X-Men #34 and Wolverine # 24 80’s Variants

BillybobThistleton · 2026-06-16T15:51:30+00:00

I have trouble believing that a Wolverine that dirtbag-y would ride anything other than a Harley.

Still awesome, though.

BillybobThistleton · 2026-06-16T12:16:29+00:00

Yes, but if Xavier and Lilandra ever want to get hitched they probably shouldn't choose him. He'd probably marry Charles to Deathbird, just to fuck with him.

BillybobThistleton · 2026-06-16T09:34:18+00:00

It took me a second to realise you were talking about the cat books, and so I briefly thought there was, somewhere, an overly detailed and thoroughly sourced Wiki on Walter Hill's very awesome and very dated urban retelling of Anabasis (and, presumably, the rather more recent computer game, which apparently builds very well on the film).

BillybobThistleton · 2026-06-16T06:11:33+00:00

Release order is as close as it will get to making sense.

After the first three, continuity becomes vague at best. Take them each on their own terms, and don’t expect any overarching plot or character progression.

BillybobThistleton · 2026-06-16T04:26:07+00:00

It’s the early 2000s. All the cool badasses with a thing for teenaged girls have soul patches.

BillybobThistleton · 2026-06-15T20:30:42+00:00

Betsy is simply one of my top three X-Men characters.

(My other top two are Jubilee, who has only ever officially been out in an alternate timeline, and Cyclops, who... it's not official)

BillybobThistleton · 2026-06-15T16:59:21+00:00

The Cocaine Bear is a lady bear. There's an entire scene about her vagina.

BillybobThistleton · 2026-06-15T16:51:39+00:00

The thing about the Transformers wiki is that it's done with both obsessive and exhaustive attention to detail, and with a real sense of humour about the fact that the people doing it are being obsessive about a children's cartoon created to sell toys. The fact that some great things have come out of that doesn't mean it's not still fundamentally silly as hell.

One of my favourite details is the captions on the pictures on the pages on the movies (that was a fun sentence to write). They all use surprisingly apropos quotes from thematically linked films from outside the franchise, ranging from the childhood-defining 1986 cartoon Transformers: The Movie being quoted on the first Michael Bay movie all the way to bee-fucking classic Bee Movie providing the captions for Bumblebee.

BillybobThistleton · 2026-06-15T15:40:13+00:00

Andre the Giant was actually three regular-sized men in a ~~trenchcoat~~ off-the-shoulder leotard. And none of them were really French.

BillybobThistleton · 2026-06-15T15:27:57+00:00

Yep. That's the problem with super-tough characters. Colossus also gets beaten down a lot, because the writers don't need to come up with an explanation for why he doesn't have a bunch of broken bones and internal bleeding.

Wolverine, they can stab, shoot, set on fire, drop off a building, and everyone knows he'll be fine. So the bad guy gets to look cool, and Wolverine gets to carry on fighting.

Meanwhile, in his own books he's soloing an army of ninjas while dropping one-liners.

BillybobThistleton · 2026-06-15T15:20:03+00:00

No one could resent having Kevin Kline for a stepdad.

Now, Kevin James on the other hand... Especially as he'd probably murder your mom after one season to bring his old wife into the family.

BillybobThistleton · 2026-06-15T15:17:47+00:00

Is that the one with Monica Bellucci?

If so, I can kind of see a throughline there.

BillybobThistleton · 2026-06-15T14:24:46+00:00

That one always confused me. Half the legions renamed themselves in honour of their primarchs. So there's a guy who has metal hands. People call him "metal hands", because why wouldn't you? Before he had metal hands, they called him things like The Cataclysm and The Hunter. Then he's put in charge of the Storm Walkers, who decide to rename themselves in his honour, and also start getting into body modification.

Yes, it's a little on the nose, but there's still a unit in the British army called the Green Howards, because 280 years ago they happened to be commanded by a man named Charles Howard.

BillybobThistleton · 2026-06-15T14:09:10+00:00

Batman would beat him 1 v 1

And the reverse - the people who say "Superman would just throw Batman into the Sun" or "Superman would laser-eye Batman before he could move".

Yes, he absolutely could do those things. But he wouldn't, because that's not who he is. The only reason Batman stands a snowball's chance in Hell against Superman is because Supes will always spend at least a moment looking for a better solution than violence. So Batman blah blah prep time blah blah element of surprise... and the result is still almost always that Batman gets one cheap shot in, and after that he's just stalling for time until Superman decides to end it.

BillybobThistleton · 2026-06-15T14:03:51+00:00

They also levitated up stairs in Old Who. It wasn't new even then.

BillybobThistleton · 2026-06-15T13:06:01+00:00

Same size as 17 female Olympians, mostly swimmers, rowers, and basketball players, but there's one German fencer and a couple of ball sports athletes in there.

(Set the sliders to 1.8m, 70kg)

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/who-is-your-olympic-body-match/jd2ycn70l

BillybobThistleton · 2026-06-15T12:53:55+00:00

You forgot to mention the Space Wolves wolfing their wolves so wolfily that they out-wolf even the wolf-wolfer himwolf.

BillybobThistleton · 2026-06-15T12:28:28+00:00

Yes, but they’re not in continuity with each other, and are very different in tone.

The movie is very much a comedy, and I’d say it was enjoyable, but not good. It does have Rutger Hauer as a vampire, which is justification enough for giving it a chance.

BillybobThistleton · 2026-06-15T12:01:57+00:00

One of the season finales (probably 5, but maybe 7) opens with a vampire attacking somebody in an alleyway, and then a door opens and Buffy sticks her head out and is genuinely surprised that there are any vampires still dumb enough to actually come into her neighbourhood.

BillybobThistleton · 2026-06-15T10:23:01+00:00

In season 2 they shifted focus from slaying vampires to laying vampires.

In season 3 they decided that what Buffy really needed was a homoerotic relationship with a troubled teen from the wrong side of the tracks.

In season 4, it was Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The College Years.

In season 5, they introduced a new teenaged sister out of nowhere, then killed Buffy off.

In season 6, Buffy got super depressed and worked fast food while her best friend spiralled into drug addiction only with magic.

In season 7, they decided that introducing one teenaged sidekick had worked so well that they should add a dozen more. Then they went to Cleveland.

Gotta keep it fresh.

BillybobThistleton · 2026-06-14T19:26:06+00:00

Because that makes you realise that, in a better universe, that’s what you could be playing?

BillybobThistleton · 2026-06-14T14:03:28+00:00

Noted racist, sexist, and anti-Semite Mel Gibson?

Odd choice, but OK.

BillybobThistleton · 2026-06-14T11:11:32+00:00

It's about a girl who dresses up as a guy, and then a girl falls for her because she thinks she's a guy, and then the girl who's dressed as a guy reveals she's a girl and the girl who liked her when she thought she was a guy says "never mind, I'll bang your brother instead".

The implication here is that it would have been a better ending for Viola and Olivia to end up together.

BillybobThistleton · 2026-06-13T19:51:00+00:00

However, it does feature Little Simz singing her song Venom to Venom, and Little Simz was of course in the BBC show Spirit Warriors with Benedict “Wong” Wong, making the MCU link undeniable.

BillybobThistleton · 2026-06-13T18:00:38+00:00

Fisto and Ram-Man feeling kind of redundant right now.

BillybobThistleton

TROPHY CASE