Superpowers, dragons, and new state borders...
A friend of mine once had an idea for a comic book/movie franchise that sounded kind of like an A-Team style vigilante group made up of people like The Punisher, Hawkeye, and Batman. They would cruise around in a military-style van, kicking bad guy tuchis as they brought justice to places the law couldn't touch.
"Cool," I said, "but are there any other superheroes in your universe?"
He thought for a moment. "Nah, just these guys."
"Then they'd be hunted down by the feds as terrorists, pretty much. The first time they hit some building with an explosive arrow or shoot off one of their machine guns, they'd become the target of every cop in the area until the National Guard could arrive or something."
It comes down to a rule I've called "The Critical Mass of Vigilante Heroes," and it goes something like this: If there are other costumed weirdos out there with weapons and powers causing or stopping mayhem, unless you're making a particularly large nuisance of yourself, you'll be allowed to operate in peace, barring the actions of other costumed individuals or groups. This can affect the plots of such worlds as well: If you're the only guy who can fly and shoot lasers out of your eyes, there's a very good chance that the authorities will want you in a lab as soon as possible to dissect your squishy bits. But if you also pal around with a bunch of other people with similar or even weirder talents, you're probably safe from such examinations (again, barring the actions of individual villains and/or groups), at least on a nationwide scale.
This doesn't preclude the military still wanting to get their gene-splicing black-ops people some samples of your DNA or a bad guy wanting to take your mystic Cosmic Blade to power a planet-smashing raygun, but it does mean you can probably keep an unlisted phone number, do product endorsements, and rent an apartment without making too much fuss about a secret identity. At least, it's been the go-by I've used for the most part, for now. Things do have a way of changing when I start to script out new idears... :)
Here's a small detour into political arenas, kinda-sorta: There are a lot of gerrymandered districts for U.S. representatives out there, shaped to give the incumbent more safety by making the majority population more likely to vote for him/her. Similarly, some feel that the U.S. Senate is somewhat skewed, in that every state gets two representatives, regardless of population. As an interesting thought exercise, some clever person has re-drawn the United States so that every Senator has equal populations to represent. It's kind of interesting-looking, and I think the biggest backers of such a plan would be whoever gets the contract for moving "Welcome to [INSERT STATE HERE]" signs to their new locations every census. Missouri, where I live, barely changes at all, save for what appears to be a tumorous growth on its "head" along with something unspeakable happening on the border with what used to be Kentucky. I think this is only feasible once we get Multivac up and running human affairs or until some game company invents a redistricting version of "Axis and Allies" that lets the parties duke it out with dice every 10 years or so.
In comic-book movie-land, there's some small buzz over a cameo by a certain giant monster in "Iron Man 2." From what I can see, the image of Fin Fang Foom appears only as a billboard in the trailer (why on a billboard, unless it's an "in" joke). While I'd love to see a superheroes vs. giant monster movie, I find myself torn between having a "movie-realistic" version of Fin Fang Foom versus the cheesy fun of a depiction derived from his "classic form" on the silver screen. But if they're still planning on doing an "Avengers" movie, giving Giant Man someone his size to hit might be a nice change of pace from him stomping on things.
Sadly, in real life, we get NASA's "Puffin" vehicle instead of "Iron Man" suits. Or hoverboards. Or jet-boots. Or... well, this could go on for a while, so here's some other things to wonder about:
- From those amazingly not-sued-into-oblivion film-makers at "Asylum" comes a trailer for Sherlock Holmes. I don't know if they did it on purpose, but Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did write "The Lost World," so it could be considered a crossover...
- Culinary horror awaits when you discover that there is such a thing as canned haggis, and that someone was brave enough to prepare it.
- Another photoblog, this one probably more amusing to anyone who has ever had to search a stock photo archive for one graphic design project or another: Awkward Stock Photos.
- Anyone who grew up with "Star Wars" playsets probably remembers how many bits were made out of cardboard. Several decades later, things have gotten better for you dang kids and your noise-music and get offa my lawn. You even have better Play-Doh sets. We had to make do with the dentist set and the one that made hair come out of people shaped like roll-on deodorant.
- An online "guess who you're thinking of" game, Akinator that's eerily accurate at times.
- Mark this one down as "unbelievable." In this day and age of Photoshop and CGI, this mad genius has made these thrilling vistas as miniature models. I feel rather underproductive all of a sudden.
- If you think your GPS Sat-Nav system is irritating, imagine if you had to use the analog version developed for British motorists in the 1920's.
- To my fellow net-bargain hunters out there, Deals-dot-Woot is now a deal aggregation site, though with more freebies and unusual items than many of the others I've perused.
- Lastly, here's a block-based puzzle game: Rotato. Rotate the playfield to clear blocks, avoiding hazards and getting blocks "stuck."