I have a confession to make, and it’s a startling one: I am a super hero geek. Give me fights and tights and I’m a happy boy. The problem is, I’m a little impatient. I enjoy a comic book as much as the next fanboy, but the release schedules can be frustrating, and lately, the price tag has me experiencing a little sticker shock.

That’s where animation comes in for me. Over the last three decades we have seen an increasingly steady flow of animated super-hero projects hit the small (and large) screen. Some, like Cartoon Network’s Justice League series, have been astonishingly good, while others, like the mid-nineties Fantastic Four cartoon, have been mind-numbingly bad (though not nearly as bad as the live action movies).

This year, Marvel Films, Liberation Studios, and the Nicktoons Network have teamed up to bring the newest incarnation of the hallowed X-Men license, Wolverine and the X-Men. After seeing the trailer, I thought I would give it a chance, hoping against hope that we might see yet another quality super-hero venture worthy of our time.

Brothers and Sisters, I’m happy to say; Wolverine and the X-Men is pretty solid entertainment. The animation is consistent, especially considering how far off the basic cable map Nick Toons can be. The line work is crisp, motion and action sequences smooth, and at times the fights can border on epic. Best of all, the characters are instantly recognizable and heroic. Sure, the proportions of the more muscular characters are really distorted, but I’m all for a little artistic license!

The story line over the first three episodes was slow to start, but by the time the second episode wrapped, I was pretty pumped for the third, which was as good as any installment of the X-Men film franchise. I won’t get into any spoiler material, since these three connected episodes go places (in story as well as location) that I wish the movies had. You want Sentinels? Check. Mutant Paranoia? Check. Apocalyptic future? Oh, wait. I said no spoilers!

Two things stand out the most, though. Vocal talent and characters both tie in together so incredibly well with this series. It seems the voice direction leaned toward capturing the vocal essence of the actors in the movies; Wolverine sounds a lot like Hugh Jackman, and I had to check the credits to see if Ian McKellan had provided the voice for Magneto (he didn’t, but it’s good). Emma Frost sounds like a first rate bitch, Beast is a spot-on academian, and for the first time ever, I’m pretty sure Colossus and Nightcrawler where voiced by people from their respective countries!

Which brings me to the characters. In only three episodes we have been spoiled by a huge cast of characters. In the first episode, Boom-Boom, Pyro, and Dust all figured in a prison break. The second episode showed us the Blob and the Brotherhood, and I’ll tell you what; This Blob kicks some ass! The second episode also shows a pretty broody Scott Summers, and we get to see just how nasty those optic blasts can be. Third episode? How about Forge? Not good enough? How about seeing Magneto fight with his powers in a way that made me giggle like a Jersey slut at a David Lee Roth concert?

Wolverine and the X-Men does have it’s faults, but, for once, I don’t care. I had a good time. So far, it’s right up there with Justice League in the Pantheon of Cool Super Hero Shows. Check out new episodes every Friday night on Nicktoons, or watch them streaming from nicktoonsnetwork.nick.com.

I have been on a quest since returning to this Great Land of Zion, Brothers and Sisters. A quest that any geek worth his or her replica Tricorder would be proud to undertake, yet few have undertaken.

I wanted my TeeVee to squirt Rocksauce.

It’s already pretty cool. Back in my Big Money Radio days, I bought myself a pretty spiffy Mitsubishi 52″ LCD. It plays my media real pretty like, and you haven’t lived till you’ve seen Galactica on a big screen, right? The problem is, I don’t like being tied down to cable. With Hulu, Fancast, and pay-per-show services like Amazon Unbox and iTunes, you really don’t need it. Add the View Now feature at Netflix, and you’ve got a pretty sweet arsenal of Geekdom just a few downloads away!

When we moved here, though, we had to get the cable. The lady we are looking after likes her football pretty fanatically, so we had to sign up. That’s when the gears started turning. I wanted a DVR, and I wanted to hook the computer to the TeeVee. Throw the looming release of Lego Batman at us, and the need for a hook-up was pretty clear! There are lots of posts on how to do this throughout Interwebia, so I figured it wouldn’t be too hard to pull off.

Here it is, a month later, and I can honestly say the project was a bear, but what a lovely bear it is. I have updated my video card, hooked it all up with HDMI to get that “HiDef” thing going on, and the movies and shows we watch look great, the computer games are stunning, and with the addition of a TV Tuner card, we managed to make the computer into a DVR without paying a subscription fee. I am, without a doubt, one of the happiest Media Geeks in the world right now!

That got me thinking; Some of you readers and listeners of the Geekshow Podcast probably set off on similar quests for some Geek Holy Grail, filled to the brim with rich, creamery Rocksauce; I would love to read about it in the forums!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to finish the Lego Batman shrine…