Who is the greatest Marvel character?

(That’s a rhetorical question.)

Sorta depends on how you define “greatest.” Is it the character with the most appearances in print, or the best stories told about him/her? Is it the one who’s made the deepest penetration into the popular culture at large? Is it the character with the coolest powers, or the most interesting personality, or the strongest supporting cast?

For me, the greatest Marvel character is the one who best epitomizes exactly what the Marvel style of storytelling and characterization is all about. That character is Thanos.

That’s right–Thanos.
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I’ll tell you a little secret - I love packaging. Even shipping boxes, like these Play-Doh cartons, that have a certain amount of design… I just love it. Just the thought of a box, or maybe thousands of boxes of mint toys and products and my brain is happy.

Play-Doh, Cincinnati
Originally uploaded by bayswater97.

I’ve done this before and you probably have, too. When someone professes to dislike a piece of entertainment that you happen to enjoy quite muchly, you come up for some excuse specific to the disliker that explains their dislike. For example, I’ve heard that I do not like The Phantom Menace not because it’s shitty, but because it’s “a kids’ movie.” Similarly, when a friend and I professed our general hatred for Into the Wild, we were told by various people that we did not enjoy it because 1) we’re too young! and 2) we’re girls and 3) we hate camping.

I’m having kind of a similar thing with Speed Racer. A lot of folks in the geekscape have come out heavily for this movie, rallying against the mean ol’ critics who didn’t get it.

Dudes, dudettes, fellow geekly brothers and sisters, I’m sorry, but Speed Racer was SO FUCKING BORING.

And here are a few rationales folks might offer for me not liking it.
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I ran across this while channel surfing on the weekend - if you can sit through the Country, there is a Shatner reward. Also a smidge of Jason Alexander.

Also, Bill was on the Adam Corolla show - grab the podcast file while you can.

Just for you, Matt!

No, really. He’s my hero.
I remember seeing the old Talk Soup show years back, but hadn’t seen it since it morphed into The Soup. And the hilarious cynicism of McHale just sells it. Plus, as the show says, he watches all the crap so I don’t have to! Or, his staff of writers does, but his Eddie Izzard pantomiming just nails it. Plus, their nerdy post-commercial pie chart this week made me the happys.

I remember an afternoon at my first job when I discovered the Dysfunctional Family Circus, a notorious early net project in which Family Circus strips were scanned and recaptioned in the most surreal, offensive, and hilarious manner imaginable.

I seriously spent hours (while at WORK, mind you, being paid poorly to attend) getting lost in the site–I had to read them all, that day, immediately. I laughed myself to tears in silence.

I had a similar experience more recently with Achewood. Busy as hell, totally uninterested in webcomics beyond Penny Arcade, and then out of nowhere–WHAM. I read about it over at J. Caleb Mozzocco’s site (if he was late to the party when he wrote about it, I’m SUPER FUCKING LATE myself). I started reading, and I never stopped. Hours upon days lost to reading and laughing myself to tears. In silence.

That’s the kind of experience Achewood is, to me–solitary, unique, and sort of astonishing.
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Anybody that gets Spike TV, but isn’t interested in Ultimate Fighting, may finally have a use for it - tonight on Game Trailers TV, they’re showing exclusive first look footage of Gears of War 2 and more importantly, the Ghostbusters video game. Hell, I may even live blog it. Just so I can say I live-blogged once.

This week’s episode of The Sound of Young America podcast has Mark Evanier in the studio to talk about his new book Kirby: King of Comics. This is a double threat, as you should already be listening to TSoYA anyhow, and any chance to learn a bit more about Jack Kirby is always a good investment. Check it out.

That’s right! That thing we did? That really cool thing? We’re gonna do it again.

The first issue of Grok, our PDF ‘zine, was packed with awesomeness and the second outing should be no different. Therefore, we need clever people such as yourselves to contribute.

To reiterate the basic mission statement: we want an electronic magazine dedicated to sharing stories, examinations, and opinions of geek culture. That means stuff like fun essays, fiction and the like focusing on the nerd experience. For further explanation, wander your little eyeballs to the sidebar on the right. And for examples of the kinds of ideas we’re looking for, peruse the dang issue.

Each issue also has a theme — #1 was pon farr. For #2, it’s all about…SECRET ORIGINS.

(Insert spine-tingling music and/or whooshy Lost flashback sound effect here!)

Also, this time, we’re also looking for artists to contribute. Otherwise, we’ll just be including more photos of Matt drinking from the punchbowl. No, seriously.

So what’s next? Well, if you’ve got something you want to write (or draw/paint/composite), drop a line to fangirl@earthlink.net. We’ll pool these ideas together and let you know if it’s a go (this is mostly just to make sure we don’t end up with a bunch of same-y articles/stories). Copy deadline is June 9 and the issue will be out in July. It should be released before that OTHER big thing that happens in July and will surely make great plane or between-panels reading material.