Toaster's Ramblings

Warning: I have many things to ramble about, so this may be a little scatterbrained.

A while back I was given a Nintendo E-shop card from my brother for Christmas or birthday, I forget which since my B-day is only eleven days after Christmas. Anyways, I decided to put this toward the downloadable characters that Nintendo was designing for Super Smash Bros. Wii U. So a little less than two weeks ago I decided to buy the characters for both Wii U and my 3DS. My first discovery was that because of tax, my $20 card wouldn't be able to buy all four characters of Mewtwo, Roy, Lucas and Ryu. So I bought Mewtwo, Roy, both of whom I had sorely missed since Melee, as well as Ryu (including the exclusive Ryu battlestage). I wasn't not going to buy Ryu! I decided to wait on Lucas as he was really just a more unpredictable clone of Ness.

On Tuesday I picked up another $20 Nintendo E-shop card. My main objective was to put the classic Yoshi puzzle game onto my 3DS, a game that previously had only been available for the original Gameboy. I had figured that the remaining balance would be accessible on my Wii U, I mean it should be all under one account, right? Well, apparently not. Somehow, and for some dumbass reason, both work as separate accounts. So to get Lucas and anything else for Smash Brothers, I have to buy yet another E-shop card. Kind of ridiculous. The only silver lining is that there are lots to games to download for the 3DS to use the rest of that card. I added Dr. Mario and Mega Man 6 to the 3DS, so that's cool... I guess. It just seems stupid that the E-shop is not exactly user friendly and work separate from both systems.

Moving on, the title of the sequel to Guardians of the Galaxy was revealed. It will be called: Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2!!!!!!!!!!! (note: exclamation marks used for sarcastic effect) What an underwhelming title. Look at the names of some of the other sequels from Marvel... The Dark World, The Winter Soldier, The Age of Ultron, Civil War. Their are numerous titles from comics that the Guardians of the Galaxy could have borrowed (in the same was Age of Ultron didn't really follow the storyline of the same name from the books). I'm avoiding Annihilation as I doubt Marvel can use Annihilus and one shouldn't be used without the other, but Guardians of the Galaxy 2 could have had subtitles like Conquest, War of Kings, Realm of Kings, or there could have been an original title. I get that Volume 2 references Star Lord's mix tapes, but generally the term "volume" suggests a new start, like in comics when a series ends and is picked up later with an issue one. The end of the first Guardians movie really had just established them as a team, which would lead to the next storyline, not a rebirth. For example, the recent run of Deadpool ended with the beginning of the Secret Wars event. Once that event is over, a new series of Deadpool will begin, hence a new volume.

So when it was revealed that the part of Ma Kent in Man of Steel would be played by Diane Lane, it weirded me out a little. I think that, for a woman her age, Diane Lane is very attractive. But I have never ever considered that I would think Ma Kent was attractive. It was odd. So fast forward to a few days ago when it was announced that the Marvel/Sony Spider-man reboot had found it's Aunt May... Marisa Tomei! What the hell? First of all, Marisa Tomei is not that old. She's only 50! Also, not that long ago, Tomei was in The Wrestler where she was topless and still quite sexy. So... now Aunt May is sexy? That disturbs me. Aunt May is supposed to be a sweet old woman, sort of like Ma Kent. You know, come to think of it I've seen Diane Lane topless... many years ago, but still, by proxy I have seen both Ma Kent and Aunt May topless! Aaargh! What the hell is going on?!? The Raimi Spider-man trilogy had Rosemary Harris as Aunt May and she seemed right for the part. Sally Field was younger, but she's at least in her 60's. But again, Marisa Tomei is only in 50! She is not elderly yet! Essentially, Peter went off to live with his hot aunt.

A while back I touched upon the topic of Marvel and Disney cancelling their Fantastic Four books to try to stick it to Fox for still retaining the film rights to the property, I guess so there would be no inadvertent advertising on Marvel's part. Well, the plot has thickened some on that count. XM Studios, a company out of Singapore that sculpts high end collectable statues, was asked by Marvel to put a "hard stop" to all X-men and Fantastic Four related statues they were working on. So my question is, how far will this go? Does it extend to action figures. What about Heroclix... it's been many years since we received Fantastic Four Heroclix pieces. It doesn't appear that Marvel is releasing any new Fantastic Four series after their Secret Wars event; in fact, they appear to be splitting up the team. The Thing is the pilot for the Guardians of the Galaxy, Human Torch is with the Inhumans... I assume Invisible Woman is still with S.H.I.E.L.D. and I have no idea what their doing with Mr. Fantastic. Not sure if the X-men are getting the embargo treatment. I haven't seen action figures of them much lately, but we do get some Heroclix of them. They will also have a few new comic book series after Secret Wars as well.

While I want Marvel to get the film rights back to the Fantastic Four, I have mixed feelings about their embargo strategy. Will it make any impact at all (considering the majority of movie-goers do not read comic books) or is it really just "cutting off their nose to spite their face?" Doing that with the Fantastic Four is obviously much easier than banning all X-men related books. Fantastic Four's popularity is minimal these days while the mutants still make up a big chuck of Marvel's profits. At the same time, it's messed up that outside of the books themselves, all X-men merchandising seems to be at risk of being cut off. A long-time X-men fan (Uncanny X-men was the book that got me into comics in the first place), I would be pissed to not receive any more new X-men related Heroclix as long as Fox holds the rights. Let's face it... it's doubtful that Fox will ever lose the rights to the X-men. It makes them too damn much money! X-men First Class proved they don't even need Wolverine to sell a film! Until the public gets sick of comic book movies, which may be coming sooner rather than later, and Fox no longer brings a profit from X-men movies, the mutants aren't going anywhere. That's okay with me... Marvel doesn't need the X-men as much as they need the Fantastic Four and more importantly the universe (Skrulls, Kang, Annihilus, Galactus, Dr. Doom, Silver Surfer) they bring with them.

Finally I want to point out another reason why Dave Grohl is awesome. The Foo Fighters frontman recently broke his leg in a stage accident, so to complete the tour, he had a throne made for himself to rock out in... the rock n' roll equivalent of The Iron Throne from Game of Thrones! Replacing swords are guitars and those black things lining the top? Laser projectors. Further proof Dave Grohl is the man! 

Until next time, Stay Strange