Usagi Yojimbo (Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2012)

Usagi Yojimbo is one of my favourite comics ever and this is probably the best Usagi figure I've seen. Full disclosure: the only other Usagi figure I ever owned was the one from the original toyline way way back in the 90's and that one was... less than faithful to the comic. This figure looks like he jumped right off the page, although he could use a few more paint applications but that's par for the course with this toyline from what I understand.


 The episodes from the final season of this (the best) Ninja Turtles show starring the rabbit ronin Miyamoto Usagi were among my favourites and I think gave us also the most accurate depiction of Stan Sakai's enduring creation on screen to date. Usagi Yojimbo is one of the few series I still buy in physical books and I can't wait for each new trade paperback to hit the shelves. This figure is certainly not a high-end collectible but is fun and a nice way to dip into the Ninja Turtle toyline without feeling like I need to collect ALL the characters.

David's Tea Buchu Superfruit Rooibos

Another new one from David's Tea that is based around a "superfruit" this time a "detox remedy" from South Africa. Other ingredients include black current, blackberry leaves, goji berry, strawberry, blueberry, açai, stevia, and natural açai and raspberry flavouring.  I find the smell of this tea very unappealing. I think it's mostly the esters used for the natural flavours, I like raspberries but not usually raspberry flavouring.

This tea is almost a checklist of trendy exotic ingredients, açai, goji, buchu, even blueberries are considered fancy now. Of the new teas we bought this was the one I was probably the least interested in which may have biased me a little bit but Mrs. ISMOTU didn't love this one either.

It's tart mostly with a hint of sweetness to prevent it from being considered sour. I wouldn't say it's bad but definitely not for me.
Not Recommended.

For more info follow the link: https://www.davidstea.com/ca_en/buchu-superfruit-organic-3

Luckily a disappointing tea did not impede my enjoyment of the latest episode of "Legends of Tomorrow" which despite having a terrible name has quickly become my new favourite of the current stable of DC Comics TV series we're lucky enough to be able to watch.  This episode's trek to the Cold War got us a look into the Eighties without repeating the funkalicious vibe from the team's inaugural trip to the Seventies. Plus we got to see some characters and callbacks to John Ostrander's run on "Fury of Firestorm" which is always a good thing in my books. I'll have to write either a Firestorm-centric post one of these days or an examination of my favourite comics written by Mr. Ostrander. Or maybe I should just do both.

Classic Comic Strips Part 1: Intro & the Phantom

I'm a big comics nerd. My gateway to comics was probably reruns of the 1960's Spider-Man cartoon and Batman TV series along with VHS tapes of a handful of Fleischer Studios Superman cartoons. So my earliest comics were the typical mix of superheroes, Archie, and other cartoon faves Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures and Sonic the Hedgehog. In my hometown newspaper I discovered the comics page and still remember when the Sunday edition had multiple comics pages in full colour. On those pages my favourites would have been Calvin and Hobbes, and Garfield. So this is the concise-yet-still-rambling secret origin of Inverse Square's love of comics.

In this post I specifically want to address the earliest version of the form: newspaper comic strips.  I have a rough idea to take a semi-chronological tour through my hobby/fandom so this seems like a good place to start.  I could go on at length about the origins of editorial comics which eventually gave rise to the comic strip as we know it but other people have done a much better job of it than I ever could so I'll leave it at that. I intend to focus on my favourites rather than a history and perhaps try to figure out why I like the ones I do.

Hallowe'en Horror

I love Hallowe'en, and ever since I was a kid the biggest part of Hallowe'en for me wasn't the candy but dressing up in a costume. I would change my mind about a million times before October 31st rolled around.  I wanted to dress up in all the costumes and occasionally I'd wear different costumes to different Hallowe'en events prior to All Hallows' Eve.

from wikipedia.org