Mr_Samoa

Yes, the characters were the only ones who thought Bruce was dead - except Tim Drake, who was convinced that Bruce was alive and was able to find evidence that Bruce had left in the past, starting the search for Bruce told in the Time Masters comic.

I like the Mr. E subplot in the sense that a long-running plotline ties the show together well, which is something other Scooby shows have missed. However, I really dislike that Mr. E solves all the mysteries for the kids. It seems like in every episode the only function of the gang is to actually trap the monster, since Mr. E figures out who it is and the villains themselves are the only ones who know their motives. It doesn't make it more of a mystery when you don't tell the audience any relevant clues.

I also miss the old Scooby/Velma dynamic. Didn't he used to jump to her aid just as often as Shaggy's? I know they're setting up a conflict within the group with the "love triangle" (which is odd because even Daphne should have said something about how wrong it is to force Shaggy to choose) but that seems to be one of the bigger changes to then Gang to me.

But I do like the show. I think it was LiquidX who said that all it needs is Red Herring to make an appearance. It's not a faultless show but it's definitely one of the best Scooby shows in a long time.

One day, a friend and I really wanted to play Call of Cthulhu (the RPG system, not the video game, obviously) so we called up our DM and said we'd pick him up in 10 minutes. Having no time to make a new game, he used a premade game that was designed for beginners and, frankly, a little skimpy on the story side. Needless to say, we got a little silly by the end of it.

It started out on a military base; the two PCs were Jow Schmoe soldiers. Drinking in a bar, a mind-controlled soldier busts in and starts shooting up the place. We are unarmed besides combat knives, so we threw our knives (missing), got our knives again (missing), tried hand-to-hand (missing), retried knives (missing), eventually killing the enemy with a dart (like from the bar game) to the thigh after the longest, most humiliating fight scene of my life.

The rest of our rolls stayed the same: terrible. I ended up carrying somewhere in the area of 5 knives, and joked about carrying them in my teeth. For some reason, the DM tried to end the game with the PCs being captured by the FBI and taken away. Unhappy with this, I tried to resist with, of course, my many knives. The DM claimed that, searching me, they took all my knives. I asked if there was any way I could stash one somehow and he replied, sarcastically,

"Only if you hide one up your [butt]."

I stared him in the eyes, calling his sarcastic bluff, and reached for a die. I rolled a 1 (for those who don't know, in Call of Cthulhu 1 is the best, not 20). Surprised at my suddenly good roll, the DM said I had to roll twice; once to get the knife in there and again to not hurt myself doing it. My second roll was a 4, and I had a knife up my butt.

The scene moved to an FBI interrogation room, where the other PC and I were being interviewed by 2 FBI agents. They asked all the questions without giving any answers (besides, we didn't learn any answers they wanted in the game) so I pulled the knife from my private place and leapt across the table onto one guard. Taking my cue, my partner jumped on the other guard and strangled him. Amazingly, we were both rolling very well. Through a continued streak of awesome rolls, we decided to chance that we were underground and headed up - we ended up on a roof about 20 stories up, but we hadn't been immediately followed because of our rolls. On the roof, a camera spotted us so guards began to flood up. My partner had 2 guns (taken from the dead guards) and I wielded a tar spreader I'd found on the roof (basically a giant knife on a long stick). I stood on top of the door leading up to the roof, and as guards came out of the door, I chopped them cleanly with my tar spreader and my partner shot those I missed.

It became clear that the DM had no intention of letting the guards run out, so we opened up a ventilation duct on the roof and tried to use it to work our way down. Unfortunately, our luck started to run out as we dropped two floors, injuring ourselves and making a large bang. Guards below us tried to shoot up into the ducts at us, so we dropped down - into a bathroom. In the bathroom was two guards in stalls and even with the element of surprise, we only managed to kill one before we were incapacitated and dragged off, never to be seen again.

I'm hopeful that we won't get another origin story. I think Superman's origin is well-established enough in popular culture that we can skip it for this movie. Maybe have a few references to Krypton exploding and him coming to Earth if you really have to, but not another whole movie.

Alright, I think I've got a stronger hold on this now. Thanks everyone!

That raises another question, though. What if the character is significantly altered? If I made a Spider-Man comic but his name was John Doe instead of Peter Parker, essentially, is a different character besides for the costume and more or less the same powers. Does that still fall under infringement (assuming still that no money is made)?

Would someone mind clarifying for me exactly how Fair Use works? In particular, how it works in regard to webcomics? It's my understanding that, say, Penny Arcade could introduce Superman or Wolverine or any other copyrighted character as recurring characters if they wanted to, as long as they made no money off of their likenesses or names. So if I wanted to, I could make a whole comic about Spider-Man and put it online as long as I made absolutely no money off of him. Is this true?

Actually, Brittany did a very good Spears, both in voice and appearance.

I agree, I was very surprised with the quality of this episode (especially next to the poor, poor showing from the Simpsons, speaking as a longtime Simpsons fan). I think Family Guy has learned its lessons with being "too silly" and "too serious" (the Brian & Stewie episode being an example of the latter, having been criticized for how completely serious it is). I'm not saying that this is the new norm for the show (though I can dream), but I think every now and then we can get a nice treat like this episode. I admit that I watch FG for cheap, cheap laughs, and I usually get that and nothing more. This was a nice surprise from McFarlane and I hope he is smart enough to keep going when he's hit something good.

History class would certainly be more exciting.

Wow. That was a fantastic episode.

Obviously, what I meant was exactly what you said

Maybe you have the dirty mind

I don't recall anything about The Source creating the universe. The Source is very powerful and it manipulates things, but it can't directly do much. If I remember right, The Source was behind everything in Infinite Crisis with the whole multiversal thing that went down. But it wasn't powerful enough to just do it (yes, because it was weakened and trying to heal itself, but still).

Besides the established Abrahamic God in DCU (as noted, Spectre and Zauriel, among others, more or less confirm that), the DCU is anthropomorphic. Remember the "hand" at the beginning of creation that Krona saw when he looked back, creating the universe? In the JLA/Avengers crossover (actually considered canon I believe, as events within are directly referenced several times later), it is shown that both DC and Marvel's universes are "beings" of some kind who fall in love with each other and begin to "merge", if you catch my drift. So that's something to consider, too.

P.S., Superman didn't create the universe in Final Crisis. He wished for "a happy ending" and wiped out Darksied's badness.

I'm in the camp that says Bruce should have actually died, and Dick should be Batman. But I accept that killing Bruce takes a lot of balls, so I accepted his return as long as Dick stayed Batman. Batman, Inc... kind of gives me my wish. I think the concept of Bruce expanding the bat-brand isn't in itself a bad idea, however, I think there should only ever be one Batman. Dick should remain Batman, and Bruce can travel and train others and allow them to use the logo, but there should only be one actual Batman.

I agree that there has been some convoluted failures in recent Batbooks (notably Jason Todd), but I am honestly enjoying the stories now than most in the last few years. Morrison isn't a writer for everyone. He balances his stories upon small, obscure references or his own previous stories. Not everyone wants to have read and fully digested Seven Soliders (basically impossible to do, anyway...) to understand Final Crisis. I know FC made no sense to me when I first read it. But when you really get into it and you can follow him, Morrison is a man who understands what he's writing. I'm not saying "if you don't get it, too bad." It's a bad thing that he's not accessible to everyone all the time. But Morrison does hit a sweet spot sometimes, like in Batman & Robin. If you're a Batfan and aren't reading Batman & Robin, you're making a mistake. Final Crisis was kind of... out there. But Batman RIP and the follow-up to that in Batman & Robin have been stellar. It's kind of a roundabout way to say it, but I'm going to trust Morrison a little longer to make Batman, Inc a classic story.

Gotham's actually a pretty nice city. Problem is, we're only shown the crappy parts because we follow Batman, who only travels to nice areas on occasion.

As for No Man's Land, while it was abruptly dropped from 'destroyed hellhole' to 'awesome city', the events in the books are still referenced as pivotal moments. Why, just this week Harley Quinn talked about what happened to her and what happened to Ivy during NML (Gotham City Sirens). Plus, some areas of Gotham are still destroyed. It's kind of a cop-out, yes, but it could be said that the main area of New Gotham was quickly rebuilt, with rebuilding going on sort of in the backround over the years. Eventually, support for the projects died out and some areas on the fringes of Gotham still look like the earthquake was ten days, not years, ago.

Okay. I knew most of that but I wished too hard for Caboose and I forgot it. RvB has gotten confusing with all the Freelancer/AI stuff.

Correct me if I'm wrong but does anyone else think SPOILERS


That Caboose is Alpha?

Could be worse, all things considered.

Don"t get Inception?

The characters don't either.