Monday News: Standing Tall in the Face of Irrelevance When Real News is Happening (Warning! Possible Spoilers!)

It has definitely been an interesting past few days as we sit here waiting through the few days before Thor arrives. I've been trying to keep up with everyone on Twitter and spending so much time on the Tweet stream is starting to make my brain fray at the edges I think. Want to help cure a little of that madness? Follow us on Twitter @Orccacast! Or, if you're already following us, tell your friends! I promise I will try to be more clever; it just hasn't been coming lately because I'm very depressed over not finding my Elite Beat Agents or Rhythm Heaven cartridges.

Speaking of Twitter, there's some gorgeous stuff over on @astro_ron's Twit pics including this little gem here of the Progress spacecraft heading towards the ISS. Yes, it basically is a flying trash can, but it still looks gorgeous. You can check out a highlight reel of some of the pics by looking up the hastag '#fromspace' on twitpic.

 

Twitter Pal Generals Joes (Follow him @GeneralsJoes; also, follow us if you aren't already @orccacast) has gotten his Pursuit of Cobra Wave 6 figures (aka wave 4 2011 for those of us who enjoy deciphering these things) and they're looking great in a "Hasbro keeps managing to find new hooks to make me buy Snake-Eyes" kind of way. If anyone wants to send some Rock Vipers or a Crazy Legs my way, I totally wouldn't mind. [Source: Generals Joes]

 To be fair they still had the variant covers, but they cost more

I didn't get to pick up Action Comics #900 last week, which is irksome in light of it finishing the Lex Luthor storyline I wrote about here. However, Twitter waits for no man and within a few hours I was well aware of the cosmic shit-storm brewing from the short story where Superman renounced his U.S. Citizenship. Laura Hudson, the lovely editor of Comics Alliance, was even summoned to be on Fox and Friends to discuss it once the backdraft had hit a high note. Everything you need to know about this important development in outrage from the not-reading-comics audience is in this little article here. The last time this kind of thing happened, we got the 'Grounded' storyline so this can't possibly be worse/funny than that. [Source: Comics Alliance]

Does anyone else wish this was on higher quality paper without the weird fuzzy feeling dust jacket?

Speaking of Comics Alliance, for those of you confused by the appearance of a certain Mossy Man-Monster in the pages of Brightest Day, you can get sort of an idea of what exactly the deal with Swamp Thing is right here. Sure it sounds crazy, but it makes more sense than a lot of the stuff thrown at us in Brightest Day #24. [Source: Comics Alliance]

Still bamboozled over the excitement from this picture. Why? It doesn't even give something for all the recent Hawkeye converts to get excited over.

Samuel L. Jackson's copy of the script for The Avengers has been stolen and reports are coming in that production is being halted so some rewrites can be done. I'm hoping Jackson actually gets in some real trouble for this but the people who swiped it are some real jerks to be sure. I'm not sure if it should really require some rewrites but if they're meant strictly as a big middle finger to the thieves then I'm all for it. I hope this didn't screw up the vacation plans for anyone working on the movie though. [Source: Screen Rant]

Oh, and this happened. [Source: The Huffington Post]

Monday Skull Rattling: Come Across the Rainbow Bridge and Be My Friend

I think I’ve discovered the secret of how other people maintain content on their websites without actually posting anything: covering stuff that other people have already posted.

With that in mind I thought today I might do the same thing in the spirit of self-interest.

San Francisco with Venus setting in the background. Or Saturn. Depends on who you ask it seems.

-First off, I’d like to recommend everyone follow @Astro_Ron if you’re on Twitter. Better known as Astronaut Ron Garan, he flew on the Discovery before its recent retirement and has now returned to the International Space Station on Expedition 27. What he doing up there? Why he’s sending Twitpics of Earth like this one here or the view of San Francisco seen above. I know a lot of people debate the usefulness of the Space Program (and the ISS in particular) but you can't deny that the pictures aren't beautiful. 

This is from Finland!

 -So last week Capcom decided it’s had enough of dwelling in what I would call “polite obscurity” following a massive slowdown after RE 5 that wasn’t broken until recently with MvC3. “Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City” was announced, with a surprising move into the realm of FPS for the franchise. Apparently you’re playing as (and with) a team of commandos who work for the Umbrella Corporation, all of whom take their visual cues from Hunk. I've seen the game described as a fusion of SOCOM and Left 4 Dead, which admittedly makes me anxious in light of the co-op elements of RE5 basically extinguishing the single players impact. One thing to note: one of the missions is apparently to kill Leon and Rockfort Island (of Code Veronica fame) is one of the locations. You can get a surprising amount of details here including stuff I hadn't heard on the first pass around. [Source: NeoGAF]

-Want to see something that burned one of my neurons with pure frustration? Well look no further than lucky dog Jeff Parker’s Guest Review of the Hot Toys figure of Friend from 20^th Century Boys! Made for Hot Toys' 10th Anniversary exhibition in Tokyo, he joins a Michael Jackson figure in the outfit from "Beat it" and a special set of the Scarecrow and hallucination Batman from Batman Begins. Hopefully one of those two is enough to make you guys jealous since I'm still bitter about not having one figure from Hot Toys ever.

Naoki Urasawa’s great manga receives a figure I’ll never be able to have and I most definitely want to share my misery with you, even if you have no experience with the man or his works. Fun fact: one time around campus I saw a girl wearing a t-shirt with Friend’s symbol on it but I was in a car and couldn’t stop to talk to her. Where did you go local girl with excellent taste?! [Source: Michael Crawford's Review of the week]

-You guys may remember a few weeks back when we last had Poe Ghostal on that he was talking about a surprise figure on his website. Well the secret is out because today he posted pictures of his very own Poe Ghostal Minimate! Head over there for the scoop as I don't want to steal any of his thunder [Source: Poe Ghostal's Points of Articulation]

None of the Thor posters have been amazing but this is one of the better ones

-So the first reviews of Thor are coming in and most of them seem pretty favorable if not enthusiastic. So far no one's screaming about how much the movie shoves the upcoming Avengers film in our faces the way they were with Iron Man 2. Maybe they've gotten over it as SHIELD is all over the movie from the trailers (and promotional campaign) and Hawkeye apparently has a role substantial enough that my clueless boss at work knew who I was talking about when asked. Anyway, full reviews are here, here and here from some of the fortunate bastards that got to see it already. [Sources: IGN, Hitfix and Comic Book Resources]

A connection only made by how they both appeared in the last batch of episodes for Batman: The Animated Series

-As a side note, it's been a thrilling week for me in toys which you'd already be aware of if you're following us on Twitter (@Orccacast for those of you who aren't and WHY AREN'T YOU?). I found all of DCUC 16 in the space of about 2 days just before I was about to order them online. By this point I figured they were going to be like Wave 8 and never appear at retail so I was doubly pleased to find them with an amazing price point of $10.99 apiece at Kroger. I think that makes this the cheapest wave since the first and that's only because Wave 1 only had 5 figures. It's a better wave than I thought it would be and I'm pleased to see they fixed the springy chest attachment on Mercury. I also finally found a Jedi Luke from the new VOTC collection after falling asleep at the wheel long enough for him to mostly disappear. He's just as great as everyone said he is 4 months ago.

Mercury is saying "You don't see any dust on the mantle. NONE!"

So that's all I've got for you today. Hopefully this was an enriching experience, even if you just learned that I'll talk to any girl wearing a 20th Century Boys t-shirt. Have fun with the rest of your day while I sit here and try to organize my demented thoughts to finish what I was working on.