I never find anything good at Wal-Mart. Unless I squint.

Wow, how have I never seen these before? Hasbro's Handful of Heroes is a truly life-altering series of tiny Marvel Comics figurines, sold in packs of eight. I shouldn't have to name the toylines this reminds me of, but I will: M.U.S.C.L.E., Battle Beasts, Army Ants and many other great reasons to italicize.

Love, love, love. There are dozens of characters represented, and though none of them are exactly "obscure," it still warms me to see guys like Mandarin and Absorbing Man get their little moments of glory. Really hope the line is doing well, because if it is, it's a safe bet that less obvious characters will become represented in future sets. I've got a bookshelf full of Marvel Universe Handbooks, chock full of random assholes who deserve to be immortalized in shiny plastic. My kingdom for a two-inch Speedball.

Oh, and to seal the deal: Each 8-pack comes with seven "visible" figures and one "secret" figure, hidden beneath the package's unforgiving cardboard. No idea if the secret figures are rarer than the rest, but for whatever it's worth, I got "Hulkbuster Iron Man." Hulkbuster Iron Man will double nicely as Juggernaut until Hasbro gets around to making a real one.

The figures come in an assortment of happy colors, sort of like inedible Tropical Starburst, and they're pretty finely detailed. Hasbro, having learned their lesson from past failures, crafted nearly every hero and villain to be posted with their arms outstretched, which keeps them well-balanced and not at all impossible to stand. Anyone who has collected "little figures" can attest to the usefulness of this, even if it's caused most of the figures to look like they're saying "WHASSAMATTA?"

Toys like these make me wish I had a son. I'm going to put pants on one of our cats and tell him why Red Hulk is better than Classic Hulk.

Recommended, even if they're essentially vending machine toys in a prettier box.

It's Saturday night, and I've got half a bottle of great Chianti that comes in a bottle wrapped in raffia. Suburban Italians may know the kind.

As I mentioned on my Twitter thing, we watched Orphan last night. I have no idea how they managed to make such a good movie out of that. Pretty incredible cast considering what type of film it is, and...well, I don't want to spoil anything, but after you see it, you'll know what I didn't want to spoil, and the thing that I don't want to spoil was pretty awesome. To guarantee the complete failure of this mini-review, I've neglected to mention the plot basics until now: Family adopts a "sweet" little girl who ends up being violently psychotic. Think Good Son without the conscience. Orphan is as good as it possibly can be, and Ebert agrees with me.

In other news: I'm slowly but surely getting back into the swing of running X-E, and man, do I have my work cut out for me. My numbers aren't too thrilling right now, I guess proving that you really can't let a site sit dead for half a year without taking a traffic hit. (And this makes me twice as thankful for those of you who kept the faith.) In a larger sense, the site badly needs to be restructured. The main page and blog need to be merged into one happy page, somehow. That's going to take time, as well as the design and coding abilities of someone who is not me. For the moment, I'm just focused on getting some content rolling. Stay tuned, because there's more of it coming.

And since I couldn't think of anywhere else to stick this:

We went to some random sushi place last week. I ordered "Black Tobiko." If you've never heard of tobiko, it's caviar, but the fish eggs are too tiny to really resonate as such. Sushi lovers won't bat an eye, but I'm sure I'm alienating some of you right now. (Perhaps even more with this than the time I made a Bullshot.) No matter your stance, you must admit this: On those table standees at sushi joints -- the ones that show the different kinds of sushi and tell you their secret names -- tobiko always looks the most fun.

As for "Black Tobiko," they somehow get away with charging twice as much as they do for the standard red, even though it's the same exact lumpfish shit and costs them the same exact lumpfish price. I'm getting away from the point that I wanted to make, which was this: "Black Tobiko" would be an amazing name for a band. Or an evil Pokemon.