The Expendables 2 comes out today. It stars almost every action movie star of the 80’s, which is great if you like that sort of thing. One problem. I don’t really like that sort of thing, so this is gonna be a very odd list.

To celebrate the successful landing of the Mars Rover Curiosity, for this weeks Friday Five, we discuss our favorite things that happened in space. We promise not to scream too loud about it. Besides, no one would hear us anyway in space.

Ughhh, this week’s topic is particularly hard. The breadth of awesome ’90s movies is very wide indeed. Narrowing this down to just five is extremely difficult. I tried to pick a bunch of movies that typified the ’90s, and that I’ll watch over and over and over again.

It’s been a very long time since I’ve actually played with action figures. Sure, I have a TON of toys now, but that’s mostly because my mother wouldn’t buy me anything with guns as a child, so I never got G.I. Joes or Transformers as a kid, so now as an adult I go buy whatever I want to fill that hole in my childhood. Most of them now are for display and I never really play with them, except for some of my starships. I’m gonna try to remember what toys I would have used as a kid.

Everyone loves Batman, how can you not? He is simply a total badass. He’s one of the few superheroes who has no real powers of which to speak of. His super power is really just lots of money and time. But even so, he stands toe to toe with some of the most powerful heroes of all time, like Green Lantern or Superman, and he’s managed to beat both in fights in various media, using nothing but his smarts.

Well, almost everyone loves Batman. He has a vast array of enemies in his rogues gallery who want nothing more than to see him dead. Out of all of comicdom, I would have to say Batman has the deepest and most interesting set of arch nemeses. Some say they only exist because Batman encourages them. Some say Batman only exists because of them. Maybe we’ll never know, but one we we do know for sure, we love us some awesome villains!

With the Olympic Trials upon us, and their endless overproduced puff piece human interest stories, it got me thinking about my favorite uplifting or inspirational music.

So I’m a little late, what with the Fourth of July falling in the middle of the week, but this is the closest we’re going to get this year to a holiday falling on a Friday, so I went with it. This week’s topic is patriotic characters.

Great writing is only half the story when it comes to comics. If I just wanted something to read I have plenty of books. No, the great thing about comics is all the visuals. While a bad artist can take a great story and make it unreadable, a good artist can elevate a bad story to new heights with creative and evocative artwork.