i can has toys?

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Let's play decipher the JPEG artifacts! Rurouni Kenshin, Warcraft: The Sunwell Trilogy (2 volumes), Legends of the Dark Crystal, Azumanga Daioh, Love Hina...okay...
Grenadier?! That's an odd single volume to be in that collection. (I edited the later volumes of Grenadier, and it ended up not as terribly as it began.)

(Is that some Del Rey or perhaps Dark Horse manga next to Love Hina?)

[Gemm: Rock & Roll Star; Born to Rock]

Infinite Crisis is obvious, from the big 'Crisis' on the spine.

Someone ought to just get his good camera in there and clear up this graininess. =P

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

when I can be bothered to bring in my real camera I can do so. In the mean time, you're close. No Warcraft stuff. Those are Return to the Labyrinth vol 1 and 2. (3 isn't out yet, is it? I'm not following closely, just checking whenever I drop by B&N every month or so).  Bet8ween Azumanga and Love Hina are two non-comics: the Bhagavadgita and a small collection of haiku. I actually like Grenadier better than Ruroni Kenshin, primarily because of the setting, but I haven't actually seen any other volumns of it in B&N when I've stopped by. Love Hina, Grenadier, and RN were ones I bought when I thought I'd try some manga and didn't ask anyone for guidance. Azumanga I bought because I thought the Anime was hilarious. And yes, on the right of Love Hina is the Dark Horse published Red String vol. 1 by Gina Biggs. Yes, it's Shoujo. Yes it's done by an American, and yes, I confess that I adore it. Call me girly. Maybe my daughters have just brain washed me.next tot hat is the Pirates Vs Ninjas I've ranted about elsewhere, follolwed by a hardcover of Batman: Hong Kong. THe "crisis" is actually Identity Crisis (also hardcover) that 42 reviewed for TWG some time back. Also nearly distinguishable there is JLA: Riddle of the Beast, Superman: Red Son, and JLA: A League of One. Hiding are the collected LXG paperbacks.

FOr the curious's sake, the DVDs are Dr. Strangelove, Rock and Rule, Shaun of the Dead, Snakes on a Plane, Godzilla Vs Gigan, TMNT 3, Ghost Rider, Punisher, Catwoman, Underworld, Constantine, Big Trouble in Little China, and Goonies. Yes, some of them are horrible horrible movies. I like horrible movies. Also, the dictionary is ca. 1991. It lacks terms like e-mail. I have it primarily for sentimental reasons.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Yeah, Return to Labyrinth was my first guess actually, from the color scheme but I couldn't think how the logo would be configured that way. But then I saw it on the shelf in my house today and knew I was wrong about it being Warcraft. I don't remember when volume 3 comes out, but at least I don't think it's in danger of being canceled due to TOKYOPOP's recent cutbacks.

Grenadier is only 7 volumes, so it won't set you back near as much as Kenshin would. If you like the first volume, you'll probably like the rest unless you expect the fanservice to get more intense. The last couple volumes answer all the questions about Rushuna's backstory, but I'm not sure how much of it was planned from the start. Some manga series run in Japan until they become unpopular and then get unceremoniously canceled, but Grenadier was given enough time to wrap things up quite nicely (though I assume if it had been a lot more popular the creator would have been happy to keep it going longer). There's little more annoying than hitting the last volume of a series and finding out everything is left unresolved.

I actually like Love Hina a lot. It was one of the earliest series I got into when I was in New York and just starting to get into manga. Unfortunately, I really don't have anything good to say about the TOKYOPOP version. The quality control on early TOKYOPOP books like that is pretty bad, and I'm unhappy with a lot of the adaptation choices they made, like how the adaptor just decided Keitaro should start calling Naru by her first name because their relationship had progressed far enough in his mind, whereas in the Japanese version he never does and the very last joke in the entire series is based on that.

As for shoujo manga, there are quite a few of them that I love. I enjoy Fruits Basket a lot, but probably the one I've got all the volumes of for which I'm most out of its target demographic is Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch, which is about magical singing mermaids and was written for tween and pre-tween girls.

I really enjoyed Ghost Rider, and Big Trouble in Little China and Goonies are camp favorites. I thought Underworld was interesting enough, and Dr. Strangelove was pretty good (I wouldn't rave about it like some people). Haven't seen the rest.

Hmm... Back on the subject of the thread, I hope I didn't have my Ookla the Mok figure at work, because I just realized that when I cleaned out my desk I definitely didn't bring it back with me. Hopefully it's here around the house somewhere.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

It would, indeed, be sad if you left it at work. I had a Jango Fett at one job with two pistols and I came home with only one. I was distraught over that for a bit. But then I found it on the floor under a book case at home. So it was all good.
Trust me whaen I say that no one will argue with me that Catwoman was a bad movie. And TMNT3 is the worst of the lot. ANd Godzilla, well... it's Godzilla. It's not supposed to be good.

I became a devotee of Red String when I bumped into it on the web. It is, thus far, the only comic that I've felt I wanted to own a hard copy of. Although I almost got Zap! volume one, because I did some volunteer editing for them. Reckoned I could show it. But then I decided that issues of TLE would work better for that purposes if I needed.

Love Hina -- for some reason I was inundated with references to it so I decided I wanted to try it. I wasn't bugged by it. But, I just didn't find it interesting. I have actually looked for other issues of Grenadier, but haven't seen them. I suppose I could just order them, but that's not how I've bought manga in the past.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I can't win. Some of you may recall my attempts to interest my girls in "boy" nerd things like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings by buying Leia and Arwen Barbies for them. It was doomed to failure.

Currently, my two oldest are playing out the wedding of Han and Leia using their action figures. Yoda is the ring bearer.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Well at least they got the right pair.