Man, I expected to  have this toy last year!  Remember when the second G.I. Joe movie was coming out in 2012?  Good times.  But now the film is finally in 3D and/or has extra Channing Tatum, and unless the movie gets delayed eight months at the last minute to add a dimension AGAIN, maybe we'll actually get to see it at the end of the month.  There's only so many more dimensions you can add!  It already had time!  What's next? Will we be adding Mr. Mxyzptlk?

Anyway, the movie's sudden rescheduling occurred just as the movie's tie-in toys were starting to hit stores.  Awkward.  And so we never got to the later waves with Bruce Willis in them.  I mean, dude, Bruce Willis G.I. Joe toy.  You gotta.  And so I did.

It wasn't until I left the register that I realized, wow, so that's why this thing's so heavy.  Buried in the packaging, basically entirely hidden, is Joe Colton's giant-ass missile launcher that's as big as he is.  I'm not sure why you'd obscure half your product, but there it was.  And what you do is attach this massive man-sized missile launcher to the top of a tommy gun so Joe Colton can sort of hold it, plug four missiles into it, and then pull the ripcord out of it, launching the missiles in turn.  In theory.  The thing that aggravates me about modern Joes is that NO ONE CAN HOLD THEIR WEAPONS, EVER.  Now, couple that inability with a gun that weighs as much as the actual figure.  That ain't happening.  Even if you don't want to stand the thing up while holding its man-sized weapon, getting the thing to actually stay in his hand is a chore.

(The photo I included above is the result of about half an hour of trial and error.  It fell over immediately thereafter.  Retakes, to be safe?  Hell no, I called it quits.)

It's too bad.  I'd really love my Bruce Willis toy to have a hilariously oversized missile launcher, but it's more trouble than it's worth.  So toss that stuff in the bin and resign yourself to only trying to get him to hold his normal-sized weapons.

I also got The Rock, because, hey, Roadblock.  And this one doesn't have a gun handle molded into his palm.  It does have an amazingly weird weapon set thing, though, that I didn't have the patience to figure out.  It's not worth it.  It's never worth it.  Joe weapons will never ever ever ever ever fit into hands, ever.

 

So as we were debuting the new site this weekend, Frumph says to me, hey, guess what, this is awesome.  See all those folks with no avatars?  Well, what if I told you that if you uploaded your own avatars to a certain directory and did some Comicpress magic, they'd be randomly assigned to unavatared users?

So I says, holy balls!

And so after crankin' out a handful every day since then, there are now a total of 24 avatars in the pool.  If you don't have an avatar and you post, you'll get randomly assigned, say, Sodomuffin.  And then every time you post, you'll keep that Sodomuffin avatar.  (... at least until I upload a new image into the pool, which restarts the math and they all get switched around again)

Since I have so many, and I put so much work into them despite being tiny 64x64 things, I thought I'd show them to you big as a wallpaper.  You are also free to crop them out and make your own avatars on other boards, so long as you give me credit.  I am also wondering if maybe I should try to do this a print or a poster or something in the meager number of hours I have remaining before C2E2, but we'll see.

Enjoy!