It’s that time of year again! No, not Halloween (though that is sneaking up on us faster that I realize). I’m talking about New York Comic Con time! Though not as prolific as San Diego Comic Con, NYCC is the East Coast’s biggest comic and media convention, boasting hundreds of exhibitors and tens of thousands of attendees.
Just like its West Coast counterpart, NYCC attracts countless collectors and, as such, has become a haven for exclusive merchandise. This is where Funko comes in. Over the summer we showed you all of Funko’s SDCC exclusives, the Pop!s, Dorbz, Rides and Vnyls that were only available at the con. Luckily, they’re bringing a pretty strong game to New York Comic Con as well.
Since they’re revealing all of their exclusives in waves so make sure to check back often as we update to see everything you can expect to find at NYCC.
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A Halloween or two ago we gave some ideas on how to throw together the perfect Buffy costume, which now feels a bit lonely. Now you can dress to match the chosen slayer with your best pal as Dark Willow with clothes you may have in your closet.
Ok first things first, you’re going to need a lot of black clothing. There’s several ways of going about getting that evil witch-bitch look.
In some scenes it looks like she’s wearing a dark grey jacket with a plain black tank like this for $65.00
Or this for $47.69
However this look can also be accomplished for less cash
Like this textured blouse for $ 36.00
Or this high collared blouse for $22.00
Now the pants that Willow sported…well they’re just black unspecials so go ahead and wear any pair that you have or buy a pair that you feel comfortable in.
For the shoes, it looks as if she’s wearing the devil’s personal best clunky shoes. Here are a few ideas:
Some world-ending kickass boots like these for $35.00
Or if heels are more your thing, check out these towering terrors for $25.00
Now for the makeup. To get that dead gal look, use a matte foundation or powder a shade or two darker than your natural color and then pick yourself up some dark blue liquid eyeliner for those…I’m not sure. Dark spooky magic veins?
I like this one from sephora for $5.00 because it’s waterproof
Finally complete the powerful look with this electric nail polish and a black wig
Planning to release your inner witch and slayer this Halloween? Doing some other DIY awesome? Want to check out the rest of our BOO-It-Yourself Halloween Costumes and Decor? Show me all your spook-tacular creations on Twitter @SubCultured or come party like its 1599 in our Discord server! When you’re done, wind down with Ten Family Friendly Halloween Movies to help lull the kiddos into a candy coma! Afterward, you can set the mood with Five Albums to Flesh Out Your Halloween Playlist and huddle under the covers with Netflix and Chilling – Halloween Movie Edition.
BOO-It-Yourself Halloween Costumes – Terra from Teen Titans!
BOO-It-Yourself Halloween Costumes – Ariel from The Little Mermaid!
BOO-It-Yourself Halloween Costumes – Misa Amane
BOO-It-Yourself Halloween Costumes – L from Death Note!
BOO-It-Yourself Halloween Costumes – Regina The Evil Queen!
BOO-It-Yourself Halloween Costumes – Amaterasu
I’ve spent a large portion of my life wanting to be Buffy Summers. While I have Faith Lehane’s tattoo emblazoned on my upper right arm, Buffy was my model. I know I’m not alone in this, I know a good deal of my generation grew up with the same goal: to someday be Buffy Summers.
What most people seem to remember about Buffy Summers: she wins a lot.
What most people seem to forget about Buffy Summers: she lost a lot.
Now, it’s not that people don’t remember these plot points, obviously they do. But they don’t seem to remember what loss means. What it can do to a person. They don’t remember that even as she is winning she is often losing. They forget that, because we are limited to an hour of Buffy each installment, we don’t see the full effect of the loss on her and those around her.
We don’t see Buffy really suffer because it’s not “good TV.” Genuine reality rarely is.
Buffy loses friends and allies and the mourning is brief. Buffy is forced to literally send the man she loves to Hell because, even if he’s good again now, he has been bad. He comes back and the problem is apparently solved (good TV), but Buffy’s pain over all of this is truncated. Buffy is nearly raped by someone she’s come to trust and the backlash against him is unbelievably portrayed (good TV?). Buffy dies, twice, and she comes back.
Real life for those of us who walk the path of Buffy does not have the convenience of “the network wants another season.” We have to live the fight in real time.
Maybe all you see from us is the equivalent of an hour a week. So when we cry or when we show pain, it’s unusual for you. Maybe it’s unbelievable. Strong women don’t DO that, Buffy cried in montages, why can’t you cry in montages?
We get told we’re “strong enough to handle this.” And we are. Trust me, we are. But even strong girls are defeated. Even strong girls hurt and cry and we need to be allowed to do it, no matter how uncomfortable that thought might make you. We need to suffer our losses, and we will.
This is our fight. Buffy never fought because she wanted to, in several cases she tries to stop fighting only to find out she can’t. Buffy fights because she has to. And we fight because there isn’t an alternative.
The dark things out there will always out number us. They will sometimes win. There will be cases where there is nothing we can really do, we don’t have the power to do it (Season 5 reminder: Buffy doesn’t kill the Big Bad that season. Giles has to do it for her because Buffy has limits imposed on her that he doesn’t). We can’t always just roundhouse kick the problem and pun and walk away. Not just because this is the real world, but because even within Buffy’s world that’s not always possible.
Allies are hugely important. But they’re ALLIES, they’re not directly in the fight, and sometimes they need to back off and let us fight. Sometimes they have to let us cry and be weak and not belittle the very, very real shit we live with every day. Xander was sometimes a total asshole and needed to shut his fucking mouth, okay? He was important, sure. However, while it was a fight he profited from, it WASN’T. HIS. FIGHT.
I have done my best to be Buffy Summers. Even in that I know I’ve failed. But I’ve learned as I’ve gone along, about my power, about power in general, that having power isn’t the same as being able to use it wisely, that it’s not about strength or weakness but about humanity and all the things that come with it.
I am strong. I know how to be strong. I have to keep fighting. Don’t you tell me what strength is.
Aquaman is the Embodiment of “Fine”
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It is possible that, today, you are single. It is possible that you are single and you are sick and tired of seeing hearts and flowers and naked babies with bows and arrows. It is possible that you are single and you are sick and tired of this holiday existing largely to sap people of money and convince you that you are a worthless lump of human flesh if you don’t have someone to love.
But folks, it could be worse.
You could be in love.
In very, very true, real love.
In something being written by Joss Whedon.
In case you need a reminder of that fact, here are some memorable moments that Joss Whedon provided to teach us that love is doomed and the world is awful.
BUFFY AND ANGEL
Buffy herself put it all into perspective in the series finale when she poses this question to her vampire ex-boyfriend: “What was the highlight of our relationship? When you broke up with me or when I killed you?”
It was the human girl/vampire boy trope BEFORE it became all cool and mainstream and “he’s not abusive he’s just protective and YOU JUST HATE TRUE LOVE!” And in this case, things did not work out so well. A short list of things that doomed their romance:
- Buffy is a Slayer, Angel is a vampire or “slayee”
- Angel once lost his soul and tried to kill Buffy and end the world
- Buffy sent Angel to hell to save the world
- Angel broke up with Buffy “for her own good”
- Buffy couldn’t deal with Angel being jealous of her new guy, Riley Finn, who didn’t deserve her anyway
- Buffy: The Vampire Slayer moved to UPN while Angel: The Series stayed on The WB so GOODBYE CROSSOVERS.
- Comic spoiler: after Buffy and Angel fucked to create a new world, Angel got possessed by that world (I think) and killed Giles. I mean, the Giles killing is the important part, please don’t ask me to explain the rest of the end of the Season 8 comics, please. I can’t.
The bright side: Buffy got to give her awesome “cookie dough” explanation in the final episode of Buffy, which I think we need to re-enforce these days.
ZOE AND WASH
The most adorable married couple in the ‘verse, Zoe and Hoban Washburne traveled as part ofthe crew of the Serenity. She was a veteran soldier with great aim, he was a spaceship pilot who played with plastic dinosaurs, together they fought crime. Or committed crime. Whatever was called for that day.
They were happily married! When offered the choice between saving her husband and her captain, Zoe without hesitation saved Wash! Wash gushed about being married to a warrior woman! And the other million things throughout that once season of Firefly that made them awesome.
And then Joss Whedon killed Wash off in Serenity. Mid-sentence. He was a leaf on the wind, watch HOW HE DIES.
TOPHER AND BENNETT
Hey, guess what science nerds? You’re almost going to get together!
And then one of you gets shot in the head!
WHEDON’D!
KITTY PRYDE AND PIOTR RASPUTIN
Joss Whedon trolled the comics world when he took over writing duties for Astonishing X-Men. He led people on to think he was resurrecting the recently killed-off-yes-AGAIN Jean Grey. Instead, he brought back Colossus, who quickly rekindled his romance with Kitty Pryde. And I mean, seriously rekindled in the “Kitty phases through the bed and floor naked at one point” sense.
(EDIT: I have seen at least one request for a link to the panels depicting this phasing incident. Here you go.)
Wait, what’s THIS? Joss Whedon bringing someone back from the dead to put them INTO a relationship? Too good to be true?
Uh-huh.
Because in his final story arc, Unstoppable, Joss Whedon wrote Kitty Pryde saving the Earth by using her powers to phase a giant alien bullet right through the planet. And because of the properties of the alien metal, Kitty ended up fusing herself into the interior of the bullet.
Oh, she’s not technically dead, but she’s FUSED INSIDE AN ALIEN BULLET THAT CANNOT BE STOPPED.
So, remember: sometimes being single isn’t such a bad thing. Sometimes, being single can SAVE YOUR FUCKING LIFE.
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Look, I’ll level with you. You know I love Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. I mean, “really love it because it saved my life in high school” love it. I mean “got Faith’s tattoo on my upper arm as a symbolic move of freeing myself and reclaiming my body” love it.
But Seasons 6 and 7 you guys.
I mean, okay, a bad season of Buffy is going to be better than a good season of other shows (Big Bang Theory, I’m looking at you). But Seasons 6 and 7 are still painful for me to get through for the most part.
And then, at some point, I had a glorious revelation:
I could just make up my OWN seasons 6 and 7 of Buffy and go from there. I could even change the whole plot of the comics for seasons 8 & 9 if I really wanted to!
What’s that? You want to hear MORE? Well, then, strap in and come along with me on this journey!
SEASON 6:
The cold open of the season features the Scoobies at Giles’ apartment, all seemingly discussing Buffy’s death.
This ends when Willow suddenly says “Buffy!” in surprise, and we see her enter the apartment, tanned, healthy, carrying several shopping bags and, importantly, very much ALIVE.
Buffy smiles “So, who wants souvenirs?”
The Scoobies all raise their hands.
The tone for the beginning of the season stays much the same. Obviously the audience is still aware that Buffy was dead, but no mention of it is ever made by the characters. We also become aware that Dawn still has nightmares about the attempted sacrifice, meaning that at least that still happened (“They were shallow cuts. That’s what he said. There’s no scars, so how come I can see them, Buffy?”).
Throughout all of this, though, strange things are happening, even for Sunnydale. Tara’s the one who initially observes that something “feels wrong.” Eventually, it turns out that some kind of weird “reality rips” are appearing throughout the city and “leaking” other-worldly foes. The Trio are still active in this season, and we’re led to think that somehow they are causing this.
At some point before the mid-season break, we get at least one answer: Buffy never died because it was Faith who threw herself into the energy mass to save Dawn.
But HOW, you ask? Well, okay, things that bugged me: supposedly Dawn was made from the blood of the Slayer. But there were two active Slayers, so wouldn’t it stand to reason she was made from blood from BOTH of them? I am just SAYING.
The point is: at the mid-season break, we discover that the rips in reality are being caused by two alternate realities bleeding into each other, but one of them is WRONG. While investigating one of the rips for answers, Willow gets in a little too far and comes face-to-face with her evil self, who insinuates that the reality tears are all because of her.
WHAT HAPPENED?
Well, we find out that after Buffy’s death, Willow tried to bargain for Buffy’s life, arguing that there was no other way to save the world. Which is when she’s told, no, there was another sacrifice that could have been made.
With this revelation, Willow decides that rather than bringing Buffy back, she can just change what had originally happened. Unfortunately, she can’t just fix it so Dawn was never captured or never cut, instead she has to use a fixed point in time with an energy fluctuation large enough to trace.
So, you know, a giant ball of energy ripping worlds apart. That works.
Willow travels to LA, visits Faith Lehane in prison and releases every bit of anger and spite she has over Buffy’s death, telling Faith that if SHE had died instead of Buffy, it would have been the first and only worthwhile thing in her life. And that’s JUST what was going to happen.
She uses magic to swap Faith with Buffy just as the latter was diving into the energy mass to save Dawn’s life. She puts Buffy safely beside her sister and effectively CREATES the other timeline.
But using that magic warped the barrier between realities AND set THAT Willow on the path to her magic addiction and heel turn.
And then what?
I.
Um.
Don’t know.
I also don’t know where Spike fits into all of this, sorry.
Okay, so I don’t have this TOTALLY planned out, what do you think this is, a fanfic?
Oh.
Good point.
…dammit.
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Ok, maybe not top eight, but certainly eight totally fun holiday episodes to watch this time of year!
“Amends” – Buffy the Vampire Slayer
For a show whose premise was basically seven seasons of Halloween, Buffy The Vampire Slayer’s single attempt at a Christmas episode is one of my favorites in the whole series. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still plenty of spookiness creeping around amongst the holiday “cheer.” Angel is haunted by the First Evil (the later big bad of the final season) in the form of the more recently dead Jenny Calendar and memories of his past escapades as a souless vampire and, prior to that, as a shitty soul-having human. The First attempts to convince Angel to knock his brooding boots with Buffy, a good time that would inevitably lead to him losing his soul. Having a difficult time resisting the temptation, Angel decides to kill himself by making friends with Mr. Sunlight rather than succumbing to the demon inside him. The most intense moment of the episode occurs when Angel grabs a pleading Buffy and hopelessly asks, “Am I a thing worth saving, huh? Am I a righteous man?” Santa thinks so, Angel. Luckily, as the sun rises we hear a weather report announcing that a freak snow storm magically hit Sunnydale (that’s the Sunnydale in Southern California) blocking out any vampire-dusting light. Apparently the Powers that Be have decided that the world didn’t quite want Angel gone yet. The couple walks through the snow together hand in hand. Holiday cheer up the yang, am I right?
“The Bath Item Gift Hypothesis” – The Big Bang Theory
I have to admit that I don’t watch too much Big Bang Theory, but this episode is certainly my favorite and is definitely up there when it comes to holiday themed episodes. I don’t remember what happens with the other nerds on the show because the best story arc revolves around Penny mentioning she got Sheldon a gift. Naturally, Sheldon feels threatened by such an imposition of social norms and buys several gift baskets of various sizes so as to be completely prepared to counteract any gift level Penny may throw at him. The result: dude, I can’t even explain what happens or why it’s so funny. Happy Holidays
“Festivus” – Seinfeld
It’s a Festivus for the rest of us. Tired of the commercialism of more traditional holidays? Or how would you like to take a vacation just a few days before December 25th? Well then my friends, I may have just found the holiday for you! With traditions like the “Airing of Grievances” in which everyone gets the opportunity to tell attendees at the Festivus table how each has disappointed him during the year, and the “Feats of Strength” where the night’s not over until you wrestle the host to the floor, Festivus is a holiday everyone should experience once. Barring that, just check out the classic episode and dream of your very own Festivus aluminum pole
“You Better Watch Out” – Married with Children
I’m not going to lie, this show has a special place in my heart for it’s ability to always do holiday episodes right. That hard luck family from the 90’s that wasn’t on Rosanne experience a Christmas miracle when the Lakeside mall Santa, who had been scheduled to parachute in to a crowd of eager shoppers, misses his mark and crashes in to the Bundy lawn, dead as a doornail. That alone should make this episode a classic for the whole family.
“Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo” – South Park
This episode is brilliant on so many levels and depressing on the one where you remember how fucking amazing South Park used to be. I honestly don’t know where to start, so let’s just jump into the music. “A Lonely Jew on Christmas” and “Kyle’s Mom’s a Bitch” were instant classics the second you heard them. Plus, in an episode revolving around a fiber-preaching turd in a Santa hat, we get to see religious sensitivity and political correctness through the innocent eyes of children. This is also the only episode on the list where, not only is that Jesus guy mentioned, but actually appears on the day of his birth. It’s not actually a small amount of depth and satire crammed in to a 22 minute long Christmas special, which (by the way Joss Whedon) manages to make you think without needing to make you cry.
“Pilot” – Six Feet Under
What, you didn’t think I could out-holiday-morbid Buffy? Silly mortals. I almost forgot that the episode that started one of the best series that I have ever seen was not your average Charlie Brown Christmas. The Fisher clan attempts to gather for obligatory family time in the funeral home/family manse. By attempt I mean that Claire, the rebellious red-headed daughter, goes off to do some meth, David (the secretly gay Michael C. Hall) tries to spend time with his boyfriend, and Nate, the eldest, banging some chick in an airport supply closet while waiting to get picked up by his father. And where is the lucky patriarch of such doting children? Well on his way to pick up Nate, Nathaniel Fischer gets hit by a bus and dies. His ghost-type things spends the rest of the episode (and series) visiting his stunned children and mostly just fucking with them. Really, egg nog for all who can get through it.
“Christmas with the Joker” – Batman: The Animated Series
Any BtAS fans here? Stupid question. Who else would visit this weird and geeky corner of the Internet? That kind of makes a long plot summary a little unnecessary, so let’s reminisce together. Remember when the Joker busted out of Arkham Asylum on a Christmas Tree Rocket? Classic. Or when he (maybe thankfully) commandeered the broadcast of It’s a Wonderful Life in order to host his own variety Christmas Spectacular of kidnapping, explosions, and general mayhem? How festive. I think my favorite part of the episode occurs when Scrooge-y Batman finally gets what’s coming to him: a spring loaded pie. That Joker, what a kidder.
“The Christmas Invasion” – Doctor Who
Santa forgive me, I don’t watch Doctor Who. Don’t worry non-Whovians, this sounds nuts to me too. Marking the first full-episode appearance of Tenth Doctor, David Tennant, the episode deals with the post-regeneration effects a Time Lord suffers through while London is under attack by the Sycorax during Christmas. The Doctor spends half the episode being guarded by Rose Tyler, her mother Jackie, and ex-boyfriend Mickey, before being energized by a spilled cup of tea and challenging the Sycorax leader to a sword fight to decide the Earth’s fate. This is also the first time we see his iconic brown duster, suit, and Converse as he joins Rose for Christmas dinner.
Did we miss something in this list? Let us know in the comments, on Twitter @SubCultured, or on our Facebook page! Happy Holidays to you and yours, with fangs and bat-a-rangs!
Aquaman is the Embodiment of “Fine”
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