“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” ~V
Archive for the 'Comics' Category
05
Nov
09
Happy Guy Fawkes Day
I’m not ashamed to admit that I need to turn my brain off, and just take in some mindless television for an hour or two a week; I find it incredibly relaxing. Without fail, Castle always fulfills my compulsive need for something easy to watch. It’s not a cerebral show, it’s never hard to follow, and you don’t have to remember much of anything from week-to-week. However, the characters are amusing, and the murders stories never cease to hold my interest.
Anyway, this week Castle had a Halloween episode that seriously pandered to the sci-fi & comic geek crowds. The show opened with star Nathan Fillion, formerly of Joss Whedon’s sci-fi classics Firefly and Serenity, suit up in his Captain Malcolm Reynolds garb, bust into his living-room while drawing his pistol, and striking a one of his famous poses. I was amused.
They followed up with a generally geeky episode filled with Buffy references, comic book art, vampires, and the pretty female detective costar (Stana Katic) drawing a distinction between comic writer / artist Frank Miller’s work with publishers Dark Horse Comics & Epic Comics… It was a nice homage to Fillion’s past, and (what I’m assuming are) the Firefly fans that watch Castle simply because Fillion is in the show.
09
Sep
09
09.09.09 Odds & Ends
There’s too much going on today to just cover one topic…
- Happy birthday to TGW contributer Jason (TheLisnakFactor). He is now the official TGW tech question responder guy, so send him some questions!
- Happy 10th birthday Dreamcast; the defunct Sega gaming console. Oh Dreamcast… your graphics were so good, controller was freaking odd, and your games were unfathomably easy to pirate. Thems were the good ole days.
The wire coming out of the back of the controller was never a good idea.
- Steve Jobs and the folks at Apple announced a lot of iPod related things that didn’t excite me enough to write something original.
- DC Comics is going through some drastic changes… really it’s a corporate enema.
07
Sep
09
Batman: Arkham Asylum Review
The Good
The new Batman: Arkham Asylum is easily the best comic book/ video game adaptation released to date. The story is interesting (written by legendary Batman Scribe Paul Dini); the voice acting is mind-blowing (most of the voices are provided by veterans of the 1990’s Batman the Animated Series), and the fighting is fluid.
By providing a simple attack/ defend method, the game designers created a superb fighting system that is easy to learn, but takes some art to master. I also love the variety of ways you can take down thugs… which is also my favorite part of the game. The planning that is necessary to take down a room full of armed thugs on hard is certainly challenging. One room in particular where the Joker has seven armed thugs wire the ceiling with bombs (essentially removing your ability to go vertical) took me a number of tries to triumph. I can’t remember the last time I had to work so hard to conquer a puzzle in a game; it was intellectually refreshing.
The scenes where you get fear gassed by Scarecrow, and have to escape your own madness, are really trippy and quite cool.
The Not So Good
My only substantive complaint is regarding the boss battles. On one hand, I have to give them some credit because no two boss battles are alike. On the other, they never made me feel like I was Baman beating the hell out of my crazy, ostentatious rogues. The boss battles were never as enthralling as the rest of the game.
One other graphic design issue bugs me just a bit. In cut scenes, Batman looks like he’s sweating buckets. This is probably because the game was created using the Unreal Engine. It’s not a huge issue, but it’s something I noticed.
The Ugly
Nada
Bottom-line
I typically don’t feel the need to complete all of the side challenges in a game, but something about the Riddler’s taunting has compelled me to go back and finish answering his riddles… so I’m not done with Batman: Arkham Asylum.
All-in-all, this game is a triumph. It looks good, is fun to play, and it gives you a reason to play some more after the main story is over. What more could you want out of a game?
Over the coming year, I’m sure we will see a variety of good and bad changes as a consequence.
"Four billion dollars... Muwhahaha Muwhahaha!"
18
Aug
09
Highway Superman
Love it -
Thanks to G4’s Attack of the Show for sharing. It’s a geeky guilty pleasure on an evening when I am really out of it.
Marvel turns 70 today.
Happy Birthday!
I finally had a chance to download the demo of the upcoming Batman: Arkham Asylum on Xbox 360.
The verdict?
It looks like we are going to finally get a good Batman game.
The combat and stealth controls feels intuitive within a couple of minutes; I had a blast skulking around and darting in and out of combat.
The voice acting is perfect, with many Batman the Animated series veterans reprising their roles:
Kevin Conroy as Batman, Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) as the Joker, and Arleen Sorkin as the lovable lunatic, Harley Quinn.
The graphics are pretty slick, although I’m not crazy about Batman’s cape (it’s really hard to animate a cape properly), and sometimes things look a little too shiny. Nothing unforgivable here.
You can expect a more through review after the game is released on August 25… but for now, this game is looking like it will be a “must play.”
Every healthy blog should have an inexplicably stupid post from time to time (and after a weekend of travel, I am too tired to write something even remotely intelligent).
nadshot.com
Yeah, the name is completely self-explanatory, but I’m going to give you a picture anyway.
Thanks to the Occasional Superheroine for sharing this oddity of the web.
Marvel’s Kevin Feige spoke with Hollywood.com about the film. ‘This movie is Steve Rogers’ origin story, and I think it is our burden to make Steve Rogers as appealing as any of our other characters … he’s not just the perfect boy scout who follows order every time. He has ideals he wants to live up to,’ said Feige. The film will be sent during World War II. ‘The origin of Captain America is really the origin of the Marvel universe,’ he continues. ‘It’s about that time in history when the idea of the superhero began to emerge.’ (Source: CBR)
There are only a three or four comic book superheros that hold a special place in my heart, and Captain America/ Steve Rogers is one of them. Hearing that this is the general direction that they are planning on taking the movie makes me very happy. Now I just hope they can execute.
The cover of Captain America #1 is my all-time favorite.
The news out of the San Diego Comic Con wasn’t particularly interesting to me this year. That and a generally packed weekend meant no extra posts.
However, here is a quick run down of the top geek stories. Some really juicy non-Comic Con related stuff happened.
AT&T should prepare for an ass-whoopin from Anonymous
AT&T probably just created a really big problem for themselves in Southern California.
Reports are coming in that portions of the website 4chan.org are being blocked by AT&T in SoCal.
I have no idea if this is true, but if it is, AT&T should brace itself for serious trouble, from a non-organization called Anonymous.
I don’t have the time to explain what 4chan.org or Anonymous are this evening, so I am going to direct you to their respective Wikipedia pages.
I will say this, 4chan and Anonymous are incredibly interesting. They are neither good nor evil, they just exist. They have created and represent some of the best and worst parts of the Internet, and openly celebrate both. More importantly, they can be very cruel (sometimes for very good reason, and sometimes for no reason at all) and are not to be trifled with.
Update: This story has been confirmed, and you can find out more about it here.
The Associated Press announces an innovative plan to destroy itself
The AP doesn’t want anyone to use any part of any of their stories unless they pay for it. No headlines, no quotes, nothing.
I guess their goal is to stop news aggrigators from linking to their web site, or keep bloggers from doing them same.
This probably won’t work very well, they don’t stand to gain much from this in terms of revenue or traffic, it will damage their placement on search engines because they will receive fewer links, they are going to get sued over “fair use,” and they will alienate the Internet (their only future customers).
This is a special kind of stupid.
That being said, I am getting the message loud and clear. From this point forward I will not link to AP material. If they don’t want my traffic, they won’t get it. I’m also going to put fourth a serious effort to avoid reading their content (since I can’t link to it anyway).
Your welcome AP.
This issue could have long lasting implications for the future health of the Internet. For a better understanding of the situation, I recommend reading this post from Scott Rosenberg’s wordyard.
News from Comic Con
The San Diego Comic Con has been morphing into a big pop culture media convention over the past decade. It seems that they are raising the prices for table space every year, and it’s causing more mom & pop comic shops to back out of the Con. The economy seems to have really hit Convention goers pretty hard and as a consequence, they didn’t spend as much money as usual. It sounds like next years Comic Con might look very different.
Valerie D’Orazio (Occasional Superheroine) wrote a good piece on the changing nature of Comic Con and the comic industry.
25
Jul
09
Geeksploitation in Hollywood
Have they forgotten what original thought and new properties look like out in California?
Over the last decade, the volume of comic book properties that have been turned into movies has been growing.
I reflected over this rapid growth, then I started to list all of the comic book movies that are due out over the next few years.
I made this staggering list off the top of my head in less than five minutes:
(In no particular order)
- Spider-Man 4
- Nick Fury
- GI Joe
- Jonah Hex
- Man of Steel (Superman)
- Green Hornet
- Sin City 2
- Deadpool
- Green Lantern
- X-Men Origins: Magneto
- Wanted 2
- The Avengers
- The First Avenger: Captain America
- Thor
- Iron Man 2
- Scott Pilgram vs The World
- Magdalene
- 300 2 (Yeah, forget the fact that damn near all of the characters died… that gives me an idea. “THIS IS ZOMBIE SPARTA!!!”)
- Batman 3
- World of Warcraft
- Castlevania (Not a comic, but a video game is still close enough. This is only being made because of the current vampire boom in pop culture.)
- The Last Airbender, which is live action movie of Avatar: The Last Airbender (A cartoon, but another geek favorite)
That’s 22 right there, and this isn’t even counting novel adaptations and movie remakes (Twilight anyone?). I think they are all due out within the next two to three years.
I am also fairly certain that I forgot a few.
It’s kind of shocking isn’t it?
My feelings on this are mixed. On one hand, I’m sure a few of these will be great, but on the other hand, a lot will be steaming piles of poo.
Additionally, I am troubled by the lack of original thought. I understand that when the economy is in the toilet, studios (and everyone else in media) want to put their money in a “sure thing,” but this trend began when the economy was booming.
Most of these adaptations don’t add anything to the characters, they usually detract. When they are done well, they usually match the comics at their best.
Make something new, unique and good, and I promise I will go to see it. As far as this current wave of geeksploitation that we are experiencing goes, I think I am going to have to be more picky with the comic movies I support. I hope you will too.
23
Jul
09
Comic Con Kicks Off
This is the big one folks. Geek Mecca. The San Diego Comic Convention.
I have no doubt that big news from the comic, movie, television, and video game industries will flow over the next few days.
One thing you will hear about is how “this is the biggest Comic Con yet.” It’s impressive in that there are so many geeks who flock to the event. However, it’s not a huge accomplishment that this is the “biggest ever,” because every year in recent years is bigger than the previous one.
I will do my best on a busy weekend, to react to the news coming from the event that makes me geek out or hulk-out.
Google marks the start of Comic Con with a special banner from Artist Jim Lee
This copy of the banner is from the typically useless DC Comics blog.
I stumbled upon the New York Times Graphic Books Best Seller list and was really puzzled. Two of the books are reader-unfriendly piles of garbage that sold well due to marketing.
I never paid much attention to the Best Seller list in the past, but I always assumed that the books had to be somewhat decent, and not just sell well.
I guess I was wrong. The two books in question are impossible to appreciate without a deep knowledge of the Marvel & DC Universes, and you had to read a number of other books for context on the main story.
3 FINAL CRISIS, by Grant Morrison, J. G. Jones, Carlos Pacheco and Doug Mahnke (DC Comics, $29.99) – The heroes of the DC Universe have their backs against the wall in this event storyline which features a much-publicized “death” and a surprising rebirth.
10 CIVIL WAR, by Mark Millar and Steve McNiven (Marvel Entertainment, $39.99) – A government registration act pits the heroes of the Marvel heroes against each other.
Both of these books are written in the standard event comic tone:
Comics don’t need to make sense if they are bombastic, and a lot of important characters die, or are resurrected.
Final Crisis in particular made no sense, and the lasting impact of the book is barely felt except for the fact that they killed off Batman, and brought back Barry Allen, the Flash. Oops, guess that was a spoiler. That’s really all you need to know from this terrible story.
Civil War wasn’t as big a mess as Final Crisis, but it wasn’t really a standalone story, or a good representation of the power of the comic medium.
The rest of the list is much better. However, the presence of these two is strange, especially since I am presuming that if one is selecting their comic via the New York Times Graphic Books Best Seller list, they probably don’t have enough context to appreciate either of these stories.
The soft cover list included the horrid All Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder among the mix of great and terrible books.
Don't read this book. I wish I hadn't.
3 ALL STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN, THE BOY WONDER, by Frank Miller and Jim Lee (DC Comics, $19.99) – Two comic book industry legends set their sights on re-examining the Batman and Robin team with over-the-top violence and characterization. Is it intentional parody or bad comics? The debate rages on.
Let me answer that question they pose. It sucks. It might intentionally be bad, but that doesn’t make it enjoyable.
Standards people! Standards.
This trailer looks even more impressive than the previous ones.
It seems that the release date has been bumped up to August 25th. I don’t have to tell you what my plans for that evening are do I?
