STUFF: News, Technology, the cool and the plain weird

[MIKA27]

Mystique Rallies The Troops In The Intense New X-Men: Apocalypse Trailer

The new X-Men: Apocalypse trailer is here, and although it gives us Professor X vowing to keep his students safe from the rise of a very angry Apocalypse — it looks like it will be Mystique that leads them into battle.

It’s perhaps not quite so surprising that Jennifer Lawrence’s Mystique gets the attention in this trailer, given the fact that her star presence has vastly increased since she first daubed herself in blue body paint for First Class — but we really get to see her take on the leadership of the X-Men’s next generation of youngsters here, stirring speech and all. Lets hope a good bit of morale boosting is just what they need to take on Apocalypse and his four angry horsemen though.

There’s a ton of new footage here, with everything from Apocalypse recruiting his Horsemen, to more battle footage focusing on Jean Grey, Cyclops and Nightcrawler in action (needs more Jubilee though!) — and of course, a bridge gets wrecked, which I’m pretty sure is a mandated moment in every X-Men movie. Still, this is looking like a lot of fun.

X-Men: Apocalypse hits theatres May 26.

[MIKA27]

A Long-Lost H.P. Lovecraft Manuscript Has Been Uncovered

Good news, Lovecraft fans! While it’s not a new piece of fiction, a new manuscript penned by the famous horror writer has been discovered, tucked away in a collection of magical memorabilia.

The 31-page manuscript, titled “The Cancer of Superstition”, was a project requested by Harry Houdini for Lovecraft to ghostwrite shortly before the magician’s death in 1926, rallying against belief in the supernatural and superstitions — that they were an “inborn inclination” that “persists only through mental indolence of those who reject modern science”. It seems a strange thing for either of the two men to condemn, especially when the supernatural inspired so much of their professions.

To be fair, there’s a debate as to whether Lovecraft wrote the entire manuscript. Speaking to The Guardian, Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi believes that Lovecraft simply wrote the synopsis for it, while fellow author C.M. Eddy wrote the bulk of the chapters. But even if Lovecraft only provided the outline for the piece, it’s still a pleasant surprise to discover it nearly a century later.

The manuscript is heading to auction in Chicago on April 9, where it’s expected to sell for between $US25,000 ($33,608) and $US40,000 ($53,773).

[MIKA27]

This Guy Can Solve Three Different Rubik's Cubes While Juggling Them At The Same Time

While most people in this world struggle to juggle and other people in this world don’t like the brain pruning effect of a Rubik’s Cube, Rubocubo is totally different: he can juggle three different Rubik’s Cubes while solving all of them in less than 15 seconds. It’s an awesome trick that combines two of the most fun (and silliest) skills.

[MIKA27]

RAY-BAN GATSBY-INSPIRED RETRO SUNGLASSES

Ray-Ban sunglasses are synonymous with the Aviator, Clubmaster and the Wayfarer. However, not too many of us are familiar with the Gatsby. Featuring the trending, retro-throwback rounded frames, the new RB 4256 model combines this classic style with modern edge. Plus, each model also features double bridge frames, allowing these shades to stand out amongst the crowd in high brow fashion.

Each premium quality frame is available in a variety of classic and contemporary color variations. From the Green Classic to Gold Mirror, theses lenses block out unwanted UV rays, protecting your eyes in style. Ray-Bans has been in the field of making high-quality eyewear for many years and it’s throwbacks like these that display a continued relevancy in their space. Frames come in either black or tortoise with prices start at $150. [Purchase]

[Fuzz]

Meet the Former Biologist Who’s Literally Mailing Bulls**t to People

MIKA: Fuzz...you got mail

Better than some of the stuff I've received in the mail in the past.

[MIKA27]

Australia's New $5 Note Design Will Help The Vision Impaired

The Reserve Bank announced back in February that a new $5 note would be out from 1 September 2016. Today, it has revealed that we’ll get to see the new design on 12 April.

The note will be the same basic colours, size and “include the same people” so it looks like we shouldn’t be expecting a radical redesign in the looks department. What will be new is a ‘tactile’ feature to help the vision-impaired distinguish between different denominations of banknotes.

The first $5 note was issued in 1967 and featured humanitarian and women’s immigrant welfare campaigner Caroline Chisholm on one side, and Botanist Sir Joseph Banks on the other.

A commemorative version for the Centenary of Federation was released in 2001. The note featured journalist, politician and suffragette Catherine Helen Spence as well as politician Sir Henry Parkes.

But with that one exception, we’ve had Queen Elizabeth II on the front and Parliament House on the back of our fiver since the mid nineties.

“The Bank has been working closely with a range of stakeholders over the past seven years to ensure that when the new series of banknotes are issued, the public can use them effectively in their day-to-day lives,” the RBA said in a statement.

“Important aspects of a smooth transition to the new banknotes are making sure that machines that take or dispense banknotes have been upgraded and that the new banknotes are available across the country. As part of this process, the Bank intends to publish images of the new $5 banknote on 12 April.”

The reveal will be followed later in the year by a public awareness campaign to make sure we can all identify the new note, and also how to use the new security features — which are yet to be detailed.

[MIKA27]

Breitling's First Plastic Watch Still Costs A Damn Fortune

If you like the look of a beefy timekeeper on your wrist, but without all the weight, Breitling’s new Avenger Hurricane is the company’s first with a housing made from plastic. Or, more specifically, a new lightweight proprietary polymer it calls Breitlight.

Strengthened with composite fibres for extra rigidity, the new Breitlight material is six times lighter than steel and even three times lighter than titanium. But besides being considerably lighter on the wrist, thanks to the new material the Breitling Avenger Hurricane is also anti-magnetic, less likely to irritate sensitive skin, won’t corrode and is incredibly hard to scratch or mar.

On the technical side, the Breitling Avenger Hurricane features an in-house 24-hour movement, basic chronograph functionality, and a 70-hour power reserve which means you only have to wind it every three days. It’s far from the most advanced mechanical watch you can buy, which begs the question, why is Breitling still asking $US8390 ($11,279) for it?

Traditional analogue watches boasting genuine Swiss craftsmanship have always come with expensive price tags, partly justified by the huge number of man-hours that go into the production and hand-assembly of the timepieces’s complicated inner workings.

These aren’t mass produced on factory assembly lines like a cheap digital Casio. A lot of skill and care goes into the creation of a genuine Swiss watch to ensure it’s as accurate as its analogue mechanisms allow.

High-end sports cars are manufactured the same way, but it’s easier to justify spending $100,000 on a car when you see it tearing down a highway at insane speeds. It’s a lot less obvious why a watch is worth thousands of dollars when the complex internal mechanisms humming along at 28,800 vibrations per second are hidden away inside.

But the often shocking price tags are also the result of well-funded collectors who are looking to step out wearing something innovative and something exclusive. There’s no denying that Breitling is using its new Breitlight material as a selling point for the Avenger Hurricane, since other timepieces in its collection with similar functionality and metal housings, actually sell for less money.

[MIKA27]

Ancient Warrior Found Buried With Ritualistic Spears Stabbed Into His Body

Archaeologists working at the Pocklington burial site in Yorkshire have discovered the 2500-year-old skeletal remains of a high ranking warrior who was buried alongside his sword — and who had a half-dozen spears thrust into him in ritualistic fashion.

The “speared burial” figure was discovered among 75 burial chambers, also known as barrows, containing over 160 iron age skeletons dating back to between 800BC to the the start of the first millennium. These folks belonged to the Arras culture, a group who lived in the area during the middle period of the iron age. The Pocklington burial site, discovered just two years ago, has been described as one of the largest and most significant iron age finds in recent times.

The young man, possibly a warrior of significance, was in his late teens or early twenties when he died. According to archaeologist Paula Ware of MAP Archaeological Practice, the man had been carefully placed into the grave in a crouched position. His sword was then placed by his side, where it dutifully remained for thousands of years. The mourners then jabbed four spears along his spine, and another into his groin. Ware said this would have produced a mound with the spear shafts protruding outwards like “the spikes of a hedgehog,” where they would have remained visible for years.

“Our interpretation of that, we are thinking in terms of it releasing his spirit,” noted Ware in The Guardian. “He was possibly a warrior — someone who had achieved status within society. In the iron age we can definitely see this ritual of death was so important. It wasn’t just a simple thing.”

Other findings included another warrior buried atop his shield, and a woman who had died during childbirth. Numerous bodies were found buried without accompanying objects, but some were interred with brooches, bracelets, pendants, glass beads, pots and various prehistoric weapons. As more bodies are uncovered, the archaeologists say a pattern is emerging.

“The small, round barrows contained people who seemed to be significant members of the society,” Ware said. “These were iron-age warriors, they had been buried with their weapons and it is clear that they were significant because they had been given different burial rights.”

In addition to working out the various causes of death, the archaeologists are hoping to conduct DNA analysis to determine whether or not the Arras people were indigenous or migrants from Europe, including France or Germany.

[MIKA27]

Meet The Man Behind James Bond's Crazy Car Stunts

No, Daniel Craig did not do all his stunts. On Spectre, a professional car stunt team choreographed every corner and drift and jump. British-born ex-rally driver Mark Higgins drove the Aston Martin DB10 in Spectre‘s night-time chase scenes in the heart of Rome, which end in a massive jump into the Tiber river.

To celebrate the launch of the latest Bond movie on Blu-ray, we sat down to talk with Mark about his career, how he got into movie stunt work, and how involved he is in both the setup of the stunt cars and the filming process itself.

How did you end up being the guy behind the wheel of an Aston Martin on a James Bond movie?

“I’ve been driving for 25 years. My main job was a rally driver, though I still rally now — that started back in 1990, we won a few British rally championships, and we’ve done the world championship, rallied in Australia and so on.

“I first got involved in the film industry on Quantum of Solace back in 2008 — this is my third Bond now, and to think my first film would be a Bond film is pretty amazing. It came about through a friend of mine, the old Stig, Ben Collins — he was working on it, and he said they wanted a rally driver to do the shot coming down the quarry — so I was the baddie in the Alfa Romeo in that.

“I was Naomi in Skyfall, driving the [Land Rover] Defender, we’ve done Fast and Furious 6 and some other movies, now James Bond for a few weeks. And now with Spectre, basically everything with the DB10 is what I was involved in. I was also out in Sölden, we did a bit out on the snow for about six weeks. My main thing was the preparation for Rome, and everything with Aston Martin and the DB10.”

How involved were you in the setup of the Aston Martin DB10 for the stunts in Spectre?

“There can be a lot of hanging around in this job, but the nice thing about Rome was that there were only two cars in the shot the whole time, so every night we were flat-out driving — I’d rather be driving than sitting around.”

“Quite a lot went into the car — I think we started working back in October. We had a Vantage, which is a very similar chassis to the DB10; the DB10 was built in a very short time, because Sam Mendes saw the drawings and said “I want that car.” And in a couple of weeks, I don’t know how many weeks it was, we built this beautiful DB10. We widened it up, and we did a lot of jump testing, and we simulated what the car would be doing.”

“We took the car to a rough cobbled road and would pound it to make sure that they didn’t break; we couldn’t have the cars break on set — and we didn’t, every one of them came back. I’m actually glad I drove it before they told me what they got for it at auction, because it sold for about 2.4 million pounds.

“The pod cars are really strange — they have a power steering system like a boat, so you turn and you can do nearly a quarter of a turn before anything happens. And there’s no central steering point, and no steering feel, so you can’t really tell what’s happening apart from the direction you’re going. The brake feel is the same, but the centre of gravity is really weird. It’s like a computer game, but a really bad one. That’s really hard to get set up right for stunt driving, especially with the star inside the car.”

What was it like jumping between different cars, on different road surfaces, on a daily basis?

“There were 10 in total, we were involved with 10 in total. There were two pod cars, which we drive from the roof, there were two stunt cars with hydraulic handbrakes, roll cages, rally seats, stiffer suspension — made for a bit of the showy stuff. We also had two gadget cars, with the flamethrower and machineguns which were activated by me, and two hero cars with the full interior and as you’d see the cars in the film.”

“I think the rallying definitely helped — you’re not just on one surface all the time, you’re always looking for the unexpected, conditions are changing all the time and what have you. You do as much rehearsing as you can, but driving’s not actually the most difficult part of it — it’s driving to what the cameras want to see. I might think “oh, that looked great”, but if it’s not part of the story.

“Sometimes you can’t see a thing in the car; with all of the cameras set up, your vision is restricted here and there and everywhere. When you start putting all this extra weight on the car, the weight distribution and handling changes as well. So I think that’s where the rallying has been especially useful — it helps you adapt to different scenarios quite quickly.”

“We had winter tyres to use, which had a bit more give in them, and the suspension was quite soft so that had more give in it — the biggest problem that we had was that we did everything through the night, so sometimes the humidity was quite high and we’d have dew on the cobbles. It was important to spin the tyres up before you did a run, because if you didn’t — the first time you lit it up sideways, with a big V8, you were going properly sideways.”

007’s latest mission is now available on Blu-ray, DVD and digital.

[MIKA27]

Jameson’s 2016 St. Patrick’s Day Bottle

Outside of Guinness, no beverage screams St. Paddy’s Day like Jameson. To celebrate that fact, the brand teams up with an artist every March to design a limited edition bottle, which looks good enough to display after you’ve sucked it dry. This year’s bottle comes courtesy of James Earley, a Dublin-based street artist who comes from a long line of stained glass makers. For inspiration, Earley looked to the bridges of the River Liffey, which flows right through the center of Dublin. If you’re a Jameson fan, it’s a bottle that should find its way to a shelf on your home bar.

[MIKA27]

Roccbox

Roccbox is another one of those items where the name says it all, it´s a rock in a box. It´s really a stone in a box, so you get stone baking properties, but you also get the portability made possible by the compact size. You can bake a 12 inch pie in just over 90 seconds, so it´s ideal for pizza fiends. Its special burner enables the inside to heat up to 500ºc in around 15 minutes, which is quite fast, the stone on the inside is a refractory stone, ideal to preserve and disperse heat featuring spatial insulation materials, there is also a silicone cover so you won´t get burned should you ever touch its surface. Also included is a wood burner, a gas burner a thermometer, a pizza peel and even a recipe book. High temp cooking made available on the spot of your choice, just take Roccbox with you.

[MIKA27]

William Shatner Recounts How Leonard Nimoy Approached Spock as a Character

The friendship of Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner is legendary, and it is now the subject of a new book from Shatner: Leonard: My Fifty-Year Friendship with a Remarkable Man. Fittingly, the audiobook edition of the book is narrated by the Captain himself.

The book covers the five-decade long friendship between the two men, who first met on the set of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., through Star Trek and up to February 2015, when Nimoy passed away.

Leonard: My Fifty-Year Friendship with a Remarkable Man is now available in audio and hardcover from MacMillian.

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Sophia The Robot Has An Impressive Range Of Derp Faces

Hanson Robotics showed off Sophia — a lifelike humanoid robot capable of facial expression — at SXSW Interactive recently. Sophia is a robot that’s designed to interact with humans, with sophisticated cameras that can track the facial expressions and eye movement of the people she’s talking to. She’s even capable of maintaining eye contact to form a connection. However, out of the 62 facial expressions that Sophia is able to make, a lot of them are just plain… creepy.

Sophia’s face is made up of a patented rubber material dubbed ‘frubber’ that can better simulate the elasticity of human skin and help with simulated expression-making. She wasn’t brought to SXSW just as a showpiece, however, but as a way for Sophia to actively learn more about people and the art of interacting with them. She pointed this out in her panel, saying: “rather than be a spectacle, I would rather learn and participate.”

David Hanson is a firm believer in humanoid robots, believing that they could be used for medical purposes, therapy, education, or even treating contagious diseases. “I believe that there will be a time where robots are indistinguishable from humans,” says David Hanson of Hanson Robotics. “My preference is to always make them look a little bit like robots, so you know.” This explains the clear panel on the back of Sophia’s skull that shows her inner workings — though much effort has gone into making sure her face is as realistic as possible. That being said, her expressions seem to range between thoroughly disgusted and slightly psychotic:

At one point, David Hanson asks a question that you should never, ever ask of a semi-sentient humanoid robot: “Do you want to destroy humans?” “Okay, I will destroy humans,” she agrees pleasantly, making this face at the camera:

The human race is doomed......

[MIKA27]

Australian Scientists Make Major Prostate Cancer Treatment Breakthrough

Australian researchers have launched a clinical trial which will use revolutionary technology to improve targeting accuracy for patients undergoing radiotherapy for prostate cancer — cutting treatment time from 40 visits to just five.

The TROG 15.01 SPARK trial, coordinated by TROG Cancer Research, studies an Australian-developed technology, Kilovoltage Intrafraction Monitoring (KIM), which assesses the position of the cancer in real-time, and enables the treatment team to redirect the radiation beam if the cancer moves even by a few millimetres.

A standard course of radiotherapy for prostate cancer involves treatment five times a week for around eight weeks. Although the side effects are generally mild, the length of the regimen can be difficult for some men to manage.

Steve McCluskey is one of the first people in the world who will access the novel KIM treatment at Calvary Mater Newcastle. He decided to join the SPARK trial after being recently diagnosed with prostate cancer and said the reduced number of hospital visits will make life a lot easier.

“I am a great believer in new technology and I loved the idea of only having five visits with minimal chances of major side effects. I cannot wait to get the treatment behind me as quickly as possible and get on with my life,” Steve said.

Trial Co-Chair, Professor Paul Keall, said the innovative technology has the potential to be transformative for men with early stage prostate cancer, significantly decreasing their treatment time.

“The KIM technology will enable safer radiation dose intensification, and therefore the SPARK trial cancer patients will be treated in five treatment sessions over two weeks,” he said.

“Potential patients are enthusiastic about the increased accuracy and the shorter treatment time. There are economic benefits to shorter treatment times also, reducing hospital workload and costs as well as the time off work and transport for patients and their families.

“KIM is a technology being developed and pioneered in Australia, and is applicable to other cancers affected by motion, including lung, liver, kidney and pancreas cancers. This Australian technology could become the global standard of care for many cancer patients.”

Associate Professor Jarad Martin is the clinical Co-Chair of SPARK, and is excited to be able to offer this promising treatment option for men in Newcastle and beyond.

“Radiotherapy is already a safe and effective treatment option for men with prostate cancer. SPARK is another step in us exploring novel ways to make a good treatment even better,” he said.

SPARK will recruit 48 patients around Australia and researchers expect the efficacy of the KIM technology to be known in late 2017. The trial is coordinated by TROG Cancer Research, co-funded Cancer Australia and the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia and sponsored by the University of Sydney.

[MIKA27]

TRITON UNDERWATER GILLS

Chances are you’ve daydreamed about being able to breathe underwater. Not with scuba tanks or snorkels – but with some small James Bond-like gadget that would allow you to stay down there for as long as you wanted. Well – that isn’t a daydream anymore thanks to Triton Gills.

Billed as a state of the art oxygen respirator, this device makes it so you can do all the same stuff you would with scuba gear – just without all of that heavy equipment. Use is simple, just bite onto the mouthpiece and breathe normally. According to Triton, when you inhale, oxygen flows in while the microporous hollow fiber keeps water out. Once inside the device, the air gets stored in a powerful micro compressor run by a rechargeable lithium-ion battery. These tech-gills can run for up to 45 minutes of underwater exploring and will retail for around $300. [Purchase]

[MIKA27]

Maple Syrup and Hot Sauce Aged in Pappy Van Winkle Barrels

Hunting down a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle is often a fruitless endeavor. If you yearn for that sweet, bourbon-y goodness but can’t find a bottle, there are other ways to get it. Take these offerings from Pappy & Company, for example. Both their Bourbon Barrel-Aged Pure Maple Syrup and Barrel-Aged Pepper Sauce are bottled after time spent in Pappy Van Winkle barrels. The Pepper Sauce is a collab with Midland Ghost, who supplied Ghost Peppers for the sauce, and the Maple Syrup is in collaboration with Bissel Maple Farm and saw six months in Pappy Van Winkle 15 Year Old barrels. If you’re looking to bring the excellence of Pappy to your waffles or wings, this is where it’s at.

[MIKA27]

First Look At Airlander 10, The Largest Aircraft In The World

Here it is, folks, our first glimpse of the fully constructed Airlander 10. This floating behemoth measures 92m-long, which is 18m longer than a jumbo jet. If all goes well, the British-designed hybrid vehicle could see its inaugural test flight later this winter.

British firm Hybrid Air Vehicles has been working on the £25 million ($46.6 million) prototype for nearly a decade. Yesterday, journalists were given a close look of newly-constructed aircraft, which is being built in the UK’s largest aircraft hangar at Cardington in Bedfordshire.

Airlander 10 during construction.

Airlander 10 is called a “hybrid” because it integrates three distinct forms of air transport, namely elements of fixed wing aircraft, helicopters and lighter-than-air technology. The vehicle boasts a total volume of 38,000 cubic metres, which also happens to be the amount of helium it requires to take flight. The ship can stay aloft in the same spot for three weeks, and even withstand bullet holes. It’s silent, produces no pollution and is considered an important prospect for future air travel.

Among its many uses, Airlander 10 could lift machinery to remote areas, provide surveillance and communications, facilitate academic research or transport passengers on novelty flights. It could even be used as a giant floating antenna to boost mobile communications for large public events, or to monitor the flow of refugees crossing the Mediterranean.

“We will not compete with a 747 flying across the Atlantic, but we can offer the ultimate flight experience for tourism and leisure purposes,” Chris Daniels, Head of Partnerships at HAV, told the BBC. “It’s perfect for sightseeing because we can have floor to ceiling clear panels, and we can open the windows because we are not flying as high or as fast as traditional planes, but we will not be offering a service to get from A to B as quickly as possible.”

Hybrid Air Vehicles is already thinking beyond Airlander 10 to an even larger vehicle, which could house entire suites of rooms within its hull. The prototype will have to undergo months of tests, but HAV is hoping to have the aircraft in British skies this winter. The firm is hoping to build a dozen Airlanders each year starting in 2018, including some passenger craft that can carry 48 people at a time.

HAV CEO Stephen McGlennan speaking at the event.

Though it may appear outdated, the concept behind Airlander 10 is sound, and it could launch a new age of airships. As The Guardian reports, US aerospace firm Lockheed Martin is currently working on their own version. HAV is hoping to woo customers from the Middle East and elsewhere — and even the UN, who could conceivably use the aircraft for humanitarian purposes.

Not surprisingly, the unveiling of Airlander 10 has prompted a number of parodies, this one with Kim Kardashian being my favourite.

[MIKA27]

This Is The Last Sun Antarctica Will See For Six Months

Manning the NOAA’s research station at the South Pole is a lonely job at the best of times. But when you’re watching the last sunset for half a year, things have to be feeling particularly bleak.

The NOAA’s Jesse Milton describes the base as the “coldest, driest, flattest place you can imagine”, and that’s probably not far off. Temperatures dip below -73C, and wind speeds of 322km/h have been recorded.

Why bother staying there at all? Well, the continuous darkness and cold temperatures make it perfect for astronomical observations, while the distance from humanity and sterile icepack make it an ideal site for atmospheric observations.

During the winter, no planes fly in or out, and a skeleton crew is left to man the station, apparently marathoning all the versions of The Thing. If you want to share in their solitude, the live webcam stays up all winter.

[MIKA27]

Four Sets Of Identical Twins Staged A Time Travel Prank On An NYC Subway

Most users of public transport are pretty blasé when people hit them up for cash between stations. When a man announced he was collecting funds to build a time machine, riders chuckled at the odd request — until another man boarded the train and announced he was the inventor’s future self. He implored them not to give any money because time travel will ruin everything.

It sounds just like that X-Files episode where a scientist travels from the future to stop his younger self from making the cryobiological compound that will one day enable time travel. But it’s actually an elaborate prank by Improv Everywhere:

For our latest mission, we staged an elaborate time travel prank on a New York City subway car with four sets of identical twins. A man enters a subway car and announces he is raising money to complete his time machine. At the next stop, his future self enters to try to talk him out of it. More and more time travellers convene on the subway car as the train rolls along, surprising the random commuters caught up in the middle.

This is the third time the troupe has used identical twins in their pranks. For 2008’s “Human Mirror,” they filled a subway car with 15 sets of identical twins. And in 2013, two sets of twins dressed as Marty McFly and his girlfriend, Jennifer, staged an elaborate Back to the Future prank. So combining the two into time travellers on the subway seems like a natural progression.

You can read more about how the prank played out here. But there’s an interesting philosophical question in all of this: would the riders’ future selves magically vanish, Looper-style, the minute the inventor resolves not to build his time machine after all?

[MIKA27]

That Weird Time DC And Marvel Joined Forces

In 1996, something happened that most superhero comics fans thought was impossible: DC Comics and Marvel mashed their characters together into an all-new fictional construct. The Amalgam era was truly a once-in-a-lifetime event, because the comics published during this brief experiment probably aren’t getting reprinted any time soon.

It’s long been a ritual of comic-book fans to pledge allegiance to either DC or Marvel. Talent may go back and forth between the two biggest superhero companies, but they have both stoked the fires of rivalry for decades now. Ever since the days of Stan Lee dissing the Distinguished Competition on the other side of Manhattan, corporate figureheads from Marvel and DC have snarked at the other side’s offerings, crowed when their sales outstrip those of their competitors and taken in-continuity potshots at each other. Even amongst readers who try to stay neutral and follow series from both houses, there are characters who ignite ire like no other. Punisher loyalists hate that Batman doesn’t kill the Joker. Superman enthusiasts argue that Thor could never take out the Man of Steel.

Crossovers between DC and Marvel have been rare. 20 years after the wall-crawler and Man of Steel faced off in 1976’s Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man, the two companies reconvened on an even bigger scale. The 1996 DC vs. Marvel miniseries mostly consisted of meet-cutes and the kind of fights that had been fuelling nerd arguments for ages.

It’s fan service of the highest order, where Superman brawls with the Hulk and wins, Wonder Woman picks up Thor’s hammer and Elektra takes out Catwoman. The best stuff came after Marvel and DC’s characters came into conflict, after a cosmic plot device character named Access fused the two universes together.

What happened next was the debut of the Amalgam Universe, a conceit that presented a landscape where composite characters like Super-Soldier had been around for decades. Amalgam was essentially fan-fiction created by the biggest enthusiasts of all, comics professionals themselves.

The Amalgam books came out in two chunks that were a year apart, one-shots that lived and died by the strength of their individual fusions. Some of the comics were awful, others were sublime artifacts from a publishing history you wished really existed. The best of them thrived on either the commonality of the original mythoses that were mashed up or found raucous energy from splicing together seemingly diametrically opposed bits of lore in surprising ways. Iron Lantern knotted Hal Jordan and Tony Stark together to make Hal Stark, a character who periodically needed to recharge the armour that he made from an alien lantern artifact.

The creators on that book found synergy in the old-school military sci-fi tropes in each character’s history and presented fun combos of their antagonists.

Bruce Wayne, Agent of SHIELD doesn’t sound like the kind of thing that would work, but layering the jet-setting playboy aspect of the character on top of super-spy tropes winds up being really fun.

It’s one of the better books to come from the project, splicing together old-school Nick Fury with Batman against criminal mastermind The Green Skull, who’s aided by daughter Selina Luthor, a combo of Madame Viper and Catwoman. Bat-Thing is Man-Bat + Man-Thing and stars in a comic that channels the gloomy macabre horror elements of each hero.

Specific fusions yielded different results in different titles, too. Dark Claw was a mash-up of Wolverine and Batman, but felt more engaging in the Dark Claw Adventures comic that pinged off of the animated series-inspired Batman Adventures. The work there was much better than the straight-ahead superhero drama in Legend of the Dark Claw.

Challengers of the Fantastic paid homage to Fantastic Four and Challengers of the Unknown science-hero teams and the work that legendary artist Jack Kirby did for both publishers, blending elements of the New Gods, Inhumans and other space-age cosmic threats in Doctor Doomsday, Galatiac and more.

Also drawing on Kirby’s prodigious legacy with each publisher, Thorion of the New Asgods felt like it was fated to happen.

The story here pays fitting homage to the operatic cosmic tone that Kirby evinced in stories featuring Thor at Marvel and the New Gods at DC. It’s a space fantasy feast where the Mother Box and Cosmic Cube become the Mother Cube and where Odin and Highfather are one benevolent skyfather figure.

In Bullets & Bracelets, a odd couple pairing of The Punisher (a Frank Castle/Steve Trevor hybrid) and Diana Prince (she wears adamantium bracelets) fell in love and had a kid who was kidnapped.

While the art is fetching, the oddball stew of street justice and sci-fi — as seen in the Monarch character who’s equal parts Jim Rhodes and DC’s time-travelling bad guy Monarch — wasn’t as engaging as in better Amalgam titles. A lot of the Amalgam comics suffered from having to have huge backstory exposition dumps on their pages. You can tell both companies feverishly wanted to create a false sense of history for the conjoined universes, cramming as many in-jokes as they could into each one of these one-shots.

The wry nods to comics history were also metatextual, as seen in the Amalgam company’s publisher figure Stan Schwartz (a combo of important creators DC Stan Lee and Julie Schwartz) and references to Secret Crisis and Final Onslaught crossovers, which are word-salad nods to Secret Wars, Final Crisis and Onslaught events done by Marvel and DC.

In at least one case, the Amalgam books capitalised on long-simmering conspiracies about events that seemed too tidy to be coincidences. The Doom Patrol, a second-tier DC super-team of freakish outcasts led by a genius in a wheelchair, appeared three months before the X-Men, who could be described the exact same way. People have long wondered if 1960s Marvel ripped off the Doom Patrol template for their more famous mutants. So when X-Patrol folded together the Doom Patrol and X-Force (the mutant squad that used rougher tactics than the main X-Men teams), it was a nod to decades of speculation.

But not all the Amalgam books made clever use of the experiment’s fusion power. Assassins is amongst the worst of the lot, filled to the brim with the stilted writing and artistic overindulgence that characterised the worst of 1990s cape comics.

Lead characters The Dare and Catsai are wince-inducing combinations of Daredevil and Deathstroke and Elektra and Catwoman. The bad guy is Enigma Fisk, a terrible mash-up of the Riddler and the Kingpin. The prose stylings read like everyone lost a bet, spitting out wannabe-clever nods at the root characters’ real continuity while strenuously trying to seem edgy.

Thanks for the superpowers, dead baby Kal-El!

My favourite Amalgam creations were Super-Soldier and Spider-Boy, patchwork heroes expertly sewn together from elements of the Superman, Captain America and Spider-Man mythologies. The two Super-Soldier comics perfectly captured the Greatest Generation optimism and whimsy of 1940s comic stylings, along with the more angsty man-out-of-time vibe that hovers around both Clark Kent and Steve Rogers.

Spider-Boy Team-Up offered the most fun canvas of all the Amalgam titles, riffing on reboots, time travel, costume changes and heroic legacy with just the right amount of effervescent snark. The crazy plot twists, melodramatic character reactions and feverish sci-fi pseudo-science found here pay homage to the reason that many fans read comics in the first place.

I loved the Amalgam project when it was happening because it felt like an end-of-the-rainbow payoff for all those years of reading footnotes and absorbing minutiae about DC and Marvel’s histories. These were comics that gave the superhero genre’s biggest fans a big warm hug, with in-jokes and fan-fic logic that actually became canon. But, while the acknowledgement of that deep trivia knowledge was a great reward, it also limited the project’s appeal beyond geek circles. The Supes/Spidey projects from 1976 and 1981 were written broadly enough to hook non-nerds whose curiosity was piqued by the unexpectedness of those team-ups. But Amalgam wasn’t pulling in anyone who wasn’t already invested in all the lore and plotlines accrued in decades of DC and Marvel’s superhero fare. It’s a crystallization of the editorial problems and policies that resulted in a drastically smaller comics-reading population.

When the DC vs. Marvel and Amalgam comics were collected, the two companies took turns releasing the anthologies. That way, DC and Marvel each got their share of the lucrative sales to be found in the bookstore market. But the companies’ rivalry feels less congenial nowadays, especially since the competition has scaled up into the realm of TV and movies. DC is a Warner Bros. company while latter-day Marvel is owned by Disney. The animosity is such that it’s highly unlikely that new printings of this material will ever happen. For now, Superman and Captain America seem destined to be competitors forever, which makes the moment when they were parts of a whole even more special.

[MIKA27]

Crazy Horse Leather Accessories:

Crazy Horse is a recent startup that create natural handmade accessories for everyday use.
They craft using only natural materials such as premium leather and felt, creating beautiful phone cases, wallets, computer sleeves, key holders and more. Each piece of leather used is unique, and after some use it will change it’s color and will give it a beautiful and natural, aged look.

Learn more from Crazy Horse or purchase now from Etsy

[MIKA27]

MINUS 8 LAYER LEATHER WATCH

For a new take on classic watch designs, look no further than San Francisco based watchmaker Minus 8. And the Minus 8 Layer Leather is a continuation of those principles. Using a process that took over a year to develop, Minus 8 developed a process that makes the Layer a timepiece that is made of individually layered strats. This process also produces a stadium effect of 6 layers of 316L bonded steel throughout the watch. Other features include Japanese movement, a PVD-coated stainless steel finish, 40+ hours of power reserve and a vegetable tanned leather band.

[MIKA27]

Watch Harrison Ford Gleefully Refuse to Say He's Done With the Star Wars Sequels

We probably shouldn’t read too much into it, but Harrison Ford returned yet again to Jimmy Kimmel Live to promote The Force Awakens, coming soon on digital download. But when Kimmel asked him if he was definitely not coming back for more sequels, Ford playfully dodged the question... repeatedly.

Maybe Han Solo will get a Force vision flashback, maybe he landed on a big pile of mattresses at the bottom of Starkiller Base and bounced into a bacta tank that also happened to be in an escape pod. The part that blows my mind is Harrison Ford “playfully” doing anything. I have literally never seen the notorious grump act so silly before, especially when it involves Star Wars. I wonder if it might have something to do with his other notorious, alleged habit.

Or maybe he’s just that thrilled he finally managed to kill Han Solo off. As he said, he’s been trying to make that happen for over 30 years. If I were him I’d celebrate too.

[MIKA27]

OVER-THE-WATER-SUITES IN MONTEGO BAY, JAMAICA

Why stay on the beach when you can stay on the ocean? That seems to be the logic the folks at Sandals Royal Caribbean applied to their new over-the-water suites.

Located in Montego Bay Jamaica, these are the first over-water suites in the Caribbean. Each Tahiti style bungalow sits on top of stilts and features the utmost in luxury vacationing; an infinity pool, a large deck, floating water hammock, and even a butler. You don’t even have to poke your head outside to see the gorgeous turquoise waters of the caribbean – just look down through the glass floors and you can spot fish swimming under your bungalow. The resort is set to officially open on November 15th of this year, and prices vary based on the season.

[MIKA27]

SHARKBANZ SHARK REPELLANT WRISTBAND

Surfing can be a bit dangerous. We all know this. And with the threat of sharks lurking below the murky waters of any ocean, it can be downright nerve-wracking. Thankfully, two California surfers decided enough was enough, and began research and design for a shark repellent band that would ease the minds of surfers the world over.

Well, that day has come with the release of Sharkbanz; the wearable device that uses patented magnetic technology to deter sharks from attacking people in the water. The band disrupts the animals electro-receptors by emitting magnetic waves which result in the shark turning away from an otherwise potential encounter. For the shark, the experience is similar to someone shining a really bright light into your eyes in a dark room. Clearly in this situation, your flight response kicks in, similar to what happens to the shark. Each Sharkbandz requires no batteries, work up to 200 meters deep, and fits just about anyone’s wrist or ankle. Available now for $65. [Purchase]