Once again I take advantage of the fact that our K-Mart seems to have only old stock of some things when I luck up and score the 3-pack with Lex Luthor, Copperhead and Mirror Master. I already had the single pack versions of Lex (the lime-green flavor) and Copperhead but this pack gives me the more accurate version of Lex and a Copperhead with a better paint job. I mostly got it for Mirror Master because this toy line is too scalperlicious to even hope that I’d see a single pack Mirror Master.

Hitting Toys R Us pays off with with two Cobras (a.k.a. Cobra Troopers) and my 2nd Red Ninja. I feel lucky here because I’ve heard nothing but horror stories about people trying to collect the new G.I.JOE 25th Anniversary line. Most involve people not being able to find them or finding out that some chumpcakes buy them all up to sell on eBay. It feels good to be rewarded for not running to the online stores where these things are selling with an insane price mark-up.

First of all, I just finished watching a movie that I’ve wanted to see for about 15 years now. From Shaw Studios comes the One-Armed Swordsman starring Jimmy Wang Yu and directed by legendary Chang Cheh. I’ll devote a whole post to this movie at one point, but I just want to say that everyone involved with this ‘Dragon Dynasty’ version of bringing over Celestial’s HK remasters deserve a pat on the back. Not only do you get the movie, a Chang Cheh documentary featurette, a Jimmy Wang Yu interview and 2 trailers for the movie and long trailers for other Shaw Bros. movies (trailers that are better than some whole movies), you get a $3 coupon for another title in the series. An added bonus for me is finally seeing the words “Shaw Scope” correctly centered. Needless to say, I’ll have to make a snapshot of that.

Only picked up two comics: the All-New Flash #13 and the Brave and the Bold #4. Enjoyed both, but I have to admit that I’m glad that they’re going back to the old Flash numbering with new Flash flavor. Finally got the last two short boxes that I need to replace the long ones so it’ll be easier to store my comics. Bad side: I have so many Flash comics that they’re now separated into two short boxes. Dammit. With Mark Waid returning to write the Flash, I’ll have to buy another short box.

Rolled with Raijin and Melinda to Splitstone Video only to be ambushed by a big sale. They had hundreds of VHS tapes for ten cents each. I’m trying to avoid VHS due to space/pack rat issues, but they had tapes that I had to get. Example: Thompson’s Last Run starring Robert Mitchum and Wilford Brimley. How the hell do you pass that up? It’s simple: you don’t. All in all, 16 tapes with 4 being gifts for other people. Picked up a used copy of the PS2 Van Helsing game for my mother only to find out that she has it already. Then we hit newly opened GameStop and I got a used copy of Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, a game that I only heard good things about long after it wasn’t in stores around here. Of course, they also had Taito Legends 2, the first time I’ve seen that GameStop exclusvie in one of their actual stores.

This week’s haul is A LOT bigger than normal because a lot of it was bought a week earlier but arrived this week. It also made up for last week since I spent the weekend in the house trying to recover from a week of dramatic jackassery. Since I was too lazy to take any pictures, I’m going to post this picture of Bat-Hulk laughing like a goon looney. Because he is. Yeah, I scanned that from the Metamorpho Showcase TPB and colored it according to a scan posted on the Comic Treadmill.

T-Shirts: My mother surprised me with two birthday gifts: A Transformers shirt with Optimus Prime and another with Speed Racer. Beautiful stuff.

Comics: the All New Atom #12 (great issue as usual filled with Gail Simone funhappytimes) and Essential Two-in-One starring the Thing vol. 2 (which I guess is filled with Thing-ness). Got two short comic book storage boxes to replace the long box that had Capt. America and Avengers comics in ‘em. After having eight heavy long boxes, I’ve finally got it down to one last long box.

DVDs: Batman and Batman Returns were bought for 50% on Amazon during their big Warner Bros. sale. I’ll add my old barebones Batman Returns DVD to the trade pile to make a lil’ bit of that money back. Today I picked up a DVD double features with 9 Deaths of the Ninja and some other Kosugi-less flick then a disc with Saturn video’s “best” Kung-Fu fights for less than $8 total thanks to Splitstone Entertainment.

Lego: First, the BrickLink order I made came in. For the most part, it was full of parts for that building front that I’m working on as a background for minifigs. I’ll post pics once I get the upgrade done. Then Raijin shows up and gives a gift of the Robo Raptor and this Castle set. that he found cheap at a garage sale. Damn! To top it all off, we stopped a K-Mart hoping that there was another Rogue Knight Battleship on clearance for $8. Nope. It was $2 dollars. Hell, this minifigure from the set probably runs more than that on Bricklink! Lots of nice parts in this set including some nice armor and weapons.

That’s it for this post. Time to watch some flicks and get to work on some random character headshots.

First of all, it was Free Comic Book day today. Of course, I missed the comic that I wanted the most: A Bob Burden Gumby comic. GUMBY, DAMMIT!. Yeah, I know that was expected, but there was no other way to describe my pain. To sooth the soul-ache was the Slott/Jiminez Spider-Man comic. Aw, man. It was Spider-Man being the funster while juggling the responsibility of fighting crime and letting his loved ones know that he cares. Oh, and there’s a surprise new superhero and one of my favorite new Marvel villains in YEARS. As much as I’m not really feeling the Marvel Universe right now, I’d start checking out Spidey if Dan Slott were the new writer. I also picked up Kirkman’s Werewolf book & the Tokyo Pop book, but haven’t had time to read them yet. For paying books, I bought the Avengers:Kree-Skrull War TPB and the Atom. What I loved about that issue of the Atom was how I didn’t really see that ending coming even though a re-reading of the situation hinted towards it. The new Atom is one of the few recent “legacy characters” that I enjoy and it’s all Gail Simone’s fault. The woman has liquid win running through her veins and I’m glad that she’s staying on the title to give the new hero a fighting chance.

The star of the week for me? What else? The final issue of 52. While I don’t like some of the series’ aftermath (a perfectly fine character as is + a perfectly fine character as is = unneccessary legacy = whatever, man), I loved the series all the way through. Even better: the ending made some other readers heads hurt. Do you know how fun it was to read comic book message board threads with people crying about how fiction made their head hurt? If you read fiction and the things that you assume about the fictional developments within make your head hurt, guess what? You earned that headache and I hope it made you cry. Me? I can’t wait to see what shades of crazy roll out of this. Oh, and Booster Gold is now the man.

The two unexpected items of the day were both used VHS tapes and a DVD. The first was one that Raijin Z alerted me to: a used copy of the Ninja Gaiden anime. Sure, it’s on YouTube.com somewhere. So? I have it on tape now. The second was the real shocker: a promo video for Busta Rhyme’s ‘Gimme Some More‘ video by Hype Williams. I haven’t watched it yet, but the package says that it came free with the Extinction Level Event album. MTV had something to do with it because their logo is on the box. Man, I miss the old, crazy Busta videos like that. The final item was Pee-Wee Herman’s Christmas special. Any show with Grace Jones singing a Christmas song while Frankie and Annette are forced to make Christmas decorations is pure magic.

I got a Bricklink order in the mail that included stuff to improve that building background I’m slowly working on, blue round open-ended bricks (and wait until you see what THAT’S for) and other random parts. From Toys ‘R Us, I got The Imperial Landing Craft set with a $5 off coupon. I didn’t even build the set. I’m still in the middle of separating all the parts into various baggies with a few parts going right into stuff that I’m working on now. In fact, that set gave me two grey tiles that I needed for that building backdrop’s sidewalk. Now I have 5 Stormtroopers which is good enough for any crowd scenes I need to do at this point. This was the biggest set that I’ve ever bought myself and I only bought it because I had a coupon. If I had more money, I probably would’ve gotten one of the bigger Batman sets. If my batteries don’t fully die, I’ll take some more Lego pics this week.

At Splitstone Entertainment in Hermitage, PA, Raijin spotted the mighty Street Fighter Alpha 2 guide by Versus Books and, well, there was no way I could pass that up. More than a collection of tips and combo instructions, it’s packed with official Capcom artwork including the line drawings of some sprites, in-game portraits and cinema scenes. I’m pretty sure this is the same book that I saw once at Babbage’s and said, “I’ll get this one next time.” only for the next time to be about a decade later. It’s worth the wait for the artwork alone. Despite being warned against it, I also picked up the live-action version of Double Dragon on DVD just so I can properly review it for ScrollBoss. While it completely fails as an adaptation of the game, it’s a cute movie for kids that were probably digging TMNT at the time. It’s almost like they were going for a TMNT movie vibe with it. Plus, it has Alyssa Milano in shorts. Besides, nothing is as bad as House of the Dead.

Didn’t hit the comic shop last week, so I did so this one.

52 (weeks 42 and 42) - Damn, Sir Chomps-a-lot.

Green Lantern - while I think everyone knew where that character was headed, I dug the issue. Pages 2 and 3 were a hoot, though. Anyone who thought that the series was going to be Hal going back to business as usual was mistaken as quite a bit of each story features Hal having to deal with his mistakes. Hmmm, methinks that Geoff Johns cat is up to something sneaky. I’ll just “Wait and see” with that.

the Brave and the Bold #1 - I haven’t read it yet, but it’s written by Mark Waid and drawn by George Perez. Somehow, I think I’m going to like it.

Essential Ms. Marvel - I just finished Essential Godzilla and this came out just in time for me. I’m not digging much of the current Marvel stuff, but they’re still getting crazy money from me with Essentials.

Also, K-B Toy stores everywhere seem to be getting Marvel Legends Showdown figures in at crazy, low prices and even include the new figures. Picked up Reed vs. Mole Man, Colossus vs. Magneto and the surprisingly good Green Goblin. I was hoping that Hasbro would pick up this line and continue it with their insane knowledge of making good, small figures. Oh well. I’m just hoping to get who I want without having to resort to the internet. I’m not in the mood to get price gouged for this stuff.

What a horrible week for a curse. I’m not going to start whining about what a week it was, but I’ll just say that it wore me out and left me needing to catch up on some sleep. I haven’t done that yet, but I’ll get around to it.

I bought more stuff this paycheck than I have in quite a while. While hanging out Raijin and Melanie, it was one of those “lucky find” days. From Splitstone Entertainment (my official favorite used game/movie store on Earth) I found one of those el cheapo 10 pack of martial arts flicks that became a must-buy after seeing it included Seven Blows of the Dragon. After watching 1.5 of the others in that collection, I’m starting ot regret this one a bit. Not horrible but not special, either. I also found an episode from the DiC era of G.I.JOE. It’s the Chunnel episode, the one that most people seem to find for some odd reason. To top it all off, I found a RockVideo monthly “Rap” tape that has Gangstarr’s Mass Appeal from this week’s Funky Friday. On the way back we hit up GameCrazy’s 3-for-$10 deal where I got Run Saber for SNES (an old fave of mine that I sold during hard times long ago), Namco Museum 3 (which I needed for a ScrollBoss feature anyway) and Mega Bomberman for the Sega Genesis. I also picked up the Essential Godzilla trade paperback from the comic shop, but I’ll talk about that another day. Right now, I have more entertainment than I know what to do with.

Things that I got this week:

Raw vs. Smackdown 2006 - That’s right, 2006. The old one. It was on sale at Wal-Mart for $10, so I stopped resisting. In a rare bit of good timing, I passed it up over a week ago when it was $19. It takes a bit of getting used to since I hadn’t really played a wrestling game since Smackdown 2 for the original Playstation. As a Create-A-Wrestler addict, I love that feature in this game. The number of chinese characters/kanji in this game is so deep that I was able to make Guy from Final Fight complete with his Bushin uniform symbols. Very fun indeed. I’m glad that I have this one since I’ve heard… things about the brand-new 2007 edition. Besides the mention that elements have been removed from the CAW mode (Boo!), there’s supposedly an incident in season mode that’s… eh, I’ll post it if I find a video. I’m sure you people have seen it already.

52: Week 36 - Again, a great issue of a series that I’ve dug from the start. One thing that everybody was expecting to happen went down, one thing that a lot of people thought happened last issue turns out to not have happened and one long awaited finally upgrades from oft-mentioned to proving that he’d be pretty good at tag. Oh, and Adam Hughes draws Power Girl’s origin. Awww yeah.

Then I hit the El Cheapo bin at the comic shop and found some fun stuff.

Alpha Flight vol.1 #12 - You know, if I had read this right when it came out, I’d never had seen that ending coming. Unlike most comics with covers hinting at a death, this one doesn’t suck. Good character play and action all the way through.

Master of Kung-Fu #82 and #88 - I remember the fact that I read the series as a kid without actually remembering what happened in it. Reading these reminded me that what little skill I have with drawing fight scenes with flow has to be partially influenced by Mike Zeck. You can tell that the movement in each panel was well thought out to “chain together” into a fluid action scene.

Speedball the Masked Marvel #1 & #2 - I’ve only read the first issue, but the book instantly sets up a classic Marvel dilemma for hero Robbie Baldwin where he has little control over his powers. For extra spice, his parents are split in their opinion of the new, mysterious costumed characer running around their town. You know, if you follow that kid’s characterization, you get a partial glimpse at how comics have changed since 1988. I may have to devote a post to that one day.

There’ll probably be a bigger haul this upcoming weekend since I won’t be damn-near-broke. Until then, I’ll be working on some new character profile artwork and unlocking more RvsS 2006 goodies.