505 – For all your interdimensional insurance needs…

Earlier in the week, I posted a geek rant on Facebook, where a few things that had been bouncing around in my head for a while finally broke loose. I shall now reprint and expound on that post thusly:

DOCTOR WHO: Peter Capaldi seems like a great actor, but I just can’t cotton to him as Doctor Who. I am the last person to want anyone to lose a job, but I would really rather see anyone else as Doctor Who right now. Except Hugh Grant. That guy can’t act his way out of a paper bag, IMHO. You can only do ‘vaguely befuddled’ for so long before it gets tiring, Hugh.
DC COMICS: Cyborg was a New Teen Titan, one of my favorite comics growing up in the mid-80s. Cyborg is not, and should not, be a founding member of the Justice League. Vic Stone’s cool and all, but he’s not at the same power level as, say, Superman. Aquaman, maybe, but not Supes.
MARVEL AND DC COMICS (and their parent companies): As a lifelong comics fan, I never thought I’d say this, but… slow down on all the superhero movies, willya? Not that I don’t want to see them – BECAUSE I DO – but the rest of the world that isn’t made up of comics fans are going to get burned out on them like they did with westerns in the 1960s and then where will we be? Also, both publishing companies need to stop trying to deconstruct their characters and make them more “real.” That’s already been done with Watchmen (the graphic novel, not the movie.) Comics don’t need to be gritty and grim all the time: no one wants to see a grim and gritty Ambush Bug, for example.
AQUAMAN: I grew up as a DC kid (later migrating over to Marvel), but I was never a huge fan of the Big Three (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman); instead, I always liked the B-Team heroes, like Green Arrow, Hawkman, Flash, and Aquaman. Arthur Curry doesn’t get enough respect. Sure, he can’t fly, but he has superhuman strength enough to withstand the crushing pressures found at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest point in the ocean (roughly seven MILES below the ocean’s surface). Anyone who can do that, plus breathe underwater, swim fast enough to break the sound barrier and telepathically summon and control all marine life makes him a BAMF in my opinion. Also, all he has to do is summon a bunch of sharks, call up Red Tornado (another favorite of mine) to make a vortex for him and – BOOM – you’ve got yourself a Sharknado! You’re welcome. 🙂

Ok, I think I’m done. 🙂 See you next week!

~Rob

16 Comments

Aquaman and Red Tornado = Sharknado…..I like the concept! Too bad DC wont approach Syfy with THAT idea….

One question for you, Rob……are you familiar with the comic “Ink Pen” by Phil Dunlop? It is in regrinds now, but talk about turning superhero convention on its head! (After reading about Captain Victorious and his nemesis, Negato, one often wonders if Batman and Joker ever had days like some of theirs….)

Rob, did you watch the pre-hiatus Doctor Who? Capaldi doesn’t fit with Matt Smith or David Tennant, but he isn’t far off of Eccleston or some of the old doctors. I think that’s a good thing. The Doctor has been growing more and more ridiculous, and while I loved Matt, I was getting a little tired of everything being peppered with shenanigans.

Most insurance companies are evil. If you have a whole life or universal life policy, you’re paying them to rob you. If you have one of these type policies I recommend surrendering the policy ASAP. Do not, and I mean it, DO NOT cancel the policy. If you do that, they keep anything you may have had in the savings portion of it. To see how badly you’re getting robbed, go to the cost of insurance section. Cost of insurance is 1 unit equals $1,000.00. Multiply the insurance cost by insurance units. Then multiply those units by 1,000 to get dollar amount. As you get older the more your insurance costs and after a certain point your insurance payment isn’t enough to cover the cost. That’s when they take the money out of your attached savings account. Like I stated, Evil.

I completely agree about Cyborg, but not necessarily because of power level (Aquaman would bury him!). The JLA should be founded by the Big 7. They’re an archetypally balanced team, a modern day Round Table, and replacing the Martian Manhunter with Cyborg is just plain silly.

Aquaman is awesome! I always enjoy seeing folks giving the Sea King his due! He’s my favorite superhero, so I’m more than used to how hard a time he gets. On a positive note, if you’re not reading the modern Aquaman book, you really should be. Surprisingly enough, it’s a New 52 book that is actually worth reading. Jeff Parker is doing a great job with Aquaman.

If you’re a fan of the character, you might enjoy checking out The Aquaman Shrine, a very entertaining fan site for the Sea King:
http://www.aquamanshrine.net/

Strangely enough I like the new doctor, but from what I’ve seen the writing just doesn’t seem to match the direction they are trying to go with. Into the Darkness was great and suggests a more gritty direction for the series and then they follow that up with humor and Robin Hood. While that might have been fine with Matt Smith or David Tennant the same can not be said for Peter Capaldi. These breaks in direction feel like the writting staff is just trying to use the ideas they had left when Matt was leaving and are just pushing them out as if nothing has changed.

@Shade

I feel like they’re trying to make the transition from fun but sometimes tough to gritty and tough, and it just isn’t working out for them.

I’m half-tempted to ask if you and Rich Morris (web comic artist from Canada who does Yet Another Fantasy Game Comic and a comic blog with Doctor Who, for those that don’t know) about doing a one-shot crossover. Basically it would just be the David Tenant Doctor popping up to berate Philo about taking his jokes. However, after typing that I realized that would be just stupid and a waste of a crossover.

I’m pretty sure it’s been around the Web a few times by now, but Aquaman’s got some hefty aces up his sleeve…

http://i.stack.imgur.com/x3yDF.jpg

@Martinel: I hadn’t seen this! Excellent.

@Strykor: I actually love Rich’s work and I’ve even bought ad space on his site for YAFGC from time to time. There are times I wish he’d ink in his pencilled work, but I think that if he did, it would rob it of its appeal, IMHO. Cannot speak more highly of it. 🙂

@Adam, @Shade: Agreed. He’s just too grouchy for me. I don’t need wacky slapstick or anything, just not relentlessly grim.

@Adam: My Doctor Who geek cred goes back to the Fourth Doctor, m’friend. Yes, I’m that old. 🙂

@Mike Lewis: My understanding is that term life gets more and more expensive if you keep the policy, but whole and universal life don’t. That is, if you get the policy at age 20, assuming that you’re free of vices and disease, you’re charged a small premium, and if you keep that policy for the rest of your life the premium never goes up. So even if you take up, oh, smoking, or jumping out of perfectly good airplanes, you still pay the same as that 20-year-old you used to be. Note that the older you are when you start your whole or universal policy, the higher your premium will be–but it still won’t go up from that initial amount.

Term policies are good for, oh, the first 10 years of your small business, so that if you die with loans still to pay your grieving widow/er doesn’t have to sell the business to the first shark to come along for pennies on the dollar. You can also get a term policy for when your kids are small so that there’s money to pay for child care and such. But for long-term insurance, get whole or universal, for that lifetime unchanging premium.

I like variable universal life the best, because on top of this feature you get a small amount of each premium check invested in mutual funds for you. Here’s the cool part: The growth on this investment was ruled to be “excess payment of premium” by Congress, so if you live to retirement age you can take this money out AND NOT PAY A PENNY IN TAXES! By law they are just returning your “excess payment of premium” to you.

When I worked for a financial planner, he recommended that his clients buy VUL policies for their minor children (with somebody not-them as beneficiaries–the local hospital, for example–because if the worst happened their being beneficiaries could put them under suspicion of murder) and turn over the policies when the kids were old enough. Congratulations! No matter what happens to you from here on out, you have a policy in place that will take care of your loved ones and the potential for extra money when you retire, all for the cost of about one deluxe pizza per month.

Back on topic: Heeeyy–did I miss the strip where our rubber-faced friend explained what he is to everyone, or–?

@Jenny Islander. True your payment never goes up for those policies, they just take the extra cost of insurance out of your savings in that policy. You can borrow money from the policy at 8% interest to borrow your own money provided you submit the request in writing in a format they approve of. Then in 6 months, if they feel like it, they will let you borrow your own money. This was straight from a policy I had and dropped. If you don’t pay your premium, they will empty the savings portion of your policy to pay it until there is nothing left and the policy lapses.

Basically if you don’t feed your UL or WL policy, it will eat it’s self.

Well, yeah, but OTOH if you hit a bad patch and have to turn off payments for X number of months you can, assuming that there is enough cash built up in the policy to cover the premiums. Try that with a term policy and it just goes poof. Likewise, you can borrow against the cash value of your UL or WL policy, but you can’t do that with term!

Anyway, this is the first time the “let’s put a big city in the middle of the alignment wheel” thing has ever been interesting* and I can’t wait to see how it turns out!

*The only times I’ve seen Sigil used in gameplay have basically been “Well, my character race/class is cooler than your character race/class.” Dueling rules supplements. Yawn,

This city looks like it could be a nexus of reality. All of time and space could potentially come together here.

I wonder if Dhur didn’t actually meet himself on the way in but Philo in disguise.

Shape shifters, changelings in disguise…..

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MeatShield by Rob Chambers

Bi-Weekly D&D-style Fantasy Hijinks!

505 – For all your interdimensional insurance needs…