Sorry for the lack of posts yesterday

I had meant to post on Sunday that there likely wasn't going to be anything on Monday. The lack of posts was due to my dad having to go into the hospital for a potential heart procedure. His doctor thought he might have needed the stint replaced or second one added. Fortunately, he didn't need either. Normally, I would have queued up at least Iron Monday over the weekend, but obviously stress and worry dominated too much for me to get anything substantial done. So Iron Monday resumes next week and hopefully we won't run into anymore interruptions.

Well, this is it, my blog belongs to the Devil now

Anybody know the number of a good exorcist?

To be fair though, one of those posts doesn't count because it's been in the drafts for almost three years.

She-Hulk Thursday #1

Or what would be #2 this week, but oh well.

Via.

Much like Donkey Kong, the Supergirl/Flash crossover is on

And it's happening on March 28th! I don't think even Barry is that fast. According to the article, it looks like Grant Gustin will be the only one from The Flash to appear in the crossover.

What I'm curious about is where Supergirl stands in the Arrowverse. Her existing on the same Earth as The Flash and Arrow is problematic because there's never been an acknowledgement of either Kara or Superman. You'd think that at some point in time, Superman would have been mentioned by somebody on Team Arrow or Flash. My theory is that Kara hails from an alternate Earth, like Jay and Zoom, and that Barry somehow ends up traveling there. Another question in the air is if Supergirl will reciprocate and show up on The Flash. I think a crossover with Arrow is a given, provided that the response to the first crossover is positive enough. Who knows, this all might eventually lead to a (at least) three-way crossover event, maybe even a four-way crossover if you throw in Legends of Tomorrow. If they could somehow wrangle Constantine into it, then hot diggity damn!

Yeah, I'm getting way ahead of myself.

Pictures via Hollywood Reporter and Fashion & Style.

Wikipedia Wednesday #2: Necromancer actually sounds like an interesting game

I'm already starting to realize that the biggest problem with Wikipedia Wednesday is that "Random article" is unreliable as hell. Most of the articles that game up with tiny or otherwise unusable. Anyways, here's Wonderwall Necromancer.

Necromancer is a 1982 computer game for the Atari 8-bit series created by Bill Williams and distributed by Synapse Software. A port to the Commodore 64 followed in 1983, and it was re-released by Atari in cartridge form for the Atari XEGS in 1987.

The game is an arcade action title, but is unusual in that there are three distinct segments of gameplay, each of which affects the one following it. The player controls the wizard Illuminar who attempts to grow an army of trees to attack Tetragorn the Necromancer and his evil minions who are attempting to take over a graveyard.

The way each segment plays out is interesting as hell. First, you have to plant the trees while at the same time protecting them from ogres and spiders that will destroy them. In the second part, you use whatever trees survived the first part to attack and destroy spider eggs in a crypt. In the third, you have to destroy gravestones as you fight that Tetragorn guy. I really like how the number of trees you have in the crypt level is entirely dependent how well you grew and protected them in the first. It reminds me of Homeworld, where the ships you end one level with carries over to the next level. Another interesting bit is the wisp that Illuminar can shoot out. It's used in the first part to plant trees, but it's also a weapon and while using it, Illuminar can't move.

To be honest, I would suck at this game so badly, it's not even funny.

It's not like I wanted to watch The Flash tonight anyways

Well, actually, I did and The Flash getting preempted tonight in favor of a college basketball game is a pain in the ass. The same thing happened last Wednesday with Arrow (reminder to self, watch that episode tonight or tomorrow).

Off Topic Tuesday #2: Blogging for the fun of it

Because in the end, that's what blogging should be about: fun. I think one of the reasons why my blogging habits have been so erratic over the years is because I became disillusioned. When I first got into blogging way back in around 2005, it was a politic blog and I foolishly developed aspirations to become a big time political blogger, like Daily Kos, MyDD, and the like. When I switched gears and started my first "nerd" blog, I wanted to become one of the big leaguers and when neither panned out, it was hard to maintain interest. In effect, I forgotten that the reason why you blog is for the fun of it. Fortunately, I've started to drift away from that mentality.

A big part of this has been the realization that Nerd Trash doesn't have to be one of those big huge blogs and to tell the truth, I never want it to be like one of those. Rather, I started to look to other, smaller blogs like HeroPress, Siskoid's Blog of Geekery, Dave Ex Machina, MightyGodKing, and the like. They're not big, but that's what makes them so worth reading. The problem with what I call the "big-time" blogs is that since they rely almost exclusively on ad revenue or corporate ownership to exist, they focus on more generic content, like TV and movie news, trailers, and whatever mega-event is Marvel and DC happens to be doing or planning at the moment.. That's all well and good, but I'd rather read something more than the latest behind-the-scenes news about some superhero movie. What I like to read is articles that talk about old comics, classic video games, TV shows, movies, pop culture, and all of that.

Now, I'm not saying that these larger blogs are boring or otherwise not worth reading. Despite my preference, the big-timers are my go-to for when I want to know the happs on whatever movie or show catches my attention. But when I want to read somebody's take on like, I don't know, Youngblood, or about some 70s or 80s TV show that I've never heard of before, then I look elsewhere. That's the reason why I'm doing the Shout-Out feature on Fridays, to highlight these blogs.

Here we go again: DC Rebirth

From Dan Didio's Twitter.

Yes, it looks like we're getting yet another reboot from the folks who hit the reboot button so often, you'd think they were in an actual episode of ReBoot. I first saw it on Siskoid's blog and a quick Google brought up all manner of articles about the impending event.

http://www.comicsbeat.com/dcs-rebirth-new-timeline-new-corporate-synergy-new-hal-jordan-arc/
http://www.bleedingcool.com/2016/01/22/dc-comics-to-relaunch-everything-with-1s-again-this-summer-with-a-filmtv-bent/
http://www.bleedingcool.com/2016/01/25/two-things-about-the-dc-comics-rebirth/
http://www.polygon.com/comics/2016/1/25/10826238/dc-comics-rebirth

The idea of potentially adding some elements of the TV shows and movies to the comics isn't something I'd be adverse to seeing^[1], as long as the latter isn't smothered by them. I'm a slut for the Arrowverse and Supergirl, so bringing Green Arrow, Flash, Supergirl, and such closer in line to those shows wouldn't be terrible. Maybe a Legends of Tomorrow comic too?


^[1]: Provided that I wasn't perpetually broke and could afford to buy comics, that is.

Iron Monday: Catch the Silver bullet, er Centurion

Out of all of the armors that have appeared in the Iron Man comics, the Silver Centurion is one of my all-time favorites. Why? Just take a gander at it.

The most obvious distinction is its color scheme. This is one of the few main armors that doesn't follow the red and gold coloring that Tony Stark preferred. The choice of crimson and silver by whoever designed the suit was a smart choice and the overall design really makes the Silver Centurion stand on its own.

The Silver Centurion made its inaugural appearance in Iron Man #200 which featured the climatic battle between Iron Man and Obadiah Stane (in his Iron Monger armor) and was the culmination of the long story arc that existed between Stark and Stane since the latter stole Stark International and forced Tony to relapse back into alcoholism and become homeless.

Tony would continue to wear the Silver Centurion until issue #230 when it was destroyed by Firepower, a very large and very powerful battlesuit, during the Armor Wars. What's interesting here is that he actually publicly "fired" Iron Man (remember, unlike the MCU, the world didn't know that Tony was Iron Man) and then faked his death during his battle against Firepower. He accomplished the latter by simply removing the suit, filling it with blood packs, then sending the reassembled suit at Firepower to be destroyed. In the next issue, Tony built a new armor and used it to stop Firepower, who was just being a dick by that point by attacking Stark Enterprise properties.

Pictures via Marvel Wiki and Comic Should Be Good.

The Fine Bros are anything but fine at this point

They really ought to teach a master class in how to piss off fans, YouTubers, and the internet in general. For those who don't know who the Fine Bros are, they're a pair of guys whose claim to internet fame was making reaction videos, which is to say that they would show a group (kids, seniors, other YouTubers, Ashy Larry, whatever) a video or something and then film their reaction to it. Going by their channel, they do other videos but the reaction ones are their bread and butter. So what did they do to piss off the internet? They're trying to copyright the word "react" and for all intents and purposes, trying to lay claim over the entire reaction video genre.

No. Really. I'm not making this up. These two doofuses are trying to claim ownership over an entire type of video for no other apparent reason than because they want monopolize it. As I've already mentioned, the reaction has been outrage and legions of their fans unsubscribing from their channel. They've already fallen under 14 million subscribers and while I don't know what it was before, the plummet seems to be traumatic. What's really quite funny in a hypocritical sort of way is that the Fine Bros responded to the backlash by posting a "clarification" their intentions on their Facebook. In it, they claim that they weren't trying to seize control over the reaction genre, but were merely trying to copyright their own particular format. What's ridiculous about that is that their format isn't original! It's just people sitting at a desk and watching a video on a laptop while a camera records their reaction to what they're watching! That's literally the entire genre in a nutshell! Even stupider is that while they say that they're not trying to control the genre, there have been reports of other people's reaction videos being taken down on YouTube, meaning that someone is issuing takedown notices.

Another flaw in their argument is the fact that in their video announcement of "React World", they claimed that other people will be allowed to make reaction videos. Allowed. Wow, really, dickheads? The monumental stupidity of it just blows my mind. This would be like Epic Meal Time trying to lay claim to the cooking genre or Michelle Phan on makeup videos on YouTube and going after other creators with DMCAs. Patently stupid, just like The Fine Bros.

I mean, it really is amazing how they're trying to claim ownership over a genre of entertainment that has existed since at least Kids Say the Darnedest Things.