The Hundred-Eighty-Ninth Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

I don't know if this would work from a scientific standpoint, but damn, is it satisfying to watch Doll Man strangling a tarantula with a length of yarn.

Predator Math!

While posting about AvP's terrible tagline, I realized that I'd never bothered to post anything about one of the movie's most baffling plot points - the drill team.

As the premise is outlined by Lance Henriksen, we learn that the Antarctic temple is 2000ft below the ice. Let's be charitable and assume that's the base of the temple, rather than the top, so the guys don't have to drill an extra hundred feet - it's a big temple, after all. When they arrive at the proposed starting point for their excursion, they discover this-

Someone has already drilled the tunnel for them, using-

Terrible Moments in Taglining: Alien vs Predator

I know this movie is a decade old, but I've got to say, I don't think that tagline's accurate. Let's consider the consequences of either possible victory, shall we?

Option 1 - Predators Win

If the Predators defeat the Aliens, then their 'rite of passage' will be complete, and they will leave, returning in another hundred years or so - next time probably without killing any humans during the ceremony, since there's no reason to believe that humans would coincidentally be in Antarctica again that time.

Also, depending on global warming, Predators will probably swing by every couple of years and kill a few people in a jungle/desert, but they were going to do that no matter what happened in Antarctica.

Option 2 - Aliens Win

Upon killing the Predators, the Aliens would then freeze/starve to death in the Antarctic.

Either way, I can't really see how either one of those results can be described as 'We Lose', assuming the 'we' there refers to humanity.

The Hundred-Eighty-Eighth Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

(Click the Image to Bigify)

I give modern comics a lot of crap for being ultra-violent, but this is seriously a Doll Man story with a bleeding head wound on the first page. The forties were strange.

Jack's Kill List

Back when it was originally on the air, I had a simple test for determining whether a season of 24 was fully successful or not - did Jack kill an average of 1 person per episode, for a total of 24 over the course of the season. Unsurprisingly, no season was ever completely successful - it's an action show, but it's not THAT action-y, but a few of them got close.

It seems that the producers of 24 understood that I wasn't the only one engaging with the show that way, so they included an Easter egg in the first episode of season 9, letting the audience have a look a Jack's list of 'Confirmed Kills'-

Which is a lot of fun, but just amazingly inaccurate for two reasons. First, it's kind of hilarious that whoever was putting the list together just went by the character names from the scripts (or possibly IMDB), so we quickly come face to face with the fact that the majority of the people Jack killed either have first or last names, but generally not both. Would it really have been so hard to make up some additional names for those guys so the screen looked a little better?

Jack Est Retourner

So 24 is back! As one might well imagine, I'm fairly excited about this fact, but not so excited that I can't be bothered to offer some good-natured nitpicking of a couple of the show's weird choices. Specifically, I'd like to discuss how strange it is watching two episodes of 24 back-to-back. Despite the show's premise inviting marathon viewing, actually watching two episodes in a row brings the implausibility of the show's timeline into sharp focus.

Take, for example, the end of the first episode, wherein a hacked drone blew up an joint US/UK convoy in Afghanistan.

The Hundred-Eighty-Seventh Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

Dear writers/artists from 70 years ago - if you're having Dollman fighting animatronic miniatures, then you're not fully realizing the visual potential of having a tiny superpowered crimefighter. This is the visual equivalent of having him trapped in a tiny prison dollhouse.

What? That happened in the same issue?

Oh.

The Hundred-Eighty-Sixth Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

I want to live in a world where a sloop will roll up on a trawler and demand a ransom of fish.

The Hundred-Eighty-Fifth Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

See, that's what separates heroes from the rest of us - reflexes. The guy hasn't even finished plummeting from the top of the lighthouse, and Midnight (the fake Spirit!) is already looking for a villain.

The Hundred-Eighty-Fourth Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

I'm not sure how effective a trap can be if you can clearly see it from the other side of the doorway/portal/hole.

The Hundred-Eighty-Third Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

Is that a rocketboy punching some hillbillies, including a backwoods witch? Yes, it absolutely is. Thank you, the 1940s.

The Hundred-Eighty-Second Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

First off, that's a long reach for a pun, secondly, I have no idea why she's holding up that case. That slip is no more scandalous than her normal dresses.

The Hundred-Eighty-First Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

Was this written by a time-traveler? Is this something they said in America? In the 40s?

The Hundred-Eightieth Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

I resolve to start saying 'Crossed Myself Up' every time I make a mistake. Is it a little late for a New Year's Resolution? Absolutely - but not the Pagan New Year, and who needs self-improvement more than the Pagans?

Adventures in Fake Journalism: Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet

Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet is not a movie about Lizzie Borden. I can't stress that enough. Is it a movie about a young girl who murders her parents with a pair of scissors and a hatchet? Yes. Is her name Mary Hatchet? No. That's just something people call her because of the involvement of a hatchet in her murder spree. She's actually named Mary Mattock, which proves happily coincidental because her daughter later uses a mattock (sometimes called a pickaxe) in a tangentially-related murder spree some years later.

Why have I spent all of this time establishing that this is not a film about Lizzie Borden, despite being clearly inspired by that famous case? The answer follows, in the fake headlines that appear during the film's opening credit sequence: