Since the alphabet is the building block of our language, the Powet Alphabet is the building block of what makes us geeks.

One of the things the Venture Brothers is known for is its diverse cast of characters. Just seeing the logo or mentioning it by name automatically brings images of Doc, Brock, Hank, Dean, The Monarch and his henchmen to mind. One of the characters who is often overlooked is Thaddeus “Rusty” Venture’s own father, Jonas.

Jonas is an obvious parody of Hanna Barbera’s Benton Quest (Johnny Quest’s father) and other “Adventurer” characters from the late 60’s and 70’s. Jonas’ voice (provided by voice actor Paul Boocock) and physical appearance are a definite nod to characters of that era. Unlike most Hanna Barbera action-dads, he is much colder towards his son and generally has a somewhat of a disregard for his feelings and general well being. If you’re a fan of the show, you’ll probably know all of this, but if not be warned, there are plenty of spoilers after the break.
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The late Dwayne McDuffie had credits on over 60 episodes of the Cartoon Network Justice League Series. In the wake of is death, I wanted to review one of his most memorable episodes. This one has magic, aliens, multidimensional monsters, zombies, gangsters, and Aquaman!

“The Terror Beyond” is from the second season of Justice League, and like most episodes from the series, is split into two parts. It opens with the US Military hunting for a very large target, revealed to be Solomon Grundy. After a rocket propelled grenade to the face, Grundy chucks around some tanks like they were nothing. One tank fires a laser(!) on him, and as the military prepares to capture Grundy and take him in, Aquaman comes to his rescue. Riding atop a purple sea serpent, Aqauman announces “If you want to live, come with me” and the two escape under water. Now I remember how awesome this show is. Ha!

Aqauman arrives not in Atlantis, but the tower of Doctor Fate. Fate’s wife Inza greets them, and Grundy is offered a chest full of gold in exchange for some task or information. As a more immediate reward he scarfs down two cupcakes. Doctor Fate arrives and is pleased to me “Mr Grande.”
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It’s only a matter of time now. This week on Jeopardy! a special event took place as Watson, a sophisticated computer system from IBM, faced off against Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter who are generally regarded as the greatest human Jeopardy! players. This is a distinction we need to make now as Watson pretty much completely trounced them.

Despite his monolithic appearance when seen from the front Watson is actually conveniently placed monitor. He’s actually a huge computer system on state of the art IBM hardware. We know this of course because this event was basically a huge advertisement for IBM. They clearly put a good deal of work to program this guy so I guess that was the trade off for all the viewers this event pulled in.

Watson does some crazy algorithms to determine the most likely answer and the probabilities are then shown on screen. If the chance of the answer being right is above his threshold, he buzzes in, with great speed, and shoots and answer. But he’s not always right!

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I don’t think anyone planned on a long show. In fact, the show almost didn’t go on, with Sean and Sindra both out. But we got a last minute ringer in the form of Extra Zero, and still managed to talk about toys for an hour straight.

This may be the last Powetcast in the form you know it. We return with our 50th episode marking the 5th anniversary of Powet.tv next, and then a live recording from PAX. The show that comes back in March may be very different. Subscribe now and don’t miss it!

Music in this episode from the album Where Did the Night Fall by UNKLE

Direct Link: Powetcast 49: Free Parking

Audio Netcast Details
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Via the DC Nation twitter, we now know who will be TV’s next Wonder Woman.

Adrianne Palicki, a 27 year old actress best known for the recently concluded series Friday Night Lights, will take up the role of Diana Prince and the alter ego Wonder Woman. After several attemps by DC parent company Warner Bros to bring Wonder Woman to the silver screen in recent years, the prospect of a TV series was recently taken up by veteran David E. Kelley. Kelley, whose credits include Boston Public, Ally McBeal, and The Practice. A pilot episode is expect to begin production soon for NBC, which will be extended to a full season order if successful.

Previously a Wonder Woman series starring Lynda Carter ran for 3 seasons from 1975 to 1979 first on ABC and then CBS.

The weekend has kicked off in stupendous fashion with a news explosion from the Hasbro event held at New York Toy Fair 2011. If you were there, you knew you were in the right place because Optimus Prime was parked outside, trailer and all. (See above)

Image from Poe Ghostal’s Twitter feed.

I’ve been watching things from a far on my twitter feeds and blogs, so I’m going to do my best to recap all the relevant news and information coming out of the event. Read on after the jump to see all the details!

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EDIT: Several sites are reporting this animation is from a scraped movie 2 years ago. We’ll update when we know more.

Bandai and Warner Bros are hard at work on a Thundercats reboot. We’ve already seen the toys. Now take a look at the cartoon show expected to accompany them.

The clip features a young, inexperienced Lion-O training on his own until he is confronted by Slithe. Its very clear these are different characters than what we might be used to. Lion-O especially is completely re-written. What do you think of the animation?
(via Flixist)

Looks like McFarlane Toys dug deep and managed to score themselves the Walking Dead license. MTV Geek got the exclusive. Two lines will be released, one for the comic book series and one for the AMC TV series. The figures will be in the 6 inch scale. Human figures will have what sounds like limited articulation with some interchangable accessories. Zombie figures will have action features like interchangable body parts and ‘exploding heads’. It doesn’t sound like there will be any articulation on the Zombies, which is just a lost opportunity.

The full presser is after the break.

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