It's a weekend at home with the kids!



Lucy sees a bug.



Lucy trots about.



Riiiiiiissse, Darth Botis.

Jamie gets Mel ready. He's off to see Star Wars Episode III for the eighth time this week.





The League and Mel take in some sun.

Something for the weekend, courtesy of Doug.

Somethingawful.com investigates comic book character fashion faux pas.

Click here to read.

Hey, kids.... hot tip from your ol' Uncle Ry.

We here at The League know that with the increase in wearable technology that social norms are changing on a month-by-month basis. When we see a person walking down the street talking to themself in a loud voice, seemingly to an invisible person, we no longer assume that the person is crazy. We give them the benefit of the doubt that mayhaps that person is merely on their tiny earpiece to their cell-phone and assume that the person in question is a total jack-ass who doesn't mind loudly sharing his conversations with everyone in a square-block.

BUT...

What is STILL not okay is to use the office-floor bathroom, enter a stall, do your business and simultaneously call your parents to wish them a happy anniversary.

1) You should really plan a more special time of day to call your folks to wish them a happy anniversary
2) I don't need to hear your conversation echoing around the bathroom when I am trying to focus
3) I don't need to participate in the symphony of sounds echoing around the bathroom and ending up on a phone hundreds of miles away when I go to flush

Leaguers... be careful how and when you decide to use your portable phones. The League was caught by surprise this time, but next time this gentleman decides the bathroom is a good place to make a call, we're adding a lot of sounds to our usual bathroom routine.

Some movies which don't take place on Earth or have Earth-people in them which were developed post-Star Wars.

Items like Lord of the Rings and Conan don't count as the material was originally conceived before 1977. Items like Flash Gordon or FarScape don't count as the main character is an earth-people. Movies liek DragonSlayer are suspect as they don't exactly say they DON'T take place on Earth. But submit them and the jury can hash them out.

Here's my very short list:

Dark Crystal
Krull

Come on. Anyone sending in submissions will get an official "Mellie Award".

Oy.

Bravo is running a series of three specials, each an hour long, "counting down" the top 20 super heroes, vixens and villains.

In order to make the show tie into movie stars and whatnot, they seem to have limited their selection to characters who have managed to appear in TV or movies.

They've also got three non-superheroes in their top 7 super heroes.

And Austin Powers is, for some reason, on the list.

Now, I'm not saying that you need a cape or a mask to be a super hero, but the selection seemed to ask that "the character is working for a good greater than him/ herself and have a costume." Which might include Rumsfeld during the Tech-vest days.

I'm going to go ahead and ruin it for all of you and say Superman doesn't win.

The show just has that same sort of vibe of "well, we want to do a show with lots of clips, but they really don't have that mnay different superhero movies, so... Okay. Austin Powers is a superhero, right?"

I don't know. I don't care that much.

But, because it's late, I didn't post yesterday, and I think bravo knows about as much about superheroes as McDonald's knows about healthy dining, I shall put it to you Loyal Leaguers.

Who are your three favorite superheroes? And, if you have time... why DO you have such a huge Aquaman collection?



Hawkman and Atom are easily distracted.

THEY'RE GRRRRRRRREAT!!!!!!

RIP, Thurl Ravenscroft.

Mr. Ravenscroft was the voice of Tony the Tiger from the early 1950's, the voice behind the tune "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch," and numerous other voices from TV, radio and elsewhere.

NPR ran a story last night on Mr. Ravenscroft's passing. Apparently he also was one of the voices singing on the "Pirates of the Caribbean" ride at Disneyland.




You can learn more about Mr. Ravenscroft here.

Spurs win, Suns do not.

Hard fought game, and I think it's fair to say that the Spurs are as good as they've ever been in any incarnation. I'm finally learning to appreciate this Mohammad guy and Barry.

I do think Horry took a flop that resulted in Stoudemire's unwarranted foul, but Spurs were playing so well, they would have bagged this one, anyway.

Not much going on with us here at League HQ.

We realized recently that we'd fallen into a vicious circle in regards to raising Lucy to be a good little dog. We'd leave her outside all day while we were gone, letting her in only to eat and sleep. Then we'd go out and play with her, and try to do some training outside.

This meant that each time we let her into the house, she thought that it was time to eat. And if she didn't eat, she would just run in circles and tear the place up. This, of course, would get her booted back outside. We'd go outside again to play with her, but it was never for enough time.

Realizing we sort of had a wild dog living in our house, we've now been letting Lucy just tear the place up. It does help that she's older now and does seem to at least try to understand what's going on. She's got a long way to go, but I think with a bit of patience, in a few months time she'll be used to being inside for longer durations.

Will she ever quit chasing Jeff the Cat? Only time will tell.

Mel, on the other hand, both loves and is annoyed by Lucy. She tends to hop on him quite a bit, pull on his ears and just sit and bark at him from time to time. And sometimes he seems to really just want some quiet time away from her. Other times he looks positively amused with her. So, you know, it's a family.

Summer is on in Phoenix. We went from below average temperatures all spring to 110 in just a few weeks. I've heard Texas is already cooking, too. So good luck to all of ya'll. Keep an emergency case of Shiner nearby at all times.

I'm watching The Chronicles of RIddick out of the corner of my eye. It's not just Uncle George who likes to write silly space movies.

And what was once the DC Comics homepage has undergone a minor hop in what I think is probably the right direction. My guess is what you'll see there now is just a place holder for things to come.

It's now quite clear that the company is trying very hard to diversify it's audience, and step away from only being a company publishing comics in the world of Superman.

Last month, however, DC stepped away from what should have been a profitable venture into republishing European comics from Humanoids. I assume the partnership was dissolved due to low sales, but haven't heard anything definite. But if it WAS due to low sales, as always, The League has an opinion.

Too much of a good thing.

For years and years and years, Americans have heard how European comics are infintely superior to American comics in structure, writing and art. This is all subjective, but European comics do tend to be handled with an eye toward an adult audience. Unlike American comics where this usually means they've drawn naked ladies (which I assure you, they do in European comics), the content seems to require a greater sense of maturity than, say, Spawn.

I checked out the famous Metabarons series, Technopriests and a few others.

But here's the problem.

I actually LIKE the comics I'm reading already. They're fun. And I already spend probably an unreasoanable amount of money keeping my comic habit going. So when even something really nice looking comes out, I MIGHT check it out. BUT, keep in mind, now that comics are a direct sales item, they're pretty much printed to order.

Each month, as a loyal comic fan, I check a guide to see what I might want which is coming out in three months. I have to then tell my shopkeep what I'll want, and he places the order. So, essentially, I'm buying items without ever getting to hold them in my hand first.

Now, if I'm following a character, or writer, or artist I like, I can KNOW there's a good chance I'll like what I've ordered when it arrives. But my shop keep can't afford to way over order items he has no idea he can sell. So, consequently, my shopkeep might not order any of the Humanoids comics at all if nobody in the shop has been talking about them.

And knowing the crowd in my shop, believe me, they aren't talking about European comics. It's Wolverine or nothing.

So what does DC do?

They flood the market with these things.

They start releasing five or six of these things a month. That's over a hundred bucks a month in material they're suggesting I pick up on top of what I'm already picking up. Now, I'd probably only pick up maybe one or two a month, maybe. But that still adds up over a while.

So if it appears that these comics are only selling a few at a time, well, DC is going to think that nobody wants to even check the comics out. Which isn't and wasn't true.

I would have loved to have always had the option to pick up one or two of these books each month. But I was never going to buy all of them at once, and if they're printing to order... when, exactly, am I going to be able to pick them up?

Anyway, so long DC/ Humanoids relationship. I thought Metabarons was okay.