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Pick 'em: Gauntlet Round 3 Pick Two Cosmobats Lombard St. Gumshoes Mercury METSSS New Vegas High Rollers
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Nov 3, 2013 22:56
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Wildly Guess 'em: Divisional Series! Burma Imperialists vs. Somali Pirates 4 3-1 Cancun Tornados vs. Rockford Losers 4 6-4 New World Symphony vs. Fukuoka Finger-Bangers 4 5-2 South Bolton Eazy W's vs. Walney Rakers 4 4-2 Pick 'em: Gauntlet Round 3 Pick Two Cosmobats Lombard St. Gumshoes Mercury METSSS New Vegas High Rollers Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 23:53 on Nov 3, 2013 |
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Nov 3, 2013 23:41
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Yall are dumb, it never worked out the last seven times my team was available as a choice in a Pick Em
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Nov 4, 2013 00:15
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Pick 'em: Gauntlet Round 3 Pick Two Cosmobats Lombard St. Gumshoes Mercury METSSS New Vegas High Rollers
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Nov 4, 2013 00:21
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Jeez I've got a lot to catch up on; sorry I'm behind on Pick 'Em Stats. Also I will read that insanely long Crisis filibuster when I have time. I love the insanity of comic books and I'll probably enjoy reading it when I'm on a cross-country flight this week. I'll make a Pick 'Em post Tuesday evening. I probably won't be able to update scores until a week from then. I'm on vacation starting Wednesday. I'll phone post my picks, but scoring is going to be a pain. TOILET OF SADNESS any interest in taking over for a week, like Tuesday-Tuesday? MY PICK 'EM BELOW Pick 'em: Divisional Series! Pick the winner, number of games (best-of-five), and score of final game Burma Imperialists vs. Somali Pirates in 4, final game 6-2 Cancun Tornados vs. Rockford Losers in 3, final game 8-3 New World Symphony vs. Fukuoka Finger-Bangers in 4, final game 3-1 South Bolton Eazy W's vs. Walney Rakers in 4, final game 11-5 Pick 'em! Gauntlet round 3 METSSSS New Vegas
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Nov 4, 2013 00:30
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Gumshoes METSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
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Nov 4, 2013 01:15
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FairGame posted:TOILET OF SADNESS any interest in taking over for a week, like Tuesday-Tuesday?
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Nov 4, 2013 01:31
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ToiletofSadness posted:Yeah, I can swing that. Would you mind giving me edit privs and sharing the google doc with me? Account is toiletofsadness at gmail dot com. Done. I'll make a final update Tuesday, so don't worry about it until like Wednesday at the earliest.
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Nov 4, 2013 03:20
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Filibuster spoilers below There must be some sort of cosmic rule that every time I observe Wonder Woman in something a version of her has to die because the only two times I've witness something involving Wonder Woman in the last year were this thread and the DC Universe Online opening cinematic and some version of Wonder Woman dies in both. Sorry if I spoiled the DCUO opening for anyone.
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Nov 4, 2013 03:44
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Pick'em! Lombard St. Gumshoes New Vegas High Rollers
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Nov 4, 2013 04:28
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 Owner: blakelmenakle Location: Alma, OK Home Grounds: The Place Founded: Super-League XI Teams Used I'd bet on it! Records SLXI: 69-93, 5th Place, Senor Goodtimes Division, Relegated in Round 2 of Gauntlet X Honors -None- tadashi's Filibuster continues! At this time, having reviewed the story of the Crisis, the best way to start our inquiry into what effect the Crisis had would be to look at each ongoing title that DC had at the time, and se how they were affected. Action Comics Pre-Crisis: Action Comics was one of two monthly books starring Superman, and, in fact, had done so since 1938. At this point, the Superman stories were essentially the same as they had been in the '60s. A typical story involved Superman teaming up with an amnesiac robot from another planet to save said robot's world by acquiring a certain chemical that an unethical scientist intended to use for evil, up to and including poisoning the Nobel Prize committee out of spite. All in 22 pages or less. Post-Crisis: It's kind of a funny story. And by funny, I mean a clusterfuck. Up to the Crisis, the Superman line had been stable for quite some time. You had Action Comics and Superman, two comics that had starred Superman since the early '40s, as well as the relative newcomer, DC Comics Presents, which was designed as a Superman team-up book. After the Crisis, DC revamped Superman, and I'll go into more detail about that later on, and decided to reorganize the line. DC Comics Presents was cancelled, and its position as the Superman team-up book was transferred to Action Comics, while Superman became Adventures of Superman, and became the second-tier Superman solo title, while a new volume of Superman, known by many as Superman (v2 was started, under the stewardship of John Byrne. About a year later, DC decided to gently caress around with the arrangement again, turning Action Comics into a weekly, which would typically be headlined by a Superman story, but would have loads and loads backup strips starring characters like Green Lantern, Deadman, Blackhawks and so on. The problem was that, in 1988, the logistics of trying to do a 48-page comic every week were essentially impossible, which really should have been apparent from the get-go. Instead, it took DC about ten months to admit that Action Comics Weekly was unsustainable, and turned it back into another Superman Monthly. All-Star Squadron Pre-Crisis: Roy Thomas plays around with all of DC's (and Quality's and Fawcett's, to a lesser-extent) characters from the 40s in this book, which was set in 1942 on Earth-2, as roughly six dozen heroes banded together to fight the Axis Powers! Except that since Hitler had the magical Spear of Destiny, that very same spear that pierced Jesus on the cross, any hero with powers that ventured into Axis-held territory would immediately fall under Hitler's control for....reasons. So they mainly just dicked around America fighting evil German super-villains who would obligingly come over to America to get their heads kicked in. It was the perfect comic for people who grew up in the '40s, and also younger people with madly misplaced nostalgia. Post-Crisis: Well, Earth-2 was gone, so that was a problem. Also, a bunch of the characters that Thomas had been using, the Earth-2 versions of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Green Arrow, Speedy, Robin and a few others, were retroactively eliminated from continuity for being redundant1 in the new post-Crisis universe, meaning that most of the earlier stories now had rather large holes in them. In fact, I happen to have a handy visual display of the changes, from All-Star Squadron #60, where the changeover officially happened.   Also, this is all the fault of that evil robot from the future who was a direct homage of the villainous robot from "Metropolis", a 1927 German silent film that even comic readers from the '40s would have found obscure. Thomas, utterly defeated, spent the remaining year before All-Star Squadron was cancelled rewriting the origin stories of the characters who had survived the Crisis and bemoaning his fate. But, sport that he was, he decided to try and rebuild, creating a new ongoing Young All-Stars, that would attempt to fix his earlier continuity by introducing new characters to take the place of those written out of continuity. His replacement for Earth-2 Batman? A mystical Native American who dressed in a fur loincloth. Amethyst Pre-Crisis: Amethyst was a 12 year-old girl who discovered that she was actually the princess of the magical Gemworld, and that only she could save the day from the villainous Dark Opal. And also that she had to balance that with her home life as a middle schooler. Hey, give credit to DC for trying to reach a different audience, at least. Post-Crisis: Keith Giffen happened.2 Suddenly, it was decided that Amethyst's parents weren't the king and queen of Gemworld, per her previous origin, but instead the queen had an illicit affair with an errant god, and Amethyst was the result. Also, due to some magic bullshit, no one on Earth remembered who Amethyst was, leading to a half-dozen scenes where Amethyst begs her earth foster-mother to remember who she is, only to get shut down every single time. Eventually, Giffen decides to stop loving around and just sets up a story where Amethyst has no choice but to give up her material existence in order to save Gemworld, which she does, but only after being completely mentally broken. Fun! Arak, Son of Thunder Pre-Crisis: Another one of the many Conan knockoffs that DC published in the early '80s...because Marvel had the rights to Conan himself, Arak was the Native American son of a thunder god who accidentally sailed to 8th century Europe after a battle with his arch-enemy, the Serpent God. Gathering a eclectic group of allies, including the most modestly dressed woman warrior in this genre history, an aged Catholic black mage and a satyr, Arak sets out on a long journey home, eventually traveling clear around the world, allowing him to meet medieval knights, djinns, Gilgamesh, Samurai, and whatever other poo poo Roy Thomas could think of. At the very least, Arak taught us that in a fight between a Native American warrior and a Chinese Dragon...bet on the man with the tomahawk. Post-Crisis: It got loving cancelled, since, by 1985, the sales of every non-superhero comic DC was publishing sucked, and so DC started culling its line. Which is a shame, because there should have always been room for a man whose solution to every single problem was to hit it really hard with a tomahawk. Arion, Lord of Atlantis Pre-Crisis: Another Conan knock-off, Arion was the awesomest mage ever, who hung out in Atlantis, except 50,000 years ago during the last ice age. Much like Arak, he had a modestly dressed warrior woman (oddly enough, DC might have been at its most progressive when it came to female characters in 1985) as a girlfriend, and an ecletic cast of sidekicks, none of whom I can remember. It was a forgettable comic in general, if I'm being honest. Not bad, but not great either. Post-Crisis: The book got cancelled, much for the same reasons as Arak. But, before it did, Arion had a climatic battle with aliens, who turn out to be humans who had ventured out into the stars millennia previously to that. (Remember, this took place 45,000 years before the present, so, uh, these are some very ancient astronauts), Arion botches it badly though, and Atlantis gets totally destroyed in the process. Batman Pre-Crisis: Was Batman. What, not enough for you? Fine, Batman was, at that time, engaged in a seemingly endless story involving proto-emo villainess Nocturna, whose preferred mode of travel was hot-air balloon, and who had attempted to steal custody of the then-current Robin, Jason Todd for...reasons. Also, there was this random guy named the "Night-Slayer" who was also tied in with the Nocturna bullshit. Also, Batman loved Nocturna, because she's all about the night, and he is the night, so you know how that goes.3    This story runs for something like 14 issues straight, and it manages to maintain this level of creepiness the entire time! Post-Crisis: The story line eventually ended with Nocturna getting stabbed in the gut by a vengeful Night-Slayer, leading to her drifting off into the red skies of the Crisis mortally wounded, but only after have a tearful goodbye with Robin, who realized that she was the mother he had wanted all along. After that, DC ordered the perpetrators arrested for crimes against Batman. They remain in prison to this day. Then they gave the reins of the title over to Frank Miller, where he wrote the seminal 'Batman: Year One' story that, for better or worse, has defined Batman for the past 25 years. Batman and the Outsiders Pre-Crisis: One day, an evil madman was trying to conquer a remote principality in Europe, and the Justice League of America didn't want to get involved because, well, who the gently caress cares about Markovia? Batman cared, though, and quit the league in protest, vowing to assemble his own team, with blackjack...and hookers! Sadly, Batman almost immediately realized that all of the good heroes were in the JLA, forcing him to assemble a team of such dregs as: Katana, a Japanese woman with a magic sword! Black Lightning, who was black and could shoot lighting out of his hands! And Metamorpho, the Element Man! Post-Crisis: Batman realized how loving stupid all of this poo poo was, and resigned from the team, leaving the Outsiders to star in their own increasingly bizarre adventures, fighting such bizarre villains as "The Nuclear Family", who were a family of robots created by a scientist whose own family had been killed by radiation, and who wanted to nuke L.A. to teach mankind about the dangers of nuclear arms. Or "The Duke of Oil" who was a robot who believed himself to be an oil magnate. Or Bentama, who was just an evil African warlord. Or Hitler. They totally almost fought a clone of Hitler once, except the clone-Hitler recovered his memories, and felt bad about killing all of those Jews, so he shot himself instead. This was a real story. Blue Devil Pre-Crisis: Daniel Cassady was just your average stuntman/special effects designer when, while tinkering around with an advanced bio-suit to be used in some movie about demons, he ran into a real demon, and the demon blasted him with some sort of magical energy blast that fused Cassady into the suit permanently. So he just went off having light-hearted, mostly comic adventures that are tough to make fun of, because I suppose their heart was in the right place. Post-Crisis: In general, the safest bet to make when it comes to new characters is that they will fail and fail quickly. In the mid-80s, they tended to have a bit more patience with comics before they pulled the plug, and Blue Devil last for about two years before succumbing to broad-based apathy. DC Comics Presents Pre-Crisis: Superman teams up with a different hero each issue, as well as a different creative team, leading to erratic results. One month, you'll get a story partially illustrated by Jack Kirby, or a Swamp Thing team-up written by Alan Moore. Other months, you get a teamup with Supergirl where they have to fight a cosmic-powered villain whose previous appearance had her being a concentration camp survivor who had grown up to be a Neo-Nazi with dreams of killing the remainder of the Jews. This one also really happened. Mid-80s DC Comics had a dicey relationship with Hitler in general. Post-Crisis: A comic that was different each month had no practical way to build an audience that went any larger than "Superman completists" and "comic book readers with multiple personalities, most of which like Superman." And decided to scrap the book shortly after the Crisis hit. Detective Comics Pre-Crisis: See Batman, except this title also had backup strips starring Green Arrow and Black Canary4, who taught us that people were dying in El Salvador, yo! Post-Crisis: See Batman again, except the Green Arrow backups were eventually phased out, presumably because people stopped dying in El Salvador, yo! Flash Pre-Crisis: No comic changes with the times like the Flash. It was a straightforward superhero book in the '40s. A surreal book that ran on dream logic in the Silver Age (as that was the style of the time), and then aped the maudlin super-hero soap opera style of Marvel in the '70s and early '80s. That to that end, leading up to the Crisis, Barry Allen, the current Flash, had been engaged in an over two year-long story called "The Trial of the Flash", where the Flash was put on trial for killing one of his enemies, the dreaded Professor Zoom.5 Eventually, he found out that his previous wife, long-thought dead, was actuall alive...because she was from the future and so...well, she's alive, okay? Isn't that enough? Post-Crisis: Barry Allen gets killed dead in the Crisis, leaving Wally West as the new (and much better) Flash. So, hey, that's one point for the Crisis! Firestorm Pre-Crisis: Ronnie Raymond is a dumb jock! Martin Stein is a brilliant physcist! When a nuclear explosion gives them the power to merge together to form Firestorm, the Nuclear Man, they take advantage of this newfound union to fight crime in this solid, but bitterly unspectacular book written by Gerry Conway, best known for writing a metric ton of Spider-Man stories in the '70s. Post-Crisis: John Ostander takes over, and poo poo gets weird. Martin Stein gets cancer, because it turns out that being half of a nuclear man isn't great for your health. With his time running out, Stein and Ronnie go on a quest to destroy all of the world's nuclear weapons, because Stein wants to feel like he's done something important with his life. This leads to a final showdown with the Soviet equivalent of Firestorm, and poo poo just gets increasingly complicated from there, eventually ending with the revelation that Firestorm was really a magical fire elemental all along. You know what, I'm not explaining right, John Ostander, can you break it down for us?  Huh. That's somehow even more convoluted. Well, gently caress. G.I. Combat Pre-Crisis: Exciting reprints of D.C.'s war comics! Watch as a bunch of dudes kill Nazis forever! gently caress, what is it with DC and Nazis? Post-Crisis: Yeah, it turns out that kids in the '80s didn't really want to plunk down cash for twenty year-old stories about a war that happened forty years ago, and so the book was cancelled. Green Lantern Pre-Crisis: Hal Jordan quit being Green Lantern, because he was hoping to get married to his long-time girlfriend, who was perfect for him, despite occasionally being possessed by an evil monster from outer space. Meanwhile, John Stewart was the new Green Lantern, and had a rockin' mini-afro and a taste for alien women. Guy Gardner then also became a Green Lantern because, hell, what was one more at that point? Post-Crisis: Steve Englehart decides to take Green Lantern in a bold new direction! Instead of space cops flying throughout the universe, a bunch of Green Lanterns decide to headquarter themselves in L.A. and let the villains come to them instead of the other way around. Also, Hal breaks up with his psychotic fiance so that he can start dating a 13 year-old instead because HAL JORDAN DOES NOT LEARN FROM HIS MISTAKES! Also, the world's saddest anthropomorphic chipmunk is introduced. The Crisis blew up Ch'p's home world! He's the only sapient chipmunk left in creation! And he's alone! ALOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONE!  It's adorably tragic! Infinity, Inc. Pre-Crisis: On Earth-2, the children of the Justice Society of America band together to form their own new super-team. Which they also decide to base in Los Angeles, except the Earth-2 version of that city. Holy gently caress, that sounds like an impenetrably complicated premise when you type it like that. Guy 1: So, who are these guys, the kids of the Justice League? Guy 2: No, the Justice Society. Guy 1: Wait, are they the ones with Superman? Guy 2: Actually, both the Justice League and Justice Society have a Superman, at least they did pre-Crisis. Anyway, Infinity, Inc. are the children of the Justice Society, who live on Earth-2. Guy 1: Earth-2? The gently caress is that? Guy 2: It's where the heroes from the '40s live. Any, Infinity, Inc. are their children, who formed their own super-team. Guy 1: And why do I give a poo poo about them? Guy 2: Well...uh...don't you want to read about the greatest super-hero team on Earth-2? Guy 1: Jesus Christ, Smasher, just stop the Super-League if this is what you're going to be doing with it. Post-Crisis: Earth-2 stops existing, leaving Infinity, Inc. with no reason to exist, as they instantly become something like the 6th or 7th most important super-hero team on the post-Crisis Earth. In fact, in the post-Crisis universe, there are two superior super-teams already ensconced in Los Angeles. Also, many of their origin stories no longer make any real sense, especially Fury, both of whose parents no longer exist in post-Crisis continuity, which is not great.6 Oh, and also Todd MacFarlane cut his teeth drawing some issues of this comic, so I guess, in a roundabout way, you can blame it for Spawn too. Jonah Hex Pre-Crisis: For a long, long time, Western comics were one of DC's staples. But the genre had hit hard times in the '80s, and, by 1985, Jonah Hex was the only Western comic still being published, and it was onl being published bimonthly. The comic itself starred Jonah Hex as a scarred ex-Confederate soldier who solved every single one of his problems by shooting it with his gun. Post-Crisis: The book was canceled, and Hex himself was sent off into a post-apocalyptic future where he traversed the irradiated ruins of America, where he solved every single one of his problems by shooting it with his gun until the one day he met a villain he could not simply shoot to death, and its name was low sales. Justice League of America Pre-Crisis: The JLA has decided to go in a different direction. Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern? Who the gently caress cares about them? The JLA needed new heroes for a new era! Heroes like Vibe, a young break-dancing hoodlum from the mean streets of Detroit, whose creation appears to be the result of one writer's deep-seated hatred of the Latino community. Also, this new team's first leader was Aquaman of all people. Anyway, since this team is all about being down to Earth, they move into a bunker in the middle of a lower-class neighborhood in Detroit full of sassy residents and urban blight. Also, break-dancing, so much break-dancing.  In fairness to these racially-insensitive caricatures, knives as pretty whack. Post-Crisis: DC realized just how hosed stupid all that seemed when you typed it out like that, and quietly murdered the book in its sleep. Legion of Super-Heroes Pre-Crisis: One of DC's most reliable midcard books, the Legion were a book about a team of heroes living in the 30th century. The team had about a million members, because, hell, why not? Also, their origin story and most of the stories from the first two decades of the book rely on Superman being Superboy when he was younger. Post-Crisis: Superman was no longer Superboy at any point, so the Legion's continuity no longer made any sense, and things just get worse from there until the entire franchise completely implodes four different times over the next 25 years. New Teen Titans Pre-Crisis: Marv Wolfman and George Perez create the seminal DC comic of the '80s, which is 75% as influential and popular as Chris Claremont's X-Men, which is pretty good, especially for DC. As far as content, it was a super-hero soap opera, as that was a popular style at the time. Because these heroes have feelings, man! They're not just robots, they are real characters, with hopes and dreams! DREAMS!  MONSTERS HAVE FEELINGS TOO! Post-Crisis: Perez left the book, but Wolfman stayed on...for another decade. It soon became clear that Wolfman is out of ideas, and things go downhill. Oh, and despite the fact that Wolfman and Perez are the ones who ended up writing Crisis and the Wonder Woman, respectively, they somehow managed to create a logical inconsistency whereby Wonder Woman's old sidekick, Wonder Girl, a key member of the Titans, now technically started her career something like five years before her mentor...who she also has never met in the new continuity. As you might guess, this caused a few continuity headaches as well. Omega Men Pre-Crisis: Some aliens fight other aliens in space for vague reasons in a series that not a single person under 40 remembers with any great detail. Post-Crisis: I guess it went on for a few more issues and then got cancelled? Sgt. Rock Pre-Crisis: For decades, war comics were a constant presence on newstands. But the sales of these type of comics steadily declining as time went on and, by 1985, Sgt. Rock was the last war comic (at least one producing new stories) standing. Anyway, the stories were all about Sgt. Rock and his Easy Company gunning down Nazis. Scads of 'em. Post-Crisis: Not enough fans to support this kind of title by the mid-80s, so it got canceled a few years later. Superman Pre-Crisis: Superman is an alien born on Krypton, raised by the Kents, both of whom died during his teenage years. He dicked around Smallville as Superboy back when he was a kid, and had a cousin named Kara, who took the name Supergirl. He worked as an anchorman at WGBS, a Metropolis television station, and pining for Lois Lane, who only loved Superman, and not the overly meek Clark Kent, Superman's secret identity. Superman's greatest nemesis was Lex Luthor, a mad scientist who really, really, really hated Superman. Post-Crisis: Superman was born on earth after his birthing matrix, which contained the fetus Superman, was launched in a rocket off Krypton, and, unlike the pre-Crisis version, is the only Kryptonion left. He was never Superboy, but the Kents, who still raised him, are still alive. He doesn't have a cousin. Superman works as a reporter for the Daily Planet, a Metropolis newspaper. Superman still pines for Lois Lane, but eventually decides that enough is enough and reveals his secret identity, which allows him to court, and eventually marry her. Superman's greatest nemesis is Lex Luthor, a super-rich businessman who really, really, really hates Superman.7 Swamp Thing Pre-Crisis: Alan Moore wrote some awesome comics. Post-Crisis: Alan Moore eventually decided to move on to his true passion: being a cantankerous old wizard in England, and DC realized that he was the only person capable of writing Swamp Thing stories that anyone gave a poo poo about, leading them to begin their infamous cloning experiments. Cloning of Alan Moore, I mean. Vigilante Pre-Crisis: Released in the '80s, where urban super-violence starring morally questionable sociopaths was in vogue, to say the least, Vigilante was the story of a man named Adrian Chase, a hotshot D.A., and later judge, whose family was gunned down by criminals, forcing him to become the Vigilante, who was, well, a vigilante. Except, unlike most characters in his situation, he was constantly gripped by self-doubt, and worried that his actions were not morally justified and, even they were, that they were ultimately making no real difference to society. It was a grim, dark comic in a time where that was something unique and interesting, rather than just the DC house style, as it is today. Post-Crisis: The writers decided to turn the grimness up to eleven, systemically breaking the Vigilante down by killing off or otherwise removing basically every friend Adrian Chase had, and eventually forcing him into more and more morally ambiguous territory until, by the last issues, he's gunning down police officers who are trying to arrest him. Chase grows increasingly deranged by these trauma until, in the final issue, he finally breaks down completely and just blows his brains out. FUN!  Hey, don't feel sad, Adrian...    ...it'll all work out in the end! Warlord Pre-Crisis: Capt. Travis Morgan was a hotshot pilot flying his super-jet over the North Pole when it froze up and began to crash. Fortunately, Morgan found a hole in the earth that led him to Skartaris, a fantastic realm that existed on the inside of the Earth's surface. He decided that the only sporting thing to do was to strip down to a loincloth and becoming a shameless Conan knock-off...except with a pistol, which he used to gun down loads of enemies as he was the only man in Skartaris with a gun. It was not a good comic, though it did run forever, 130 issues, to be exact.  This is either the greatest comic panel ever, or the worst. Post-Crisis: Warlord was of DC's Conan knockoffs to die, lasting all the way until 1989. But die it did, and we are all better off for it being gone. Wonder Woman Pre-Crisis: Okay, here's the thing. The guy who created Wonder Woman, William Mouton Marston was a smart motherfucker, even if he did have some unconventional beliefs about bondage. At any rate, he had it written into his contract that DC could retain the rights to the character so long as they continually published a title starring her. If at any point, however, there was not a Wonder Woman book on the market, though, the rights would revert to his estate. Which left DC in an unpleasant situation. True, Wonder Woman was there most prominent and popular female character, and they really couldn't stomach losing the rights to the character but, on the other hand, she did not loving move books. In 1985, Wonder Woman was the lowest selling book DC was producing, and this was not a new state of affairs. For most of its existence, DC had run Wonder Woman as a bi-monthly, figuring that with sales as lovely as they were, trying to sell this book twelve times a year instead of six would just be doubling their losses. By 1985, Wonder Woman was, most months, literally the lowest selling title that DC printed. Which is understandable, because it was a terrible book, written with all of the verve that comes with a perfunctory contractual obligation. Post-Crisis: DC hoped that George Perez could inject some new life into the property because DC had to print the drat comic anyway, and they figured they might as well try to make some money off it. Perez elected to reboot Wonder Woman's continuity, which caused a bunch of continuity problems, but it did give the title the breath of fresh air, though that didn't really last past Perez' tenure on the book. On the plus side, DC did eventually buy out the Marston estate, meaning they are now free to cancel Wonder Woman whenever they want! World's Finest Comics Pre-Crisis: In 1941, DC decided that what the readers really wanted was an ongoing series where Superman and Batman would team up IN EVERY ISSUE! Which led to decades of Superman and Batman being super-best friends forever and, a few decades after that, bloggers making thinly veiled "Superman and Batman are super-gay for each, dudes!" Although, given some of the printed material, that was sometimes a reasonable inference to be made. Post-Crisis: Two problems plagued the book after the Crisis. First of all, in the new continuity, it was made very clear that Superman and Batman were so different from each other in temperament and life experience that there was no way they couldbe super-best friends forever, and so an ongoing team-up comic starring the two just wouldn't work. Second, and more importantly, the sales were poo poo, and the only reason the book had lasted as long as it had was inertia. Conclusion As you can see, the issue with the Crisis is that it did things halfway. Most books carried on as if nothing ever happened, but for a sizeable minority of the ongoing comics, the Crisis ripped them apart. The problem with that is that these comics did not exist in a vaccuum. They all reside in the same shared universe, and have to fit together. So, if none of Superman's old stories are in canon any more, then any time Superman had guest-starred in another comic, that those stories were affected as well, and that led to serious problems down the line, as those books who hadn't initially seemed to have been affected by the Crisis would later find that their previous stories, which they had built their own stack of continuity on, no longer counted, which in and of itself created problems. Now granted, most of those problems only mattered to diehard losers who cared about such continuity issues but, as time went on, and sales numbers continued to fall, those diehards would be all the DC Comics had left... Footnote 1 Thomas has claimed in interviews that before the Crisis was approved, they told him what was going to happen with Earth-2, and said that they wouldn't go through with it unless he signed off, although even Thomas is dubious that they would have let him stop the Crisis from happening. At any rate, Thomas had extracted a promise that he'd still be allowed to use the Earth-2 Superman and Earth-2 Batman despite the fact that eliminating duplicate characters like that was one of the main points of doing the Crisis in the first place. Thomas proposed that while the Earths were certainly merged in 1985, and that, going forward, they would remain merged, and that everyone would remember them as always being merged, it was only their memories that had been retroactively altered by the Crisis and so, in 1942, which happened before the Crisis, there was still an Earth-2, even if no one remembered it, and so he would not have to write any of those characters out of continuity. (At least, this was his explanation in the March 1986 issue of All-Star Squadron). Obviously, that was an unworkable plan, because it was mind-numbingly complicated, and whether or not DC had ever intended to allow Thomas to keep writing about the duplicate characters, they certainly weren't going to sign off on that. 2 Keith Giffen was a iconoclastic creative dynamo in a business ruled by icons and creative stasis. In an industry where, especially at that time, the status quo was all-consuming, Giffen was a man unafraid to take a chance in order to tell a more meaningful story, even if it torched the entire franchise in the process. And, uh, that did occasionally happen under his watch. 3 I'm sure that the story had other salient points I'm leaving out, but here's all you need to know: For over a year, Nocturna was probably the most important character in the comic book besides Batman and Robin. The character has not made a single appearance in any comic book since that storyline ended in 1986. That's how much of a lasting impact she had. 4 It's worth noting that, whatever else it may have done, Crisis did do some good things. A few years before the Crisis, to plug up an inconsistency with Black Canary's character (namely that, up to that point, because on a continuity problem too complicated to explain, the current Black Canary's origin was that her mother, the original Black Canary, had a daughter, but because of magic reasons, the daughter was a blank slate mentally, and was also hidden away in a pocket dimension for decades. Eventually, for reasons even I don't care to look up, the original Black Canary died, but all of her memories got transferred to her daughter, who took up her mantle. It didn't make any loving sense at the time either. 5: It must be said that the "Trial of the Flash" is one of the more plodding and stultifying stories of its era, and that was before it hurdled on towards its ending which involved time travel, astral projection, and the worse defense attorney in human history. 6: In case you're wondering, the way that Roy Thomas, who wrote Infinity, Inc., dealt with this problem was to have Fury mope about her parents not existing for the better part of an issue, and then having a telepath pop in the last few pages of the story and just erase all of her childhood memories. Roy Thomas was a deeply, deeply bitter man. 7 John Byrne was the man tasked with rebooting Superman, and the changes he made were designed to make the character feel a bit fresher. He removed Supergirl and every other surviving Kryptonian from existence because he thought Superman worked better as the true Last Son of Krypton. He kept the Kents alive because there was not dramatically compelling reason for them to be dead. Other writers took that ball and ran with it, eventually marrying off Lois and Superman. Sadly, by the turn of the millennium, a group of writers came to power who had a bizarre and relentless belief that the only 'real' versions of DC characters that had existed where the versions they had read as kids in the '70s and '80s, and started rolling back all of these changes, mainly because it didn't match their version of Superman. So they brought in truckloads of Kryptonians, including Supergirl. The killed Pa Kent dead because, hell, he was dead in 1984, and after the Flashpoint reboot, they even managed to split up Superman and Lois. In the DC world, it goes: Thesis, Anti-Thesis, retcon to bring back Thesis.
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Nov 4, 2013 04:46
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Pick 'em: Divisional Series! Pick the winner, number of games (best-of-five), and score of final game Burma Imperialists vs. Somali Pirates in 3, final game 4-1 Cancun Tornados vs. Rockford Losers in 4, final game 5-3 New World Symphony vs. Fukuoka Finger-Bangers in 3, final game 5-0 South Bolton Eazy W's vs. Walney Rakers in 4, final game 5-2 Pick 'em! Gauntlet round 3 Mercury METSSS New Vegas
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Nov 4, 2013 17:13
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Pick 'em: Divisional Series! Pick the winner, number of games (best-of-five), and score of final game Burma Imperialists vs. Somali Pirates in 4, final game 6-4 Cancun Tornados vs. Rockford Losers in 4, final game 5-2 New World Symphony vs. Fukuoka Finger-Bangers in 5, final game 5-0 South Bolton Eazy W's vs. Walney Rakers in 4, final game 4-2 Pick 'em! Gauntlet round 3 Mercury METSSS New Vegas
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Nov 4, 2013 19:55
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Dynamo League Divisional Series: Cancun Tornados vs. Rockford Losers The following series, scheduled for a best three-out-of-five games, is for a spot in the Dynamo League Championship Series. In addition, if the Losers sweep the Tornados, they will become the new Unified Canadian Heavyweight Champions.  The Cancun Tornados have the momentum of a runaway freight train at the moment. Which, come to think of it, probably isn't a great thing, as runaway trains tend to end up crashing into things at tremendous velocity, causing serious damage in the process. In any event, the Tornados have, for all intents an purposes, won seven straight elimination games to get here, which is impressive. They beat the Losers in three straight games in the last week of regular season and, even more promisingly for them, won the only playoff match-up between these two teams, upsetting the Losers in the divisional round of Super-League VIII. Make no mistake, the Tornados are the heavy underdogs here, and will have to steal at least one game from the Losers in Rockford to advance, but they've got a chance.  Dr. Wagner Memorial Field Cancun, Quintana Roo, Estados Unidos de Mexico Dr. Wagner Memorial Field will host Games 3 and 4 of this playoff series.  The Rockford Losers dominated the regular season, and are best known as the best team to never win a Super-League Championship, despite winning five division titles and two league championships, to go with a large clutch of secondary championships. Still, that's not enough, and the Losers see themselves, rightfully, as the favorites to win it all this time around. The first step to their date with the Macho Men runs through Cancun...  Rockford Municipal Stadium (Vale of Woes) Rockford, Illinois The Vale of Woes will host Games 1, 2 and 5 of this playoff series. Game 1 Don May posted:
Box Score   Game 2 Don May posted:
Box Score   Game 3 Don May posted:
Box Score  
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Nov 5, 2013 00:37
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Way to suck, Tornados!
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Nov 5, 2013 00:50
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If I were forced to choose between some shithole beach in Mexico and loving Rockford, I'd think your chances of getting shot are less in Mexico.
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Nov 5, 2013 00:58
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Tornados offense was bad and Tris Speaker was good The least surprising end for SLXI.
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Nov 5, 2013 01:17
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Hey, CraigK! You're going to post your own obit, are you? Then I'll post your obit before you even get relegated! Owner: CraigK Location: New Vegas, Nevada Other Details: Unimportant I want to make some things very, very clear. 1. By this point, the Super-League has become a total drag to run. It is soul-crushing. It's a constant drain and everyday I am forced to confront the fact that, when it comes right down to it, just about every thread in this entire subforum is less popular than this one. And, at a certain point, you internalize that grim statistic, and start to believe that it's all because you suck at running an LP. 2. CraigK did two things that made me very, very angry with him. First, he made noises about playing kingmaker in the Super-League, selling his players off for nominal sums to other teams to change the balance of power in the league. As he knows, and as anyone who's been around knows, I never allow that poo poo to happen but, every time it does, I usually have to go out of my way to clean that sort of poo poo up, and I don't need the aggravation. 2a. CraigK also made noises about writing his own obit, and I've got to nip that poo poo in the bud. Listen, if it were up to you guys, each of you would be portrayed as super-awesome sociopaths who are smarter and better than everyone else. Which, fine, everyone has a blind spot when it comes to themselves. So, I don't like you guys writing about you or your teams. I'm sure that CraigK's obit would have be fine, but it's a precedent I don't want to set. This thread is terrible enough already. Let's not make it into a morass of self-insert fics any more than we have to, okay? 3. I love the Packers. And when I see Aaron Rodgers jogging back to the locker room because of an injury to his arm? Someone is going to have to pay. In this case, it's CraigK who, for the aforementioned reasons as well as his more general crimes of being CraigK, has been selected to bear this burden. And since I'm still angry, very angry, it's time to burn this motherfucker to the ground. So here's a summary of a 1994 Legion Crossover Event, "End of an Era", because even now, tadashi's filibuster continues! Prologue So, going into this crossover, here's what you need to know: -Years of retcons had made Legion history incomprehensible -The Legion, at this point, had just fought a long war against an evil group known as the Dominators, to free the planet Earth...which promptly exploded shortly thereafter, forcing mankind to move into a series of biodomes they call "New Earth" -Subsequently, several members of the Legion had been framed for several crimes against the state and had become fugitives. -Also, there was now an entire other Legion running around, who were teenaged versions of the main Legion. They were typically known as the "Batch SW6" Legionnaires. No one was sure if they were clones, or if the adult Legion were clones or what. -Time glitches, involving characters suddenly transforming into alternate versions of the themselves, or other characters, without warning, were becoming increasingly common. By which I mean that they were part of the story.  And yes, this is really part one of the story, despite it being labeled as the 'conclusion' on the front cover. That should tell you just how well-crafted this story is going to be. Above the domes of New Earth, a few members of the SW6 Legionnaires1 are trying to contain a maddened Cosmic Boy2. But he's wearing a mask, so the SW6 Legionnaires don't recognize him, and also exposit that SW6!Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl, and Cosmic Boy are all missing as a result of time travel.3 SW6!Star Boy and SW6!Light Lass all wonder who this mysterious stranger who has magnetic powers just like Cosmic Boy used to, and also sounds exactly like Cosmic Boy might be. Eventually, SW6!Element Lad used his powers to vaporize Cosmic Boy's gauntlets and mask, and they discover the truth, which also has the added benefit of bringing Cosmic Boy back to sanity. But wait, Chameleon Boy4 comes up and has some bad news for everyone: Andromeda is dead.5 So, that means it's time for both Legions to head on over to Shanghalla, a planet where the Legion buries their dead. Obviously, SW6!Andromeda is slightly freaked out to be burying her older self. Valor6 gives a speech that basically amounts to "Andromeda was a'ight." Dev-Em7 also gives a speech that boils down, "Bummer." A time bubble then appears, bearing SW6!Invisible Kid and both regular and SW6!Brainiac 5. They explain that they came here by time bubble because time is of the essence. Brainiac 58 first hands a missive off to Valor, who looks at who it's from, and expresses some surprise that this particular person would call him for help. Who is this mysterious person? Well, we'll find out later, and it won't turn out to be particularly important in the grand scheme of things. Anyway, he's off, taking his wife, Shadow Lass, SW6!Andromeda and Dev-Em with him. Everyone else wants to know why these assholes are interrupting a funeral, and SW6!Invisible Kid has pretty good retort "The Death Knell of the Known Universe." SW6!Star Boy and SW6!Dream Girl both laugh off the notion that the entire universe is about to end, and then Rond Vidar, who was Andromeda's husband, breaks out of his grief to loudly exclaim that there is no loving SW6!Star Boy or SW6!Dream Girl, and who the hell are they, anyway?9 The SW6 Legionnaires notice that, yeah, that is an odd development. SW6!Brainiac 5 then notices that a member of the adult Legion, Celeste Rockfish, is now a Darkstar, which hadn't been true just a couple of seconds before.10 Everyone notices that this too is also a huge problem, and ask how this is happening. SW6!Invisible Kid has the scoop, and explains that it's due to all of time and space falling apart. The assembled Legionnaires feel pretty confident that they'll be just fine, and that no crisis, time-related or otherwise is going to be able to defeat their team spirit. Brainiac 5 begs to differ, though, and shows them the statue they erected for Superboy11, asking which of them remember who he is. Half of the team does, and half of the team doesn't, and everyone recognizes that something is terribly wrong. Brainiac 5 explains that, quite literally, the 30th century is being retconned to death, with each continuity change loving things up more and more. And the news gets worse, as SW6!Brainiac 5 and Rond Vidar had taken a trip into the timestream, only to find a black void where the dawn of the 31st century should be, meaning that, quite literally, they have no future. And it's all somehow the Legion's fault, though they aren't sure quite how yet. They've traced the damage in time, and it appears to spring from the moment where the SW6 Legion came into being, leading each Legion to accuse the other of being clones, and thus the problem. Their argument gets interrupted when a bunch of villains burst into existence and start attacking. It turns out this is all just a ruse by Mordru and Glorith, the Legion's two biggest enemies at this point, who needed a distraction for them to spirit away the adult version of Cosmic Boy. Also, Lightning Lord gets killed by Evil!Lightning Lord. He will be missed. Mordru and Glorith have trussed Cosmic Boy up, noting that Cosmic Boy has some sort of destiny that he needs to fulfill although, and so they can't kill him right at that exact moment, because that would be bad for some reason. It will eventually become clear that the reason they can't kill him here is because otherwise there would not be a third act to this story. They then vanish, leaving the Legion confused and angry. But the Legion has an ace up their sleeve! Dawnstar has super-tracking powers, and she'll be able to lead the Legion to rescue Cosmic Boy no matter where Mordru and Glorith have taken him. And then she fades out of existence. Bummer. To be continued!  On New Earth, Valor and his crew are trying to stop New Earth from falling apart. It turns out that the biodomes are just not stable enough in the long-term, and a more permanent solution needs to be found. Also, Valor can no longer remember his own origin story. Inside the dome, the Subs12 are trying to keep domes together. Outside, Valor is distracted because he can't remember how the hell he got from the 20th Century to the 30th Century13, he considers that maybe he was trapped on the Isle of Avalon, or maybe frozen in an iceberg, or maybe he was cursed to sleep by a wicked witch. He gives up trying to figure out, and decides to focus on the more immediate task of saving New Earth, though he realizes that he can't remember how old Earth was destroyed either. It's a problem. At any rate, Valor meets with R.J. Brande, the man who bankrolled the Legion in its early days, and the guy who had called him last issue, because Brande has a plan to fix everything. Brande asks the team where Andromeda is, as she was supposed to have come with them. But she's loving dead, so too bad. Anyway, Brande has some more bad news, New Earth is on the verge of collapse.14 But Brande also has the solution: Pocket Universe Earth!15 All they have to do is go to the Pocket Universe, drag the planet into the regular universe, and the gravity well should stabilize New Earth until they can land the cities on the new new Earth. Valor points out that dragging a planet in from another dimension doesn't seem quite feasible, and Brande counters that there's no time to tow a planet in from Centauri! Anyway, it's a complicated plan, and part one involves embedding the current President of Earth, and former Legionnaire, Tyroc, into a giant machine that will allow Computo, and member of the SW6 Legion, to use Tyroc's sonic powers to open a rift into the Pocket Universe large enough to move a planet through. That works, and Valor's team fly through, finding the Pocket Universe Earth just as dead as they were expecting. Meanwhile, SW6!Andromeda is still bummed that regular Andromeda is dead. In fact, pretty much everyone is in a bad mood, with Color Kid of the Subs explaining that this feels like everything is ending. Elsewhere, Valor and Shadow Lass can't quite remember whether they're married or not. Shadow Lass wonders if that might not be a somewhat more pressing concern, and then Valor starts fading away, saved only by his half-remembered love for Shadow Lass. Still, the heroes put it together, and managed to get the Pocket Universe Earth into the real universe, and the day is saved! ...Except I'm afraid there is some more bad news for everyone. It turns out they've made a fatal miscalculation and the physical laws of the Pocket Universe are just a bit different than those in the real universe. The upshot is that the Pocket Universe Earth is going to explode, destroying New Earth in the process. Everyone is rather bummed at the news. But Brande demands that his allies look on the bright side! Sure, that Pocket Universe Earth is going to explode at some point but, until that happens, it's gravity will stabilize New Earth. And with the Legion on the case, they fix the Pocket Earth explosion problem for sure. Brande then asks Computo to start calculating their next move, except then she and Tyroc fade out of existence. As does everyone else around except for Brande and Shadow Lass, the latter of which Valor saves through the power of true love, again. Brande realizes that poo poo has just got real, and his can-do attitude might not be able to save the day. To be continued!  Cosmic Boy has been taken to Mordru and Glorith's base, and decides to make a run for it. He notices that he still has a little of his magnetic powers left, and runs through some corridors to the exit...which turns out to just be the throne room of Glorith, as time and space are warped here. He is then put into stocks by Mordru, who really wants to just kill Cosmic Boy and get on with it, which Glorith once again cautions him against, since that might screw up time and space worse than it already is. Also, there's still one last piece to their puzzle before they can conquer the universe. Every Legionnaire in existence convenes at their headquarters to discuss the Cosmic Boy situation. Their consensus: He's a cool dude, and they probably don't want him brutally killed by their enemies. They turned the team's magical members together on figuring out where the villainous duo went because, gently caress science, I guess, and they soon learn that they're on the planet Baaldur, Glorith's home base. Also, that Mordru killed a poo poo-ton of other magicians, but, well, that's not exactly rare for him. In other vignettes, SW6!Light Lass and regular Light Lass meet, and they discuss how, because of an earlier skirmish with Glorith, the older Light Lass is rapidly de-aging. In a lab, Brainiac 5, SW6!Invisible Kid and Rond Vidar are noting that the black void in time is heading backwards through the timestream, meaning that in a few hours, reality is going to stop, and that's bad. Catspaw burst in to complain about something, but then she disappears into nothingness, so who cares? SW6!Sun Boy slides into her place and starts complaining that they aren't devoting all of their energies to helping Cosmic Boy, and Brainiac 5 admits that Cosmic Boy's abduction is more important than the imminent end of time itself. Really? I mean, I'm sure Cosmic Boy is a nice enough dude, but if time ends, doesn't it not kind of matter what happens to him? Back on Baaldur, Glorith tells Mordru all about the Infinite Library, a library outside of normal time that contains all knowledge about time travel that was ever learned by anyone. She had recently used it to recharge her powers, and shows off her key to the library to Mordru, when Cosmic Boy notices that it's made of metal, and steals it, quickly using the key to open the portal to the Infinite Library and making his escape. Glorith is unimpressed, noting that Cosmic Boy just trapped himself in a pocket dimension outside of time and space, and that should hold him for now, since, as Glorith attests, there is no escape. Which does raise certain questions about why she wanted to go back there, and how she got out of there in the first place. Shrinking Violet addresses the Legions. They have to find Cosmic Boy and, if there's time left over, stop the universe from collapsing. But, before they figure out exactly how they're going to fix any of that, they get word that Mordru and Glorith are attacking a Science Police base. Why? Because they need a time beacon to summon the last part of their plan. The Legion doesn't much like the sound of that, and so counter-attacks. SW6!Colossal Boy decides to grow giant-size and just trash the beacon to stop it from being used, but Glorith manages to stop him by rapid-aging him into a skeleton, which causes the other Colossal Boy to vanish out of existence as well. Brainiac 5 quickly realizes that there might be a connection there. In the end, the Legion's efforts go for naught, as the Time Beacon summons forth the Infinite Man, another old Legion foe, and the embodiment of the idea that time is cyclical. Infinite Man wants to know who dares summon him, and Glorith and Mordru quickly use their magic to tear apart the Infinite Man and steal his powers. On the plus side, Light Lass's de-aging gets fixed. On the minus, a whole bunch more Legionnaires wink out of existence. Oh, and Glorith and Mordru are now more powerful than ever.  Glorith and Mordru menace the Legion a bit, and they seem basically unable to do much of anything. SW6!Star Boy and regular Star Boy talk it over and agree that they're probably pretty hosed. Brainiac 5 then announces that the pair are now powerful enough to remake the universe itself, and begin doing just that, quickly bending the entire universe to their will. Still, that's not so bad since, as Brainiac 5 notes, the universe is still falling apart, so it's not exactly going to last very long. In fact, if the actually do pull off their latest scheme, the universe will implode exactly 5.8 seconds later. Kono starts yelling at the Brainiacs for being unhelpful in general, but stops existing before she can finish. SW6!Invisible Kid wonders how the gently caress they're going to get out of this one. In the Infinite Library, Cosmic Boy is wondering around, and thinks about how he isn't sure how long he's been there. He finds Glorith's journal, and learns that he's somehow connected to Glorith's greatest enemy, but the journal doesn't name the enemy, because apparently Glorith feels the need to be oblique even in her own personal diary. Back in normal space, the Legion has a new plan. The magicians on the team will channel their powers onto Devlin O'Ryan, who has reflecting powers, who will then reflect that power onto Glorith and Mordru, and hopefully take them out. Meanwhile. the rest of the Legion will run interference. And, unfortunately, that task gets complicated when Glorith summons an evil Legion of her own. In the Infinite Library, Cosmic Boy starts studying the books, looking for some way to fix all of this. Since he's outside of time, and there are plenty of books through which he can magically restore his youth, he has centuries to handle this task. In the 20th Century, SW6!Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl, and Cosmic Boy meet the regular version of Ultra Boy, and then all four are summoned by Superman to deal with the Zero Hour crossover. In the future, the Legion's magic gambit fails when Devlin abruptly ceases to exist, and the Legion continues their inconclusive battle with the evil Legion, which, admittedly, turns out to be a winnable fight, as the SW6! and regular Legions outnumber the evil Legion 2-to-1. Still, that's the end of Timber Wolf, who fades away during the battle as well. The White Witch16 then decides to take a more direct approach, and just blasts at Mordru and Glorith until they are forced to stop trying to remake the universe. And then she fades away, but notes that, after years of being afraid of Mordru, whom she had been in an abusive relationship with, she's finally free of fear, and it's not a terrible way to go out. In the Infinite Library, Cosmic Boy finally finds the exit, only to be greeted by the Legion's most powerful enemy, the Time Trapper.  Valor and Shadow Lass are flying through space, and Valor can't quite remember much of anything, and begins to fade out of existence once more, finding himself distracted by all of the myriad pasts and futures that never were and yet, due to the current instability, are very nearly tangible. He eventually gets saved by an unseen figure. Somewhere else, Cosmic Boy is not happy to see the Time Trapper, but realizes that the Time Trapper could crush him like a bug if he wanted, so decides to talk it out. Time Trapper has a story to tell. You see, untold aeons ago, Time Trapper found the Infinite Library, and recognized that there was a crisis a-brewing that was going to destroy the 30th century. Time Trapper was against that, so he built an Iron Curtain of Time to protect the 30th century, as well as preventing the Legion from traveling into their own future. Cosmic Boy notes that Time Trapper's M.O. has always been to destroy the 30th century, and Time Trapper explains that, back in the day, that wasn't his intention... Back in the universe, Mordru and Glorith and knocking around the Legion, who are both overpowered and beginning to lose their own memories as the timestream becomes increasingly unstable. Suddenly, Superboy busts in to save the day, as he was the one who had saved Valor and Shadow Lass a few pages back, and the momentum begins to shift. Elsewhere, the Time Trapper continues to explain. The Time Trapper wanted to save the Legion, so he created a fork in time, allowing him to create a second Legion, which later would become the SW6 Legion. So, to sum up, neither Legion were clones of the other, they were just temporal duplicates. Unfortunately, that just created more problems... The Legion is still fighting Glorith and Mordru when Valor comes up with a new plan. First, he distracts Glorith with a declaration of love17 just long enough for Superboy to sucker punch her from behind. Valor feels like he should tell Superboy that hitting people from behind isn't usually a good thing, but isn't quite sure where he's going with it, as his memories continue to degrade. The energy Glorith took from the Infinite Man then begins to leak out of her, and Valor absorbs it. Time Trapper is still explaining poo poo. So, he dumped the SW6 Legion into a deep vault in the Time Institute, and then set to work creating a Pocket Universe where they could ride out the coming crisis. But poo poo went terribly wrong, the Pocket Universe was mostly destroyed, and Time Trapper started to go insane. Still, he kept trying to help through whatever way he could, sending allies from the future to help, and shielding the Legion from dangers, and Cosmic Boy protests that none of those things happened, to which the Time Trapper explains that, yeah, that particular history got overwritten at some point. And it turns out that created an extra Legion just made things worse, as it weakened the overall fabric of time, as did all of his other meddling. But Time Trapper pressed on, trying to fix his mistakes, even as poo poo began to snowball. Eventually, he took things to bizarre extremes, culminating in a plot where he essentially manipulated the Legion into destroying him utterly. But again, that only made things worse. Eventually, Time Trapper found himself at the end of time, planning one more comeback, but before he could get to it, he was viciously attacked and flung back in time to the 30th century.18 Valor and Mordru punch each other with infinite power for a while until SW6!Brainiac 5 figures out how to defeat Mordru. They let him take all of the Infinite Man power, which means that his consciousness is infinite, which triggers his claustrophobia, which causes him to rabbit away. Elsewhere, Time Trapper wraps up his story. After getting beaten up in the end of time, he remembered what he was supposed to be doing, and so found Cosmic Boy, who would be able to help him. Time Trapper then reveals his true face, which shocks and frightens Cosmic Boy....but we'll see that next time. The Legionnaires are pretty stoked that they beat Mordru and Glorith, but it turns out that Mordru isn't quite defeated, Saturn Girl just used her powers to force Mordru to teleport himself into the core of a planet. Still, that will contain him unless that planet were ever somehow blown up...which is what's going to happen, since Mordru teleported himself to the Pocket Universe Earth which is due to explode shortly, freeing Mordru once again. In the last fight, though, Shadow Lass was gruesomely injured, and quickly succumbs to her injuries and fades away. In response, Valor decides to just give up, and allows himself to fade away as well, bumming everyone out. But Superboy is still around, and he gives a rousing speech about how the Legion can do anything! And then he fades away as well, and while no can remember who the gently caress he was, they remember it was a pretty good speech!  The remaining members of the Legion land on Pocket Universe Earth trying to figure some way to prevent poo poo from getting worse. Of course, by the time they get there, the planet is already starting to break apart, with it's entire surface beginning to erupt with magma, and they quickly realize that there's not a ton they really can do, especially with most of their heavy hitters no longer existing. SW6!Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl and Cosmic Boy, as well as regular Ultra Boy, arrive back from the past to confirm that all of time is shredding itself to pieces as part of the Zero Hour crossover. SW6!Brainiac 5 points out that, with the way things are heading, none of this really matters, since there's just no way to fix all of it before time itself is going to end. Some of the more optimistic Legionnaires pipe in to say that there has to be some hope left, but they are interrupted by the Time Trapper and Cosmic Boy, who arrives just in time to see his wife, Night Girl, fade away into nothingness. Cosmic Boy feels bad about that, but Time Trapper reminds him that there was no way to stop it, and things are going to get considerably worse before they get better. He then reveals to the Legion that he, their greatest villain, was really an alternate universe version of Cosmic Boy all along. SW6!Ultra Boy doesn't buy it, but, Cosmic Boy shuts that down because they're running out of time. Also, he has some more bad news, and this bad news may be about the worst bad news ever. It turns out that the Legion's timeline simply cannot be saved. It's too damaged by meddling to be fixed. The timestream must be allowed to unravel so that a new timeline can come into being. On the plus side, had they not stopped Glorith and Mordru, even that would not have been possible, so that a minor victory right there. It's a shame that said victory is about to be retroactively erased from history. Anyway, Time Trapper explains that when he split the Legion into their regular and SW6 versions, he broke time, so now the two have to reunite to allow the timeline to finish unraveling properly. Otherwise, it's the end of time for good. SW6!Lightning Lad points out that "erasing history in hopes that a new history will start" is not exactly an ideal plan of action, but Time Trapper insists that it's the only real choice, and, even as he speaks, the universe is beginning to fade into nothingness. SW6!Sun Boy objects on the basis that if what the Time Trapper was saying was true, and both he and Wildfire would have already faded away, as neither has a living counterpart on the other Legion. But Wildfire closes one last plot hole by revealing that he had possessed the dead Sun Boy's body, which I guess makes him the equivalent of Sun Boy? The other Legionnaires try and desperately find some other way out of this, but got nothing. Finally, SW6!Phantom Girl, who herself lacks a counterpart as well, starts to fade, and Time Trapper uses the last of his power to bring the adult version of Phantom Girl to the present, allowing her and the adult Ultra Boy one last reunion.19 With that, time is up, and the Legionnaires start merging with their teenage duplicates to get this show on the road. The Element Lads muse on how they're the last of their kind, and with them gone, their race will truly be extinct. Yeah, and so will the universe. The Shrinking Violets and Light Lasses have one last tender moment, which does remind me that, for whatever reason, DC Comics has now had these characters be openly gay in two versions of continuity, only to erase that continuity from history almost immediately after. Clearly, the only thing that can kill the Legion is continuity problems and lesbians. The Triplicate Lasses and Bouncing Boys are next to go, saying nothing of value, as usual. SW6!Dream Girl laments the fact that her adult counterpart got fat, while adult Star Boy seizes the day by making out with Dream Girl one last time. And then they all rejoin their younger counterparts which, oddly enough, only involves holding hands, and disappear. That just leads the Saturn Girls, Lightning Lads and Cosmic Boys, who founded the Legion in the first place. Lightning Lad points out that everything seems kind of pointless now that their entire existences are about to be erased, and the Time Trapper tries to give an inspirational speech about how, in a way, their legacies as heroes will live on although, in a much more immediate way, they really, really won't. The Time Trapper leaves to perform one last task, ans the Pocket Universe Earth starts coming apart at the seams, and the Legionnaires scramble to avoid falling into the lava. Although, at this point, it's been established that if one counterpart dies, the other dies as well, and since they're just trying to cast themselves into oblivion anyway, it probably doesn't make a huge difference either way. They all say their final farewells before joining hands, and enjoying one last montage of memorable scenes from this continuity before it all fades to white and... ...well, that's it. Footnotes 1For the sake of clarity, I'm going to use the most common name for each character. As there were two different Legions running around by this point, they had switched a lot of the names so that each character could have unique identity but, well, it was kind of mess. Also, I'll be marking the SW6 version of the characters by adding a 'SW6!' to their names. So, SW6!Element Lad would be from that Legion, and Element Lad would be the normal version of the character. 2Cosmic Boy originally had magnetic powers, like all people from his home planet, Braal. But during the Braal-Imsk war, he had lost his natural powers, and had spent most of this volume of Legion powerless. But then he found some gauntlets that allowed him to tap into his powers again, at the cost of his sanity. 3They had been shanghaied into the ongoing Zero Hour crossover, and so were in the 20th century at that point, where there main purpose would be stand around in group scenes and look shocked at the ongoing exposition. 4The SW6!Chameleon Lad had gotten blown to bits about a year prior to this, so this was the regular Chameleon Boy, who had taken the responsibility of leading the SW6 Legionnaires, since he was an adult, and they were all idiot teenagers. 5Andromeda was created as a retcon. In the Pre-Crisis universe, Supergirl had been on a bunch of missions with the Legion, but had been erased from history in the Crisis, so Andromeda was a character who essentially took Supergirl's place in continuity to try and fix everything. So, for example, if some old story had Supergirl punching the moon out of orbit or whatever, the new continuity would have Andromeda doing that. Anyway, the older (yes, there was a SW6! version of Andromeda as well) Andromeda had been killed in the previous issues of Legion of Super-Heroes saving the United Planets Headquarters from a really big bomb planted by a race of dastardly aliens known as the Khunds. 6In pre-Crisis continuity, Valor was known as Mon-El, and was a buddy of Superboy's who had gotten trapped in the future for reasons that mainly have to do with a bad case of lead poisoning. Since Superboy didn't exist in the post-Crisis continuity, Mon-El was renamed as "Valor", and his new backstory was basically space Jesus. 7Yes, another Crisis-related problem. Pre-Crisis, Dev-Em was a legit Kryptonian who had ended up in the 30th century through reasons even I can't quite remember at the moment. Post-Crisis, since DC was cracking down on extraneous Kryptonians, Dev-Em was made a Daxamite (who are essentially the same as Kryptonians, except with a fatal weakness to lead) instead, and eventually ended up going insane. Until a time glitch happened, and Dev-Em went back to sanity. 8Who had been aged to senescence by a super-villain a few issues beforehand, and so was grumpier than usual. 9The idea behind the SW6 Legion is this Legion was a carbon-copy of the Legion taken from a particular point in time. More specifically, a period in the late-60s or so when neither Star Boy or Dream Girl were members of the Legion, and so they shouldn't have been part of the SW6 Legion. And, in fact, they hadn't been until a time glitch in the previous issue of Legionnaires. 10Celeste's powers originally came from being hit by a blast of Green Lantern energy sent from Oa (in this continuity, the Green Lanterns still existed in the 30th century). But, since in a recent issue of Green Lantern, the Guardians had all been killed along with the power source of the Green Lantern Corps, they would no longer exist in the future, so they needed to do one more retcon, making Celeste a Darkstar instead, which were essentially cheap knock-offs of Green Lanterns. 11Technically speaking, this would be the Pocket Universe Superboy, who was the inspiration for the Legion, but had been killed by the Time Trapper, and then written out of continuity entirely a few years later. Meaning he should not have a statue commemorating his life. 12The Legion of Substitute Heroes. The Legion had about two dozen members, but apparently these guys were so terrible that even the Legion didn't want them. So they formed their own team instead. 13At this point in continuity, the original Valor had been accidentally killed by Glorith, destabilizing time, and forcing SW6!Valor to go back in time and take the original Valor, who was technically his younger self's place, in the phantom zone for 1000 years, meaning that, technically speaking, at this point, SW6!Valor and regular Valor were actually the same person, even though Valor was also technically dead. See! Not confusing at all! 14In the original story, Earth had blown up because some toxic waste had been accidentally ignited, starting a slow burn that ended with a planet-shattering explosion. Trying to save as many people as possible, the people of Earth had activated a number of emergency domes that allowed for about a hundred or so cities to blast off from the planet to the safety of space. But those mechanisms were centuries old by the time they were activated, and so are breaking down. 15The Pocket Universe was originally created by the Time Trapper as part of a plan to, actually, I'm not quite clear that Time Trapper had a clear reason for building the Pocket Universe in the original story. Probably just to gently caress the Legion over, I guess. Anyway, Pocket Universe Superboy got killed in the original story and, about a year or so later, Superman went back to the Pocket Universe, which ended with everyone on the planet getting killed thanks to a Pocket Universe General Zod. But that's okay, because it's still a big-rear end rock, even without a biosphere, and the mass of said rock is all they need at the moment. 16Who at this point is actually a teenager half-possessed by the spirit of Amethyst, a B-list hero from the '80s. 17In this continuity, Glorith had an unrequited love for Valor. 18This was part of the Zero Hour crossover. More specifically, Hal Jordan, who had been really depressed, decided to assume godlike power and restart the universe more to his liking. Blasting Time Trapper was part of that plan. 19Phantom Girl was sent back in time a few years previous and had ended up in the 20th century, where she joined the cosmic hero team of that era, L.E.G.I.O.N., and took the code name of Phase. However, since that title was going to continue after Zero Hour while Legion was going to get its continuity rebooted, it was revealed, just a few issues prior in L.E.G.I.O.N., that Phase, despite looking identical to Phantom Girl and having the same powers wasn't really Phantom Girl, so she wouldn't get erased with the continuity purge. After Zero Hour, it was eventually revealed that, in actuality, Phase really was Phantom Girl, or at least one-third of her, since it turned out that the post-Zero Hour Phantom Girl was half-Cargggite, meaning that she had the ability to split into three beings. The moral of this story is....I have no loving idea.
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Nov 5, 2013 07:11
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Yay! I got my obit! And it actually mentioned my team! (sorry bout your dead packers quarterback, Smasher)
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Nov 5, 2013 11:13
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Also I've said multiple time that's they aren't giveaway trades, they'd be traded that both sides agreed were "fair" and lord knows you've vetoed like seven trades of mine that I thought were fair like the multiple desperate attempts to heave Rogers Hornsby onto the Plunder Corn for, uh, I don't even remember what the hell I would have gotten back now
CraigK fucked around with this message at 11:40 on Nov 5, 2013 |
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Nov 5, 2013 11:17
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I really like this thread  Also, having read that entire loving filibuster from Tadashi's obit thru CraigK's, now I actually have backstory for most of the non-anime characters in Salty Bet, so that's something 
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Nov 5, 2013 13:38
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That was probably the most... depressing end to a comic book title I've read about. Geez. "Oh hai, we have gays! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNDDDDDDDDDDDD they're dead." WAY TO SUCK, DC!
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Nov 5, 2013 16:45
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cbx posted:That was probably the most... depressing end to a comic book title I've read about. Geez. "Oh hai, we have gays! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNDDDDDDDDDDDD they're dead." WAY TO SUCK, DC!
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Nov 5, 2013 18:24
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Revenant Threshold posted:It's a fairly common trend, sadly. Also specifically the Legion go through a lot of phases of "this isn't selling as well as we'd like/Forget that poo poo, new awesomeness!/this isn't selling as well as we'd like". Plus of course when you're looking for people to kill to make your latest big epic mean something without actually meaning something, it's not so great to be a character in a series whose recurring theme is "There's a shitload of us and mostly we don't matter!" The problem with the Legion wasn't actually its sales figures, which had been relatively steady at that point in a period where almost every DC Comic was hemorrhaging sales every month. The issue was more that a lot of people at DC just didn't like what Keith Giffen had done to the franchise, and also that the continuity problems were just becoming too much of a bother. Ironically, spiking that the old timeline and starting over did trigger an long-term decline in sales that appears to have ultimately killed the franchise for good.
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Nov 5, 2013 18:59
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Legion of super-heroes is a concept I always wanted to like but couldn't get into. I hear about Brainiac 5 all the time, some of the heroes sound hilarious, and generally I like wacky space adventures, but Legion never made me want to buy it. I also cannot get back how loving ridiculous the chipmunk attempted murder scene is. They all look so sad and the melodrama is leaking out of the page.
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Nov 5, 2013 22:34
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I'm at the Tigers event staff party. Any one want any pics of inside the Tiger Den or Beer Hall? That's baseball related...
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Nov 6, 2013 00:05
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  Results!   The High Rollers rolled a seven!  Comrade, the regime has fallen! Boris Yeltsin has won again! Det. Don Slaught was gunned down in Vegas. His murdered remains at large.             Pick 'em: Gauntlet Round IV! Pick TWO! Haukness Mad Knights Hawk City TWTWs Mercury METSSS New Vegas High Rollers
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Nov 6, 2013 01:10
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prime Arod rolled a 99 but posted a .302 OBP? Willie Mays at .299? Joe Jackson at .256? Yup, sounds about right! I hope the filibuster ends because I'd like to read an honest assessment of what the gently caress is wrong with this team, but whatever. Enjoy feasting on the carcass of the People's Team, you capitalist oligarchs!
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Nov 6, 2013 01:40
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Pick 'em: Gauntlet Round IV! Pick TWO! Haukness Mad Knights Hawk City TWTWs Mercury METSSS New Vegas High Rollers
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Nov 6, 2013 01:48
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You're welcome for my Mo Vaughn GGN :P
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Nov 6, 2013 02:18
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bawfuls posted:prime Arod rolled a 99 but posted a .302 OBP? Willie Mays at .299? Joe Jackson at .256? Willie Mays, A-Rod, and Joe Jackson never preform as well as they should in the Super League. A-Rod and Mays strike out a ton (probably more than they should) and Jackson is a Powerless corner outfielder. That, coupled with King Kelly committing what I assume is a trillion errors at catcher, probably killed your team. Paul Zuvella fucked around with this message at 02:30 on Nov 6, 2013 |
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Nov 6, 2013 02:27
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If it's not too late, could I just make Minnie Minoso my full-time LF instead of platooning with Joe Jackson as per my last roster posting?
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Nov 6, 2013 02:34
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Pick 'em: Gauntlet Round IV! Pick TWO! Haukness Mad Knights New Vegas High Rollers
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Nov 6, 2013 02:35
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cbx posted:Pick 'em: Gauntlet Round IV! Yes, this.
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Nov 6, 2013 02:37
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TWTWs High Rollers
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Nov 6, 2013 02:44
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mks5000 posted:Willie Mays, A-Rod, and Joe Jackson never preform as well as they should in the Super League. A-Rod and Mays strike out a ton (probably more than they should) and Jackson is a Powerless corner outfielder.
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Nov 6, 2013 02:58
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Pick 'em: Gauntlet Round IV! Pick TWO! Haukness Mad Knights Hawk City TWTWs Mercury METSSS New Vegas High Rollers
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Nov 6, 2013 03:26
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bawfuls posted:prime Arod rolled a 99 but posted a .302 OBP? Willie Mays at .299? Joe Jackson at .256? It's all about you, isn't it? What about my need to type 100,000 words about DC Comics? Anyway, as for the Cosmobats, a huge amount of it was luck. The average for BABiP is usually around .300. Of your starters, only A-Rod had a mark better than .300. As for the rest of your players, well, the results were rather ghastly: King Kelly (.289) Orlando Cepeda (.274) Mel Ott (.268) Joe Jackson (.258) Nap Lajoie (.247) Willie Mays (.241) Willie McCovey (.240) Brooks Robinson (.226) So, yeah, that was a huge problem, and one that could not have been controlled or fixed or anything like that. The engine's RNG just decided to take a stand against Marxism, and nothing could be done about it. I will say that McCovey has usually had contact problems in the Super-League, and Mays is often disappointing, but, then again, it's Mays and McCovey, you aren't going to bench them. And really, that explains most of the problems you had on offense. Just a terminal case of bad luck. As for your pitching, your team didn't have a great defense, and that hurt your pitcher's stats a bit, as did Randy Johnson's usual erratic pitching. Still, your pitching was only a bit below league-average, which, given the over rotations in the league, and the fact that you were in the same division as the Coburns, Oranges and Losers, it was about as good as you were going to get. So, what did you screw up? I don't know, the Giants probably weren't a good choice for a feeder team, in that McCovey and Mays chronically underperform in the Super-League. Joe Jackson probably shouldn't have been a starter for your team, seeing as he didn't really have much power to offer, and was bad defensively meaning that, if he got bad luck getting balls into play, as he did this season, he was a black hole of productivity. Similarly, the old Lajoie, once again, needed to hit .300 to have any value, because he had very little power and was a bad fielder to boot, and he didn't provide that. And given that this Lajoie was 38, which is way old for a second baseman, betting on him to be good was probably not a gamble worth taking. I also wonder whether or not Brooks Robinson could hit enough to be a starter in the Super-League. He wasn't a great hitter in real life, and the quality of pitching is better in the Super-League. Granted, he was unlucky to do as badly as he did, but he was never going to be a good hitter in the Super-League. Your bullpen was also too weak to survive, as it only had two good relievers (Soria and Wilhelm), and you saw what happened when you tried to skate by with filler. So, I'm not sure that there were any critical failures in your methodology so much as a few bad decisions and some incredibly bad luck that snowballed into a catastrophe.
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Nov 6, 2013 03:32
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My pick 'em: Rollers and Madknights Pick 'Em Standings: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AvhK1RX1-jWLdEJTRElCeU1zMVpLdWlNeEdVeEVEVmc&usp=drive_web#gid=2 1.) Captain Yesterday, 13 points 2.) FairGame, Grinnblade, TKBomber: 12 points 3.) Blackmongoose and The Goog: 11 points ...really given how many points playoff series can earn people it's entirely too early to say someone has a meaningful advantage. I was doing really lovely until I got the number of games for the Losers and both teams in Gauntlet 3. So get involved if you haven't already; it's winnable. Anyway, Toilet of Sadness is gonna take over for a week or so while I'm on vacation. Thanks, buddy!
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Nov 6, 2013 03:40
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High Rollers A) hit "Sort All" again B) I see that Hornsby was put at second, what ghastly FPCT did he put up there CraigK fucked around with this message at 03:48 on Nov 6, 2013 |
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Nov 6, 2013 03:45
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