Hodor X

Image by Marco D'Alfonso

Days of Extended Past

How awesome is this?

The upcoming Blu-Ray DVD of X-Men Days of Future Past will have some extended scenes including the back strory where the Prof and Mags bounces Rogue out of Mutey Jail.  This movie was already EPIC to begin with and I really wouldn't have changed much (except for some explanation as to why Kitty Pryde was magically able to project people's consciousness through time) but this is cool as fuck!

I just hope they give you the option to play the whole uncut movie rather than having to just check out the scenes all sidebar-ish.  I want a full immersion damn it!

Where's my immersion?!?

Full story at Empire Online.

Uncanny X-Cars

OMG, I got into an accident!!!

Or rather an accident almost got into me.... sort of... well... look, it's a long story.  The Cliff's Notes version is a truck got cut off, jack-knifed on the freeway and slip-and-slided (is that even a word?) across multiple lanes of traffic, including the one I was in.  I ended up with 2 flat tires, fucked up brakes and a "commuter innocence" that can never be reclaimed!  Despite the harrowing ordeal, I'm still making the 1.5 - 2 hour commute to work.  YES, it takes me that long!  Have you ever driven up the 405 freeway in Los Angeles?  It's ridunk!  You wanna hear me bitch for hours?  Ask me about my commute.

But I digress.

The point is, now my mind has started inexplicably assigning comic book characters to the autos I deal with on the freeway.  Maybe it's a coping mechanism, maybe a pseudo PTSD from the even triggered something in my brain, or maybe it's just cuz I'm a geek of the highest order and that's just what I do.  Regardless of the wherefores involved, this is real... this is happening... GET INTO IT!

The Colossus

THIS is the culprit behind my woes.  To be fair, it's the car that cut off THIS, but still THIS is the image blurred into my memory.  Like Piotr Reasputin, these semi's are just these big, stumbling (albeit powerful) hunks of steel just barreling down the road.  I'm always really surprised though that these guys aren't ALWAYS in the slow lane.  We have some very adventurous truckers throwing caution to the wind and living it up in the fast lanes.  Why?  Why must you do this to me?  You dudes are entirely too massive to be going that fast!

Author's Note: I feel it should be mentioned that this generalization should in no way be viewed as reflective of my personal feelings towards Colossus.  He was my first comic book crush and I will always have a soft spot for his hard spots.

The Quicksilver

I'm always weary of these cars.  Usually it's a silver BMW, Audi or (gag) Jetta.  Few things irritate me more than these obnoxious vehicles, especially on the freeway. Magneto's annoying little pissant, Quicksilver, fits the bill perfectly.  8 times out of 10, I find them driven by these snot-nosed kids who CLEARLY didn't pay for the car themselves but are being funded by their ridiculously well off parents who have given these wonderful specimens of automobiles to their tweens in hopes that it will set them off on the right path in life.  I think the parents are trying to instill a sense of success or some other bullshit to propel their spawns into a bright future.  You know: go to college, earn a masters, get a good paying job, be married with 2.5 kids and dog.  That sort of thing.  But really, they're just racing down the road (freeway or not) with the entitlement that can only be bought by a household that earns a relatively high 6 figure income.  

Wow... that was pretty ragey.  Especially given the fact that some of these "Quicksilver" types on the road are my friends.  I suspect my Facebook friend count may drop 2-3 numbers after reading this.  Oh well. Truth hurts.  Moving on.

The Destiny

By the Bright Lady, I hate these things!  Is it just me or is every car on the road that is powder blue always going at least 10 miles less than the speed limit, taking forever to make left turns at signals, and is somehow always getting to an intersection RIGHT when the lights turn red?  This is why these slow sons-of-bitches are represented by Destiny.  Like Irene Adler, these cars usually have a pretty smokin' body but peek behind that mask, and it's this old lady that can just afford nice things.  It kills me because OMG how jealous am I of their car?  But you need to usually be pretty advanced in your years to afford what they drive.... orrrrrr, be the aforementioned Quicksilver and have mumsy and dadsy buy it for you.

Damn, there's that rage again.  Where's my Xanax?

The Wolverine

Oh yeah.  This is happening.  I am forever running into the "Soccer Mom" archetype that invariably drives the RED SUV.  I'm not saying that all "Soccer Moms" drive this.  Just the ones that grace me with their presence.  These ladies truly epitomize Wolverine's berserker rage.  They can and WILL do anything to get where they need to be.  They will speed down the road.  They will cut you off.  They will make U-turns that end up becoming 3-point turns in a very busy intersection because "Whoops, I missed the turn into Whole Foods, again!".  You need to be careful of these RED SUV's.  They will do whatever they need to and they will justify it by the fact that they "have a family and kids to take care of" and there's apparently just not enough hours in the day to obey traffic laws.

Seriously, dem bitches be cray cray!

So yay, that was cathartic and borderline bigoted.  I feel so much better.  Now that I've ostracized a good population of the world, I feel it necessary to fry up some bacon in self-congratulatory celebration.  Mucho appreciate to the creators of the comic book images I used.  Especially Jim Lee's rendition of Colossus.

And if you don't know who Jim Lee is, we can't be friends.

Baiiiiii.

Issue # 1

This is where it starts...

Or at least this is where it should have have started; my infatuation with the X-Men, that is.  The five originals (that would later become X-Factor) battling against the one and only Master of Magnetism.  It's one of the most iconic covers in the history of ever, and yet that's not where I jumped in.

I had just come back from having to live in Erick, Oklahoma (that's pronounced eeeeerek, btw) for a few months because my step-father had to take care of some family business herding cows or something that was entirely too boring to even warrant my notice.  There, I occupied myself with walking into town and using my allowance to buy my first set of comic books.  I didn't entirely LIKE any of the comics I read.  I was only under the impression that kids my age were expected to enjoy them, so I followed along like a lemming, hating every page turned.  Then the day came when I walked into the shop and I saw it: Uncanny X-Men #115.

What the heck was this?  The super heroes on the cover looked so weird!  They were SO different from anything I've ever seen on the Superfriends cartoons I watched.  On TV, all the heroes looked "normal" but not here.  They was one guy who was entirely blue, with a tail and 3 fingers.  The other was all metal and (WOOF) buffed as all hell.  Then there was this black woman with white hair?  This can't be real.  These PEOPLE can't be real.  I HAD to have this comic.  I paid the cashier my money and ran back home in a mad dash.  My limbs felt like they were going to fly off their joints because of how fast I ran, but I didn't care.  Something important was about to happen.  I just felt it.

It didn't take me long at all to finish the issue.  Nightcrawler, Colossus, Storm?  They were all Super Heroes!  No matter how much they didn't look like any heroes that I've ever seen, they were still champions for the forces of good!  Regardless of what the world thought of them, these strange looking people still fought for what they knew to be right.  They didn't do it for applause or gratitude or even acceptance.  They just stayed true to themselves.

It was the X-Men that taught me it was OK to be me.  To be different.  To be gay.  And for that?  I am forever grateful.  After that one moment, I was hooked to The Children of the Atom, and I would dedicate my life to finding out everything these was to know about them.  So I went back to when these specific characters made their first debut and THAT issue for me, was where it really started.   Enter: Giant Size X-Men #1.  And the rest was history...