So by now you've undoubtedly seen, heard, and/or read about how Kanye West drenched Taylor Smith's parade at the MTV Video Music Awards -- and while I agree with contributor Mickey Glitter that discussion of the actual event is getting a bit old, I'm still finding myself thoroughly amused by the perpetuation of the resultant Kanye meme. Dusty Plastic HELLside #9 is my contribution to the fad: five Capcom characters interrupted by a dude who really has no business popping up during someone else's victory animation. Who does Kanye think he is, Dan Forden?

Note that I can't take credit for the Kanye West pic in any of those images; that was created by Stefmax of The Orange Society! And in case you were curious about the dude, here's the Wikipedia article on Vajrabodhi.

By the way, wouldn't it be really cool if fighting games actually had victory cancel moves? In a game with fatalities, for instance, there could be a command for the loser to still escape death -- perhaps entered after the finishing hit but before the loser hits the ground -- thereby diminishing the winner's victory. Or maybe if the winner is about to get a perfect, the loser could do something so that the character bounces off the ground and into the winner, thus causing the winner to take damage and lose out on the perfect bonus. And you know what would be really cool? A command that causes one of the spectators in the background to throw a bottle or tomato at the victor -- not only souring the victory, but also causing minimal damage and negating any perfect bonuses. Hell, there could even be ways for the victor to dodge or deflect these attacks, earning an extra "untouchable" bonus or something.

Yeah, I know -- I should totally be one of Capcom's idea men.

In other news, Infinite Hollywood has been added to the links block on the sidebar! I'm aware that there are a couple of broken links on there -- and that the Pop Arena link isn't a link at all; I've kept it there for nostalgic reasons -- so expect more new links whenever I get buttons to replace them. In the meantime, you'll just have to do with me telling you to visit The Undiscovered Playthings and such! Oh, and there's something else I wanted to mention -- apparently Twisted Kaiju Theater is now known as The Once and Future Tyrant. But since it seems to be part of a storyline development and could possibly change in the future -- and because I don't have a button with the new title -- the TKT button will remain for now.

Aaaaaaand that'll do it for this update. Until next time, watch out for falling jackasses and don't let your victories get canceled!

And here's the latest installment of Dusty Plastic HELLside, in which Raphael and Ryu meditate to control their inner demons. I really just wanted an excuse to show the modification I did to Raph, which involved popping his lower legs out and sanding down the square peg so that the leg can rotate at the knee. RADICAL!

I've done similar mods to a bunch of Playmates figures over the past week (most satisfyingly with the Terminator Salvation T-700 and T-R.I.P. figures' arms), which makes me wonder why the good folks at Playmates are so fond of these square pegs. Obviously they're putting square wheels on the car to prevent it from moving, but why would you want a stationary car?! And yes, cars and joints aren't the same thing, but I'm standing by my assertion that more articulation is better -- especially when adding it doesn't impact the sculpt or sturdiness of the toy in any discernible way.

Then again, I can kinda understand why they didn't bother to add the swivel to the TMNT Turtles. Turning the knee into a swivel-hinge joint doesn't add a whole lot of poseability to them -- it pretty much enables them to sit with their legs bent and that's it. Hence today's comic!

As always, more to come, and thanks for reading Scary-Crayon!

Told you she'd be back! Dusty Plastic HELLside #7 makes reference to the conclusion of Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, in which our heroine performs a decidedly unheroic finishing move on a helpless and defeated Bison.... right in front of his daughter. Not even Sonya Blade would be that cruel, and she routinely left her opponents as charred, kneeling skeletons. What's up with heroes going all murder crazy these days? I hear even Optimus Prime is ripping off faces and whatnot.

Incidentally, for all its horribleness (or perhaps because of it... and Kreuk, of course), I kind of liked the movie. I'm not going to pay the new release price for it, but one of these days I'll definitely grab it on DVD.

More Chun-Li comics to come!

P.S. If you missed the SFIV Chun-Li figure review, check that out... and if you saw it before and want to look at stuff in there again, let me know what you think of the change! I've replaced the SF2 menu bullets in the summary section with mini Crayon Critter heads.

EXCITEMENT -- the first of the newly-formatted Scary-Crayon toy reviews is here! (Thanks to all... three? of you out there who actually commented on the test layout. ) But first, here's a new Dusty Plastic HELLside comic starring our beloved Sarah Jane Smith... in a situation that wasn't exactly intended for this particular Sarah. Making this comic made me kinda sad for television series loved and lost, but at least "The Sarah Jane Adventures" is getting a third season. Looking forward to it.

Anyway, here's our review of NECA's amazing Street Fighter IV Chun-Li action figure -- complete with lots of special move poses and inserted sprite comparisons! Originally I was doing the article with the video game screencaps positioned next to the thumbnails (as I did in our CvS2 Mai and Chun-Li figure review), but since I found dealing with those images to be highly time consuming for a number of reasons I decided to go with this method instead and ditch the other images. I think this works a lot better anyway, but let me know what you think!

You may also have noticed that, with some recent reviews, I spent an insane amount of time trying to get the pixel widths of each row of images to match up -- I didn't do that here, and it bothers me a whole lot less than I thought it would. If you're as obsessive as I often am about these kinds of things, I apologize for any hair-pulling it causes you. And speaking of obsessive, I really did take over 1000 photos of the toy. Some of those (a relatively small percentage, but still) were shots of Chun-Li with other figures -- so, much like the appearances that followed the Grim Reaper review, expect to see Chun-Li show up in three or four upcoming Dusty Plastic HELLside comics. Hopefully at least one of them will be funny!

Finally, another plug -- Infinite Hollywood has a brand new domain name and a new contest to boot! One of these days I'm gonna win the lottery, and then I'm gonna have a contest with all kinds of prizes. Prizes rule.

Aaaand that does it for this update. As Chun-Li would say, zai jian!

P.S. NECA, if you're ever looking for employees to pose and photograph your toys, I seriously wasn't kidding about wanting the job.

Or maybe he loves his child/distant cousin? I'm not especially well versed on Godzilla history, so I have no idea whether the 1968 Godzilla is meant to be the same individual as the 2000 version or not. In any case, Dusty Plastic HELLside #5 as two Godzillas in a warm setup. With Beatles lyrics. Bet you never thought you'd see that.

Unless you've read Twisted Kaiju Theater before, anyway! And there was my random plug for this update. Oh, speaking of plugs, did I forget to mention that I reviewed the G.I. Joe Sigma 6 Battlefield General Cobra Commander over at Articulated Discussion a week or two ago? Yes.

In other news, I'm still trying to decide how I want to go about toy reviews -- here's the latest test layout (ignore that the text doesn't always match up with the categories; this is just to sort of show how it would look). Whereas much of Scary-Crayon's layout has sort of a quirky cartoon horror appeal, this scheme clearly takes its cue from video games and gaming mags (the bullets in the review section are even from the Street Fighter II Turbo selection menu).

So, what do you think? I welcome your input! The sooner I settle on a scheme, the sooner I can get back to reviewing toys... which will be cool since Chun-Li should be arriving sometime this coming week. Mmmm.

Until next time!

Aaaand here's a quick Sunday update with Dusty Plastic HELLside #4 -- starring Cobra Commander and Shockwave! I think I'm falling in love with these figures all over again... especially considering that I just found out about the extra guns on Shockwave's cannon (not seen deployed in today's comic, since I didn't know about them when I took that photo).

Incidentally, I didn't even play with Action Masters as a kid, but that's the first thing that comes to mind when G.I. Joe figures and Transformers are the same height. Go figure. Action figure, that is! Ah ha ha ha ha that made no sense okay I'm done. Seeya next time!

As promised, here's our review of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra! I really didn't think it was all that bad -- and I can definitely see picking up the DVD on sale and watching it once more -- though it's not the kind of movie I could ever love or recommend wholeheartedly. I did have fun doing the comics, though! I'd originally intended for them to be read in full as two separate comics, but I decided to separate panels in order to break up the text. Feel free to skip the text and just read them on your first pass, especially if you're worried about spoilers. This review does have some spoilers, though I don't explicitly give away any of the so-called surprises. The surprises are stupid, by the way.

Also! Here is a paragraph that I cut from the original review because I thought it went off on too much of a tangent. But that's pretty much what these blog entries are for, so here it is!

At any rate, there's the argument that while Cobra's scheme was needlessly complicated and stupid, it was arguably intentionally so within the context of the movie... but it seems like the desired result could have been achieved without even attracting the attention of the heroes (or anyone else) and certainly without sacrificing the resources and personnel that Cobra lost in the battle with the Joe forces. This is one of those movies that makes me think I was supposed to be a supervillain (or at least should be writing their plans), since I would have come up with something so much more sensible. Then again, my plan probably wouldn't have been as easily foiled (at least outwardly) as Cobra's, so perhaps it's best that I'm not writing the villains' schemes. Every film can't end with an evil victory, after all...

Yep. Anyway, see you next time!