Farinas is the artist behind ACT-I-VATE webcomic MOTRO, and he has recently taken to drawing Marvel and DC battles packed with superpowered Lego minifigs.

[Ulises Farinas via Forbidden Planet]

From 1978 to 1999, Lego regularly released lines of toys themed around deep space exploration. Lego Space was discontinued to make way for a decade's worth of Lego Star Wars sets, although the theme made a comeback this year with its third incarnation of the Space Police line. (You can see its flagship, the Galactic Enforcer, up at the top.) But for more than two decades, Lego continuously released more than 200 sets in its Lego Space theme, and that's what we're here to honor. Here now are some of the highlights. And yes, I'm pretty sure I've bought, built, and disassembled a good 60% of these.

Name: Space Rocket
Year: 1964
It's a little on the basic side, admittedly, but keep in mind people had only been sending real rockets into space for less than a decade. I'm willing to cut it some slack.

Name: Rocket Base
Year: 1973

Name: Moon Landing
Year: 1975

Name: Rocket Launcher
Year: 1978
Line: Classic Space
One of the first wave of toys in Lego's official Space line, the Rocket Launcher helped initiate two decades worth of space-themed sets.

Name: Mobile Tracking Station
Year: 1978
Line: Classic Space

Name: Space Shuttle
Year: 1979
Line: Classic Space

Name: Space Shuttle
Year: 1979
Line: Classic Space

Name: Alpha-1 Rocket Base
Year: 1979
Line: Classic Space

Name: Beta-1 Command Base
Year: 1980
Line: Classic Space

Name: Starfleet Voyager
Year: 1981
Line: Classic Space

Name: Mobile Rocket Transport
Year: 1982
Line: Classic Space

Name: Galaxy Commander
Year: 1983
Line: Classic Space

Name: Intergalactic Command Base
Year: 1984
Line: Classic Space

Name: Cosmic Fleet Voyager
Year: 1986
Line: Classic Space

Name: Polaris-1 Space Lab
Year: 1987
Line: Classic Space

Name: Monorail Transport System
Year: 1987
Line: Classic Space

Name: Battrax
Year: 1987
Line: Blacktron

After nine years of general Space sets, Battrax helped kick off the new Blacktron line. The next decade would be dominated by a steady rotation of different variations on the Space theme.

Name: Invader
Year: 1987
Line: Blacktron

Name: Renegade
Year: 1987
Line: Blacktron

Name: Message Intercept Base
Year: 1988
Line: Blacktron

Name: Alienator
Year: 1988
Line: Blacktron

Name: Stardefender "200"
Year: 1987
Line: Futuron

Name: Cosmic Laser Launcher
Year: 1987
Line: Futuron

Name: Space Lock-up Isolation Base
Year: 1989
Line: Space Police I

Name: Mission Commander
Year: 1989
Line: Space Police I

Name: Stellar Recon Voyager
Year: 1990
Line: M:Tron

Name: Mega Core Magnetizer
Year: 1990
Line: M:Tron

Name: Aerial Intruder
Year: 1991
Line: Blacktron Future Generation

Name: Spectral Starguider
Year: 1991
Line: Blacktron Future Generation

Name: Alpha Centauri Outpost
Year: 1991
Line: Blacktron Future Generation

Name: Rebel Hunter
Year: 1992
Line: Space Police II

Name: Galactic Mediator
Year: 1992
Line: Space Police II

Name: Ice Station Odyssey
Year: 1993
Line: Ice Planet 2002

Name: Ice-Sat V
Year: 1993
Line: Ice Planet 2002

Name: Deep Freeze Defender
Year: 1993
Line: Ice Planet 2002

Name: Saucer Centurion
Year: 1994
Line: Spyrius

Name: Recon Robot
Year: 1994
Line: Spyrius

Name: Robo-Guardian
Year: 1994
Line: Spyrius

Name: Saucer Scout
Year: 1994
Line: Spyrius

Name: Lunar Launch Site
Year: 1994
Line: Spyrius

Name: Monorail Transport Base
Year: 1994
Line: Unitron

Name: Star Hawk II
Year: 1995
Line: Unitron

Name: Crater Cruiser
Year: 1995
Line: Unitron

Name: Space Station Zenon
Year: 1995
Line: Unitron

Name: Explorien Starship
Year: 1996
Line: Exploriens

Name: Nebula Outpost
Year: 1996
Line: Exploriens

Name: Android Base
Year: 1996
Line: Exploriens

Name: Scorpion Detector
Year: 1996
Line: Exploriens

Name: Robo Stalker
Year: 1997
Line: Roboforce

Name: Robo Master
Year: 1997
Line: Roboforce

Name: Robo Raider
Year: 1997
Line: Roboforce

Name: Robo Raptor
Year: 1997
Line: Roboforce

Name: Warp Wing-Fighter
Year: 1997
Line: UFO

Name: Interstellar Starfighter
Year: 1997
Line: UFO

Name: Alien Avenger
Year: 1997
Line: UFO

Name: Arachnoid Starbase
Year: 1998
Line: Insectoids

Name: Celestial Stinger
Year: 1998
Line: Insectoids

Name: Bi-Wing Blaster
Year: 1998
Line: Insectoids

In honor of the 10th anniversary of The Matrix, a group of fans recreated nearly 900 frames of the film. The entire sequence is animated "in camera," with no wire removal, no Photoshop, and no special effects other than what can be created with the Lego blocks themselves. The entire project took 440 hours, and you can see videos of the laborious process on the project website.

You can also see a side-by-side comparison of the Lego version with the original:

[Lego Matrix via Cinematical]

Chabon talks about how his eldest son startled a British attendant at the Smithsonian with his Dalek T-shirt, and then his other children had to regale the man with tales of their Cybermen and Time Lord shirts, until he understands they're a geek family. And then Chabon talks about how the new Doctor Who series has brought his family together, and sings the show's praises:

And if you aren't watching and loving the glorious new BBC incarnation of Doctor Who, geeking out on the mythos of the Daleks and Time Lords and Cybermen, swooning to the polysexual heroics of Captain Jack Harkness, aching over the quantum transdimensional heartache of Rose Tyler, and granting yourself the supreme and steady pleasure of watching the dazzling Scottish actor David Tennant go about the business of being the tenth man to embody the time-and-space traveling Doctor on television since the show's debut in 1963, then I pity you with the especial harsh pity of the geek.

As you might have gathered from its subtitle ("The Pleasures And Regrets Of A Husband, Father, And Son") Manhood For Amateurs is Chabon's collection of essays about being a man, and the various personas he's taken on. But even as he delves into the heart of his own struggles with maleness, Chabon invokes science fiction and comics, exploring topics as diverse as why Big Barda is the greatest superheroine, or why all futurism is now retro-futurism, and we've lost our starry-eyed optimism. Like manhood, these geek avatars gain their meaning from other people, they're public and subject to interpretation. They also change over time, like the Doctor. (Chabon, himself, has gone through incarnations, including being a "little shit" in his twenties, as he makes clear at various points.)

The Doctor Who essay, one of the last in the book, returns to the theme of the book's first essay: the solitary and communal sides of fandom. Chabon grew up, like many of us, as a solitary geek, with nobody to share his obsession with comics and science fiction paperbacks. The first essay talks about how he tried to start a local comic-book fan club, with his mother's help — they even paid $25 to rent a room for the first meeting, and only one other boy showed up, then immediately left before he could get sucked into this "loser's club." The Doctor Who essay is about how the new version of the show has given Chabon's children the gift of each other, and how fandom and families are the same, with their rituals and obsessions.

Most provocatively, in the earlier "Loser's Club" essay, Chabon even suggests that fandom and the artistic drive come from the same impulse, and even hints that fanfic and literature spring from the same well:

This is the point, to me, where art and fandom coincide. Every work of art is one half of a secret handshake, a challenge that seeks the password, a heliograph flashed from a tower window, an act of hopeless optimism in the service of bottomless longing. Every great record or novel or comic book convenes the first meeting of a fan club whose membership stands forever at one but which maintains chapters in every city — in every cranium — in the world. Art, like fandom, asserts the possibility of fellowship in a world built entirely from the materials of solitude. The novelist, the cartoonist, the songwriter, knows that the gesture is doomed from the beginning but makees it anyway, flashes his or her bit of mirror, not on the chance that the signal will be seen or understood but as if such a chance existed.

Manhood For Amateurs isn't just notable for the honestly with which Chabon deals with every aspect of his life, including his insecurities and his relationships with women and his own children — it's also a more revelatory look at fan culture, and science fiction, through the lens of the personal essay. Anyone who's interested in discussing science fiction and its attendent genres for their personal as well as cultural significance should be checking out these essays.

More than ever, Chabon uses superhero comics, Star Wars toys and Doctor Who's Daleks as signposts to the masculine imaginary. He geeks out about these things as if they are the only points of certainty in a shifting, illusory world.

(The book is by no means perfect: At times, his opinion-spouting gets a little overwhelming, and by the time he gets to the section where he talks about women, about two-thirds of the way through, I was starting to wonder if Chabon really did live in some male-dominated enclave — but then a lot of the last third of the book is about women, and he addresses that criticism of his writing head-on. But my criticisms of the book mostly have nothing to do with its discussions of science fiction or geek culture, and they're pretty minor in any case.)

Manhood, Chabon seems to be saying, is improv. You create yourself on the fly, in roles as perplexing and diverse as husband, father, lover and friend, and hope to project an impression of knowing what you're doing. The fact that Chabon deconstructs masculinity while pulling together so many elements of science fiction turns nerd culture into a set of anchor points. You sort of expect Chabon to use comic-book and science-fiction icons to illuminate his inner world, the way in which superhero storytelling in Kavalier And Clay became a kind of emotional atlas. But it goes beyond that: one of the constants in Chabon's essays is the primacy of play, in the midst of all this role confusion. And geeking out is an essential ingredient of that play.

The discussions of play includes a very carefully considered history of Lego toys, and their development from abstract bricks to a world dominated by crudely representational minifigs. (We featured a "quote of the day" a while back, in which Chabon talked about how his kids were remixing these Lego sets and transcending the tyrannical corporate-sanctioned instructions.) He joins the chorus of people lamenting the fact that kids no longer roam free on their bicycles and skateboards. He narrates some bizarrely awesome-sounding games he and other kids played, based on the 1973 Planet Of The Apes TV series (not the movies, weirdly enough). And he talks about stargazing, and discovering our smallness in the cosmos, as well as the Long Now Foundation's 10,000 year clock and how it's making him wonder why we've stopped obsessing about the far future.

All in all, Manhood For Amateurs is a much geekier book than you might have expected from its title, and yet also a much more personal book than most geeky essay collections. If you've suspected that fandom's signs and collections of ill-fitting clues were markers in someone else's inner cosmology, just as they are in yours, then you will definitely bond with this book.

Last year was the inaugural voyage of the Zombie Apocafest, organized by the Brothers Brick, and this year, the collaborative diorama doubled in size. Seventeen tables were filled with fortified buildings, zombie killing machines, and of course hordes of the undead. Participants created their own original pieces or "apocafied" existing Lego sets, resulting in a handful of oddball creations like the zombie killing gay pride float and a black and red carousel populated with skeletal horses.

A full set of Apocafest images are up on Flickr, but take a good long look. This will be the last year for zombies, and the Brothers Brick have already cooked up a new theme for next year's BrickCon.

[The Brothers Brick]

Zombie Killing Gay Pride Float — Winner, Best Original Vehicle

Abandoned Factory — Winner, Best Original Building
Dark Carousel — Winner, Best Apocafied Lego Building

These are but a mere handful of MacLane's dozens of CubeDudes, which include characters from the SuperFriends, Transformers, Dr. Horrible, and GI Joe. He has also built non-CubeDude Lego sculptures of Pixar characters WALL-E, BURN-E, and Carl Fredricksen.

[CubeDudes via Super Punch]

At least two Lego enthusiasts have used the multicolored blocks to visit Frank Herbert's Dune. The gray sandworm popping out of the dune with the detailed Fremen comes from Brickshelf member RebelRock, while the blue sandworm is the work of Flickr user - 2x4 -, whose science fiction-themed Lego constructions include the Tron lightcycles and a bevy of ships from Battlestar Galactica.

[Brickshelf via MAKE]
[- 2x4 -'s Flickr via The Brothers Brick]

At the moment, Anderson has only eight ships, though he's looking to make it all the way to 26 — hopefully with X and Y-shaped ships that don't too closely resemble the X-Wings and Y-Wings from Star Wars. If he does manage to finish and photograph all 26 ships, the result will make for a visually interesting, rather out of the ordinary alphabet poster.

[Andertoons Flickr via Brothers Brick]

MOC-005 A Fighter
MOC-006 B Spaceship
MOC-008 C Spaceship
MOC-009 D Spaceship
MOC-010 E Spaceship
MOC-011 F Spaceship
MOC-012 LEGO G Spaceship
MOC-013 LEGO H Spaceship

GALLERY

Even if you don't know any children, it's a fair bet to say that you've at least been tempted to spend some money on an action figure or two, even for yourself. Whatever the reason, we're saying that it's definitely the time of year for toys for all girls and boys - and here are some picks that we hope you find in your stocking on the day.

Star Wars - The Ultimate Lightsaber Kit: Yeah, yeah; you could play that Wii lightsaber game and have a lot of fun, but those of us with the bigger midichlorians know that building your own lightsaber is where it's at. This kit lets you do that very thing, providing all the pieces that you need to become your own padawan. Just try not to slice your own hand off in some Joseph Campbell-esque maneuver whether by accident or in a misguided attempt to emulate your childhood idols.

Star Trek Phaser And Communicator Set: Along the same lines, these replica phasers and communicators from the original Star Trek series would let you get your William Shatner and/or Leonard Nimoy on, like the gentlemen in the picture. Insignia-ed t-shirts not included. Alternatively, the Dueling Kirk And Spock From "Amok Time" figures have the uniforms and sexy tears in shirts to influence hot slash action.

Anything From LEGO's Mars Mission Range: When I was a kid, LEGO's space sets consisted of a moon base and a few dull grey repurposed planes. Now, the rebranded LEGO Mars Mission sets are multicolored blocks of imagination, accompanied by aliens and heroes with stubbles and smirks. Ignore LEGO Star Wars and LEGO Batman; these are the blocks you're looking for.

A Breakdancing Robot:

I'm sorry, is there something else I need to say? (Alternatively, Robotic Pugilists. If that doesn't appeal, then good day, sir. I said good day!)

Twilight Action Figures: They may not be released until mid-2009 - way to miss the boat, toymakers - but they are available for pre-order right now; it'll be just like the Star Wars Early Bird Offer all over again! You know that you want to see the face of your favorite emo relative almost display an emotion when they open the IOU envelope for this baby on Christmas (or whatever day you deem appropriate) morning.

Risk Transformers Cybertron Edition: Update the depressing game of strategy from your youth by adding in the wildcard of robots in disguise, and their home planet - filled with countries that you have no idea about. Let the youngsters in your life experience the same hours of frustration and disappointment when they, too, realize that the game may be coherent and technically accurate but also endless and much less fun than playing with an actual Transformer, no matter how many times you tell them that the cardboard box transforms into an educational experience.

The Superhero Action Figure Of Your Choice: You can't go wrong by giving a small plastic representation of your loved ones' favorite defenders of truth and justice. Me, I'm rather partial to the original Firestorm, complete with puffy sleeves, but that may be my nostalgia overpowering my taste (Although, you know, if you really want to buy it for me, that's perfectly alright). Alternatively, you could go for a prop replica of something to do with your favorite Marvel superhero. You may scoff, but I don't know anyone who doesn't secretly want to put on Iron Man's helmet and pretend to be Tony Stark.

Alien Kubricks: Yes, there are Kubricks for almost everything, but our favorites are the ones based on Ridley Scott's 1970s classic SF horror movie. Surely, we're not the only people who find the sight of an overgrown LEGO dude with an alien bursting out of his chest to be the perfect representation of Scott's intentions with the original film. And the Kubrick Ripley's hair perfectly captures the hair of the previous Sigourney Weaver. See? Now you understand.

Pleo, Robotic Lifelike Dinosaur: Yes, we could take exception to the description of this overly cute robot as "lifelike," but we'd rather point out that anyone who really wants a lifelike dinosaur in their house - especially as educational tools for their children, as Pleo is supposed to be - is fucking insane. It would eat your child! And then you! Seriously, this Disney-esque version is a much, much better idea; and much safer, as well. For those less brave and/or rich, I'd like to suggest the (much cooler, let's face it) Miniature Godzilla that you can get from Giant Robot because, well, why not?

Deathbot Lederhosen Edition: Call me old fashioned, but the holiday season always makes me want to strap on a pair of lederhosen and dream of snowier climes. With this festive limited edition killer robot from Tim Biskup's Gama-Go, that gets that much easier. Get high on a hill with this murderous goatherd after triming the tree.

I have to admit, the humor in this video goes a little far for me. Especially the cop falling over in the police office, but also Robin doing tricks on his bike and then jumping off a roof the wrong way. Robin should not be quite that incompetent if he's going to be Batman's partner, even in a kid-friendly game. Okay, enough grumbling. Here are some awesome pics:

This is a recreation of a famous 1968 photo by Eddie Adams of a soldier with his gun to a Vietnamese man's head. The Lego version is much less intense, but the irony of the gun and the smiley faces is creepy. Images by Mike Stimpson

Classics in Lego via Notcot

• 
  
• The first game to bear the Star Wars name was The Empire Strikes Back for the Atari 2600. You could fly around as Luke Skywalker taking down AT-ATs which inexplicably had one tiny space on their backsides which allowed you to destroy them easily. Too bad the Rebels didn't know about this in the movie.
• 
  
• They followed that one up with the equally forgettable The Return of the Jedi: Death Star Attack on the same system, and it faded like a an iron-on tranfer that's been washed 2,000 times.
• 
  
• Probably the worst (or at least simplest) Star Wars game to come out of the Halls of Lucas was 1983s Jedi Arena, which featured an overhead shot of... two dueling lightsabers. The little Star Wars target probe would pop out every now and then to irritate the crap out of you, and you'd try to vanquish your opponent.
• 
  
• The real Star Wars game that most people think of and remember as the first in the genre was the coin-op game Star Wars from Atari in 1983. The thing came in both standup and sitdown versions, and featured digitized voices from the game. It was vector graphic goodness, and for some reason it was also addictive as hell. You could even "Use the Force" by not firing a shot during the trench run on the Death Star for bonus points.
• 
  
• Atari also put out versions of Return of the Jedi in 1983, and a strangely out of order The Empire Strikes Back in 1984. Jedi featured a weird 3/4 angle looking down at speeder bikes, but Empire returned to the vector graphic format. You could find Jedi at theaters across America, but Empire was extremely hard to come by.
• 
  
• Star Wars games faded from the limelight until 1991 when Ubisoft Games released Star Wars on the Nintendo, but the game really looked best on the Super Nintendo where it appeared as Super Star Wars, Super Empire Strikes Back, and Super Return of the Jedi. These were side-scrollers that were surprisingly fun to play, especially since the Jawas would say "Utinnin!' over and over.
• 
  
• Part of what I can blame my low grades for in college was the release of Star Wars: X-Wing in 1993. It was a flight and combat simulator based on the X-Wing, and it was obsessively fun because... well, you're in the cockpit of an X-Wing. What kid hasn't dreamed about that? It had expansion packs for more missions, different kinds of ships, and later led to Star Wars: TIE Fighter in 1994.
• 
  
• By 1996, the Star Wars gaming renaissance was in full swing, and LucasArts released Shadows of the Empire for the Nintendo 64. It was set between Empire and Jedi, and followed the exploits of Dash Rendar, a sort of Han Solo-ish mercenary. In fact, Shadows of the Empire was also a novel, a comic book, an action figure line, and a soundtrack release for Lucas, in an attempt to take advantage of all types of multimedia at once.
• 
  
• In 1997, the popularity of fighting games on gaming consoles was hard to resist, so LucasArts released Masters of Teras Kasi, where you could pit Chewbacca against Luke Skywalker, and so forth. The game had some decent animations, but mostly sucky gameplay. Just explain to me in what world a Gamorrean Guard could beat Darth Vader.
• 
  
• With the prequels came more opportunities for video games, and there were a slew of forgettable Episode I games on the consoles and on PCs. However, Episode I Racer in 1999, which was a game solely about podracing, can still be found in most arcades around the country. It's not half bad, even if that movie did suck.
• 
  
• In 2001 LucasArts created a launch game for the Nintendo GameCube with Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader, which features the word "rogue" in the title two times, just so you're sure. It was a sequel to 1998's Rogue Squadron, which was a Nintendo 64 (and later Windows) title. It spanned all three movies, and tried to fill in gaps in the story.
• 
  
• In 2001, 2002, and 2003 LucasArts released Star Wars Starfighter, Jedi Starfighter, and The Clone Wars, all with declining sales, and they featured elements like stale gameplay, and repetitive missions.
• 
  
• 2001 was also the year that LucasArts tried to go after the hardcore strategy gamers with Galactic Battlegrounds. It featured gameplay similar to Warcraft (not World of, mind you, which hadn't been invented yet).
• 
  
• 2002 was a year of Star Wars sequel games, giving us not only Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast (which was a sequel to Dark Forces: Jedi Knight, which was itself a sequel to Dark Forces) but also Racer Revenge, which was an update to the Episode I Racer game.
• 
  
• Dark Forces actually followed a character created specifically for the video games, Kyle Katarn. He was originally an Imperial Officer, but later turned and became a spy for the rebellion. He was played by actor Jason Court for Dark Forces: Jedi Knight II.
• 
  
• 2003 saw both the release of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Star Wars Galaxies, both of which were the first Star Wars roleplaying games. Knights was set 4,000 years before A New Hope, but Galaxies was in the "current" Star Wars universe. However, while Knights was a huge hit and spawned a sequel (and possibly an upcoming third game), Galaxies was reviled for having sucky gameplay and things like dancing Wookies.
• 
  
• In 2004 Lucas brought Battlefield style gaming to the table with Star Wars Battlefront, where you could play as a single soldier in massive battles set in the Star Wars storyline and universe.
• 
  
• Republic Commando in 2005 was, for my money, one of the most underrated Star Wars games, featuring you as a clone trooper who had to issue squadron commands to the other clones under his command. It was set amidst plot holes in the prequels, and was genuinely Anakin-free fun.
• 
  
• However, one of the most fun Star Wars games, both in gameplay and with the supplied tongue-in-cheek humor was Lego Star Wars: The Video Game. It was irreverent, sassy, and pure dumb fun. It was followed up with Lego Star Wars: The Original Trilogy in 2006 and Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga in 2007. Later this year you'll also be able to pick up Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures.
• 
  
• While there are many to choose from, what wins the award for the crappiest game ever to bear the Star Wars name? That would have to be Star Wars: Super Bombad Racing from 2001. It featured big-headed versions of the movie characters racing around go-kart style. While the Star Wars Lego titles could take something like this and make it fun, this game just sucked, bombad.

Lego Iron Man: No, not this one (although, really? Awesome), but where is the ideal tie-in for this summer's metal movie blockbuster? Just as Tony Stark used whatever he found around him to build his iron suit of doom and justice, so should millions of children the world around them use multi-colored bricks to become their own Armored Avengers.

Lego Battlestar Galactica: I know; isn't Battlestar Galactica a little too dark, a little old, for Lego? Perhaps - but who wouldn't want the chance to build their own replicas of the bridge (complete with little Lego Gaeta), Colonial One or Pegasus Brig? And just imagine how hot Lego Six would be in her blocky little red dress.

Lego Lost: Admittedly, once you get past the Others' houses and the Hatch, there's not going to be that many sets available for this line. Lego Sandy Beach? Lego Three Toed Statue That Gets Shown Once And Never Mentioned Again? You could try and create a Lego Flight 815 Crash Site set, of course, but anyone could make that just by emptying the box on the ground and leaving it in a big pile.

The possibilities are endless - If you're not at least considering a series based on There Will Be Blood, why, you're just leaving money on the table, Mr. Lego - but what multi-media franchises are you hoping to see immortalized in plastic brick in the near future?

Image from Brickshelf.com

LEGO Group Secures Rights from Warner Bros. Consumer Products To Upcoming SPEED RACER Film [PR Newswire.com]