Today was supposed to be something the comic buying world had not seen for a long time (if ever), a Wednesday (or Thursday) without new comic books.  Upon first hearing that comics’ central distributor, Diamond Distribution, would not be shipping new books this week, I was admittedly sad and disappointed. That seemed to quickly change to a sense of relief in having a week to catch up and save a few dollars (what can I say it’s a weird hobby).  I’ve come to find out that there will be new books today as some publishers have decided to work around Diamond.

Read more of this article »

I haven’t been the most frequent poster on MLD lately, but I do want to take some time to wish everyone a Merry Happy from myself and the rest of the MLD writing team  🙂  Enjoy some of my recent Lensbaby Fisheye shenanigans, on what I hope is at least a day you don’t have to work!  

Well, it’s the week before Christmas and all through the house… I don’t actually have a rhyme to go with that… Bottom line, I’m spending the weekend in sunny (or cloudy and rainy but still distinctly warmer and nicer) Florida. Heck, there’s a winter storm warning in effect at home for tomorrow night. Suckers.

Why do they even pretend to celebrate Christmas down here?

At home, they’re predicting a white Christmas. Down here they’re putting lights on palm trees.

Anyway, I took a break from the Operations Management final that I’ve been working on unsuccessfully for the last six days to join my wife for a trip to Universal Studios’ Islands of Adventure today. Since Pete is such a huge Marvel fan, I spent the day harassing him with photos from the park’s Marvel Island. Pete suggested that I should be posting the photos here as well to share them with the world. So since I’ve been too buried with school work the last few months to post much, I figured that sounded like as good of a way to jump back into it as any.

So we’ll start with the scene when we arrived at Islands of Adventure this morning.

The lack of people suggested to us that we had slept through the Apocalypse overnight and luckily survived.

While uncertain about the fate of the rest of the world, we headed over to the Spider-man 3D ride where the line was unbearably long.

Actually, it was just us and Doctor Octopus.

We rode the Spider-man ride that seats 12 or 18 people alone. Just the two of us. It was so romantic until the fires and spinning started.

That was the highlight of the Marvel section of the park until I reached the gift shop and saw this.

Psycho is right.

I have no interest in the Punisher. None. But that bobble head might be the greatest piece of Marvel merchandising I’ve ever seen. It’s better than all three of his movies combined… (and I’ve only seen two of them.)

I soon realized that there was a whole line of Marvel products in this awesomely cute style. Here are some highlights.

Amazing.

Spirited.

Unpredicatable.

All American.

Seeing the Hulk pin made me sad as they didn’t have a larger Hulk bobble head to go with the line, but they at least did design work on him. As it is, I may end up picking up a Captain America for me and Spider-man for Pete but I wish I was coming home with a Hulk as well.

The final couple of photos I’ll share with you tonight are below. While I’m not a huge fan of the Harry Potter movies, I know some people freak out for them. Well, you may have seen ads lately for Universal’s upcoming Harry Potter attraction as they have been airing incessantly on television. Here’s a sneak peak at the still under construction Hogwarts school. I believe it’s set to open in the Spring.

That’s it for today. Maybe tomorrow I’ll share photos of manatees and gators.

Three great special issues were released by Marvel in the past two weeks, unfortunately they shipped (and I subsequently read) in perhaps the exact reverse order they were intended.  All three books are written by Brian Bendis, the architect of the upcoming Siege event and writer of the Avengers titles for several years.  The books in questions are New Avengers Annual #3, Dark Avengers Annual #1 and Siege: The Cabal.  Read them in that order, but don’t read on unless you want to know why (consider that a SPOILER warning).

Read more of this article »

In a week, some of this mop of hair you see to your right might be going away.  Until then, I can enjoy moments like right now, where in an effort to control the uncontrollable, Angie goes with any hair configuration that works.  I’d say it looks like Chronomancer-era Bishop‘s hairstyle, but no one will get that reference. So I’ll just say that I love my wife, Predator-head and all.

Images courtesy of Mile High Comics and Unreality Magazine.