This November, two beloved characters audiences didn’t know they liked until the Guardians of the Galaxy movie came out will be starring in a series of alternate covers that pay homage to classic covers of Marvel past.

It’s the role of a lifetime for Rocket and Groot, who are cast as everyone from Tony Stark to The Hulk on these fabulous homage covers, illustrating that a raccoon and a living tree can actually play some pretty diverse roles.

These covers should be just the thing to further propel these formerly second string superheroes toward the comic book superstardom they so richly deserve.

You can see many more of these amazing Rocket and Groot homage covers over at ComicsAlliance

Ferrofluid, by definition, is a fluid that contains a magnetic suspension. We have posted them sculptures and videos with them before, but to most people, the idea of ever being able to play with the stuff seemed unlikely. Well, guess what? You can make your own ferrofluid, and do all the playing and experimenting with it that you want. 

Heck, maybe you will even end up making a scultpture with the stuff that we will feature one day on this site. Life is insane like that. You never know. 

(YouTube Link)

This clip is taken from the Household Hacker YouTube page, and if you have a second today, go check it out. They even teach how you to make a keg out of a watermelon. Yes, you read that correctly. Life hacks are a beautiful thing.

Have you not heard of the Klingon proverb that revenge is a dish best served cold? It is very cold in the winter. So bundle up before slaughtering your enemies. For today is a good day to die, but also chilly. Kimberly Gintar has a knitting pattern that will wrap you in a Klingon bat'leth. So get out your knitting needles and charge. Qapla'!

-via Fashionably Geek

Image Credit: YouTube

Do you ever find yourself looking at something, and somehow just losing yourself in its intricacies? It can be artwork, or a moment glimpsing at the sky, but it just grabs you, and in that moment, nothing else exists? That is how I feel about the Blue Ball Machine. I think that title sounds a little off-color, so we I will avoid using that expression again.

Just trust me. Click the above link, and be prepared to be sucked in. A couple of pieces of advice before you do go there. It may seem old-school and overwhelming at first, but the way to find a flow to it all is watch just one ball is it runs its journey through the machine. Before you know it, you are sitting there, glued to your screen at this mesmerizing display.

It may look old-school, and may seem archaic, but who cares? Once you get enraptured by the machine, little else will matter. At least for a minute or two, anyway.

YTMND

Vanja Vinter made this stroller that is perfect for a Gallifreyan baby. Both the outside and the inside (the latter of which is larger) are stylishly decorated in the colors and patterns you'd expect from a Whovian.

So take your baby out in the pram. It's chilly out, so wear a bonnet. Bonnets are cool.

-via Nerd Approved

Stephen King is one of America’s most beloved authors, and his fan base has bridged the gap between horror aficionados and mainstream readers like nobody has before.

But what about those who are new to King’s dark world? It could take them years to read every book King has ever written, and who has time to read full length books?

Author and columnist Max Booth III took a note from Twitter and summarized each book in the Stephen King library using 140 characters or less, so people with short attention spans can catch up on their reading in about five minutes.

Now you can tell your King fan friends that the plot to Carrie is actually "The tale of a brave girl with telekinesis taking the Ice Water Challenge during prom", and that The Shining is simply a story where "A writer fights his family". It's so easy!

You can read all of Max's perfectly concise summarizations over at LitReactor

The original version of The Legend of Zelda on the NES became a classic because of the fun action gameplay, the lengthy RPG storyline, and the many hidden secrets gamers delighted in uncovering as they played through the game.

It didn’t become a classic because of the in-game artwork, because at the time of its release the 8-bit color palette was so limited that the game designers were simply doing the best with the amount of pixels they were given.

However, Japanese illustrator Katsuya Terada was creating all kinds of simply beautiful artwork based on the Legend of Zelda universe, which could be found in game booklets, magazines like Nintendo Power and various art books released in the late 80s.

These amazing illustrations show the land of Hyrule, and the adventures of a brave boy named Link, as they would've looked if games like The Legend of Zelda and A Link To The Past were released today.

You can see a great collection of Katsuya Terada's artwork created for The Legend of Zelda here

-Via Slightly Warped

Robots in cinema are awesome. Since most of us were children, we always wanted a cool, nice, tough robot to be our friend, and it never seems to happen. But that is the beauty of the magic of film. In film, robots can be awesome and friendly and cute. The other problem with cinema is that they love to kill things off in the end. It is like a painful lesson of life, squeezed into 90 minutes. Everything you ever love will die. Yet I digress, lest I depress myself and you even more than this list might.

I figure now would be the best time to embrace the idea of "good robots", as it seems that our takeover at the hands of evil ones will be happening at some point in near the future, and when that happens, lists like this will be more positive to us than sad. But for now, while we still love them and they have yet to kill any of our families, this list is awesome (in a sad kind of way).

(YouTube Link)

Pardon me for a moment while I sob for the Iron Giant. If you dig this vid, WatchMojo has more like it over at their YouTube page. Go show them some love.

Spaceships are an integral part of most science fiction franchises, a seriously massive piece of the puzzle that serves as a catalyst for heroic action, a getaway vehicle in times of need, and occasionally as a home for spacefaring characters.

There are so many different ships, in so many shapes and sizes, that it’s hard to keep track of them all, but now you don’t have to devote any more mental energy to the task thanks to this massive size comparison chart created by Dirk Loechel.

It’s officially the largest spaceship chart ever created, an update of Dirk's earlier version which we featured here on Neatorama a year ago, and as far as anyone can tell it's the most complete and up-to-date spaceship chart in the universe.

Don't look at it too closely for too long, or it might put stars in your eyes!

To see an enlarged version of the chart click here (double click on magnifying glass at link for full zoom)

-Via Sploid

Image Credit: George Michael Brower

First, I want to tell you Staggering Beauty is a game. No, no, maybe it is a website. Perhaps, it is just an interactive art project that you can play with and manipulate to your own whims.Then it dawns on me. It doesn't matter what it is. Stuff like this does not need to be put in a box and labeled, when what works so well about it is the very fact that you cannot do that with it.

Maybe instead of me deeply philosophizing about this, you should just hop over to Staggering Beauty and check it out for yourself. Put together by Google Creative Labs designer, George Michael Brower, and though it is simple and design and execution, there is something that just sucks you in and keeps you there. 

Once you pop over there and mess with it a little bit, you will see just what I am talking about. Simple? Yes. But there is something staggeringly beautiful about that.

The Hellspawn anti-hero known simply as Spawn has starred in dozens of different comic series spanning hundreds of issues, an amazing yet short lived animated series, and a pretty bad live action film.

So why is this badass comic book character, with so much movie storyline potential, still waiting around for a decent movie adaptation?

Your guess is as good as mine, but until we get to see that great big screen movie we’ll just have to settle for this awesome short film by Irissee entitled Spawn: The Recall.

(YouTube Link)

On second thought, settle really isn’t the right word, since this fan film is more fun to watch than the '97 movie!

Hollywood movie studios need to help Todd McFarlane's hellish anti-hero out, he's only been around for twenty some odd years, isn't it about time he got a decent movie treatment?!

-Via io9

Believe it or not, despite how many massive movies came and went this summer, movies in general did not do as well this summer as projected. That means, a lot of big movies did not make the money they needed to make, while a couple other movies no one expected came in and kicked butt.

To put the summer movies of 2014 in perspective, Screen Junkies hosted a panel of some of the finest in internet movie writing (though I was woefully neglected) to talk about some of the best and some of the worst movies that came out this past summer. You really can't argue with their logic (though you don't have to agree with the one person who liked the TMNT reboot. Best we will just leave that alone).

(YouTube Link)

Much like the panel, I was shocked at how good Edge of Tomorrow was, but feel the need to expand on something they say. They all agree that Edge of Tomorrow was a surprisingly engaging and fun film, but that it had a super generic name. But someone should point out that the movie Edge of Tomorrow is based on a Manga book called All You Need Is Kill.

Now that, my friends, is a name that would have brought the movie the crowd it deserved. Okay, that is all. Just proving my worth for the next time they have one of these panels.

Tim Burton is known for his kooky creature creations, his dark and quirky sense of humor, and the touch of classic cinematic style he adds to every film, and since he's always reinventing himself fans will always find something new to love about his movies.

Burton has created many different kinds of films, such as supernatural comedies, stop motion animated fantasies, dark sci-fi flicks and lighthearted family films, and now he's adding a new genre to his collection- the biographical drama.

(YouTube Link)

Tim Burton's upcoming film Big Eyes is based on the life of artist Margaret Keane, whose paintings of bug eyed kids and critters caused quite a stir in the pop art world in the 60s and 70s.

Big Eyes looks like it will be an interesting change of pace for the prolific filmmaker, adding yet another dimension to the visionary's incredibly diverse cinematic career.

-Via Variety

Image Credit:Rolf van Mellis

Weather is a fairly compelling spectacle. Not just weather itself, but some of the weirder weather phenomena that occurs throughout the world. The stuff we hear about, but never see. Truthfully, in regards to some of the things mentioned on the following list, you may not even HEARD of them.

While everyone can say they have seen a particularly tumultuous rainstorm before, what about when it rains fish in Honduras? That is one we might not as familiar with.

Witnesses of this phenomenon state that it begins with a dark cloud in the sky followed by lightning, thunder, strong winds and heavy rain for 2 to 3 hours. Once the rain has stopped, hundreds of living fish are found on the ground. People take the fish home to cook and eat them.

I am not even sure what is weirder. The fact that the sky rains fish semi-regularly in Honduras, or the fact that the natives take the strange fish, cook it, and eat it. To them, it is a gift from the Gods. To us, it is science.

This list over at Oddee of strange natural phenomena is well worth checking out, as raining fish seems to be the tip if the iceberg. Don't worry. It is not all weather related. One of the entries is about goats who climb trees.

Yup. You just read that correctly.

It’s hard to believe the MTV of today was once a network devoted to music, and thriving subcultures based around music, instead of cheesy reality shows and decidedly non-musical content.

MTV has begun to show music videos once again, but it's safe to say they will never be the trend setters they once were, as this amazing documentary called Punks and Poseurs that aired in 1985 will demonstrate.

(YouTube Link)

This freakin’ rad, totally cutting edge (for its time) concert video features performances by bands like the Dickies and GBH, and footage of perfectly punk writers Pleasant Gehman and Iris Berry trashing the influx of "poseurs" making their way into the L.A. punk scene in the mid-80s. 

-Via Dangerous Minds