A dream of extraordinary magnitude

The lastest piece of fan art that I finished was of Capcom’s Mike Haggar. For video game players ‘sometime in the 1980’s’, Mike Haggar was the best mayor ever. He was introduced to us in 1989 in Capcom’s game Final Fight, a game that was originally planned as Street Fighter ’89. Mike Haggar’s bio states that he was formerly a Street Figther and a pro-wrestler before becoming a mayor. Yes, this was long before Jesse the Body Ventura threw his feather boa and funky sunglasses into the political arena. So you wonder what kind of place would elect a former brawler and wrestler as mayor. That’d be Metro City (or New York in the Japanese versions), a city filled with violent criminals and corruption that runs from the police force to the previous Metro administration. So Mike Haggar gets elected and declares a war on crime. No, not like real-life politicians do, but in a way that gets the attention of Belger, the Kingpin of Metro City, angry enough to kidnap Haggar’s daughter Jessica. Haggar gets two options: agree to let Belger’s Mad Gear gang to run the streets or never see his daughter alive again. Did Haggar cave? Hell no! Haggar got Jessica’s boyfriend Cody and his ninja friend Guy to beat the hell out of the gang and get his daughter back. See, that’s how you get my vote. For one, he stands up against corruption. Even better, he has ninja friends. Could you imagine a mayoral campaign that says “Mike Haggar for Mayor: He has ninja friends” at the end? I sure could, but I’m just a dreamer.

After the three heroes rescue his daughter, Mike Haggar makes appearances in Final Fight 2 & 3 and is a star of Capcom’s wrestling series, Saturday Night Slam Masters. If the 3-D title Capcom Fighting All-Stars would’ve been finished, he’d have been in that, too. Personally, I’d love to see a game where Capcom gathers all of it’s wrestlers into a new 3-D wrestling game. Get Haggar, Zangief, R.Mika, Hugo/Andore (with a final explaination of whether that’s Andore from Final Fight or not), Abigail, Alex, Birdie (also a former wrestler and Titanic Tim’s ex-tag partner), all of the Slam Masters characters and any other wrestlers they can throw in there, including some new ones. While I’m dreaming, get Slam Masters character designer Tetsuo Hara (best known for Fist of the North Star) to draw some official artwork for it.

Categories: Video Games by PrimeOp

Newsarama posted a Previews solicit for an upcoming Spider-Man story:

“HEADED FOR THE CHOPPING BLOCK?

“Black Cat, Mary Jane, and Aunt May?

“Is it one of these ladies that take a dirt nap in the upcoming storyline ‘One More Day’? You heard it here, folks. A re-assuring voice and shoulder-to-lean-on is going to be taken out permanent-style in this four-issue storyline, which kicks off in Amazing Spider-Man #544 and Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #24. This body check is whipped up by war horses J. Michael Straczynski and Joe Quesada. Pain is promised. No tissues will be issued!

“Who next gets thrown under the bus like the long-lost Gwen Stacy? Details are hard to come by, but what we do know is that there ain’t much joy in Mudville. Spidey’s gonna get left out in the rain again, and oh, how the tears will flow.”

Translation: “Hey, kid! Wanna see a dead body? Buy our book! Ba-HAW!” C’mon, man. Whoever wrote that is happily announcing the death of a character. Haven’t companies and writers always told us that the point of a character’s death to have an impact on both the character and the reader? If that’s the case, why the hell is it being advertised like an episode of XMC or TV’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes? If the people behind the scenes don’t give a damn, how are we supposed to? Are we even supposed to care at this point?

It doesn’t get more full circle than this. When Peter Parker’s girlfriend Gwen Stacy died long ago, it was a big shock. People weren’t expecting it to happen and were shocked and saddened by it. Decades later, not only are they telling us that someone’s going to die long in advance, but they’re joking about it. “Who next gets thrown under the bus like the long lost Gwen Stacy?” It’s like Snidely Whiplash typed this out with one hand and twirled his handle bar moustache with the other. “Nyah-ha-HAAA!” There’ve been quite a few other cases of snarky promo speak like this during other big storylines. One of those “Avengers member goes psycho-beta and starts killing other Avengers” crossovers (either the Crossing or Disass) had a checklist with jokes for each dead or injured character. Again, it’s hard to feel any weight to the events when the company itself is cracking jokes before the corpse is done smoking.

I’m not saying that the staff should wear black armbands and set up little shrines to every dead character and poor some Snapple out on the curb for their super-homies. I’m just saying that maybe a little class is in order. I mean, at least pretend like you give a damn. See, those faithful fans that stick on a book no matter how bad it gets only do so because they care about the characters. What’s going to happen when even these people stop giving a crap? If sales drop, companies are going to find out the hard way.

Categories: Comics by PrimeOp

First of all, I just finished watching a movie that I’ve wanted to see for about 15 years now. From Shaw Studios comes the One-Armed Swordsman starring Jimmy Wang Yu and directed by legendary Chang Cheh. I’ll devote a whole post to this movie at one point, but I just want to say that everyone involved with this ‘Dragon Dynasty’ version of bringing over Celestial’s HK remasters deserve a pat on the back. Not only do you get the movie, a Chang Cheh documentary featurette, a Jimmy Wang Yu interview and 2 trailers for the movie and long trailers for other Shaw Bros. movies (trailers that are better than some whole movies), you get a $3 coupon for another title in the series. An added bonus for me is finally seeing the words “Shaw Scope” correctly centered. Needless to say, I’ll have to make a snapshot of that.

Only picked up two comics: the All-New Flash #13 and the Brave and the Bold #4. Enjoyed both, but I have to admit that I’m glad that they’re going back to the old Flash numbering with new Flash flavor. Finally got the last two short boxes that I need to replace the long ones so it’ll be easier to store my comics. Bad side: I have so many Flash comics that they’re now separated into two short boxes. Dammit. With Mark Waid returning to write the Flash, I’ll have to buy another short box.

Rolled with Raijin and Melinda to Splitstone Video only to be ambushed by a big sale. They had hundreds of VHS tapes for ten cents each. I’m trying to avoid VHS due to space/pack rat issues, but they had tapes that I had to get. Example: Thompson’s Last Run starring Robert Mitchum and Wilford Brimley. How the hell do you pass that up? It’s simple: you don’t. All in all, 16 tapes with 4 being gifts for other people. Picked up a used copy of the PS2 Van Helsing game for my mother only to find out that she has it already. Then we hit newly opened GameStop and I got a used copy of Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, a game that I only heard good things about long after it wasn’t in stores around here. Of course, they also had Taito Legends 2, the first time I’ve seen that GameStop exclusvie in one of their actual stores.

Categories: Friends, Haul by PrimeOp

She’s not done yet, but here’s a pic of Samus in her Metroid (NES) armor:

I know, I know… I need a better camera. You can’t even see that the torso decal has the segment lines in orange. I’ll have to make them darker when I finish the rest of the sticker/decal set for the figure.

Categories: Comics, Lego by PrimeOp

My father, may he rest in peace, was one of the coolest cats to ever walk the planet. I’m not stating this as opinion but as stone cold fact. He could play guitar, keyboard, sing and write songs like nobody’s business. During one of the African-American festivals held downtown back in the mid-90’s, the band couldn’t make it. A group of local musicians including my dad and I think Mr Seitu “Mr. K” Kenyatta were there to move the crowd. My memory’s pretty messed up these days, but I think this was all just a spur of the moment thing with everybody bringing their gear to the courhouse and not just being the back-up band. And there’s dad right in the newspaper. I pretty much have the same smile on my face typing this out as he has in that photo. Happy Fathers’ Day, Dad.

Categories: family by PrimeOp

This week’s haul is A LOT bigger than normal because a lot of it was bought a week earlier but arrived this week. It also made up for last week since I spent the weekend in the house trying to recover from a week of dramatic jackassery. Since I was too lazy to take any pictures, I’m going to post this picture of Bat-Hulk laughing like a goon looney. Because he is. Yeah, I scanned that from the Metamorpho Showcase TPB and colored it according to a scan posted on the Comic Treadmill.

T-Shirts: My mother surprised me with two birthday gifts: A Transformers shirt with Optimus Prime and another with Speed Racer. Beautiful stuff.

Comics: the All New Atom #12 (great issue as usual filled with Gail Simone funhappytimes) and Essential Two-in-One starring the Thing vol. 2 (which I guess is filled with Thing-ness). Got two short comic book storage boxes to replace the long box that had Capt. America and Avengers comics in ’em. After having eight heavy long boxes, I’ve finally got it down to one last long box.

DVDs: Batman and Batman Returns were bought for 50% on Amazon during their big Warner Bros. sale. I’ll add my old barebones Batman Returns DVD to the trade pile to make a lil’ bit of that money back. Today I picked up a DVD double features with 9 Deaths of the Ninja and some other Kosugi-less flick then a disc with Saturn video’s “best” Kung-Fu fights for less than $8 total thanks to Splitstone Entertainment.

Lego: First, the BrickLink order I made came in. For the most part, it was full of parts for that building front that I’m working on as a background for minifigs. I’ll post pics once I get the upgrade done. Then Raijin shows up and gives a gift of the Robo Raptor and this Castle set. that he found cheap at a garage sale. Damn! To top it all off, we stopped a K-Mart hoping that there was another Rogue Knight Battleship on clearance for $8. Nope. It was $2 dollars. Hell, this minifigure from the set probably runs more than that on Bricklink! Lots of nice parts in this set including some nice armor and weapons.

That’s it for this post. Time to watch some flicks and get to work on some random character headshots.

Categories: Comics, Haul, Lego, Movies by PrimeOp

For the sake of argument, let’s say that I was a normal person. If that were the case, I’d have made a post two days ago back when it was my birthday. My birthday has a weird history of bad luck around it, so I decided to hold off until I was free and clear of the whole thing. As it turns out, something did happen, but I’m not going to go into that here.

Much thanks to everybody that sent me birthday wishes in various places on the world wide interwebs. I got a delicious cake, some cool shirts (one with Optimus Prime and another with Speed Racer) , some gift art from Kiwi featuring one of my favorite game characters and a card from Mazi. To top it all off, we found out that my sister’s going to have a baby girl. In other words, this birthday wasn’t bad at all. I’ll probably unlazy myself and post some photos this weekend.

Categories: Real Life Disease by PrimeOp

While working on the ScrollBoss update, I’ll jot some commentary down on the draft. Not that you care, but it’ll be fun for me. I’ll have to post some of it after it’s done since I got to work at 9:30.

8:18 – I’m digging the borderline mental patient verson of Vincent McMahon. Weird to see such a short match between two champs like Edge and John Cena. Of course, it’s fully explained when the Great Khali is drafted and you see the “Oh crap, this guy’s going to take my title” look on his face. I also like how whoever made the random wrestler selector must’ve played video games. Seriously, it’s like playing MUGEN and putting it on Random Select (with big portraits included). Cool.

8:26 – Jesse the Body cutting a promo? Beautiful.

8:40 – Heh, I wonder what Foley will be up to once he gets back. Maybe even a GM position somewhere? CM Punk and Carlito need to wrestle more often because that was pretty damned good for being a short match. But… eh… the Boogieman in ECW? Look, I like Boogie. But that’s just… I don’t know. Then again, they can bring back the ECW Zombie and make a new tag team. Yes, i’d like that. Shut up. After Snoop’s lil’ speech about McMahon, this night might drive the poor owner completely insane. Hmmm…

8:59 – Balls Mahoney on the losing end of a squash match against Umaga? Well, sounds like ECW’s still the same. Balls deserves better than that. Nice to see Booker and Charmelle again, though. I’m looking forward to seeing him in action again.

9:13 – The draft made me root for Lashley more than Benoit? That’s crazy as catfish. Great to see that Benoit is going to make the transition to ECW. I’m hoping that’ll give him a chance to go back to his older, more varied wrestling style. Oh, Trump’s on. Time to do something else.

9:22 – That was so wrong that it was just right. Moolah and Mae Young… they’ve still got it!

Okay, I’m off to work. I’ll blab about the rest after work.

Edit: Back from work. Seeing as how there’s no point in keeping the time thing going, I’ll just keep things brief with the rest.

Candice Michelle looks like she’s been practicing her in-ring skills a lot more and it’s paying off. Even better, her win lead to Lashley getting drafted. It’s good to see Lashley move to Raw where he won’t just be squashing ECW regulars and wrestling on other programs.

What the hell @ teasing a Jeff Hardy vs. Elijah Burke match then putting Batista in it? The match was okay while it lasted, but the outcome was predictable. Still, whoever put these matches together did a nice job of having some of them match up with draft pick. I wonder if we’ll see Flair and Batista chillin’ on Smackdown. That 15 man battle royal made no kind of damned sense at all.

It’s good to see that Rowdy Roddy Piper’s doing okay, that Bobby the Brain still has that wit and Capt. Lou is still “a legend in his own mind” (and mine, while we’re at it). Seeing Bret Hart on a WWE program talking about McMahon was just too ill considering what happened all those years ago. But above all, Dusty Rhodes’ sermon takes the top spot in my book.

Of course… that ending? Did NOT see that coming.

Categories: Wrestling by PrimeOp

Before reading this, please remember that all items have been sorted according to cranial capacity, shoelace length and use of rotoscoped stock footage.

1.) In the “I’ll probably have a better time remembering this if I slap it in a blog post” department, I need to get an issue of Cereal:Geek, a magazine that’s all about 80’s cartoon. A great side effect of not being an animation snob is that I still love the 70’s and 80’s animation that a lot of people seem to hate. Well, I still don’t like the first season of Super Friends (except for the episode where they played the H-B Fantastic Four theme), but I’m only human. Anyway, it looks interesting and I’ll have to pick up that first issue to help support the cause.

2.) In the last post I mentioned the idea that I had of adding tags to the PHP flat file-based gallery system I crappily put together for the site. Last night, I finished it and it’s working on my hard drive’s test copy of the website. The artpages can display the tags of a picture and clicking on a tag name will take you to a gallery with all the pics with that tag. As a living brain fart, I don’t even know how I got it to work last night.

3.) In the “Oh my!” department:
YouTube.com video: Superpoderosas video with Batgirl, Catwoman and Wonder Woman

Gotta go… another thunderstorm’s brewin’… AGAIN…

Categories: Cartoons, Illmosis by PrimeOp

So the artwork that I was struggling with as I worked on that early morning post was good enough to be posted on the site today. It’s of the infamous classic video game character Karnov. Not only did he switch between being a hero and villain before it was cool, but he pops up in a ton of other Data East games other than his own and also became one of the few non-heroic gaming mascots ever. It isn’t really a great picture, but I was glad to get some artwork out of my system.

Right now I’m working on another update to the site’s gallery system. While it’s not all that great or fancy, it’s nice to have built a gallery system from the ground up. I started the gallery system recently, but I think I’d also like to have art context tags. So that’s what I’m working on now along with cleaning up some older coding. I’m hoping to put together an all-around big update for next week since it’s right before my birthday.

Categories: Art, Illmosis by PrimeOp