Lawnmower Boy

Grab your bags, gentlemen!

Soooo, where do I send my resume

For all of you RUSH fans out there, I just wanted to let you know that Aaron Allston's Strike Force Universe had a hero named By-Tor and another (a canine) named Snow Dog.

Ha!  Suck it India!  We're number one!  USA!  USA!

Greetings everyone. I wanted to announce the official start of my work on Strike Force Organizations, a sequel to 2016's Aaron Allston’s Strike Force.
  The book will focus on three groups, the Blood, the Circle, and METE (all previous presented in Champions Organization products for early editions of Champions. My intent is to combine the content written for the PDFs with content Aaron wrote for his proposed (but never complete) Strike Force Universe series of books.
  I intend to update the content to HERO 6e, update the text to correct any errors and issues, and update any references to current game mechanics. I will not fill in any gaps -- I am not so arrogant as to assume what Aaron would have wanted, but I will acknowledge areas where content is lacking (if such a need arrives). I hope to find updated character sheets for many of the early NPCs, but will work with what I have.
  I also intend to present bases, vehicles, scenarios, and villains, just as they all appeared in the early releases.
  I will change names (for example, METE will be called Alien Research Laboratories) in accordance to Aaron's wishes and per his list of corrections for setting names.
  This product will be released as a collaborative work between Surbrook Press and High Rock Press.
Finally, the book will contain stats for Prowlers & Paragons UE and I hope to have a P&PUE add-on detailing all of the characters from Aaron Allston’s Strike Force.

PS: that last item has already been discussed with Jason. I am seeking to support two systems that I greatly enjoy and I hope to draw both fan-bases together to support this product.

PSS: I will endeavor to provide frequent updates. Please bug me via this thread if I forget.

Not sure whether to put this here or in the Advice thread.
 

Like I said, Miniguns work well!

Of course it's not a trap door. It's obviously a concealed pit.

Let's see if this works now...

New one UP before the New Year!
 
https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1294.html

Mmm pickles.  Seroiusly though, some systems do lend themselves to more lethal combat than others, although if you use the optional rules for hero like hit locations, disabling, impairing, bleeding, etc its quite lethal as well.  Particularly given the lack of resistant defenses (unless you're Clint Eastwood in A Few Dollars More) and mortal level stats.

On the level of traditional symbology, there is also a superficial resemblance to the Hanged Man, one of the major arcana of the Tarot:
 

 
 
 
Which Bad Things? That book has a lot of them.

Actually Henry iv Holy Roman Emperor, was not even "Frenchish" he was a German, being in fact King of Germany. His father, Henry iii had ended the period of the three popes, forced a synod and elected a German bishop pope, Clement ii. Calling him French is insulting, and although borders have shifted somewhat since then calling one the other (French<>German) will get you into a world of trouble. 

Which is why I believe that in the long run, the Trump era could turn out to be a good thing. Rot has existed deep in American society and politics for a long time. It can't be recognized and cleaned out unless and until it's brought to the surface. Maybe Trump's blatant simplistic provocation has brought it out sooner than it otherwise would have been... and before it's too late to purge it.

I had some significant issues with the Black Adam movie, but I loved the Justice Society. Vivid characters, great chemistry between them, impressive powers and action scenes. IMHO a movie based around them would have been much more interesting and entertaining than what we got.

Then I hope you had a good Monday this week and have a Great 1st of January 2024. 🙃

"Some people can read War and Peace, and come away thinking it's a simple adventure story. Others can read the ingredients on a chewing gum wrapper, and unlock the secrets of the universe." -- Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman), Superman: The Movie.
 
Two people can look at the same work of art and come to completely different conclusions about it. That doesn't make either of them right or wrong. Art will always be fundamentally subjective.

Found this awesome post on Facebook, dunno the author to give credit.  Bold emphasis mine
 
Who is the best Marvel movie or TV Marvel villain? Hands down, David Tennant's Kilgrave from Jessica Jones' first season, the perfect embodiment of sexual and domestic violence. He's one of those rare villains who leaves you with unease long after you turn off the TV, and it's because he was there before you turned it on. He's not the best villain because of his personality, though his glee and charm is a large part of it. He's not the best villain because of the scope of his villainy. He's not out to destroy any cities or conquer any galaxies. He's not even out to take down a hero, although that's what he's going to do along the way. You see, Kilgrave's power is this: You have to do anything he wants you to do. Anything at all. Maybe he wants your jacket. Maybe he wants you to have sex with him. Maybe he wants you to become his lover and live with him happily, forever and ever, in a lovely little house for the two of you. Maybe he wants you to murder your mom. You know those intrusive thoughts, the ones you would never in a million years do, the ones that make you wonder if you're a monster? The ones that say, jump over the railing. Hold the match to your sleeve. The dog sure looks happy; why don't you kick its brains in? Kilgrave whispers the very worst things to you, and you do them. Kilgrave makes it your fault when he does what he does to you. Makes it your idea. Does it with your hands. Makes your body something bad. And he makes the people you depend upon blame you for it. So when Kilgrave uses his powers on you, you aren't a victim. You are a villain. And you're utterly, eternally alone in your hurt and your horror. And it doesn't end when it ends. He's got no master plan or secret agenda. He's just following his whims. If he decides he really likes you, he'll bring the trauma back over. And over. And over. He can leave an idea in your head that never goes away, an idea that sits there where you can't see it until it suddenly shows up at the worst possible moment. Creating a villain who generates such revulsion and horror in the audience is like capturing lightning in a bottle. As Dorothy Sayers told us, it’s almost impossible to write the Devil without making the audience root for him, because those attributes that make a villain an opponent worthy of writing about are virtues, or are at least the personality traits that make a character fascinating. If your villain isn’t powerful, you’ve got no story. If your villain isn’t talented, you’ve got no story. If your villain isn’t persistent, isn’t charismatic, doesn’t have a good reason to do what they do . . . no story. There is a sense in which it's very hard for us to tell honest stories about evil, because real evil isn't extremely watchable. So instead of making legitimately evil villains, we make villains who are heroes on the wrong side, or villains who are heroes with a streak of malice, or we just take the hero, run through a list of their strengths, and come up with a foil for each bullet point. Those methods make engaging villains. Those are the villains you love to see, because they thrill you at the same time that they horrify you: the Darth Vaders and the Hannibal Lectors, the Moriartys and the Lex Luthors. Those bad guys may not have our allegiance, but they have our attention, our fascination, the stamp of the viewer's approval. But to write a villain who elicits horror in the audience, who’s a perfect counterpoint to all the hero’s strengths, and to have the audience feel sick when he’s on the screen—that’s extraordinary. And in this case, it’s achieved by tapping into a kind of violence that has only rarely been addressed on the screen, and even more rarely shown from the victim’s point of view. It’s not the “violent rape” that politicians discuss, the kind that grabs you in an alleyway with a stranger’s hands. It’s the kind that gets up close and personal in all the other ways, in ways that nobody can see from the outside. And its perpetrator is an emotional toddler, raging for anything and everything they want, right now, as if their whims were as essential as oxygen. There is absolutely nothing appealing about Kilgrave. Zilch. Even his charm isn't directed toward us; it's directed toward the other characters, the ones Jessica needs to believe her and help her, and so we hate his charm. He convinces the audience that he’s powerful, maybe too powerful to be defeated, and we’re right there in Jessica’s misery with her, feeling isolated and despairing. Kilgrave's comic-book villain in Jessica Jones does what speculative fiction does best: turns a mirror on reality. You can make a villain who is stronger than other villains, who rules a bigger empire or has a bigger weapon or is out to kill more people than any other villain ever written. But all you're doing is playing the game of "Oh, yeah? My bad guy is bad times a hundred. No; times a million. Times infinity plus one." Kilgrave tells us what bad really is, and it rings true. Anybody who's had to take out an order of protection knows Kilgrave already. Anybody who's undergone a rape kit knows Kilgrave already. He's the rarest sort of screen villain: the one we were afraid of before he was written.

Warning.  Graphic car crash imagery
 
 
 

My assumption is that the gamesters were effectively playing for matchsticks, but it's certainly open to debate.
 
For other quatloo trivia, the currency was mentioned regularly in the 1985 newspaper comic Robotman, which was the most successful component of a very cynical multimedia cash grab attempt that tried to make the character another Garfield from scratch.  The overall push failed, and continuing legal issues with marketing Robotman in the face of DC Comics' legal department led to the strip being reformatted multiple times, first to Robotman & Monty, then just Monty, and the Robotman character gradually being phased out of his own comic around 2001 when he returned to the planet Diskelion (ha bloody ha).  The strip has a long history of borrowing from Star Trek that's tailed off since Robotman vanished, although it cribs from many other things.  As Monty the fool thing is inexplicably still in syndication, although I have no idea what papers are still carrying it...or why.