Zoom may be a murderous supervillain, but even he understands the importance of hydration

I'm not sure whether he's actually drinking or not, but it makes sense that whoever is wearing the suit (since I doubt that Tony Todd is wearing that thing) would be able to while masked up. There's no nose holes in the mask, so he'd have to breathe through those grooves in the mask.

Picture via doc-retro.

Iron Monday #4: Goldmember isn't the only one who likes gold

Out of all of Tony Stark's armors, the Mark I had probably the shortest run of them all. Debuting in Tales to Astonish #39, it was replaced the following issue with the Golden Avenger armor.

The color change was purely aesthetic. Tony's girlfriend at the time, Marion pointed out that the the Mark I's plain grey color was off-putting to the public and mused that Iron Man should have a golden exterior to invoke a "knight in shining armor" vibe. Tony took the advice and wham-o, Golden Avenger.

Sixth panel: That's kind of sexist, Tony.

The Mark II differed from the original in other ways too. The skirt is the most obvious, but the torso armor was also slimmed down so that Tony could wear it under his clothes and not have people go "Holy shit, you're Iron Man!" He added some other gadgets, like a force field generator, loudspeaker, and an upgraded monobeam in the chest.

He was wearing this armor when the Avengers were formed.

Did I mention the aluminum armor he built? No? Well, Iron Man runs into a fella named The Melter who, as his name implies, can melt most metals with a ray gun. For whatever reason, the Melter's gun couldn't touch aluminum, so Tony builds an aluminum

And boy, was he cocky ever about it.

After only eight issues, the Golden Avenger fell to the wayside like it's predecessor. Iron Man battled a man named Mr. Doll and was nearly killed. This lead to the introduction of the first red and gold armor, but that's a post for another day.

Picture sources: 1, 2, 3.

Check out my sweet Spider-Man light thing

It looks better with the lights out.

It was a yard sale find from several years ago. I had it shelved away until yesterday when I decided to set it out. Looks nice.

How about a behind-the-scenes picture of Flash and Supergirl?

A photo posted by Grant Gustin (@grantgust) on Feb 10, 2016 at 2:07pm PST

Supergirl/Flash crossover HYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYPE. *blows airhorns, pisses off neighbors*

Off Topic Tuesday #4: Blogger needs an overhaul

I've been using Blogger since 2004 or 05 and Tumblr since 2010 and in the time I've spent on the latter, I've come to realize that Blogger is in a desperate need of an overhaul. Don't get me wrong, I love Blogger and think it's a great service despite the flaws, but it could be so much better. Here's the problems I see and how they could be fixed:

Lack of community. On Tumblr, if you're a fan of a TV program, movie, book, comic, etc. then you can easily find other fans and become part of that fandom. On Blogger, not so much. Sure, you can search for other people who are also fans of that think you like, but it's a crapshoot because whoever comes up might not actively post about the thing.

The solution here is to replace the current search system with one that can not only show you blogs with similar interests, but posts too. So like if I do a search for say The Flash, I can see who is posting about that show and comic. That not only helps give bloggers wider exposure, but facilitates the formation of cohesive fandoms and makes Blogger more attractive for people looking to get into blogging.

The app, it sucks. No eloquence there, just straight truth. Its functionality is no different than just going to blogger.com and that's a problem. Mobile blogging is a big deal and while the Blogger app lets you make posts on the go, it leaves a lot to be desired.

As you can see, the post editor is behind minimal. There's no ability to attach images or videos, or do much of anything other than adding text. But hey, you can sure as hell bold and italicize that text!

Another problem with the app is that it doesn't let you view other blogs, just your own. Again, this goes back to mobile blogging. The inability to view blogs that you're following or any other blogs is a huge hindrance.

Speaking of followers, a minor gripe I have is that there's actually a limit on how many blogs you can subscribe to. I can understand this being a limitation back before Google took ownership, but now? Not so much. Other social media doesn't limit how many people you can follow on their platforms, so why should Blogger?

Another area that is sore need of improvement is themes. The current batch is fine, but I'd like to see more, including user created themes. It's not a huge deal, but having more options that better fit your blog's aesthetic would only make Blogger even more attractive.

I mentioned social media and one of the things needed in the overhaul is better integration with other platforms. As of right now, you can post articles to Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+, and other Blogger blogs. That's nice, but outside of external methods, there's no way of adding a Twitter, FB, Tumblr, or other social media feed to your blog via a gadget.

Blogger is a great service for long form blogging and compliments the short-form and medium-form platforms of Twitter and Tumblr, but compared to the latter and other services like Medium are unfortunately starting to leave it in the dust and I think a major overhaul would do wonders to put Blogger back near the top.

In an odd and unexpected move, Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice will now be an ANIMATED movie

In the end, a bold and wise move.

Picture via Cal's blog.

Who is Zoom? My five choices (SPOILERS)

The biggest mystery of The Flash's second season is the identity of the main antagonist, Zoom. Who's under the mask? They haven't revealed his identity on the show yet, but apparently it's going to happen soon, so in the meantime, here's my five picks (four from Earth-2 and one who isn't) on who it might be.

Barry Allen

While our Barry's Earth-2 counterpart comes off as a total dork, he wouldn't be the first person to put on an act to hide an alter-ego. After all, one of the reasons why nobody suspects Clark Kent is Superman and Bruce Wayne is Batman is because they both put on acts that run counter to their superhero personas. Likewise, the Barry Allen of Earth-2 could easily be acting like a skittish dweeb to keep his double life as Zoom a secret.

It would also be dramatic as hell. Imagine The Flash coming face to face with himself. After all, they say that you are your own worst enemy.



Henry Allen

This would be purely for the shock value. Imagine Zoom pulling off his mask and it's Earth-2 Henry underneath! Imagine Barry having to spend the rest of the season wrestling with his emotions over having to fight and defeat a man who looks exactly like his father. Plus, it would be a nice shoutout to John Wesley Shipp's time as The Flash.

Of course there might be a tiny little problem with this. In "Welcome to Earth-2", Earth-1 Barry talks to his counterpart's mom on the phone and she mentions her and Barry's dad going on a trip to Atlantis for their anniversary. I'm assuming that its Henry she's going with, but on the other hand, what if it isn't? We don't know how different Nora and Henry Allen are on Earth-2, so they might not be married here and she was referring to a second husband.

Wally West

We haven't seen Wally's Earth-2 counterpart yet and that's what initially made me suspicious. Then I started thinking about it and realized that Wally and Zoom have something in common: Speed. They both want to go faster, so what if E-2 Wally's obsession with speed escalated? He became a speedster in the same accident that created the other metahumans or had gotten them later on. Either way, the speed gained still isn't enough and that's why he's trying to steal Barry's speed.

Hunter Zolomon

So this is one of the more interesting options. In the episode "Potential Energy", Caitlin discovers that Jay is slowly dying because of the loss of his speed. She comes up with a possible cure in the following episode, "The Reverse-Flash Returns" that involves replacing his damage cells with fresh ones from his Earth-1 counterpart, but unfortunately, can't find the counterpart and assumes Jay doesn't have one. Jay takes her to the park and shows that he does have one, but on this Earth his name is Hunter Zolomon, due to being adopted by a different family when his mother died.

Now, what's interesting here is that in the comics Hunter Zolomon is the name of...Zoom. Personally, I feel like this might be too on the nose and Zolomon is nothing more than a red herring meant to misdirect the comic book fans and people who google character names. Still, having a character who has the same name as the season's antagonist is something that can't simply be ignored. I'm also wondering if there's any significance to the book Zolomon is reading in the above picture. It's Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. I've never read it, so I have no idea if there's a hidden clue there or not.

Jay Garrick

Oh yes, Jay is on the list, make no mistake about that. Why? For two reasons. Firstly, he has the same desire for speed as Zoom has. This led to him taking Velocity 6 in order to increase his speed. Secondly, he lied about how he lost his powers. He originally claimed that Zoom had stolen his powers the night that Jay was sucked into a breach and dumped on Earth-1. However, in "Welcome to Earth-2", he confessed to Caitlin that the loss of his powers was due to taking Velocity 6. It's a strange thing to lie about and caused Team Flash to focus on ways to make Barry faster in order to combat Zoom. Interestingly, Zoom wanted Barry to become faster before he'd take the Scarlet Speedster's speed for his own. Likewise, Jay was taking Velocity 6 because he wanted to be faster. That could easily just to have been from the desire to break the stalemate that existed between him and Zoom, but what if Jay became obsessed with truly being the Fastest Man Alive and when Velocity 6 didn't work out, decided to try other methods?

The question of course is how Jay knew about Earth-1 and Barry? In the season one finale, Barry experienced visions of future events while opening a breach to send Reverse-Flash back to his timeline. Did Jay have similar visions and saw E-1 Barry and how fast he was?

So who is Zoom? We'll just have to wait until he's unmasked to see if any of my choices are right. Hopefully they won't keep us waiting for much longer.

All pictures from the Arrowverse Wiki.

You know you've made it as a sci-fi writer when you're a question on Jeopardy

From John Scalzi's blog, Whatever.

The answer is Redshirts. Not a bad novel and one I would recommend if you like comic novels. It pokes fun at Star Trek, but isn't a parody. The summary explains it better than I can:

Ensign Andrew Dahl has just been assigned to the Universal Union Capital Ship Intrepid, flagship of the Universal Union since the year 2456. It's a prestige posting, with the chance to serve on "Away Missions" alongside the starship's famous senior officers.

Life couldn't be better...until Andrew begins to realize that 1) every Away Mission involves a lethal confrontation with alien forces, 2) the ship's senior officers always survive these confrontations, and 3) sadly, at least one low-ranking crew member is invariably killed. Unsurprisingly, the savvier crew members below decks avoid Away Missions at all costs.

Then Andrew stumbles on information that transforms his and his colleagues' understanding of what the starship Intrepid really is...and offers them a crazy, high-risk chance to save their own lives.

"Pictures of Mulder and Scully as..." is probably one of the funniest things I've seen on Tumblr

I found a post on a follower's Tumblr last night and it's just great. The post is like a dozen or so pictures that Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny have done together over the years, but each labeled as being something else. Hold on, here's some of my favorites:

Indie album cover.

The Sears portrait. This one killed me.

The true crime cover.

There's more and all of them are funny and worth checking out on my Tumblr (NSFW warning because it sometimes isn't). All credit to the clever people who thought up the captions.

Iron Monday #3: Tony's idea of telepresence differs wildly from Ciscos

Back in the early 90s, Tony Stark wasn't doing so well. First, he'd been shot by an unstable ex named Kathy Dare in Iron Man Vol. 1 #242. He survived, but was left paralyzed. But oh, things got so much worse. A microchip was implanted in his spine, which turned out to be a plot to take control of the billionaire and ended up slowly destroying his nervous system. While all of this was going on, Stark created a version of his of his Mark VIII armor that allowed him to move while wearing it, but when his nervous system began going to pieces, he created the NTU-150 Telepresence Armor, which first appeared in issue #290.

What made the Telepresence Armor interesting was that it was effectively a robot. Stark at this point was bedridden and slowly dying, so donning an suit of armor was no longer an option. Instead, the TA was designed to be controlled via a special headset that transmitted Stark's thoughts to the armor through subspace. The downside was that he was susceptible to feedback from damage the unit took.

I read the issue where he uses the armor to fight something called the Technovore, which ended with the armor's destruction. I also remember reading issue #291 where Tony saves James Rhodes from the Battledroid attack that started in the previous issue and drops off the War Machine armor and together they whoop some serious ass. I always thought it was cool to see the NTU carrying the other armor in a hand dandy case on its back. The armor looks cool as heck, but I think some of the drama was lost since Tony wasn't actually in the armor. Sure, there was the danger of what was left of his nervous system being destroyed by feedback, but considering that he could just cut the connection before the armor takes a fatal hit.

 Picture sources: 1, 2, 3.