During the dark days of the 1980s, there was no shortage of tights-wearin’, hair-teasin’, tongue-wagglin’ lunatics with names like Ratt, Quiet Riot and Snakes ‘N Barrels, all entreating us to feel, work for and/or get various noises, weekends, rocks and video vamps.  Music being music, those legendary bands are now only heard on oldies stations (or in Otter Disaster’s Subaru) but I still find myself missing the lost epoch of the Queensrÿches and White Rangers Night Rangers of the world…

The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) wants a piece of your heart, but just doesn’t have time to start from the start, asking: Which abandoned fashion or trend of days past needs to make a comeback?

One of the side-effects of living in the American Midwest is the occasional bout of winter weather.  This morning, I awoke to a blanket of white and blowing snow obscuring vision in all directions.  Though I’m still going to work, the state, county and schools have all closed in preparation for Snowmageddon ’13.  Given my druthers, I’d have stayed at home with a stack of comics and ‘Transformers: The Movie,’ which has become my usual storm/snow day fare.

The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) vows that neither snow nor sleet nor Legends of the Dark Knight shall keep me from my appointed rounds, asking: What’s your go-to entertainment for storms, sick or snow days?

They say that everyone has a double somewhere in the world, but I’ve always been a little troubled by the fact that I’ve never seen mine.  When Otter Disaster and I were in college back during the late Cretaceous, there was another student at the university who looked remarkably like him, enough that we called him (unofficially, and never to his face) “Otherotter.”  I am, however, very lucky in that the only FAMOUS person that I’m ever told I resemble is also someone whom I respect and whose work I really love: Penn Jillette.  While I’m not nearly as handsome as the big guy, I am just about as loud, which I think balances things out, and when I had my own enormous Kentucky Waterfall haircut, I tended to model it on Penn’s hair.  (Whether or not I was successful is another tale entirely.)  Having an acquaintance who is a dead ringer for a young Tiffany Amber-Theissen, though, I expect that having a complete celebrity doppelganger is a HUUUUGE pain in the patookus, it would make it easier to figure out what happens when you eventually become a Lifetime movie of the week (as we probably all will.)

The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) can’t decide whether Young Zach should be played by Michael Cera or Selena Gomez, asking:  Who would you want to play YOU in the movie of your life?

My recent review of The Walking Dead comic started a chain of thought in my head about current events in the television version of Rick Grimes and company’s story.  To wit, I’m finding it most interesting to examine the comic book’s characterization of Negan, and how he occupies a similar narrative role to the TV version of The Governor (a sinister counterpart to Rick, with similar goals regarding the safety of his people, though not sharing Rick’s moral stance).  Though there is some variance in how the tale is being told, the paranoid part of my brain wonders if there hasn’t been an effort to bring the two character takes in line for reader/viewer cross-pollination purposes.

The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) also finds Negan’s verbal tics overdone and insufferable, but that’s another matter entirely, asking: Is the character of Negan just another iteration of The Governor?

If you’ve ever listened to any of the Major Spoilers podcasts in which I appear, you’ve probably realized that I love to futz about with language, even ones that I barely speak.  (My Spanish and Yiddish-speaking friends tend to just sigh and nod a lot.  Ask Rodrigo.)  But there’s something special about spectacularly awkward turns of phrase to me, especially during my recent processing of a relatively spectacular lot of Silver Age DC Comics.  Maybe it’s just the fun of hearing things like “A flock of tiny Supermen!” or “These fire-trolls are trying to give us an underwater hotfoot!” in the voice of the Narrator from ‘Plan 9 From Outer Space,’ or maybe it’s the peculiar chemical fumes of aging comics, but you gotta love the gleeful illogic of Superman sternly telling Jimmy, “I’m sorry I adopted you as my son!”  Even in movies, you get the wonder that was Ed Wood’s conversational dialogue, or the wonder of Star Wars’ occasionally tone-deaf talky-talky.  (“But I wanted to go into Toshi Station and pick up some power converrrrterrrrrrs!”)  As someone who often speaks in one-liner out-of-context references, I have but one thing to tell you: Nobody ever lends money to a man with a sense of humor.

The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) realizes that we are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives, asking: What’s your favorite bit of goofy or bad dialogue?

Couples in fiction (ESPECIALLY in heroic or super-heroic fiction) are a troublesome plot point.  There is an old adage that says happy couples are dramatically inert, which makes them occasionally seem boring to read/write about.  There are literally infinite ways around this problem, but even back in the Golden Age, writers have bent over backwards to create drama around comic book pairings.  Still, in honor of St. Valentine’s Day (which, I think, is designed to either make you feel like an inferior partner and/or remind you of gangsters gettin’ shot down) I have been considering the various permutations of pop-culture romance.  From the love triangles (Remember Mark/Princess/Jason?  What about Cyclops/Marvel Girl/Angel?  Cyclops/Marvel Girl/Wolverine?  Jean Grey/Cyclops/Emma Frost?  In retrospect, I think maybe Jean Grey may be Taylor Swift’s romantic role model.) to the boring old married folks (Reed and Sue come to mind, but there was a time when a certain arachnid/super-model pairing of which we do not speak of for fear of awakening the sleeping giants fit here) to those fallen couples we all miss (Oh, Victoria…  You were so right for stupid Ted, and he is an idiot.)  The one thing that I think we can all agree on is that, while difficult, there are many great movie, comic and TV moments that put the lie to that cliché “boring couples” paradigm…

The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) is so suffused with love and junk that we’ll accept answers involving glittery vampires or Spawn, asking:  What’s your favorite couples moment in the history of pop culture?

My most recent Retro Review started me thinking about the nature of the “kid sidekick” as a superhero trope.  From the debut of Robin back in the Golden Age, people LOVED the concept, leading other companies to try to duplicate the Boy Wonder’s success with the likes of Bucky, Dusty, Tim and the other Tim.  (Both Captain Wonder and The Black Terror had sidekicks by that super-heroic sobriquet.)  In these postmodern days,  it’s become a cliché to mock the very IDEA of a child fighting crime, but that sort of cynical Negative Nancy nabob nattering doesn’t fly in MS-QOTD land.  Besides, if we’re being honest, the idea of a kid partner isn’t even the most ridiculous part of the Golden Age superhero combo pack, and some of those costumed kids are pretty cool in their own right.

The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) Which of the kid sidekicks (excluding Dick Grayson, who would break the curve) is the most awesome overall?

This weekend’s shift at the comic store (Gatekeeper Hobbies, Huntoon & Gage, Topeka!  Ask me about the first appearance of Bizarro!) included an extended conversation with a young woman about 18 years old who was just killing time while her laundry finished drying across the street.  Although initially uncertain about the whole “comic book store” experience, she had an understanding of RPGs, liked the Walking Dead television show and was kind of fascinated by the D&D game going on in the back game room.  Our discussion ranged from the simple (“How do you know what order to put the books in?”) to the surprisingly complicated (“Do you think barbarian is a better class choice for damage in 4th Edition?”) and at the end of the day, she indicated that she might return to the store and purchase things for herself.  Given the recent hubbub regarding “fake geek girls,” I find myself hoping that her next experiences with nerdity will be positive ones, with her fellow enthusiasts helping her to discover the awesome that gaming and comics have to offer, rather than quizzing her about the finer points of Batman’s Silver Age adventures or mocking her for not knowing that Rick Grimes and his friends started out in the comics…

The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) always imagines the “ONE OF US!” scene from ‘Freaks’ when someone blunders into the more territorial corners of nerd culture, asking: What can we, as conscientious fanboys & girls do to keep our shared hobbies from turning into gated communities of judgemental exclusionist jerks?