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While I'd love to promote an in production Champs game, a game I've been talking up and promoting since the 80's.  The reality is that it has moved from an "in print and available to brick & morter" game to an "pdf online game". 
 
My gaming mostly happens in FLGS's or at cons.  Public gaming.  Being able to put hardcopies on the shelf and in the hands of players is a requirement.  CC cannot do that.
 
Since I am playing a "dead" game, I might as well run the version I most enjoyed and that I have sufficient copies in hand. 
 
And it is also how the books are received by the players.  5th and 6th are met with glazed eyes and indifference. 4th on the other hand, even with it being black and white and "feels" much more Super.  The people I have shown the 4th ed book never have the glazed look. 
 
5th & 6th are great textbooks.
3rd and 4th are great games.
 

I have a sneaking fondness for The Sword and the Sorcerer. Not that good, but some cool visual moments, and that sword could have been designed by Q.

Black Panther and Wonder Woman were entertaining despite the political needling. The problem that follows is when Hollywood learns the wrong lessons from their success. They begin to think that it was the political moralizing that appealed to audiences, and not the, well, entertaining elements (the action, the character interactions, the narrative arc, etc.). When that happens, too much focus gets put on stuffing future projects with political messages (in order to make them Socially Important), and then you have an inevitable backlash crashing up on a movie that is perceived as having a political agenda (e.g., Captain Marvel), before anyone has even seen it. Social politics start to dominate the cultural discussion about a movie, and the objective of just making good, entertaining movies starts to get lost in the scuffle.

I'm not surprised that any hint of a feminist slant to the movie would have the anti-feminist backlash arriving in force to spread FUD just when the trailer campaign is winding up to full speed in front of the movie's release in theaters. And to my eyes, that's all this is. The press always has two sides that fight it out over any story or issue, and this movie is no exception. Will it be an "important" movie the way Wonder Woman and Black Panther were? Will it break $100M in its opening weekend, proving that female-led superhero movies are a viable sub-niche? Or will it be "too much Grrl Power" for mainstream male audiences, causing it crash and burn at the box office? Only time will tell, but one thing is for sure. You can count on the press to stir the pot and spin this into a controversy-laden question they can milk pointlessly for weeks.

Indeed. It was this unprecedented degree of black representation that catapulted the movie into the ranks of All-Time Most Important Cultural Event Since Roots. Disney/Marvel fed as much fuel into that fire as they could, knowing it would prove a very effective box office accelerant, and it worked. Hell, the movie even nabbed a Best Picture nom, something no superhero movie has ever managed to do. And that's because no other superhero movie was deemed Socially Important, even though at least a few were arguably better movies.

"The filmmakers behind “Black Panther” were intent on creating a vibrant Afrocentric world, and to bringing a culture Hollywood has habitually ignored or denigrated to glorious notice."
 
While the above may be true, I don't think that is a reason to give the movie a Best Picture Oscar. It is a reason to give it a Socio-Political Awareness Award, if Hollywood ever invents one, but not a Best Picture Oscar.
 
I feel that in the race to turn everything political, including all of our entertainment, Hollywood is forgetting that the vast majority of the time movies are simply that: entertainment, and not some grand platform for social change. If a movie has to be the celluloid equivalent of a Nelson Mandela to win an Oscar, then the entire industry is headed for a crash worthy of the Daytona 500.

"The filmmakers behind “Black Panther” were intent on creating a vibrant Afrocentric world, and to bringing a culture Hollywood has habitually ignored or denigrated to glorious notice."
 
While the above may be true, I don't think that is a reason to give the movie a Best Picture Oscar. It is a reason to give it a Socio-Political Awareness Award, if Hollywood ever invents one, but not a Best Picture Oscar.
 
I feel that in the race to turn everything political, including all of our entertainment, Hollywood is forgetting that the vast majority of the time movies are simply that: entertainment, and not some grand platform for social change. If a movie has to be the celluloid equivalent of a Nelson Mandela to win an Oscar, then the entire industry is headed for a crash worthy of the Daytona 500.

"The filmmakers behind “Black Panther” were intent on creating a vibrant Afrocentric world, and to bringing a culture Hollywood has habitually ignored or denigrated to glorious notice."
 
While the above may be true, I don't think that is a reason to give the movie a Best Picture Oscar. It is a reason to give it a Socio-Political Awareness Award, if Hollywood ever invents one, but not a Best Picture Oscar.
 
I feel that in the race to turn everything political, including all of our entertainment, Hollywood is forgetting that the vast majority of the time movies are simply that: entertainment, and not some grand platform for social change. If a movie has to be the celluloid equivalent of a Nelson Mandela to win an Oscar, then the entire industry is headed for a crash worthy of the Daytona 500.

I didn't have a problem with Psylocke's costume either. At least it was more comics accurate than most.
 
I liked Cap's costume in First Avenger because it was a great adaptation of the classic costume in the form of military fatigues, sorta like what we saw in the original Ultimates comics. I also liked Cap's Winter Soldier costume, which I think was the best version so far.
 
When it comes to Capt. Marvel, well, to be honest I never liked the black one-piece swimsuit costume from the comics. I just didn't like the design. I like the more current red/blue full-body suit that she has in the comics right now, and I think if they had picked someone with a better body/physique than Brie Larson, then going with a more spandex-y rendition would have looked pretty awesome. But, of course, this is the MCU, home of armor-plated spandex costumes, so we were never going to get a Spider-Man-like costume for Capt. Marvel regardless of who was cast in the role.

I thought Psylocke's costume worked great onscreen, but the obvious fanservice doesn't set a great example.

As a middle-aged anything you have aged out of the most popular target demographics--twentysomethings with disposable income, and pre-twentysomethings who will soon be twentysomethings with disposable income.  Pull up a rocking chair, we're yelling at kids on the lawn today.

I liked Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes. It was getting really interesting... then it got cancelled.
 
Wasn't so keen on Avengers Assemble. Although it did get better as it went along. The Squadron Supreme arc was pretty good.
 
Not sure what other animation they've done in recent years. The adventures of baby Iron Man one, some sort of horrible Spiderman thing, a Hulk thing, all aimed at the 5-10 market. Nothing wrong with that. Kids need their shows. But it means less cartoon for me. And as a middle-aged, hetero, white man I strongly feel that I have been marginalised by society and not given my fair share of the pie. (Irony there folks. Sooooooo much irony.)

Sometimes, it's a blessing that the mechanical shark keeps breaking down.

You post this like it was good news?

I don't think Akil understands that the fans don't find these teases very much fun if they don't serve as genuine connections between the shows. This kind of fan service is ultimately pointless because it doesn't have any kind of concrete payoff. This is especially true given we're talking about a network of shows that cross over with each other annually now.

As a GM, I would go through the following procedure:
 
Step 1: Decide if the campaign will use Placed Shots or random Hit Location rolls.
Step 2: Decide if Vorpal Effect should occur as a result of a Critical Hit or a hit to the Head location (or both).
Step 3: Determine highest BODY creature in the campaign that can be killed by decapitation.
Step 4: Adjust the build I provided depending on decisions made in steps 1-3.
 

Maybe you could borrow the technology flow chart idea from Gamma World for that sort of thing.

Just make it an HKA so big that with Standard Effect, it would surpass all the BODY in any creature's neck in the campaign. If you're the GM, then you know what that number is.

There is a case to be made for using extra-dimensional movement, usableon others....

Yeah I see Comeliness/Presence as having a similar relationship as Ego/Presence.  They can overlap but have different areas they specialize in.   The proper argument should not be "I can't think of a way to use it" which Bob Greenwade blew to tatters with a 3-page workup on ways to GM comeliness and posted on the discussion page.  It should have been "its highly subjective" and difficult to give an objective rating to. Still not enough reason to delete the stat entirely, but enough to say "this optional for your campaign."  Also, an optional "here's how you can do figured characteristics if you prefer" in the back would be good, too.

I chuckled at io9's take on Harleys new look:
 
 

I chuckled at io9's take on Harleys new look:
 
 

Disney/Marvel enjoys the benefit of being run by a comics superfan (Kevin Feige). DC had Geoff Johns in a similar role, but he isn't nearly as business savvy as Feige, nor does he seem to have the vision necessary to architect a shared universe franchise on the scale of the MCU. Moreover, WB/DC lacked the patience to grow their shared universe slowly and organically, and in their rush to be competitive with the MCU, they imploded creatively and organizationally.

It's tricky because if you aim for the most popular RPG genre, which is fantasy, then you have to compete with D&D and Pathfinder, which already puts you into a deep, deep hole in terms of mindshare and market share (and frankly, I'm not convinced that Turakian Age is up to the task). The superhero genre seems like a no-brainer given the history of the system, but if a licensed Marvel RPG can't explode with popularity in the MCU Age then what chance does the Champions Universe (or any original superhero universe) have? That leaves going into a genre which lacks a dominant alpha brand to compete against, like science fiction perhaps, but that also means having to convince potential new players to try something other than fantasy for once in their lives, which might be a tough sell.
 
Honestly, I don't see anyway out of the darkness for the Hero System. Even if it had Elon Musk investing in the effort, I'm not sure there is a winning direction to take.