Ms. Mesmer

I told you so.

They have an out with Batman, sort of, with him now having been active before Superman. I still don't see how he could have gone through up to 3 Robins and still be an urban legend. The truth is that all of that stuff could have happened, or at least all of the stuff that anyone cares about, but that the time frames for those events, where they were specifically stated, could mostly be shorter, since that's not what really matters about them.

I doubt they'll give any specific amount of time that he's been active, but I'd cringe if they tried to say that it was 5 years or more prior to Superman. It just doesn't make sense in the new continuity.

I was going to say something along the lines of it being a moot point, since he was considerably more powerful by the time of the first test detonations of a working atomic weapon, but I just left it, since we were looking at how various versions of the character would stand up to a nuke.

Warning, 81 year-old Spoiler Alert!

Looking at Hugo Danner's story, though, I would assume that a nuke would have killed the very early version of Superman that seems to be an analog of him, since Danner himself was killed by a lightning bolt.

It was happening in the comics at about the same time, both in the early 1940s. Superman for the first 3 years or so may have been vulnerable enough to be killed by a nuke, but we really don't know. I don't recall anything giving him a significant injury even back then.

Pretty much every incarnation of Superman can take a direct hit from a nuke. Even Byrne-era Superman, about the weakest status quo he's ever had, was specifically stated in the Who's Who entry with input from Byrne to be able to survive a nuclear blast at point-blank range. The only way that I could see for him not to survive is a time like immediately after his return from the Doomsday fight and "death", where he had been effectively-dead, then held in containment and had all of the energy that he was absorbing siphoned away by The Eradicator.

As was mentioned above, Firestorm has survived nukes. One of those during Ostrander's run effectively altered his matrix, replacing Martin Stein (believed dead at the time from cancer moments before the blast) with the Russian hero Pozhar. The new Firestorm immediately absorbed/reversed the nuclear blast.

Sam already filled you in on the story details. I'll just add that it's a mission from Maxwell Christopher in the 40-44 range, and that the implication is that there are more than just the one that you fight.

The thing is that Nemesis automatons were literally always in the realm of stupid-tech. You're first introduced to them in either Issue 0 or Issue 1 content, and among the first examples that you run into are telepathic Rikti automatons that the Rikti apparently can't distinguish from their own kind. That's already about as far out as automatons that can at least mimic the appearance of Demon Summoning, and it's been there from the start.

I'm not handwaving anything. Everyone but the most common minion is using the same exact shoulders. Any move to make a distinction there would require a new piece. I even agree with you that the current Thorn Casters have some definite differences with the Mages that are lacking in all but the Death Mage in the revamp, calling them drastic might be overstating things. I even suggested adding something in the shoulder line to help distinguish them even further, and possibly restoring the back detail that the Death Mage kept, with an update, that the other Boss Mages lost. It's not even a disagreement with you, and it's not a strange tangent, it actually logically follows from your argument.

However, and here's your tangent, there is actually a far more drastic difference in silhouette between the Thorn Casters and the upper-level Mages that they appear with now in the revamp than there is in the old one, it's just that it's in the legs now. Check them out. The old ones are identical, not nearly-identical, but exact matches in form, from the waist down. You can't say that the Agony and Death Mages look like the Thorn Casters from the waist down now. But (here's the part where I bring that tangent back into agreeing with you) I don't think that's enough. It's not where my eye is drawn, and it looks like you made no notice of it, either. Our eyes are drawn to faces, so distinctions above the waist are more noticeable and useful to us in distinguishing between different models. This is why I think that, at the very least, the Agony Mage needs some kind of back piece similar, but possibly a little smaller than, the one the Death Mage has, and that Boss Mages in general could benefit from something more up above the waist.

He has the same shoulders as virtually everyone else in that shot. It looks like only the generic robed Minion doesn't have them. Since they're nearly-ubiquitous, one would assume that only one type of spiky shoulder was made. Perhaps that could be changed to provide something a little more ornate for just the Bosses, not necessarily bigger spikes, but an extension toward the neck and hemline of the robe.

What sets the Death Mage apart is the tall spikes that look like they come out of his back, which is a feature shared by all Boss-class Mages currently. I'm not sure why he gets to keep them and the others don't. Giving them to the other Bosses would help to distinguish them from the Thorn Casters (though only Agony and Death Mages actually spawn with Thorn Casters) and preserve a consistency of appearance across the Boss rank.

Right. I edited mine to agree with you about a shorter hat. I still think the differences in them, aside from that, are pretty minimal, even on Live, and the one new area of obscuring looks like it can't be helped that much, since the new aesthetic is spiky shoulders for all.

Not as much as you might think.

Thorn Caster:


Death Mage:


Currently, the differences between Thorn Casters and Boss class Mages are color scheme and shoulder/face accessories. That hasn't really changed with this revamp. Well, the hats on the Mages are currently a bit taller, too, so maybe a shorter hat is in order to keep the silhouette balance of power.

King of the Hill is an Adult Swim program. While they share a channel, they do not share management, and are considered two networks essentially using a time-share on the same channel for ratings and advertising purposes.

No, he was cleared after Egghead died. He was retired from being a hero at that point. I just wonder about Wasp and the Torch because I don't even recall them interacting during the series.

I wasn't worried about cancellation, since they apparently ordered a second season. A couple of bright spots for the series are out there. Namely that it, along with Brave and the Bold (both reruns) are back on the schedule this week, and that Teletoon is set to premiere Young Justice next month, which probably means that a good chunk of the supposed 26 episodes are done or nearly done. Hopefully, we'll see the remaining episodes starting in November, at the latest. Plus side of that is that the wait might be reduced between seasons 1 and 2.

Edit:This actually got me interested, so I visited Greg Weisman's blog. He confirms that there are now 9 more episodes in the can and ready to air, 3 more in post-production, 4 in production, and one in late-stage pre-production as of August 1. He also confirms that the initial 10 episodes confirmed for season 2 are in various stages of pre-production, and that they have been given the greenlight to begin breakdowns for the next 10, although they have still not been given the order for them as episodes.

That's part of the point. The other part is that if you keep up a VIP subscription, even if you never buy a single point, you will earn rewards three times as fast, since the tokens are given out monthly, and seem to each correspond to a veteran badge and associated rewards, based on the chart from a Ustream chat that is notably linked in this post by Snow Globe.

That means that Freedom will make it easier for a new player to get all of those badges and rewards, though we'll have to see just how many Tier 9 VIP rewards there are, and how fast they cycle through, to see if you can realistically catch up on those.

I'll be doing much the same. It also looks like this set will have better confuse duration enhancement in the IOs themselves, since they don't have the unnecessary (to me) range enhancement in them.

Edit: Looking at the numbers that we see, these appear to enhance the same as a level 50 set, so Schedule A is 26.5% for a dual, 21.2% for a triple and 18.55% for a quad. That's 89.75% Confuse duration (pre-ED) versus the current 74.2% (also pre-ED) of Malaise's Illusions. 66.25% Accuracy versus 74.2%, which is a bit of a loss that I doubt I'll notice. Even for my purposes, which will probably be to skip the proc/Recharge, a very good increase in Recharge of 71.55 versus the anemic 47.7%. 66.25% End Reduction versus 53%. Mostly win on those values, with less than 8% loss in Accuracy on a character who is 95% or better on +4s anyway, unless they have psi defense, and the loss of 15% range enhancement.

I'm so hopeless at formatting stuff to fit on those, so I never bother. When something is really important to me to share, like the link to the first month or so of patch notes I dug up on the Wayback Machine, I sent the link to an active contributor (pretty sure it was StarGeek) to post up and make it fit the style of the others.