to guys like Zack Ryder.

Zahara Schreiber, on the other hand, has no such protection. She could be lose her job over someone posting a single nude picture of her without her consent, so don’t think that what happened here is victimless.

RIP RadioShack

(via The Old Computer)

Well, it happened - RadioShack filed for bankruptcy the other day. I don't have much more to add than what I already said before. Unfortunately, that's how capitalism works. RadioShack really wasn't bringing anything to the table and clearly couldn't compete with Best Buy or online retailers. Their attempt to market themselves as a DIY resource failed because they didn't really put much of an effort into actually being a DIY resource. Sprint is planning on turning half of RadioShacks' stores into Sprint Stores, which just feels like grinding salt into an already fatal gunshot wound. I like John Oliver and Last Week Tonight's take on it:

Mystery and crime fiction book haul and current reading list: Ellery Queen, Nero Wolfe, The Black Dahlia, and more

So I realized a few weeks back that I didn't have much in the way of mystery and crime fiction. A bit ironic considering the theme of this blog. I really did think I had some, but it's mostly thrillers and spy fiction. Fortunately, Goodwill exists and I was able to pick up a few books to bolster my inadequate collection. Before that, I headed to the local library to pick some books up, just to quench my thirst until I could get more of my own.

First up, the haul:

(via Cover Browser)

A murder in a crowded theater leaves a pack of suspects, but only one clue.

Despite the dismal Broadway season, Gunplay continues to draw crowds. A gangland spectacle, it’s packed to the gills with action, explosions, and gunfire. In fact, Gunplay is so loud that no one notices the killing of Monte Field. In a sold-out theater, Field is found dead partway through the second act, surrounded by empty seats. The police hold the crowd and call for the one man who can untangle this daring murder: Inspector Richard Queen.

With the help of his son Ellery, a bibliophile and novelist whose imagination can solve any crime, the Inspector attacks this seemingly impenetrable mystery. Anyone in the theater could have killed the unscrupulous lawyer, and several had the motive. Only Ellery Queen, in his debut novel, can decipher the clue of the dead man’s missing top hat.

(via Amazon)

There Was An Old Woman:

Cornelia Potts was a wicked old witch of a woman with many millions of dollars, a henpecked husband, and six miserable children, and every life she touched turned to sheer hell. But no one objected until death came to the vast, grotesque Potts mansion and began claiming its inhabitants one by one. That was when Ellery Queen was invited to sup on this devilish brew of diabolical murder and baffling mystery - in a case that made the most horrific crimes in his entire career seem like innocent fairy tales.

The Origin of Evil:

Ellery Queen was sunbathing, au naturel, in the doorway of his Hollywood bedroom when the pretty young girl appeared. She was small and slender, but three dimensional where it counted. But this vision of loveliness beckoned Ellery into eerie nightmare adventure when she put him on the scent of a case where the only murder weapon appeared to be a dead dog.

(Via Cover Browser)

The murders began with a note:

Dear Walt:
You know who I am. You do not know that you know.
You shall.
I write this to let you know that I know who you really are.
I know the skill of your hands. I know the quality of your obedience. I know where you come from and what you are doing.
I know what you think. 1 know what you want.
I know your great destiny.
I like you.
Y

This was the overture to the murders. The note came to Walt, for many years handyman for the four miniature castles that made up York Square.
Robert York was in the flesh what York Square was in stone-punctilious, outmoded, predictable. Not all the Yorks were like that, of course. Myra, younger than Robert, had a secret unmentioned by the other Yorks, as anyone who got close enough to see the gentle unfocused eyes became uneasily aware.
Emily York was younger than Myra and looked older. Compelled like her cousins, by their uncle's eccentric will, to live in a castle, Emily recorded a permanent protest against such trumpery by taking as her own the smallest of the maids' rooms and decorating it with all the elaboration of a Trappist cell.
And then there was Percival York, playboy, gambler, drunkard, gentleman, man of many personalities-a totally unpredictable character.
These were the people whose lives were threatened by "Y"-until "Y" was finally checkmated by Ellery Queen, called into the York case when it baffled the police.

(via gdprice)

Sheila, exotic young international leader of haute couture,is found murdered in her Park Avenue penthouse. Two floors down, the distinguished middle-aged millionaire—Ashton McKell—is hauled off to jail. Next to go, Lutecia, his shy patrician wife. And then—Dane, their handsome, sensitive son. Together, a triangle of murder suspects. Ellery Queen, immobilized, can trick the police into becoming his 'legmen' if he discovers The Fourth Side of the Triangle.

(via The Literary Amnesiac)

On January 15, 1947, the torture-ravished body of a beautiful young woman is found in a Los Angeles vacant lot. The victim makes headlines as the Black Dahlia-and so begins the greatest manhunt in California history.Caught up in the investigation are Bucky Bleichert and Lee Blanchard: Warrants Squad cops, friends, and rivals in love with the same woman. But both are obsessed with the Dahlia-driven by dark needs to know everything about her past, to capture her killer, to possess the woman even in death. Their quest will take them on a hellish journey through the underbelly of postwar Hollywood, to the core of the dead girl's twisted life, past the extremes of their own psyches-into a region of total madness.

(via neroandarchie)

NERO WOLFE’S ADDRESS
WAS IN THE DEAD MAN’S POCKET-
AND MURDER CAME TO CALL

When it was all over, Wolfe had a bullet in the arm-and the killer had one in the heart.

But before the shoot-out in the fat detective’s office, Wolfe and Archie had to break the mystery of a “Rubber Band” that stretched across forty years and five thousand miles-a mystery made up of a lynching, multiple murder, blackmail, and one of Nero Wolfe’s most dangerous-and lovely-clients!

Library checkouts:

(via Amazon)

 Fer-De-Lance:

The fer-de-lance is among the most deadly snakes known to man. When someone makes a present of one to Nero Wolfe, his partner, Archie Goodwin, suspects it means Wolfe is getting close to solving the devilishly clever murders of an immigrant and a college president. But this is a case with more twists than an angry rattler...and if Wolfe doesn’t handle it with extreme care, he’ll be the next one struck by a killer with poison in his heart.

The League of Frightened Men:

Paul Chapin’s Harvard cronies never forgave themselves for the hazing prank that left their friend a cripple. Yet they believed that Paul himself had forgiven them—until a class reunion ends in death and a series of poems promising more of the same. Now this league of frightened men is desperate for Nero Wolfe’s help. But can even the great detective outwit a killer smart enough to commit an unseen murder…in plain sight?

(via Amazon)

A brilliant mystery in a classic vein: Detective Cormoran Strike investigates a supermodel's suicide.

After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, and creditors are calling. He has also just broken up with his longtime girlfriend and is living in his office.

Then John Bristow walks through his door with an amazing story: His sister, the legendary supermodel Lula Landry, known to her friends as the Cuckoo, famously fell to her death a few months earlier. The police ruled it a suicide, but John refuses to believe that. The case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers, and it introduces him to every variety of pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known to man.

You may think you know detectives, but you've never met one quite like Strike. You may think you know about the wealthy and famous, but you've never seen them under an investigation like this.

I also checked out There Was An Old Woman, so I'll be skipping that particular copy. Plan wise, I'm currently reading Fer-De-Lance and after that, I'll move on to maybe Cuckoo's Calling or The Roman Hat Mystery. After that, a short break from mysteries before I move onto the rest.

Any of these books look good to you? Have you read any of them before?

RIP Joystiq, Massively, and WoW Insider

So I learned yesterday, via The Know, that AOL shutdown gaming websites Joystiq, Massively, and WoW Insider as part of a restructuring move because AOL hasn't been relevant in over a decade and rather than actually evolve and adapt to the now, it's easier to just fire people and shutdown popular websites to save a few bucks.





Now, I'm not going to front and claim that these three sites were vital to me. Truth is, I hardly game anymore outside of Fallout 3 and some Facebook games, but I know well enough that quality gaming sites are an important commodity that shouldn't be wasted. What really boggles my mind is that according to Brianna Royce, the editor-in-chief of Massively, the site was performing extremely well, revenue-wise:

...We all suspected this was coming eventually a year ago when a VP whose name I don't even know and who never read our site chose to reward our staggering, hard-won 40% year-over-year page view growth by... hacking our budget in half....

 Emphasis mine, because goddamn, that is just stupidity. I'm no financial expert here, but if I had a site that was posting that kind of annual performance, I would reward them, not punish them by halving their budget. This was mentioned already in the above video, but the astounding amount of stupidity made it bear repeating.

Farewell, Joystiq, Massively, and WoW Insider. Hopefully someone will swoop in and buy you all up, like Townsquare Media did when AOL shuttered ComicsAlliance.