Today’s Nerdvana is my favorite song from the musical Chess, as performed by Murray Head. I first saw this video on TBS’s Night Tracks and it’s stuck with me ever since. This song calls to my mind Casablanca, the Indiana Jones movies and my favorite line from author Raymond Chandler, “The night left a check that the morning couldn’t cash”. Here’s “One Night in Bangkok”.
Month June 2016
Talkin’ Nerdy: What the What, X-Men: Evolution?!?
Today Talkin’ Nerdy probes X-Men: Evolution.
For the uninformed, X-Men: Evolution was a Canadian-American animated television series about the Marvel Comics superhero team X-Men, which originally ran on Kids’ WB! from November 4, 2000 to October 25, 2003. XME’s major selling point was that in this incarnation, many of the characters were teenagers rather than adults.
That’s not so unusual, after all, the original X-Men were teenagers.
Also, the main X-Men attended Bayville High, where they interacted with ‘normal’ kids and teachers.
So it was basically X-Men Meets Saved by the Bell.
Since the principal characters were teenagers, the show quickly became a favorite among fangirl shippers.
“SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Magma should totally date Pyro! BEST SHOW EVER!!!!!!!!!”
My personal opinion of the show was…
I thought the animation was pretty decent (Evolution was easily one of the best looking X-Men cartoons to date) and it was a refreshing change to see an X-Men cartoon in which Wolverine wasn’t chewing up all the scenery for once…
“Hey, Bub! It ain’t my fault that I got the skills that earn Marvel big bills!”
…But the high school setting just never gelled with me, largely because I’ve never been big on high school based stuff in general. As a kid I hated, Hated, HATED school, so the last thing I wanted to see when I turned on the tube was a show about kids attending school. Basically I agree with the Blockbuster Buster about X-Men: Evolution: it was an OK show, though you had to slog through a ton of high school BS.
“The show was badass…except when it wasn’t.”
However, even Evolution‘s biggest fans and most staunchest admirers have to admit that there’s a HUGE, GAPING HOLE in the show’s premise.
Namely, the main kids on the show attended Bayville High (a public school) in this series, yet they still lived at the Xavier Academy for Gifted Youngsters. Let me repeat that: they went to a public school while living at a private school. They attended one school while living at another.
“That. Does Not. Make. Sense!”
Now usually when I bring this up, some fanboy (or girl) will pipe in with…
“Obviously they were learning regular school stuff at Bayville and mutant stuff at the Academy. Duh!”
Yeah, I got that. Great. Sure. OK.
Except…
On this show, the existence of mutants was kept tightly under wraps. The general public didn’t even know about mutants until they were publicly outed in season 3, so what did Joe and Jane Average think these kids were doing at the Academy while they were concurrently attending public school? These kids had non-mutant friends; didn’t any of them ever ask one of them, “Say, you go to school here and you live at that other school. So you’re in 2 schools? What’s up with that?” What did Xavier’s staff and backers tell the public about the Academy? That it was a day camp? Chess club? A campus for LARPing?
Or did everybody just think the X-Teens were in a cult?
I’m not saying fans of X-Men: Evolution can’t or shouldn’t enjoy the show. The ‘Mutant High’ premise wasn’t really my thing, but I know a lot of people who thought it was awesome. If the show tickles your fancy, fine, but you’ve got to admit…
“It’s a plot hole big enough to drive a Mack Truck through!”
Unpopular Opinions: The Incredibles 2
I feel like I’m the only person who’s not really looking forward to the announced sequel to Disney/Pixar’s The Incredibles.
Don’t get me wrong; it’s not because I didn’t enjoy the first movie, quite the opposite, I thought it was great, one of my favorites, if not my all-time favorite Pixar movie, but I was actually OK with The Incredibles being a one-and-done film. The story was told: Superheroes fell out of favor with the public, the Parrs settled down into domestic life, a crisis erupted, the Parrs faced adversity (and their own personal issues) and triumphed, the public became OK with Supers again, and the family was back in business. The end. What more needs to said? What questions did the first movie leave unanswered?
It’s usually at this point that some wag pipes in with:
“Duh, they need to make a second movie since the first one ended on a cliff hanger. Ah-hyuk!”
Yeah, no. The ending of The Incredibles wasn’t a cliff hanger ending, it was a “We’re back in business” ending. Did you honestly think that Pixar was planning to devote an entire movie to The Underminer? Anyways, there was already a video game about that, Incredibles: Rise of the Underminer.
Which brings me to the other reason why I’m not exactly anticipating an Incredibles sequel: the reason the first one was so good was because it was about the superhero mythos as a whole; it wasn’t your typical “Bad guy makes trouble, good guys have to go out and stop him kind of deal”, it dealt with so much more: family, marriage, relationships, acceptance, hero worship, hubris, isolation. My big fear is the next movie will just end up being another generic superhero story, and reading some of the fanfics and story ideas that people have suggested for an Incredibles 2, most of which stink like day-old sushi, doesn’t make me any more optimistic. I really hope they don’t opt to make it a time-skip, ’cause I hate those.
However, Brad Bird has said that he wasn’t going to embark on an Incredibles sequel until he had a good enough story for one, and Pixar has managed to surprise us before (Finding Dory seems to be going over well with audiences, though it’s worth mentioning that I still haven’t seen Finding Nemo yet–yeah, I know; talking fish movies just generally aren’t my thing), so I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. I’m trying to remain optimistic, though I still have reservations.
2 Funny: Whiners Can Be Losers
Anyone who’s ever worked in an office or a corporate or team environment has experienced that one day or meeting where their unit succeeds at getting absolutely nothing done. The Super Friends’ archenemies the Legion of Doom are having just such a day in this favorite Cartoon Network bumper from back in the day. Enjoy.
Note how Solomon Grundy always just piggy backs onto whatever request the last person who spoke makes. The “Solomon Grundy want pants too!” line gets me every time. Good stuff.
Nerdvana: Our Favorite Fictional Aliens
Today Nerdvana pays tribute to one of our favorite tropes in fiction: space aliens, those guests of ours from beyond the stars.
Today we’ll be listing some our favorite fictional Visitors from Beyond. First, some ground rules:
- These won’t be in any particular order, so we won’t be numbering them.
- We’re only talking about friendly aliens here; not the would-be world conquering kind…
…Or the human abducting and probing kind.
“Now understand, human, that we derive no pleasure from this procedure. This is purely for scientific research. That said, is it OK if my buddies here watch?”
Now that we’ve gotten the preliminaries out of the way,
LET’S ROCKET!
STARFIRE
Jason’s favorite Teen Titan, and who am I to argue? Starfire was and still remains one of our all-time favorite alien characters. She’s a golden orange skinned princess from a species of interplanetary hippies who naturally absorb sunlight and are fueled by their emotions, who can fire heat-and-light energy blasts from her hands thanks to experimentation by a race of scientist shnooks called the Psions, possesses the strength of 7 humans, can naturally fly and absorb language through epidermal contact, i.e., kissing.
Baby, you can learn colloquialisms from me anytime!
J’ONN J’ONZZ AND M’GANN M’ORZZ (aka Martian Manhunter and Miss Martian)
The stars from Mars. They’re from the same planet, belong to the same race (technically Megan is a White martian, but why split hairs?), have the same power sets and M’gann is J’onn’s niece, so we’re listing them together. Martian Manhunter was my favorite character on the CN Justice League show. I like the Martian’s power set: strength, flight, invisibility, intangibility, telepathy, metamorphosis and sometimes telekinesis (MM has been referred to as ‘the Swiss Army Knife of Superheroes’ for good reason); over the years he’s had more powers than a toad has warts, but good producers have modified them to decent effect for a good balance…
…Plus the dude rocks an awesome costume!
As for Miss Martian, imagine Martian Manhunter as a cute, perky teenager. The freckles are a nice touch.
I like how Miss Martian’s costume is a cuter, more feminine variation of J’onn’s. Kind of looks like a super sailor suit.
Cute green alien girl in a bikini? Yes, please! Captain Kirk would approve.
Bonus: the DC Super Hero Girls’ version of Megan is super-shy around anyone else besides fellow alien student Starfire. She squeals and goes invisible whenever anyone talks to her. Awwww.
QUANTUM RAY
He’s here and he’s Quantum!
The show Cosmic Quantum Ray wasn’t around for very long, but I dug this guy while it was. A delightfully daffy super guy from the 9th dimension who can lift a chunk of building over his head, detach his body parts due to being held together by some cosmic mucilage that we mere 3rd dimensional beings can’t see, can fly through space, transform his molecules into any organic substance from steely steel to anti-matter and exist in 6 other dimensions simultaneously. In this photo, Ray just happens to standing in front of a 7th dimensional kielbasa stand.
SUPERMAN AND SUPERGIRL
The Man and Girl of Steel, respectively. Like the Martians, they have the same planet of origin and the same powers, so we’re listing them together. Kryptonians rock, plain and simple. Superman is one of the greatest super aliens of all time…
…And Kara has all that, plus Barbie blond hair and an exposed midriff. (No, a bare belly doesn’t make sense to fight crime with, but Kara’s bulletproof so no big deal.)
Now some people feel that the Kryptonians aren’t so great. they think that Supey is a boy scout, that they’re too powerful, that they’re boring and lame, etc. Now those people are entitled to their opinions of course, but in actuality, well, I’ll let Dr. Cox field this one:
MARS (Milky Way and the Galaxy Girls)
Yet another green skinned Martian, this time with antennae! Mars has always been one of my favorite Galaxy Girls. It’s cool how Lauren Faust chose to represent Mars as a classic green alien (Ms. Faust must like 1950’s sci-fi kitsch too). her symbol is a flying saucer (nice!) and she’s a wacky modern artist who’s not afraid to get her oddball on. As weirdo artists ourselves, we stand by you, baby.
Words to live by.
THE WONDER TWINS
They’re twins. They’re named after Tarzan (Zan) and Jane (Jayna). Zan’s got the ‘tude and Jayna’s got the sass. Their pointy ears were inspired by Mr. Spock. They can touch and morph into any form of water or any animal, respectively. They’re alien versions of Donny and Marie Osmond. The eat CDs. They get to hang with the Super Friends. Plus they have a blue space monkey which they received as a gift from a space clown. ‘Nuff said.
YANCY ROBERTS (Out of Jimmy’s Head)
The sassy green teleporting space alien sister of the kid who has cartoons in his head, who was adopted by his astronaut mom. OOJH was a train wreck to be sure, but even though this plot point had nothing to do with the show’s premise, Yancy was one of the best parts of OOJH. I guess you can tell that we like our green teens here.
WASHU HAKUBI
Tenchi Muyo!‘s resident Greatest Scientific Genius in the Universe! Washu’s either an intergalactic mad scientist, Ryoko and Ryo-Oki’s creator, a goddess who chooses to employ technology instead of her natural powers and stay in child form or all of the above, and she’s all kinds of awesome. Anybody who can create a doomsday device and a dimensional portal with a star-shaped door is A-OK in our books.
-And now, some Honorable Mentions:
MR. SPOCK (Star Trek)
Everybody’s favorite half-human, half-Vulcan science officer. To not include Spock would be illogical.
STARLEE HAMBRATH (TMNT Fast Forward)
Cody Jones’ blue skinned, pointy-eared alien intern. She has no powers, but like Washu she’s a genius (Starlee’s race, the Omatronians, possess twice the brain capacity of humans), plus she rolls around her lab on roller skates, so maybe she’s an honorary Galaxy Girl.
THE CAT (Red Dwarf)
Oooooooooooooooooowwwww!
OK, maybe this isn’t a conventional choice, but he belongs to a different race and he was born in space, so I’m counting him. Deal. Who doesn’t like The Cat? He’s a stitch! Delightfully vain and shallow, with a fashion sense even more outrageous than Mars. What’s his special power?
Lookin’ NICE!
ATEE & GEECEE (Cosmic Quantum Ray)
Two more crew members from Cosmic Quantum Ray (technically 1, since they hail from a planet where everyone’s a twin and therefore count as a single crew member). Another set of alien twins, these 2 possessing the powers to create super-strong, super-elastic DNA strands. Atee (the one in pink) is sweet, while Geecee (the one in baby blue) is sassy. Plus they’re pilots with the need…the need for warp speed.
COLONEL BLEEP
OK, the propeller on top of his helmet serves no purpose since there’s no air in space and the unicycle is kind of dorky, but we can’t help but like an alien ambassador who comes from a planet called Futura (so what did they call it in the past?), lives on an island located at exactly zero degrees longitude and zero degrees latitude and possesses ‘Futomic Energy’ which can conjure up a house in seconds.
Plus he has a mute cowboy puppet and a caveman as his running crew, or flying crew to be more accurate.
So there you have it, our favorite fictional super advanced space aliens. Let’s just assume that they are super-advanced; after all, if they can get here, then they’re already more advanced than we are.
A Squared plus B Squared equals C Squared, Dum-dums!
Twin Images 
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