A new Batman Beyond short? Shway!

by Aaron Williams on April 21, 2014 at 3:15 AM
Posted In: Mystery Clip Theater, Nostalgia!, Sequential Artistry

For Batman’s 75th anniversary, DC made a new bit o’ Batman Beyond to remind us how much they need to go back to focusing on animated versions of their characters:

Most of the time, “[Established Character], but in the FUTURE” shows fall flat, but Batman Beyond was an incredible exception. Among the many things they got right:

• Future-slang that didn’t sound completely forced. It was only a few words, they weren’t all stand-ins for swears, and they sounded fairly “natural” when you said them yourself.
• A progression of the setting and cast that we’d come to love in the Batman animated series, especially when it’s revealed why Batman “quit.”
• A smart sense of sci-fi and horror that was fairly subtle. I’m thinking of when they showed what became of Bane after years of taking his super-strength serum and the “death” of a digital consciousness that had taken over the Bat-costume. Oh, and a reporter who had a gizmo that let him phase through matter, until it wouldn’t turn off and… well, gravity is a harsh mistress…
• Old Bruce Wayne and how much he really didn’t care for the future and all the terrors it brought.

In case you can’t tell, I’ve been disappointed that the idea of having a live-action movie based on this with Clint Eastwood playing Bruce Wayne never went anywhere. :)

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A Happy Easter post

by Aaron Williams on April 20, 2014 at 5:09 AM
Posted In: It Came from the Internet, It's got Robots and Lasers, Om Nom Nom!, Science ahoy!, Video Gaming

I’ve been a bit neglectful here, but it’s been for a good cause (drawing, for the most part), and the backlog of my oddball websurfing is prepared and ready for that post-egg hunt unwind in front of the computer. What can I say? I’m all about internet holiday traditions:

• The image to the left is just a small taste of Texts from Superheroes. That should be a thing in comics, except it’d probably make that whole “secret identity” thing even less plausible.

• Statistics are always fun, right? Hey, come back here! I’m talking about a statistical look at the paintings of Bob Ross and Ars Technica’s “Steam Gauge,” which reveals the most popular games on Steam. This “Never Played” one seems to take up a lot of time.

• It looks like Saturn could be birthing a new moon. No word yet on if the aliens behind the Black Monolith have given us permission to land there.

• But why go to Saturn’s moons when America has so much unoccupied space? And yes, that’s largely due to farmland, lakes, and places that, like Saturn’s moons, are kind of hostile to human life.

• For a Millennium Falcon car, this vehicle’s pretty understated. Still cool, though.

• Those who went to Pax East were able to get their hands on a Fallout “Vault Boy” puppet, which some think is a sign of a release date coming for Fallout 4. Not to radioactive rain on their parade, but the puppet came from a Penny-Arcade comic about a vault dweller that had a Vault Boy puppet, and the P-A guys run Pax East, so it could only mean someone saw an opportunity to move some puppets…

• It’s Easter and that means it’s okay to eat deep-fried Cadbury Creme Eggs. To say otherwise insults our holiday traditions, and that’s the story I’m sticking to, as are my chocolate-and-oil-covered fingers.

• Getting back to planets, have some fun playing with gravity in Super Planet Crash. Add some celestial bodies to a small solar system and try to keep the whole mess stable for 500 (virtual) years. If it helps, imagine you’re playing with immense, spherical Easter Eggs that like to hurtle through space.

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Nodwick’s back online!

by Aaron Williams on April 15, 2014 at 11:57 PM
Posted In: From the Mouth of Madness

Everyone give a huge thank-you to our webmaster, Drew, for restoring the Nodwick archive! He’s awesome, a genius, and has totally earned his place in Internet Valhalla (it’s a PvP server, but you respawn when you “die”).

More site tinkering to come from me, probably being corrected by Drew afterwards. :)

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Just a quick cat video. More actual content this evening…

by Aaron Williams on April 14, 2014 at 6:17 PM
Posted In: It's got Robots and Lasers, Mystery Clip Theater

It’s been a busy weekend. In honor of my son discovering the joys of Hexbugs, here’s how the toys could come to replace laser pointers in your own cat-occupied home:

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Nodwick Comic back online.

by Drew on April 12, 2014 at 6:22 PM
Posted In: The Basement Storage Bin

Web guy Drew here, just wanted to drop a quick note we have all the Nodwick comics back online. So all archives are available. Check them out, respond here if I missed anything.

Also if you want to meet Aaron, he will be at InConJunction this summer along with being at GeCon as well.

Thanks! Have fun!

Drew.

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New “vintage” Batman!

by Aaron Williams on April 11, 2014 at 11:22 AM
Posted In: Articus Pharticus, Mystery Clip Theater, Sequential Artistry

I like the style, though I almost expected to hear “CUT!” followed by the reveal that it’s all being shot on a sound stage somewhere in Gotham. Also, Kevin Conroy’s voice makes an appearance along with Bruce Timm’s animation, a combination that should be required by law:

Now if only Mark Hamill could be kidnapped and forced to voice the Joker forever persuaded to lend his talents…

4 Comments

Kate Mulgrew says she was duped.

by Aaron Williams on April 11, 2014 at 1:59 AM
Posted In: It's got Robots and Lasers, Science ahoy!

"Coffee, Black" by John LarrivaThe image to the left is called “Coffee, Black” by John Larriva. It’s available as a print, here.

In the previous post, I wrote about Kate Mulgrew doing the voiceover work on a “documentary” promoting geocentrism. After much nerd outcry, Ms. Mulgrew says she was misinformed about the project before accepting the work.

She’s not the only one that doesn’t want to be affiliated with the project, as physicist Lawrence Krauss doesn’t even know how the footage of him wound up in the thing to begin with. The movie’s producers released a statement claiming Krauss got into the film by signing a release form and cashing a check, but the research done by those in the previous link show how some of Krauss’ on-camera statements could be easily edited out of context.

I didn’t see if physicist and futurist Michio Kaku had any similar statements, but at least we know the Captian of Voyager isn’t under the influence of any macguffins. :)

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Captain Janeway and geocentrism.

by Aaron Williams on April 8, 2014 at 5:40 AM
Posted In: From the Mouth of Madness, It's got Robots and Lasers, Science ahoy!

A new movie is coming out soon that tries to make the case that we live in a geocentric universe. That is, our solar system (and therefore, Earth) is the center of everything. This is in stark contrast to what observation and science tells us, but that’s not what has geeks a-stir over this.

The problem for a lot of folks is that Kate Mulgrew is providing the voice over for this thing.

Even though it pretty much abandoned the “science” part of “science fiction” a long time ago, Star Trek and its cast are still highly regarded as at least representing humanity as it encounters the new and the strange in a future where we’ve begun exploring the cosmos. Even the loosest interpretation of science in the show would probably not cite a blog with the title “Galileo Was Wrong” as a source of inspiration (said blog is run by one of this film’s backers). Unfortunately, this probably won’t be the last of the attempts to make Cosmos-esque “documentaries” about pseudoscience that’ll be hitting screens in the near future.

By the way, I’ve probably said this before, but there seem to be a lot of misconceptions about why people don’t like Star Trek Voyager, and the one that cracks my dilithium crystals is the one that claims people don’t like a strong female in charge of a starship. For starters, I prefer Kate Mulgrew over Scott Bakula for their respective roles. Bakula couldn’t pull off Captian Archer without sounding befuddled or whiny, in my opinion. Now here’s the big secret as to why a lot of fans don’t really like Voyager:

It was a badly-written show with no idea where it was going with a premise that pretty much demanded it know where it was going.

Kate Mulgrew is a fine actress. The problem with Janeway was that Voyager pretty much had a new writer every episode, and they didn’t seem to agree on what kind of person she was. One week, the Prime Directive is absolute, another it was just a suggestion. Risks that were acceptable two episodes ago, are now unacceptable this week, and next time it’s worth rewriting the timeline to save one person. The whole show was like this, actually, in that one week resources were stretched, but then again they seemed to have no shortages of stuff to make new shuttles out of. In short, people don’t hate Voyager for Janeway, they hate the stand-alone show structure in what needed to be a long, complex arc coupled with often embarrassing weekly antagonists. Saying one must not like a woman in the captain’s chair is like saying most fans’ loathing of Neelix is a prejudice against short people who dress in polyester.

Anyway, the Trek timeline’s been rebooted, so we’ll likely see Janeway II at some point. I hope they don’t turn her and Paris into salamanders again…

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Smooth out your “Game of Thrones” groove…

by Aaron Williams on April 7, 2014 at 1:27 PM
Posted In: It Came from the Internet, Mystery Clip Theater, Stuff with magic and swords, The Idiot Box, You call that noise "music?"

In case last night’s premiere of the new Game of Thrones season was on the stressful side, here’s a way to mellow out and still enjoy the show’s theme:

On a related note, if you’ve watched all of GoT only once through, you’ve only used up about 1 day, 9 hours, and 20 minutes of your life doing so. You, too, can discover how much time you’ve spent with your favorite TV shows (and even add them all together) with this handy (and possibly depressing) webpage.

Also, a mechanism that pulled on a rope connected to a statue of King Joffrey for every tweet containing the tag, #BringDownTheKing has completed its work, and footage of the tyrant’s toppling is to go up for viewing soon. Well done, House Twitter. I’m sure George RR Martin will see you murdered a little less horribly than other houses we could name. :)

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Your traveling internet art gallery has another small exhibition…

by Aaron Williams on April 4, 2014 at 3:42 AM
Posted In: Articus Pharticus, It's got Robots and Lasers, Om Nom Nom!, Science ahoy!

• The image to the left is from a marvelous collection of Rock Star Scientist posters you can buy to decorate your hidden volcano lair.

• Let’s move on to a way that Cthulhu could look even more disturbing if he looked like this fascinating sculpture.

• If you flip through them fast enough, they could resemble a sci-fi version of the music video for “Take On Me.” It’s the original storyboards for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

• A small item in the form of a miniaturized tool box.

• Moving to tools of another kind, here’s an attractive way to display every sonic screwdriver from your various regenerations. Sticking with all things Who, here’s how a Doctor Who themed version of the game “Guess Who” was made.

• Art can warm the body as well as the soul, though you might feel a slight chill if your aunt makes you a Night Vale bedding set.

• We close with the art of food, where some clever person from the Discworld’s Agatean Empire sculpted this wonderful cake in the form of Rincewind’s Luggage.

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