So the next time refers to you in a negative fashion about being a geek, tell them, "Well yeah, but at I’m not like these guys." We’re all second in our geekdom to them.

The article comes complete with a video of the event!

This list from ToyFare of the top 50 fictional weapons is, as expected, very comic book, (recent) film, and video game oriented. How else could you explain #18 Excalibur finishing higher than Dagger of Time (from Prince of Persia #17), Sword of Omens (from Thundercats #11), and He-Man’s Power Sword(#2!!!). Missing weapons that were apparently too cool for a list that put He-Man’s sword at #2(!) and Mr. Freeze’s Gun at #12 include:

Nautilus— Captain Nemo‘s legendary Victorian era nuclear submarine from Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Mysterious Island. Nemo and his sub recently returned to geek prominence in The League of Extraordinary Gentleman graphic novels.



Bolo— Artificially intelligent super-heavy tank from the Keith Laumer novels of the same name



Wonder Woman’s Magic Lasso— This is a no brainer. Not all weapons need to blow things up or draw blood.



Smart Bomb— The ultimate weapon that destroys everything on your video game screen, made its first appearance in the classic Defender. Shouldn’t the ultimate weapon be on a list touting itself as the Ultimate Weapon list?



Oxygen Destroyer— As any geek worth his/her salt will tell you, Godzilla died at the end of the original 1954 film. The Oxygen Destroyer completely dissolved the future "King of the Monsters."



The Necronomicon— The legendary book, created by H. P. Lovecraft, holds the key to other dimensions and can grant a knowledgeable necromancer immense power for the mere price of their immortal soul. (I wrote a piece a few years back about this non-existent book)

I’m sure there are plenty of others. What do you have?

Reported at Slashdot:

In celebration of the venerable magazine’s 85th anniversary, the editors of Weird Tales are compiling a list of the 85 weirdest storytellers of the past 85 years and they need your help. And they are looking far afield from the magazine.

Time to get crackin’.

[  Mood: Happy ]
There have been rumors for decades of the existence of a "lost" Lee-Kirby Fantastic Four. Apparently Kirby had finished the pencils for #103, 102 being his last issue. Marvel is finally publishing the lost issue in February.

Click on image to enlarge

The biggest shocker to me is the price. Marvel could have easily raked us over the coals on this one, but for once common sense won over greed. I’ll gladly fork over my $4.99.

Click on image to enlarge

Newsarama had a very informative interview back in August with Marvel editor Tom Brevoort about the genesis of this project.

And I was very pleased to learn this from the interview:

Click on images to enlarge

Scott Dunbier, former Wildstorm editor, recounts on his blog one of my favorite Michael Moorcock stories. In the mid-50s, Mike worked for Tarzan Adventures, who had acquired the plates of the Burne Hogarth-illustrated Tarzan stories. Problem was that the plates were in Spanish.

I’ve heard Mike relate this story many times and I’m glad to see it in print. The only piece missing from Dunbier’s report is that Moorcock was actually 15 at the time!

Original text (Click on image to enlarge)

Text re-written by Michael Moorcock (Click on image to enlarge)

In order to present a more balanced assessment of the recently released Ratatouille DVD, panned by our very own Alan J. Porter, I present an excerpt from my SF Site review.

Course, unlike Alan, I liked the movie, as expressed in my RevSF review earlier this year.

Since Alan and I are obviously at odds, I suggest you watch the DVD, and make up your own mind. We’ll both be curious to hear what you think.

As many of you no doubt know, the long-awaited League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier was released today. I received a review copy and have read roughly two-thirds of what is easily the densest and most complex League tale yet attempted.

Written and drawn in a variety of styles, the Black Dossier is essentially the hidden history of the League and hence the world. In the first 2/3, I discovered the origins of James Bond’s boss "M", "Q", Orlando, the very first League, the 1910 German (lead by Dr. Mabuse!) and the 1911 French incarnations of the league. I learned how Mina Murray first met Nemo (remember they are both part of the team in the first issue.) Also, there is an excellent piece on occult history by Oliver Haddo that ties Melniboné, Hyperborea, and the Great Old Ones into our reality. Allusions to 1984 abound. How exactly do Gloriana, Fanny Hill, Harry Lime, and Shakespeare tie into the tale is quite amazing… and let us not forget Wilhelmina Murray and Allan Quartermain. I’m not even done with the book yet.

Thankfully in an attempt to make sense of it all, Jess Nevins has already started his annotations. The accompanying book will be published next Summer from Monkeybrain.

Not that the tome was published without some controversy. Comicscape discusses the controversy, Black Dossier, and the League in general in this fascinating interview.

Though plans are afoot for an Absolute edition, rumor has it that there will be NO paperback version. Since this hardback includes various paper stocks, a Tijuana bible insert, and a 3-d story (including glasses), a paperback would probably be in the $25 range. Given the excellent quality of the art and story combined with the fact that The League of Extraordinary Gentleman stories need to be re-read, at $30 this book is a steal. It will be the best $30 you’ve spent on a book in a long time.

Expect a more formal type of review soon…

The Tunguska Event or Explosion fascinated me as a child. Glad to see some more information. Though it won’t stop the UFOlogists from spouting conspiracy nonsense regarding the incident, especially with bits like this in the article: "The basin of Lake Cheko is not circular, deep, and steep like a typical impact crater" and "lacks the rim of debris usually found around typical impact craters" and "the cosmic body, he added, which likely made a "soft crash" in the marshy terrain."

Image from Kulik’s 1927 expedition of the explosion aftermath

This is absurd. Punishing the universities because students are using their bandwidth is akin to punishing the cable company because a subscriber records a pay-for-view movie then shares it with their friends. Or holding the internet provider responsible for pirated software. Or the federal government at fault for speeders on freeways.

And exactly how does withholding education address this problem?

It is appalling the short-sighted avenues that the music and film industries are using to address this problem. Instead of attempting to create even harsher penalties, many of which affect far more than the guilty parties, the industries should embrace the p2p models and figure ways to use these new technologies to their advantage. The sharing of music and film will not go away. Get use to it.