Before we begin this week’s “Postal Apocalypse,” I’d like to stop for a moment to commemorate the fact that this week features my very first question about superhero penises! I am 100% confident it will be the first of many. Make sure to email your questions (penis or otherwise) to email@example.com!
I believe marvel did a great job with marketing and connecting movies together. The problem is with warner bros. Everyone wants a justice league movie. Batman has already happened in a trilogy. I believe a justice league can happen if they start with meshing the new superman with the last Batman movie. Have night hawk be in it for the first JL movie and when you redo a Batman movie have him become Batman. This would still have continuity from the comics and the movies. Also, reboot green lantern or just plug him in later with a better story?
Well, you’re right in that Warner Bros. is staffed by morons who are so afraid of fucking up their biggest potential franchise — the DC superheroes — they almost never even make the movies, which ends up being the same thing as making shitty ones. When they do actually produce the films, they occasionally get lucky, like with Chris Nolan’s Batman flicks. Unfortunately, they usually pick wrong, like hiring the talented-but-unfortunately-completely-obsessed-with-the-first-two-Superman-movies Bryan Singer to make Superman Returns; or they're fucked by their own inability to understand their franchises, e.g., Green Lantern, and they terrible script they allowed to be shot. More often they second-guess themselves and end up hedging their bets and cutting budgets, and that's why we get half-hearted shit like the Jonah Hex movie.
Obviously they don’t have best track record, so they should be scared that they’ll make bad choices. But what can you do with that? Do you realize they had Joss Whedon write a script for a Wonder Woman movie and turned it down? What better fucking choice to bring Wonder Woman to mass audiences is there than Joss Whedon? There isn’t one, and WB passed on his script. There is absolutely nothing you can do about that level of stupidity. Until they can hire someone who can actually recognize talent, they are going to be paralyzed, and we’re never going to get Justice League, Wonder Woman, The Flash, or any of DC’s top heroes besides Batman and Superman, while Marvel is busy making a major motion picture about Batroc the Leaper.
One note, though: Your Night Hawk idea is completely insane. No one knows who he is. I’m a professional nerd, and even I had to look him up. Also, unfortunately, Nolan’s Batman would not have worked as part of a Justice League movie — the particular tone is just too off what'd they'd need for JL. Maybe Man of Steel’s Superman will work, but I’m reserving judgment. Honestly, given how well-known the Justice League is, WB doesn’t need to build into it like Marvel did with the Avengers — they could just make the damn JL movie, and then launch all the superhero franchises out of that. But they’re idiots, so oh well.
Although, to my knowledge, no X-man has gone full frontal in a mainstream comic, who do you think, of the X-Men, has the biggest penis?
I do know there are several scenes of nookie and/or highly salacious images within the comics, but I don't think any Marvel artist has drawn a full-on wang.
If you do consider this question, try to ignore the characters that are shapeshifters because that's just not fair. Technically, I guess mystique or Morph (Exiles) would be the winner in that race because of their morphing abilities to grow whatever size Johnson they want; so let's try to keep this based on how the person would have grown up "normally".
My money is on Gambit, just because he has a certain "I've got big dick" kind of swagger; however, I have never seen a drawing of Cannonball that didn't have a decent package.
Well, assuming everybody is built to scale, Colossus is a big dude who’s probably packing a sizable wang. Plus, he can turn it into steel, which would be hella useful. Of course, Juggernaut has been an X-Men on occasion, and he’s massive, but that’s probably from carrying around the Gem of Cyttorak, so you could argue he’s been magically enhanced and thus should be out of the running.
Gambit certainly has swagger, but I’d posit it’s the type of swagger that is making up for not having a giant penis. I’m not saying he’s under-sized, necessarily, just that having an enormous dick should provide people with a quiet confidence, and Gambit is mostly bluster.
So purely based on length and girth, I’d probably guess Colossus. But… if you want to talk biggest penis size to height/weight ratio, my money is on Cyclops. I think his dick must be enormous. Look, the only time Cyclops isn’t being boring is when he’s being an asshole, and yet Jean Grey, Madeline Pryor, Emma Frost and other superpowered hotties didn’t just have sex with him, they entered into committed relationships with him. I guarantee they weren’t staying for his personality, but they were staying for something. And Scott’s always been a huge prick anyways. Hey-o!
I’m actually kind of sad you only asked about the X-Men. It turns out I have a great many thoughts about superhero penises.
The Madding Crowd
Do you think crowd sourcing will ever become the main source of funding big studio projects?
Main? No. More prevalent? Yes. First of all, Kickstarter is fine when your budget is in the low millions, but no major summer movie is going to be able to make $200 million on Kickstarter. Only the big studios have that type of money to sink into a project, meaning the domain of the summer blockbusters will stay firmly in their hands. Also, think about how many movies get made that, while they attract plenty of viewers, don’t have fans willing to put up money to make the damn things.
For example, Disney’s The Lone Ranger. Chances are, that’s going to make a ton of money. Yet how many hardcore Lone Ranger fans are out there that would have been willing to donate money to making it? Five? 12? I think crowdsourcing will allow for a lot more small, fan-favorite movies to get made — Veronica Mars being the best example of this — which makes it a wonderful addition to the movie-making system. But taking over? Not a chance.
A Giant Conundrum
Greg Is Not An Alien:
In the clearly-best Irwin Allen series, Land of the Giants, the humans were, approximately, 1/10th the size of the giants. See attached — let's say the human on the left is six feet tall. The tape (assume to be standard tape width of 3/4") appears to measure 10% of his height (~2.5" in this picture), meaning he is 7.5 inches tall in the Land of the Giants, about 9.6 times smaller than a giant. If the tape is narrower (which I suspect to be the case, seeing as all indications are the Land of the Giants world was experiencing the 1960's at the time of filming, and my memory of tape of the period is that it was not as wide as is common today), the human would be slightly shorter — rounding up, 10% the size of a giant.
Now, since speed is a measure of distance and time, I believe that in the Land of the Giants, humans would perceive speed very differently. Obviously, if a human were sitting on the shoe of a giant who was walking relatively slowly, for a giant, they would perceive their speed to be significantly greater than if THEY were walking along the ground, relatively slowly.
What I'm interested in is the situation where a human rides on the hood of a 1965 Dodge Dart Charger with the Commando 273 engine. The giant driver goes 80 mph for half an hour, traveling 40 (giant miles). In the same time, the human is traveling approximately 400 (human) miles, or 800 mph. Since the speed of sound is 768 mph, does the human break the sound barrier and perceive a sonic boom? Does the giant experience a tiny sonic boom — more like a sonic click?
Any insights you have to offer greatly appreciated.
First of all, let me say I adore this question and the absolutely terrifying amount of thought you have put into it. More questions like this, please!
Second, please you allow me to use the ol “I am a fake mailman wandering the post-apocalypse so I know nothing about science and physics” card, but here’s what I think: The regular human does not break the sound barrier, and here’s why.
Say you glued a fly to the hood of your car. Now, the fly is much smaller than a human, and thus if you drove 80 mph, the fly would be travelling much, much farther and faster than 400 in-scale fly miles per hour. Does the fly experience a sonic boom? Of course not, because that’s not how physics work. Everyone doesn’t get their own set of physics, there’s one set and we all have to deal with ‘em.
Now, I understand your confusion in that theoretically the humans who have landed on the giant planet are their same, regular size, meaning the giants should be playing by our physical reality. But if you watch the show, they obviously don’t.
Think of it this way: A normal human speaking voice is 70 decibels. Since everything is scaled up on the giant planet, the giants would have to talk 10 times as loud to each other so their voices could carry through the enlarged distances, right? That means the giants would be speaking at 700 decibels, which would instantly destroy the eardrums of any regular-sized people in earshot. A goddamn rocket taking off is only 200 or so decibels, and that is literally deafening. And think about gravity — assuming the planet is 10 times bigger than earth, the regular humans would be unable to move.
So there’s only two explanations here: 1) Either the crew of the Spindrift shrank when they entered that space storm and landed on a planet at the exact same scale as our own, where physics haven’t changed, or 2) they were transported into another dimension where the laws of physics have expanded in scale.
I hope that answers the question to your satisfaction. One warning: trying to figure out the science of Irwin Allen shows is a fool’s game. From one who knows.
OK supposing the following were actual things you could watch, you have to buy one, or watch one at least once on Netflix (or streaming service of your choice). Which do you pick?
• A Gungan Adventure - Caravan of Crap: The kids from an Ewok Adventure are grown and find themselves basically in the same situation except on Naboo. Substitute Wicket for Jar Jar.
• Geordi and the Packleds - The Continuing Voyage: The first half of an un-aired series in which Geordi is again taken captive by the Packleds and they tour the universe looking for things to make them go.
• Still Tolkien - With Cheech Marin and Radagast the Brown: Basically Cheech and Radagast smoke a little too much of the Halflings' Leaf and hilarity ensues. I goes without saying that there is a high speed chase involving a hare drawn sleigh.
This much more fun than Fuck/Marry/Kill. On the other hand, YOU BASTARD. These are all horrible choices. Jar Jar is terrible, but honestly I find the Packleds just as annoying in their own way; while I hate Jar Jar viscerally, the longer the Packleds stayed on screen the more enraged I’d get.
So my choice, I guess, is to watch the ancient stoner and the shit-covered wizard pal around for a while, although I sincerely doubt any hilarity would actually ensue. And I’m genuinely nauseous at the thought of having to watch it. Well played, sir!
Do you have questions about anything scifi, fantasy, superhero, or nerd-related? Emailpostman@io9.com! No question too difficult, no question too dumb! Obviously!