They gave him some of the best lines on the cartoon:

Well, at least until the later figure sets, the Joes were generally fairly realistic military people. But almost from the beginning, Cobras were an eclectic bunch of Bond villain mooks in brightly coloured uniforms, crazy mad scientist types straight out of Gothic horror, or the most 80s bikers ever. What’s not to…

That was my Snake-Eyes. I was a little disappointed he didn’t come with Timber.

In the cartoon, Barbecue’s a white red-headed Irish-American from Boston.

It’s maybe not clear in the above picture, but Alpine, the guy just right of Shipwreck (the sailor), is black.

HEY KID! I’M A COMPUTER...STOP ALL THE DOWNLOADIN’!

Always a pleasure to see you on Io9, Veronica!

Funnily enough, the only part of Snowpiercer that made me go, “So what?” was the revelation they were eating insect protein.

Good stuff. They have the vibe of a good late 70s/early 80s space opera, but better reflect our contemporary society than the Cold War-inflected classics. If you’re not well-read in literary space opera but would like to be, they’re probably the best introduction to the subgenre out there right now. If you are…

For a genre supposedly boldly facing the future, a whole lot of SF fans sure like to live in the past.

I feel the main purpose of Messiah and Children is just to drive home the point for the people who didn’t get that Dune isn’t a Chosen One/Messiah story, but a deconstruction of that story. They’re okay reads otherwise. God-Emperor is about 300+ pages of philosophy and crazy ideas padding out about 50 pages of plot,…

Without Leiber and Moorcock, a good chunk of this list wouldn’t exist, that’s for sure.

The Sword of Shannara is the reason the epic fantasy boom of the late 70s-late 90s existed in the first place. So it’s noteworthy for that. But it’s an awful book and almost any fantasy book you could name that came after it (including its own sequels) did its thing better than it.

One-and-a-half Pratchett books: Good Omens is there too.

The Robot books have aged far better than Foundation.

Love these stories. It’s great how Westeros is such a flexible setting it can accommodate sword-and-sorcery buddy stories in the vein of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser and epic fantasy.

I don’t think I’ve ever read a fantasy saga that went longer than about 2,000 pages total that didn’t end up irritating me. And GRRM is better than most, but I think even he’s gone too far at this point.

The chain mail bikini bugs me. If Sonja was in a fur bikini, or the blue fur one-piece she had briefly, that would be fine: it would be a worldbuilding statement that warriors in the Hyborian Age who are badass enough—male or female—don’t need any armour, and can get away with Stone Age swimsuits. But choosing to wear…

Clothing has uses beyond modesty, though. It protects you from the elements, from scrapes and bruises, and even from weapons. It gives you pockets to carry things, and prevents the straps of packs and bags and various weapon holders (holsters, scabbards, bandoliers) from chafing against your skin. And it can denote…

Red Sonja’s makeover looks almost like a callback to her original appearance, I have to wonder if it’s deliberate.