Callous Jack's page

For some reason Marvel never really liked the Teen Sidekicks thing. Closest they really had was Rick Jones. But it's a great way to build a new character and let them become a natural part of the setting.

Well, besides Bucky and Kitty/Jubilee to Wolverine, I see your point. I'm bummed by the fact that every major Marvel superhero has half a dozen clones now with similar powers. It really waters down the original character.

Sometimes I feel like Marvel doesn't like the fun parts of Superheroes. Like being a superhero needs to constantly be about sacrificing your own life and happiness for the good of others. I blamn Bendis for that.

I approve of this Bendis hatorade.

Freehold DM wrote:

Comics stuff will always attempt to get new audiences, mostly fail, and then desperately try to get the old ones back. Vicious cycle.

Indeed. I've been collecting for damn close to thirty years, and the cycle always repeats. Happened to me with Flash. They unceremoniously dropped original recipe Wally West down the memory whole and brought back Barry. I tried to keep with that, but found it lame.

Now, with Rebirth, I'm back to collecting because I'd heard the writing on Flash was really good. And it has been. I'm even starting to like Other Wally.

Hell, I'm even collecting a few Bat titles again. Even though that little ballsack Damian has a tendency to show up.

I was sad to see Barry come back, partly because I like to see death mean something in comics and partly because I liked Wally a lot.

Chris Mortika wrote:

Because comics are essentially conservative. There's a baseline default that everything regresses towards. It seems that the target audience for comics is guys who stopped reading their favorite titles back in 1995, and want to pick them back up with the least glitches in continuity.

Iron Man will eventually be back to being Tony Stark. Thor will eventually return to being the Odinson. And Uatu the Watcher will regain his post on Earth's moon.

Ehhhh... I'm about as conservative as it gets with keeping my comics traditional but, there's a pretty strong difference between Uatu and Thor or Captain America. I can't imagine there are massive fans of Uatu who would riot with him replaced... if there are they should have already rioted with him getting killed. He's not a main character... heck he's not even a secondary character or even really a guest star. He's pretty much spent his entire career being somewhere between a narrator and a plot device.

Just the fact that there IS a watcher who shows up when something 'big' is going to happen to record it in his journals... That's all there is to the Watcher.

Actually, did Uatu's death even been mentioned since Secret Wars? I wonder if Reed Richards included that when he rewrote the universe...

Interesting question. And I would be surprised if people cared about Uatu, I know I don't. Then again, Marvel has damaged some of main characters so much that I don't even care about them anymore.

still kickin

Sebastian? Is that you?

Please do get some reviews up of these puppies if you would, I look forward to all reviews - good and bad ...

Rich

Shall I throttle those who give bad reviews, O Most Loathsome One?

I'm not one that typically rates shows but I'm surprised how many people are rating Luke Cage so low. I thought that show was phenomenally well done.

I don't know about other folks but just because LC is lower on my list doesn't mean I didn't like it. I enjoyed watching it and thought it was a good show (with flaws, just like all of them). I just like other shows a bit more.

Proud geek dad moment; my 8 y/o had to pick a literary character to dress up as for school.
His choice:
GANDALF.

The key elements, in their various stages of completion thus far, are:

1. The troop template and rules for converting individual creatures to troops to armies.

2. A bestiary of ready-made troops

3. A mercenary group generator.

4. There's at least one other section that I'm not remembering off the top of my head.

Sounds great, I hope it comes out before my KM campaign is done.

Could you explain more about the "mercenary group generator?"

DungeonmasterCal wrote:

I'm far more interested in Ultimate Armies!

Me too!

No, that sounds wrong.

I've been looking forward to Ultimate Armies since it was first announced and I can't wait to see it. I'm excited for Ultimate Strongholds because it's something I can get my own design teeth into. I'm excited for Ultimate Armies as a fan.

If only there were someone to tell us about Ultimate Armies...

*cough*

;-)

I can tell you about Ultimate Strongholds!

1) The Downtime Rules. So, you use downtime to make your building, but what if you wanted to... make it out of adamantine? Magical glass? Make it able to fly? Teleport? What capital and how much do those cost? What about cheaper interior walls but very secure exterior walls?

2) How easy is it destroy that building? How about with siege weapons? What if there's a defensive wall?

3) You built an amazing castle and... the generic castle from Ultimate Campaign doesn't quite cut it in terms of the building's effect on the kingdom. Would you like some rules to tweak the kingdom modifiers?

4) I wanna build a castle outside a settlement! Not a fort, and I don't want to create a whole new settlement for this, but I want an actual castle across that canyon. What does that cost?

A lot of it is inspired by the old 3E Stronghold Builder's Guidebook (which I'm very carefully not taking off the shelf), but as I hope you can see is designed to integrate with Ultimate Campaign in some depth.

Sounds great! Is there an ETA for this? I ask because I'm currently in book 4 of Kingmaker and have a lot of army/siege/war stuff coming up.

They're still being written! Jason's got Ultimate Armies, and I'm doing Ultimate Strongholds, so there are a couple more books in the pipeline right now.

Can you tell us more about the content of these books?

Chemlak wrote:

Favourite Star Wars movie?

Return of the Jedi. Not even kidding.

*fistbump*

I always thought Black panther was Marvels batman.

Technically it's Nighthawk...

Yes.

I just finished it last night. Overall, I liked it and I think Colter is a great Cage. I loved all the nods to the comics and other Netflix shows. I was hit/miss on Misty as she was acting like a jerk (and stupid), but by the end of the show, I liked how they handled her, warts and all. And Cottonmouth and Mariah were almost my favs of the whole thing!

For my Mom, it was the poor starving kids in India. So one day I got up from the table, went out to the living room, got an envelope from the desk, went back to the table, and started filling the envelope with mashed potatoes. My father asked "what do you think you're doing?" I said "Well, I keep hearing about the poor starving kids in India, so I thought I'd send them some food."

I couldn't sit down for a week. :-)

But.. but... did the envelope reach India or not?

Freehold,

I'll get over it the same day people stop complaining about the Star Wars Prequels. :p

Or maybe when FHDM embraces all things Whedon.

Who are you?

Celestial Healer wrote:

I thought Friday would never come.

me too. Apparently I have to do that thing with my tongue Friday likes or it's nothing doing.

Oh my.

Also Bendis is still an ass.

+1000!

Well, shift's almost over. It was quite an adventure figuring out the different doors to unlock. There's a lot of buildings out here.

Nothing caught on fire or began leaking radioactive fluids. So that's cool

You can *always* blame it on your first day.

Liz,

Thank you for your patience, support and enthusiasm on the boards and with the paper minis!

Good luck and best wishes!

Oh man. We are bringing down this ironically titled thread. Let's bring in some positivity, guys.

A proton and a neutron are walking down the street.

Quote:

"Freehold DM"-brand Whedon-flavored Haterade ingredients list

Stay tuned for Good Eats

This might be my fav alias ever.

Treppa wrote:

How lovely! Do you hear gulls?

Natch

To the Sea, to the Sea! The white gulls are crying,

Oh, and watch out for sharks making their way over from Amity.

Pfft! What could go wrong?

I think they are running short on people. Maybe they use newcomers as food or something.

Cape Breton hamburgers! Now with more soylent green!

Nice!

Pearl Jam is always a great show. :-)

Yeah, I haven't missed a show in 20 years. First time in the front row though! I got several of Mike McCready's guitar picks! And some of the band were taking shots of the crowd with polaroids and throwing those and I got one too. So much fun!

Wonderful night last night. I got to sit in the front row of the Pearl Jam concert at Fenway. So awesome!

Now I'm hungry...

[Kramer] OOOOooh dragon fight![/Kramer]

Prepare for disappointment.

Callous Jack wrote:

Freehold DM wrote:

captain yesterday wrote:

They have Cloverfield on Hulu now.

I've heard good things about it. :-)

one of my favorite movies.

It is not for everyone, however, as I have painfully learned.

I didn't know it was possible for you to like something.

I like you.

How about a hug?

captain yesterday wrote:

They have Cloverfield on Hulu now.

I've heard good things about it. :-)

one of my favorite movies.

It is not for everyone, however, as I have painfully learned.

I didn't know it was possible for you to like something.

T-Minus 26.5 hrs before I begin my journey to GenCon. 37 years in the making.

The power of positive thought and visualization cannot be overemphasized people. I know it sounds all New Agey and hippy-dippy, but the SH!T WORKS!

I visualized going to GenCon. I let nothing get in my way. I still have some anxiety about the financials, but by having faith I have everything I need covered as long as I don't go nuts and buy every book off the shelves.

Namaste b!tches!

Pffft.

Meh, Stark is such a damaged character with all the crazy/evil stuff he's done going back to Civil War and beyond, I really could care less about what they do with him now.

And I like Hal Jordan...
*gives FHDM an atomic wedgie*

I do worship Ren and Stimpy. Lord knows why. It was even more spastic, but it just worked for me.

They did give us Stinky Wizzleteats.

I might have liked comics, but somehow I was never exposed to them. At all, really. RPGs yes, comics no.

.

Ok here. Is a fun one. Favorite Comic Book series, hero/villain, and storyline.

Mine is Sandman by DC/Vertigo
Death is my favorite hero or ally
I enjoyed Tale of a thousand Cats storyline and the son of The Sandman storyline.

Comic book Series; Astro City

Ambrosia Slaad wrote:

Why does an inhabited barrier island have such crappy drainage? Also, if drainage is such a recurrent problem, especially when said island is subject to regular thunderstorms and frequent tropical storms/hurricanes, why don't said inhabitants do something(s) to improve the drainage? Yes, living in stilt homes helps those particular inhabitants, but what do you do when most of the roads are underwater/washing away and the septic fields & sewer systems are both too waterlogged to operate properly? Knowing all this, why doesn't everyone drive Subarus and other AWD vehicles? I miss my Subaru. [/Rant]

The real question is why anybody still lives in Florida.

No income tax?

Besides, you're from NY, it's almost a requirement that you retire down there eventually.

I thought pym, beast and stark were all about as smart as each other, just specializing in different areas. Banner is considerably smarter than all of them but focused entirely in gamma radiation research.

Richards is as smart(or not) as the storyline says he is. He's made a lot of boneheaded moves over the years.

Banner! I forgot about Banner!

In regards to making boneheaded moves. I have a lot of doctors on the in-law side of my family. They are very smart and excel in some of the most difficult fields but they do/think some really stupid things, basic common sense things. I guess that's why Wisdom and Intelligence are separate. ;)

Krensky wrote:

It's Marvel's stance.

Is it a recent thing? Pym never seemed to get much respect for... what? Decades? Seems like just recently since like Age of Ultron they've tried pushing how important he actually is.

Prior to that? Shrink ray and malfunctioning robot certainly wasn't as impressive Reeds 'Make whatever it is I need for JUST THIS MOMENT!!!' that he could whip up whenever he needed. Anything from dimensional portals to machines to restore Galactus. Knowing the unknowable was always his thing. It's why Doom was so jealous all the time...

Now I kind of want to see Doom go after Pym...

Yeah, I always figured Richards was the smartest by far. Pym seemed smart but not on the same level. He seemed like he was on the same level as Stark and maybe Beast.

Callous Jack wrote:

thejeff wrote:

]Blech. People who are children of people who are in the current universe, but not actually those people but different versions of them who presumably don't exist?

C'mon, that's like half the X universe.

Fair enough, but at least most of those got there in a vaguely coherent way - there was a storyline where they traveled from their original alternate timeline/possible future to the main universe.

They didn't just in world with their supporting cast and history intact for them, but in open conflict with the rest of the world except we don't talk about it.

Do some people in NYC know about the new Spiderman who replaced the old one while others know the original has always been around and still is? (Granted, they might just think it's two costumes and the same guy, but still.)

Yep, I totally agree with you, but then that's Marvel these days.

]Blech. People who are children of people who are in the current universe, but not actually those people but different versions of them who presumably don't exist?

C'mon, that's like half the X universe.

Unless they folded the MC2 universe into the 616 universe which would be cool. I liked ANext and some of the other concepts they came up with.
Coal Tiger!
Darkdevil!
Revengers!

My second thought was "Why couldn't they do a redesign on the costume, especially the mask?" Seriously, that mask is silly looking.

I love that mask, it's so bad yet I'd be bummed if they took it away.

Went outside this morning a little after sunrise to go pick up Deadpool from Redbox. Everything is soaked and it's already feeling sticky-muggy from the humidity, but otherwise not too bad from tropical storm Colin. Stopped for a moment to enjoy a brief breeze and noticed a neat spikey spider had put up a new web. So I carefully leaned in close to take a closer look and admire his/her pretty colors... and a nice gust suddenly blew the spider right in my face. A teeny spider surprise in the face, and the subsequent spastic arm-flailing and sputtering, works pretty good as a coffee substitute for completely waking up.

Sorry, I loled.

Started the morning by snapping myself in the eye with my bra.

Don't ask.

Did you crit?

captain yesterday wrote:

Celestial Healer wrote:

Ambrosia Slaad wrote:

Freehold DM wrote:

Celestial Healer wrote:

Freehold DM wrote:

would word that pomme frite is back help?

Poutine always helps.

When are we going?

approximately 2 weeks.

Since you both are the resident NYCers, where are your top places in the city to get a good slice (or entire) pizza? Is Sicilian-style considered heresy?

There is more diversity in pizza offerings here than one would think. Sicilian is easy to find, and there are lots of people doing brick oven, too, in addition to the typical "New York" style pizza (or Neapolitan, which is just a stone's throw from the NY style).

The only heresy is Chicago-style deep dish.

Is that so you're not reminded what a real pizza tastes like. :-D

I try not to hate on it too much. It is a regional specialty. If someone gave me one, I would eat it (or at least a piece or two, at which point I would feel like I had a big rock in my stomach because deep dish is so heavy and greasy).

It could be worse, it could be pizza in the South.

I'm just not up on the whole Japan thing

Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, the East China Sea, China, Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south. The kanji that make up Japan's name mean "sun origin", and it is often called the "Land of the Rising Sun".

Japan is a stratovolcanic archipelago of 6,852 islands. The four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku, which make up about ninety-seven percent of Japan's land area. The country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions. The population of 126 million is the world's tenth largest. Japanese people make up 98.5% of Japan's total population.

Approximately 9.1 million people live in the core city of Tokyo, the capital city of Japan, which is the sixth largest city proper in the OECD and the fourth leading global city in the world.The Greater Tokyo Area, which includes Tokyo and several surrounding prefectures, is the world's largest metropolitan area with over 35 million residents and the world's largest urban agglomeration economy.