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(From "Wonder Comics", number 1, 1944.)
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This week's installment of Bad Super Hero Costumes focuses more on the broader issue of Black guys who are super-heroes, and why they always have to have "Black" in their name. It's never "Superman the White" or "Batman the Pasty", although I'll have to go ahead and give you Gandalf the Gray. But dude was hanging out with hobbits, you know, the racial thing just doesn't play when you're worried about Sauron turning everyone into orcs, you know?
Which brings us to "Vykin the (of course) Black":
First of all, from a purely sartorial standpoint, he looks like an idiot. He's wearing athletic socks. Blue athletic socks. That's just not cool, especially after middle school's over. Take in the matching sweatbands and the skull-sucking awesomeness of an old-school leather football helmet dipped in avocado and you've got yourself a fashion disaster.
But that's not the worst thing.
It's not as bad, for instance, as having one Black guy on the team and sticking him with "The Black". We can see he's Black, do you have to point it out right in his name? If he were working for The White Queen, maybe, but that's a totally different title and the connotations are different, so don't try to get smart with me. And yes, to their credit Marvel did drop "The Black" in later years.
But that's not the worst thing.
I can forgive blue athletic socks, even though it pains me. I can forgive the subtle racism of his moniker. But what I can't get past is that they a) put him in a lawn ornament pose and b) gave him the job of carrying the team's m----- f---ing luggage! Yes, the main job of the only Black guy on the team was as follows, and I quote:
"It is Vykin who carries the Forever People's Mother Box."
Let's all just have a moment of silence to be thankful that the Sixties and Seventies are over, folks. At least now they don't make Black Lightning or Black Mass or the Black Panther carry the team's bags. That's just low, man.
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Posted in Bad Super Costumes
And with that I hopefully am out of "pattern" puns. In any event, I've just posted an update to the HeroMachine 3 Alpha (use the "HM 3 Preview" button in the header) that includes 24 new semi-transparent patterns in addition to the 8 the program already had. The complete list of patterns is now:
That's probably going to be it, because there are now enough objects in the basic shell app that it's starting to slow down. I think Flash CS3 has a problem when you put too many things in the library, it really slows to a crawl. If I add too much more it's going to be really irritating to work on.
In addition to those 32 built-in grayscale patterns, there is now a "Patterns" slot with one set of items, "Standard". The items in this set are just like any other items in that they can be colored, sized, rotated, etc. To get the effect, load up the item you want to be filled with the colorable pattern. Then load the pattern, click "Mask", and click on the target item to be filled. Just like any other masking effect.
The nice thing about that is you can, for instance, have blue stars with a sprinkling of yellow ones filling a dark blue body. Or red and orange flames scaled to size to fill a deep red body, making it look like he's full of fire. With the integrated grayscale patterns you can't do that, you have to rely on the color of the original item to carry off the effect.
Here's a sample of what I mean, with the "loaded as an item, colored, and masked" effect on the left and the "just use the built-in grayscale pattern" on the right:
Should I keep both the integrated patterns and the loadable, colorable set? One or the other? Neither?
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Posted in HeroMachine 3
(From "Wonder Comics", Number 1, 1944.)
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I wanted to mark the occasion of the 52nd week (which according to my Aztec Calendar is one year) of the HeroMachine Caption Contests in some way. So I've gone through and tallied up all of the Honorable Mentions throughout the year (except for week 52), coming up with the following list of Caption Contest All-Stars, with the number of times they made the Honorable Mention list (but not as winners):
Apparently I find Frankie hysterical, who knew? Seriously, to get on the list four or more times is truly remarkable, speaking not only of a great sense of humor and a lively imagination, but dedication to keep coming back time after time. Thank you all sincerely for helping to spread laughter through the blog, I really appreciate it.
Since Frankie has the most overall Honorable Mentions, he gets his choice of either the first paperback edition of "All-Star Superman", one of the best comics of the last year in my humble opinion, or a "bonus" custom color illustration by yours truly. Congratulations Frankie!
In addition, I wanted to recognize the person on the list with the most Honorable Mentions who hadn't yet gotten an outright win. And that person, with five entries, is Doomed Pixel. Since he hasn't won before, he'll also win a free custom black and white illustration by me. He's made some killer characters in HeroMachine, so I look forward to seeing what he comes up with for his illustration.
Congratulations once again to Frankie and Doomed Pixel, as well as the other distinguished folks on the All-Star List. Well done!
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Posted in Challenge Favorites, Challenges
I am happy to announce that the Three-Peat Club has a new member: Steve!
I have to say, the whole idea of activating super-powers through a head-to-butt contact is ... unique. And funny. There were a ton of great entries this week, so forgive me for the long list of Honorable Mentions. Maybe this "no limit on the number of entries" thing is a good idea after all ... Anyway, here are the especially funny entries, well done everyone!
Special bonus credit (not currently redeemable for anything) goes to Runt82 for giving me an excuse to do a Google Image search for Julianne Hough. Hubba hubba. And to Blue Blazer for the difficult-to-achieve "Peter Paul and Mary" shout-out. Well done, sir!
Steve wins another black and white custom illustration of whatever he likes (within reason) to go with the one he's already got and the one I still owe him. That's three times in six weeks for the Stevester, which is darned impressive.
Thanks again to everyone who entered, and I hope you had as much fun reading all the entries as I did!
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Posted in Challenge Favorites, Challenges
(From âTop 10âł, Season Two, ©2009, DC Comics, Inc., written by Zander Cannon, pencils and inks by Gene Ha.)
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We return to filmed entertainment for this week's question, which is:
Discussion after the jump, or as I call it "Revealing how little Jeff knows about super-hero tv shows".
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Posted in Versus
(From "Top 10", Season Two, ©2009, DC Comics, Inc., written by Zander Cannon, pencils and inks by Gene Ha.)
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Three middle-aged nerds (including yours truly!) review all of the MCU movies in chronological order. Short, funny, and full of good vibes, check it out and let us know what you think!
Nerdmudgeon.com