Mike's Comic Blog

X-Men Destiny Review

2011-10-03T11:31:00.000-05:00

So, as you know by now, I'm a big sucker for comic-themed video games. We've talked about, we've done that, let's move on.

I'll be honest, I wasn't expecting big things out of X-Men Destiny. It looked kind of cool, but wasn't going to be a blockbuster no matter how hard it tried. And that's okay. It didn't have to be. All it had to do was create a fun game, try a few new things, keep me entertained for a weekend.

Did it do that?

Well yeah, I guess it did.

The basic premise of the game is that you are taking control of one of three new characters that are being introduced into the X-Men mythos. Generic Asian girl, generic Jock, and generic...uh...nondescript guy. You then get to choose one of three powersets. Density control (rock-based tough guy), Shadow Matter (teleporting claw based, like if Nightcrawler and Wolverine had some unholy spawn), and Energy Projection, which as far as I can tell, involves throwing nerf balls at enemies until they get frustrated and leave you alone.

The real meat of the gameplay comes not from your core powersets, but rather by equipping various X-Genes that are littered around the city, combining a severe lack of understanding how genetics work with a sense of dread coming from not knowing why people's genes are laying around the sidewalk. You 'equip' these genes, and get a small taste of the powers of whatever famous mutant you happen to be stealing DNA from. And since you can mix and match these genes however you desire, you are free to make yourself into a true abomination of nature, combing one mutant's speed with another's attack power, and finishing it off with a third's...extra health bar? Is that a mutation? Do mutants have health bars? Is 'extending your health bar' some kind of horrifying innuendo?

Anyways

Once you set aside the obvious silliness that comes from equipping other people's powers, it actually makes for a pretty neat concept for a game. Basically everything you do will reward you with a new gene, and most of these offer you the ability to exchange XP for real quantifiable upgrades to these abilities. For example, if you stumble upon Northstar's utility gene, you will gain the ability of super speed. If you spend some points in it and upgrade, you eventually gain the ability to fly.

However, the game quickly devolves into a fairly basic formula.

Step 1: Go here.

Step 2: Fight this.

Step 3: Return to Step 1, repeat.

When you break it down, the game is little more than combat arenas interspaced with cutscenes. The story is fairly run-of-the-mill, with good mutants and bad mutants punching each other while the rest of the world decides exactly how long we're going to put up with their crap. Cameos abound, and anyone with a passing familiarity with the X-Men franchise is going to see their favorite mutant stomping around.

I was pleasantly surprised by the voice acting, most of the characters sounded exactly like I expected them to. Emma Frost was soft and sensual, Magneto was pompous and authoritative, and Quicksilver was a complete tool.

Colossus has been drinking vodka since noon, and perpetually sounds like he wants to fight you about it.

Here's the thing, I said earlier in the review that the game wasn't trying to be a big blockbuster epic, and I actually LOVE that about this game. It knew what it was doing, and it did it well. There's not a ton of meat on these bones, most of this gameplay is just busting up groups of enemies without any clear reason why. But smashing endless waves of enemies is the perfect format when you are given a huge pool of powers to sift through and re-equip at will. There is some focus on moral choices, but most of these are boiled down to their bare essence. (Go with Nightcrawler to fight baddies, or go with Pyro and fight some other baddies). If you pick up this one, don't stress too much about the choices, all roads lead home.

"Give me the canister! Or, you know, don't. It doesn't really matter either way."

At the very least, the game will keep you playing. With all the different character and power possibilities, you aren't getting your money's worth if you don't play it through at least twice. And any game that provides enough incentive to keep going after you've beaten it once deserves some recognition.

In short, it's no epic RPG, and most people will pass it by. But if you enjoy the characters at all, it's worth a look, because there is plenty of fun to be had here for those who are willing to try something new.

That's all for today. Don't forget to hit me up on Twitter, and check out the MikesComicBlog tumblr!

Until next time, do your part and have your mutants spayed or neutered!
~Michael

Cable's Back, and He's Pissed

2011-09-14T10:24:00.002-05:00

Weekly Ketchup 9-12 - Deus Ex, Fight for the Light, X-Men First Class, and More

2011-09-12T11:18:00.000-05:00

So, its been a busy few weeks for me. Between work and home, I've been running pretty much solid. Sorry for the lack of posts lately, but I'm back, party people, and we're gonna talk about some stuff that makes Mike happy.

First things first, my son!

Benjamin Reilly Wearden, born 9/4/11 at 9:41am.

That's my little guy. Happy and healthy and kicking all kinds of baby ass.

I got through Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Finished the final boss fight this afternoon. I really enjoyed the game, and I already want to go through on a second playthrough. The game strongly encourages replay, just because there are so many different areas to put your points into in order to progress through the game at different angles. The thing is I don't think the game has as many avenues of attack as it wants you to think it does. I mean, its okay to level up any area of advancement with your character, but there are points in the game that you are shoehorned into a particular style of play (usually combat) and it doesn't matter where you have put your points. If you aren't combat-ready, you are boned. I ran into a problem like this with the final boss. There are one or two specific upgrades that can really get you out of tight spots, but outside of those spots they are pretty much useless. I did not bother with them because I was usually able to work around these solutions without much difficulty, but that final boss...oh man. If you aren't prepared, its gonna make you want to start all over just so you can get those specific upgrades to make the fight easier.

All that being said, I loved the game. It really makes you feel like you can attack a situation however you want and it doesn't really punish you if you decide to mix it up. I started off the game very combat heavy, eventually steered back towards hacking and stealth and non-lethal maneuvers, and then retreated back into very run-and-gun style of play towards the end, and I really didn't experience any problems moving back and forth between playstyles. I highly recommend the game.

So the big DC reboot was this last week. We saw Justice League #1 hit shelves last week and Action Comics #1 this week. We are introduced to these new versions of classic DC characters. My first impressions are mostly positive, I'm not so attached to these characters that it breaks my heart if they get changed. Besides, most of the changes I see are not huge. Superman is a bit more aggressive and cocky, and that's fine. The interaction between Batman and Green Lantern looks like it was lifted straight out of Frank Miller's All Star Batman and Robin series, with a lot of smirking and bickering and condescension. I haven't gotten through all the new books yet, but from what I am seeing, the New 52 is off to a decent start. O.M.A.C. was a hoot, if a little strange. But it was fun. I still need to catch up on Swamp Thing and a few others, so I'll let you know my thoughts as I come across them.

Fight for the Light was released on DCUO this last week, adding a new powerset and some new missions. We need a lot more updates like this one. For one thing, the pack was free, as opposed to the $9.99 that was advertised, and free content is always a good thing. Secondly, DCUO is woefully limited in its powersets. Most of them feel a lot alike, with specific roles being carried across multiple powers. You don't really get to enter deep power customization until you hit level 9 or 10, after devoting a couple of hours to a character you may or may not like once it is fully realized.

But the light power is pretty neat. The heroes get the Green Lantern rings, while villains are given Yellow. You can always spot a Lantern right away because their fist will glow green or yellow at all times. I've only gotten to devote an hour or two with the new powerset, but the powers I've seen are fun and balanced. It is notoriously difficult to translate unlimited power into a limited control scheme, but the constructs you can make with the rings are fun, if sometimes a little silly.

X-Men: First Class was released for home distribution a few days ago. It took me damn near 20 hours to download the HD movie on my Xbox, but it only cost me about $20 worth of MS points, so it wasn't all bad. I started to watch it last night with dinner but I didn't get to finish it for two reasons. 1) I have three kids that demand a lot of attention. And 2) I had forgotten that it was a 2 and a half hour long movie.

However, re-watching the first hour or so reminded me of my conflicted feelings about the film. Some of it I really loved, and other parts I really hated. Emma Frost in this film was played by January Jones, who is a beautiful and talented actress who is playing a cardboard set of boobs in this film. The character is flat and pointless and completely uninteresting. It feels like she was shoehorned in just to be another big name character, when in reality, the same role could have been given to a lesser known or new character and gotten the same effect. Which is funny because Kevin Bacon is chewing the hell out of every piece of scenery he can get his hands on and is genuinely having a blast while doing it.

However, James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender as Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr have this on-screen chemistry that really works for the film and is just perfect, if a little homoerotic at times.

But I really enjoy the film, and I may end up writing down some second thoughts after I finish it.

In other news, I've fallen into a real rut with my games. There are so many big games on the horizon (Skyrim, Arkham City, etc) coming up in the next few months that nothing is really holding my interest right now. Deus Ex was fun, but I think I'm done with it. DCUO is great, but it is more of a distraction than a full out pastime at this point. So I'm just kind of treading water at the moment. Not like I have a whole lot of playtime lately, but when I do sit down to play, I find myself unable to settle into anything. I've got about $40 of Gamestop credit burning a whole in my pocket, so I may go try to pick out something used to hold my interest until the next round of games drop. I'm open to taking suggestions, but I've played almost everything under the sun at this point, so I'm having a devil of a time finding something good I haven't already burnt out on.

So, there's a little catchup on what has been going on. Don't forget to check out the MikesComicBlog Tumblr and my Twitter feed for more day to day thoughts and opinions.

~Michael

Sorry for the Unexpected Hiatus

2011-09-01T11:00:00.003-05:00

Hey everyone, Mike here. I just wanted to apologize for this unexpected hiatus I've taken over the last month. Life gets in the way, you know?

However, you'll be pleased to know that I will be returning to a more regular writing schedule soon. You see, my son, Benjamin Reilly Wearden, will be born on Sunday, and I've saved up some vacation time at work so I can take some time off once he arrives. So expect to see more content coming your way very soon.

In the meantime, check out tumblr.mikescomicblog.com for random stuff that I encounter in my Internet travels.

This is just a primer, you'll be seeing some new content from me soon, including my thoughts on the new DC relaunch, Hickman's new Ultimates book, and maybe a few games I've been checking out lately.

As always you can find me on Twitter at @MichaelWearden or you can email me at mike@mikescomicblog.com. Feel free to get involved, I'm happy to get some community involvement on the site.

Also, just something I'm entertaining, how do you guys feel about ads on blogs? Too distracting? Hey, if it puts some cash in my pocket to buy some baby food for little Ben Reilly, I'll consider it!

Cheers, people. I'll see you real soon.
~Michael

Captain America: Super Soldier Video Game Review

2011-07-21T09:58:00.002-05:00

As you probably know by now, I have a thing for video games based on comic book characters. I tend to be a little more lenient on them, I overlook their faults in favor of shilling the thrill of playing as your favorite superheroes. However, it must be very difficult to translate these characters into a playable form, because we have so few of these games that end up being genuinely GOOD games, without the moniker of 'good for a comic book game' or the dreaded 'better than most movie games.'

Captain America: Super Soldier makes no secrets about what it is, this is a Cap game that is trying to be Arkham Asylum. And boy it is trying SO HARD. Which is not a terrible goal, AA stands out as the best comic book adapted video game of this console generation, and the only thing that stands in its way from being the best comic book game ever is a little title called Hulk: Ultimate Destruction WHICH IS THE BEST COMIC BOOK GAME EVER MADE AND YOU SHUDDUP.

Anyways, the Cap developers were trying to build on a proven winning formula. Like Arkham Asylum, the entire game takes place in a singular location, a decidedly Germanic castle which we assume belongs to Baron Zemo judging by all the diaries the dude apparently left around all over the place. You see, this takes place long before the age of blogging, so the only way ol' Zemo could get people to read his emo poetry was to litter the place with pages from his super secret diary. By the way, the master of the house is apparently on vacation, because I couldn't find that bastard anywhere. He just let his buddies move in for the weekend. Maybe Arnim Zola is an accomplished house-sitter. I don't know. He looks like the kind of guy I'd let into my house.

I digress.

The game drops you on top of the castle and you spend the next 6 or 7 hours attempting to rescue your buddies, bust up some Hydra soldiers and robots, and generally trying to ruin the Red Skull's day. Because...the Red Skull is bad? I guess? That seems to be the primary motivation here. The bad guys are bad, therefore you should stop them. Not the deepest premise I've ever seen, but hey, what did you expect?

Cap has definitely been playing some Batman games in his spare time, because the combat system appears to have been practically copy-pasted into Super Soldier. But don't think you've done this before. The addition of the legendary Shield puts an entirely new spin on combat.

The basics are nothing you haven't seen before. Simple attack commands, a dodge button, counter attacks, all standard fare stuff at this point. But that Shield, holy cow. There is nothing more satisfying that following up a takedown with a shield throw that bounces off several other enemies in the room and returns to your hand just in time to block a bullet fired from behind you. That is one thing about this game that I truly enjoyed, the combat. Wrecking guys with that shield and your fists will not get old, even up to the last fight.

However, for all the good, there is plenty of bad. The environments are boring and uninspired. Expect to find yourself in lots and lots of generic laboratories, hallways, and trudging through the most boring and generic castle in all of Europe. And the collectibles, jeezus. In many levels you can find up to 7 or 8 dossiers, ceramic eggs (?), briefcases, and film reels all in a single room. The game practically demands that you search every possible nook and cranny looking for these (worthless) items, in an apparent attempt to extend the playtime.

For anyone who plays this game, allow me to save you some time. Don't bother. These collectibles are EVERYWHERE and they don't do you much good. Sure, they give you 'intel points' that can be used to purchase upgrades, but in a tragic failing, the upgrades are crap-useless. Not only are you required to purchase every upgrade on a level of the skill tree before unlocking the next level of skills (thereby completely ruining any chance of customization and putting a serious damper on replay value) but the skills you purchase are either arbitrary, impractical, or downright broken. Several of these upgrades involve special moves that require you to hold a button instead of tapping it, but the game does not seem to recognize the difference. Without fail, every time I attempted to use one of these beefed up moves, the game would default back to the tap move, a less impressive and less powerful attack. Not ONCE in my entire 7 hours of playtime was I able to execute ANY of these upgraded moves and guys, I am no slouch when it comes to these kind of games. You know it, I know it, and these upgrades suck.

The only upgrade that is marginally worth obtaining is the shield bounce, which causes your shield to ricochet off multiple enemies with each throw. But as I stated before, you have to buy ALL the crap upgrades to get to the next level of this skill, and frankly, it's not worth it. The only special move you need is both the most fun and useful, and is given to you for free at the beginning of the game. So for all you 100% completeists out there, don't bother putting in the extra time and effort. The abilities I started the game with are the same abilities I used throughout the entirety of the game, including every single boss fight.

This move. Because it's awesome.

Gameplay is broken up into 3 major sections. Combat, which is a blast, collection, which is a time-waster, and platforming, which is not platforming. The idea of that third one is to focus on Cap's legendary agility, but the game is so worried that you'll mess it up that it decides to take the controls from you and give you a single button to work while it does the hard stuff. Comparisons have been drawn between Cap's platforming segments and the agility seen in the Assassin's Creed games, but while AC allowed you an unparalleled amount of control, the platforming in Super Soldier is more akin to a timed button-press sequence. Thankfully, it's not a straight up quicktime event, but only just barely. You press 'A' as Cap lands on one surface to propel him to the next. A greater degree of control during platforming can be seen in the original Super Mario Bros.

Me: 'Wow, that looks fun.' - Cap: 'Yeah it does.' -takes the controller-

And despite all these claims to agility, we never get to use it for ourselves. In pre-scripted platforming segments, Cap can jump and flip and scurry around corners. But in the core gameplay you can't even hurdle a bench or table. Gameplay keeps you firmly nailed to the floor except when the game decides it wants to show off. On more than one occasion I found myself jumping and flipping around in place trying to climb a ledge that couldn't have been more than a couple of feet high in an attempt to grab one of the approximately 40 billion collectibles that had been strewn about a single room, and I was unable to grab it because Cap apparently only knows how to be agile when it involves swinging from suspiciously evenly spaced horizontal pipes, and NOT ANY OTHER TIME.

Despite all these flaws (of which there are many) I truly did have a blast playing the game. Combat is genuinely fun and... ...well that's really about it. The combat is a lot of fun. The rest of it, meh. It's okay. It's passable. It strides a hair or two above the line of mediocrity.

It's not a total wash. Unlike the tremendous turd that was the Thor game, Captain America: Super Soldier actually does have a lot of really fun moments. You just have to wade through a sea of boring to get there.

It's worth a playthrough. I myself will be kept occupied with the challenge mode (another element lifted straight from Arkham Asylum), as many of the challenges cut out all the boring and just get straight to the combat. I'm also a sucker for alternate costumes, and since nothing is unlocked by chasing down collectibles, I think I'll have a good time with that. I'd recommend the game to anyone who enjoys comic book games, even if they aren't the best. Especially if you are a Marvel fan, Cap is a great character and it truly is fun to run around in his boots. Everyone else? Wait for the price to drop. This game is definitely one you want on your radar, but for the average consumer it won't be worth the $50 out of your wallet.

Old Folks Home Review

2011-06-29T10:00:00.000-05:00

Nursing homes. Man, those places are the worst.

I know I know, that makes me a bad person to say. But come on, you were all thinking it. There wasn't even any lead-in to that topic, and I still bet some of you were thinking "Man, I know this comes out of nowhere, but aren't nursing homes just the worst?"

I mean, it really is kind of a delicate topic, isn't it? Your beloved parents or grandparents start to get to a point where they can't take care of themselves, and as much as you love them, you can't bend your whole life around caring for them. I mean, it's not like they bent their entire lives around caring for you, is it? But hey, there's this nice facility that takes these people in and takes care of them. So you don't have to worry about it. Or, you know. Visit. Because these are health care professionals and you can rest easy knowing that your loved ones are taken care of.

I know some of you out there are feeling pretty guilty right now. That's not really my intent. I've had loved ones put into homes before. And for the most part, the staff does a great job of taking care of them.

But MAN those places are the worst.

Anyone who has ever visited knows what I'm talking about. Most of the people there are so lonely that they want desperate to believe that you are their relative, and they want to hug and touch you and

Okay I gotta stop that line of thought now. Gives me the creeps.

Anyways more to the point, I'm sitting here reading this issue that was sent to me by Garry McLaughlin. It is called 'Old Folks Home' and features a cover specifically designed to make me wet myself.

Seriously. Add a beard and that dude could be me.

This issue is part of Laser Age Comics' "Year of Fear" and was written by Jamie McMorrow and illustrated by the aforementioned Garry McLaughlin. For those of you who haven't put the pieces together yet, this is a British Horror comic about pissed off, murderous old people who escaped a nursing home.

That's...pretty much the scariest thing I've ever encountered in my life.

Even more terrifying once you notice this:

That's right. Not only is your Gram-Gram pissed off and coming for you with a giant knife, but apparently she's been doing so for two previous issues already. You are officially out of time, she's at your door RIGHT NOW DON'T LOOK!!

Anyways, enough of my blathering. Let's talk about the book.

This issue has a very art-school deco theme going with it. All black and white, a relatively small cast of characters, most of the book takes place within one or two rooms. The meat here is definitely in the dialogue, so this may be a little too artsy for my 'hurr durr action punching spandex muscles hit 'em again' readers. We have a young man coming home from work to find his elderly parents have come to visit from the nursing home he put them in and subsequently neglected. Understandably a little nervous, (and seriously, who wouldn't be?) he tries to call the home to let them know.

I named this image 'NoThanks.jpg'

And then we find out that the parents have brought some of their old and lonely friends along and isn't that just lovely excuse me while I run as far away as I possibly can.

There is no escape.

It's a creepy tale in the vein of a Hitchcock short that explores all the guilt and secret fear you have about old people. I know that comes off as insensitive but honestly? There hasn't been a single person who put their family in a home and felt good about it. It is just part of life, and it is such a delicate topic that we don't see that explored very often.

From an art standpoint, we have some real good pencils and inks here, if sometimes a little bare-bones. Not a complaint, just an observation. The book plays out more like a storyboard at times then actual sequential storytelling, but then again, I'm not real fluent in storytelling styles of the UK, so that may be my uncivilized American viewpoint. There is also a small measure of inconsistency with the art. At times certain faces feel photo-referenced while others are clearly drawn in a stylistic manner with exaggerated features and almost cartoonish proportions. There's not a single thing wrong with either of these styles, it's just a little jarring to seem them both used side by side.

Presenting for your viewing pleasure, two panels completely devoid of context.

The book makes good use of its lack of coloring, using shading and the occasional lack of backgrounds to draw our focus to the characters emotions and reactions. The lettering also feels a little inconsistent, and I think that all comes down to size. It's difficult to mask the fact that you are inserting typed text over a pre-drawn speech bubble when the font size has to be reduced in order to make the dialogue fit.

However, that's another little nitpicky thing. The actual quality of the story and art is excellent. Great use of close-ups and reaction shots provide mood for an absolutely terrifying high concept. The book follows a traditional three act layout with an intro, buildup and climax, and reminded me of the black and white short films we used to watch in Film Study. I'd love to see this adapted to a short film, I almost think that would be a better medium for this kind of story, but as it is, this book fires on all cylinders and delivers exactly what it promises. I enjoyed it, guys. I really did.

So if you are looking for a little variety in your horror books, something self-contained that you can enjoy without needling around with backstory or three part plot lines, give this one a go. I promise you two things, you'll enjoy this comic book, and you won't sleep tonight.

FEED ME YOUR NIGHTMARES

More info and purchase options can be found here.

http://www.laseragecomics.co.uk

The Abormals Special by Grant Springford Review

2011-06-27T10:12:00.001-05:00

Something you should know about me. I'm not a terribly picky eater.

Argue with me, I double dare you.

I enjoy eating. I like it. I love trying new foods and new ways to combine foods to create new tastes and textures. And I'm not terribly picky. I'll try most everything once. Sure, I may not like everything, but I almost always am willing to give it a fair and honest chance.

I'm telling you this because I take the same approach to comics. I love comics. Even standing apart from the individual stories and artwork, I love the idea of comics as a medium. I enjoy trying new things, new ways to look at the world. I enjoy reading new books. Sure, I have my favorites, and there are some I really don't care for, but I am almost always willing to give it a fair and honest chance.

You either get knee-pads OR a Top Hat, not both.
Most of the team made the wrong choice.

That's how to came to be that I sat down to read The Abnormals courtesy of the creator Grant Springford. I try to keep my ear to the ground on independent, creator-owned work as much as I can, but understandably, there is a lot to wade through. So I wasn't surprised that this was the first I had heard of this book.

The premise is simple enough. A group of ragtag other-wordly beings are gathered together to be a force of good in the face of increasing paranormal and demonic activity. The book takes place in modern day London, providing a refreshing change in scenery from those of us who are used to our NYC based superheroes.

The characters, for the most part, are fun and engaging. From a rubber robot called 'The Bouncer' to a dapper psychic in a top hat called 'The Link', we're seeing archetypes explored in this book in a way I have not seen. In a comics society that is sometimes afraid to branch out, its intriguing to see characters who break the mold and remain interesting, even if they do suffer from the dreaded Introductoryitis, a debilitating disease that causes them all force as much exposition as to the nature of their abilities as possible into their dialogue with each other. However, such an illness is hard to avoid when you are introducing this many characters into a book that still has a plot to get through, so I suppose that can be forgiven.

As far as the artwork goes, we have a lot of potential. The book is written, penciled, inked, and colored by one man, and in some places, it shows. That's not to say the artwork suffers, not by any means. It certainly has a way to go, but there is nothing wrong with that. As it stands, the art is...let's say sufficient. Good use of space within panels, excellent work on backgrounds. There is still a little refinement to be had in places, at times I felt a character's eyes were focusing on a strange focal point off the z-axis of the panel, or worse, on two different focal points altogether.

That being said, the art is a good ways better than most non-professionals put out in their first issue, and I see a lot of potential. If Mr. Springford chooses to continue doing all the artwork on his own, then I have no doubts we'll begin to see more refinement in the book. As it stand, the book reminds me slightly of 70's era Marvel books, with dynamic colors and lots of full body action shots.

The first issue begins with Jack Patch (who is NOT Nick Fury and shame on you for suggesting it), a mysterious quasi-governmental agent recruiting Meena Malthotra. The only backstory we get on Meena is that she is a 'civil servant' with 'unusual hobbies.' This is the sum total of the information we have on the character. Meena is the one character in the book who I really felt we didn't get enough info on, but there is plenty of room for backstory in a team book such as this, so I wasn't too broken up about it. The rest of the team gets their kicks in as far as introductions go, and there are some real great concepts here. I'll let you buy the issue (support creators, dammit!) to find out the specifics, but with the possible exception of Meena (time will tell) there's not a character I met in this book that couldn't hold up a one-shot issue by themselves. Throw in a genuinely interesting set of villains and a brief glimpse into a much deeper and scary underworld, and The Abnormals comes out of the gate with a very strong showing.

The only complaint I would offer up in this review is in regard to certain visuals. Not necessarily the artwork itself, we discussed that and its actually growing on me the more times I go back and read the issue, but rather some of the basics some of us tend to take for granted. Now, this book originates from the UK, so I don't know how stylistically different its meant to be from American comics, but I found myself distracted by the speech bubbles, of all things. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but something about it just felt unfinished, like a webcomic speech balloon as opposed to a mainstream media comic speech balloon.

The more time we spend with these characters, the more they will develop their own voice and style, and I, for one, am very much looking forward to see where that style takes us.

As much time as I spent here dwelling on some minor negative points, I cannot deny that I had a good time while reading. This is a book that holds a surprising amount of quality in the story and characters. Cast yourself into the book, allow yourself to suspend some minor criticisms and you'll find yourself terrified of the Ragged Ghosts, casting odd glances at the alien appearance of Angie Gray, or wishing you could crack open a beer with brutish troglodyte Throwback and the devlish imp Nasty.

Or playing poker with The Link, because seriously, that dude is awesome.

The one thing I stepped away from this book with was the fact that I want to see more. I want to know more about who is organizing this group, what's the story with Jack Patch's mysterious source of information? The book left me hungry for the next issue, and as it is with food and comics, that's probably the highest praise one can offer.

More information on the Abnormals can be found here:
http://theabnormals.co.uk/

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Abnormals/117308118317046
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/AbnormalsComic

What happened?

2011-06-19T15:34:00.000-05:00

Hey, sorry its been so long. I kind of had surgery a couple weeks ago. Apparently I'm susceptable to MRSA, which is some kind of staph that doesn't respond to medication. Messed up my leg real bad. I'm practically healed now though, back to work tomorrow. I promise you'll get some good posts out of me real soon.

For the past couple weeks, I've pretty much been stoned on painkillers and playing New Vegas on my laptop. Need to catch up on my comics. I'll try to be back on a regular posting schedule within the next week. Thanks for your patience everyone!

Captain America Gets It Done, Son

2011-06-03T16:15:00.001-05:00

A Response to 'Thor' Reviews

2011-05-17T09:03:00.000-05:00

I've had about enough of this nonsense.

You know, I'm fine if someone doesn't like the same things I do. That's just a part of life. For example, I have no desire to 'watch the game' with my coworkers or even my own family. It doesn't matter what the game is, I'm probably not interested. I don't follow professional sports of any kind. However, I do not attack the legitimacy of professional sports as an entertainment venue. If you don't like something, that's fine. If I don't like something, that's fine too. It takes all kinds. But what I cannot abide is the attacking of a subject, especially on a public forum, with the vast majority of arguments made on the writer's ASSUMPTION in the place of doing any actual research on the topic.

For example, I am not a fan of the Twilight movies or books. It's a fact. However, if I were tasked with reviewing said content, I would attempt to approach it fairly and pay my readers the courtesy of doing at least the most base and effort-free degree of research in order to adequately become familiar enough with the topic to provide a fair and balanced viewpoint. I would not, however, simply say "This vampire film is stupid. Vampires don't sparkle. That's not how it works. This is obviously just romantic fantasy for high school girls with no-talent filmmakers and actors."

And you know WHY I would not say that? Because nobody is interested in hearing my opinions about topics that I clearly know nothing about and have made no effort to learn anything about.

And yet, if I were a 68 year old film critic, a widely respected one at that, I could apparently get away with saying anything I want to without making any effort whatsoever to understand the material.

I’m not really all that good with sarcasm and snark, so I’ll just cut to the chase. Roger Ebert was not a big fan of the “Thor” film. That’s fine. Something tells me that me and Mr. Ebert do not share many interests in common, and we are not going to enjoy the same things. Cool. I can live with that.

However, in his review of the film, Ebert makes broad sweeping statements about the film and what his preconceived notions about the source material were, and in doing so demonstrates a clear lack of understanding, and more importantly, a clear lack of any DESIRE to understand the film.

“Thor to begin with is not an interesting character. The gods of Greek, Roman and Norse mythology share the same problem, which is that what you see is what you get. They're defined by their attributes, not their personalities.”

“Thor is a particularly limited case. What does he do? He wields a hammer. That is what he does. You don't have to be especially intelligent to wield a hammer, which is just as well, because in the film Thor (Chris Hemsworth) doesn't seem to be the brightest bulb in Asgard.” (Ebert, 2011)

Obviously Mr. Ebert is reviewing a film about Norse gods, and is using his own knowledge of this source material as basis for his opinions.

The thing is, I don’t think Roger and I sat through the same film. You see, I went and saw a movie about comic book characters.

“But Mike,” I’m sure you are thinking, “This film is about Thor and Odin and Asgard, obviously this is a film about Norse mythology and pagan gods!”

That’s horsecrap, and shame on you for suggesting it.

I know it must strain some people’s brains to make the distinction between Norse mythology and comic book characters based on Norse mythology. That can be hard, I know, because its not pointed out very obviously, anywhere. Do you know why that is? Because Hollywood, in all its foolishness, assumed that people would be able to make that distinction on their own.

Oh shame, shame on you Hollywood for thinking people were smart enough to do that.

Let me break it down for you, people. This is not a film about Thor, the Norse god of thunder. This is a film about Thor, the Marvel comic book character. I know that might be hard to understand, because the similarities are staggering. I mean, they have the same name, they both wield hammers, they both live in a place called Asgard and have a father named Odin. That’s surely the entirety of the depth of the character, right? I mean, come ON they even look just like each other!

Woah woah woah, that’s not the Thor of Germanic paganism worshipped by millions of people to this day! That looks more like...well...kind of looks like a fictional character that was obviously inspired by the legends.

You’d think that this wouldn’t be so hard of a concept to grasp, or even an important one. But then we get arguments like “But...but...Heimdall can’t be portrayed by a BLACK MAN! The Norse gods were not BLACK!”

This is a film about FICTIONAL COMIC BOOK CHARACTERS. I understand that people have a hard time grasping this concept, but that should not serve to de-legitimize the content.

The fact that Mr. Ebert begins his review with a recounting of how he missed opening night of Thor because he was busy watching much more worthwhile films sets the tone for his entire review. A 30-second Google search would have provided enough research for him to put the film in context, any kind of context other than “Well I think this is what they are referencing.”

I’m sorry, Mr. Ebert, but in this world where your opinion on films is heard by thousands of readers daily, a failure to put your writings in any kind of relevant context is a major failure indeed.

But wait! Somewhere near the end of his review Mr. Ebert suddenly remembered that he saw the Marvel logo in the film! By George, this is a comic book movie after all!

“The standards for comic book superhero movies have been established by "Superman," "The Dark Knight," "Spider-Man 2" and "Iron Man." In that company "Thor" is pitiful. Consider even the comparable villains (Lex Luthor, the Joker, Doc Ock and Obadiah Stane). Memories of all four come instantly to mind. Will you be thinking of Loki six minutes after this movie is over?” (Ebert, 2011)

Holy cow! I was wrong! He DID do research for this article! I say that because I’d be willing to bet you a dollar that he had to Google “What was the bad guys name in Iron Man?” in order to catch the name Obadiah Stane. But Loki? Absolutely right. Six minutes after the film ended I totally heard people in the parking lot saying “What was that bad guys name? Oh who cares he was barely noticable.”

This is starting to devolve into immature snark again, so I’d better wrap it up. Here’s my bottom line. The Thor film, while it may not be your cup of tea, was a well made film. It was not a film about Norse gods or in any way about an honest portrayal of anyone's religious figures. This was a film about Marvel comic book characters, and between you and me?

They knocked it out of the park.

Feel free to disagree with me. Just do me a favor and make sure you have your facts straight before you do. Because the next person to bring up Idris Elba’s skin color to me is getting a hammer to the face.

Citations

Roger Ebert, (2011) "Thor" is not a Meet Cute for the gods. Retrieved May 12th, 2011 from
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2011/05/_i_didnt_attend_the.html

Thor: God of Thunder Game Review

2011-05-09T11:54:00.001-05:00

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."

-Rita Mae Brown (alleged)

Oh man.

Okay, you already know I'm a pretty big fan of Thor. And I'm a sucker for superhero games. I even liked the Sega Iron Man games, sort of. And thats hard to believe, those games were horrible. You also already know that I really loved the new Thor movie, and since this game is based on that license, even if its not a very good game the cards are still stacked in such a way that I'm probably going to end up enjoying the game, right?

No, this game is a turd.

This is also a turd. Or would be, if I wasn't terrified to Google Image Search the word 'turd.'

Seriously, Sega? THIS is the best you got? You had a great license, input from Matt Fraction, one of the best writers in the business today, and free reign to write a story that was not constrained by the big blockbuster movie. Thats almost impossible to screw up! How did you find a way to take this winning formula and...

Oh thats right. You got the development team from "Desperate Housewives: The Game."

Not Pictured: Thor

Solid decisions there, Sega.

You guys, I love Thor. I even have a soft spot in my heart for mediocre games. I like them. They are very low pressure. I can play them and shelve them and never feel guilty about keeping them and only playing them for 10-20 minutes every now and then.

This is not a mediocre game.

Oh it feels that way at first. You start off the game with real hope for the future. Swinging Mjolnir around is a blast. And the fact that there is a quick throw button for slinging that thing right into someone's face is just gravy.

But you see, here's the thing. The game starts you off with a limited set of abilities, and introduces them one at a time so you get the hang of it. This is not an uncommon practice. The idea is that you start slow so that 5-15 minutes into the game, you feel like the 'real game' has started and you can get out there and start smashing.

Except 4 or 5 hours later, I'm still waiting for the real game to start.

Thor feels handcuffed. Oh sure, he can hit things with his hammer, or call down lightning on his enemies. He can walk around and jump. He can throw his hammer at things. But this is THOR!

Where's the flying? Where's the powerful, Hulk-level impact of smashing? Where's the war cries and epic battles and quasi-believable voice acting??

Not here.

Don't get me wrong. The fact that Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston did their own recording sessions for the game is awesome. And I've watched some of those sessions, those guys really put their hearts into those readings. They did a great job.

BUT

I have a little exercise for you. Take a really powerful and moving speech. Bill Pullman's speech from ID4, perhaps? Then recite that speech with a COMPLETELY deadpan face. Like, barely move your lips. And for the love of all that is holy do not use any facial expressions or body language. You were hit by a train and paralyzed and now the only movement you are capable of is swaying back and forth like you've been standing at Six Flags all day and all you want is for that fat guy to get up off the bench so you can sit down without being subjected to the smell of fat guy nacho sweat. You know the smell I'm talking about. Like someone took a wet dog and dumped them in hot dog water. Nasty. Your feet hurt. So you sway a LOT. But deadpan face, no emoting, no anything. In fact, don't even speak. Just record the speech onto a tape player, press play, and then swallow it.

Ok, got it? Speech isn't that impressive anymore, is it?

Thats the thing. The performances of the actors is great. But the mouthpieces from which those recorded lines emerge is...lets go with 'less than impressive.'

The other thing? Half of these levels don't even look finished! Like you are looking at them through beer goggles. Or pixel goggles. Something.

Do not adjust your monitors. That is gameplay footage. And I do not have a blurry TV. Those pictures you see are full 1080p. Look at those snowbanks. Check out that crystal. What the hell, guys?

In a similar note, I'm a sucker for unlockable costumes and skins. So even though I was long past realizing that the game was terrible, I kept playing and playing so I could unlock the Ultimate Thor skin. Imagine how cool it would be to...oh.

"KILL IT! BURN IT WITH FIRE!"

I like to think of him as Trauma Ward Thor.

No, he doesn't look like that all the time, surely the developers were more careful than that, right? No, this only happens when you move the camera. Which you sure don't need to do often in a 3rd person platform-brawler, right? Sega certainly doesn't think so.

The game sucks guys, I know, it hurts. I've had to come to terms with it myself.

Let's just...talk about something else now, ok?

Oh, and Sega? Those guys you got to make this game? Maybe they should get back to work on Desperate Housewives 2.

~Michael

Thor Movie Review

2011-05-09T11:52:00.003-05:00

My wife and I went out Saturday night and watched the Thor movie. Given that this was probably my most anticipated Marvel film yet, you can imagine how excited I was to finally watch it. I decided to put some distance between seeing the film and writing it up so I wouldn't be tempted to review the whole thing with rose-colored glasses. So I took a day off, took care of some other things. But I can't put it off any longer. It's time to break it down in such a way that my own personal feelings about the character and the Marvel film franchise in general would have no chance of influencing my opinion in this review, so I can be honest about its quality.

You guys, it was AWESOME.

I am not kidding here, I loved almost everything about it. So many right decisions went into this thing, so much hard work, and it really paid off.

CASTING

I confess, I went into the film with no small amount of trepidation regarding Chris Hemsworth's ability to play the Thunder God. I don't know what it is, maybe the accent, but I get a very Heath Ledger circa "A Knight's Tale" vibe from him. And Chris is a big guy, to be sure, but in the photos I had seen before the film, he looked kind of puny in that armor. I mean, Thor's a BIG GUY. Like, 7 1/2 feet tall, 500 lbs kind of big. I was worried that would be kind of a catch-22 with the casting here. Anyone that big is unlikely to be a strong enough actor to really make the character believable. But most good actors aren't going to be big enough to pull off that kind of imposing presence.

Consider me converted. Hemsworth knocked it out of the park. Was it the exact Thor I knew and loved from the comics? No. Nor should it be. This is a film interpretation, and I say that with absolutely NO amount of excuse-making. I had to put aside my predisposed ideas about what Thor was and realize that I'm watching a relatively young thunder god on screen. Once I was able to put that aside, I was blown away at how perfectly the character was represented on screen. The arrogance, the swagger, but what surprised me the most was the honest, bare-soul humility we eventually would get from Thor, even earlier in the film than I expected. The guy is just so damn likable, it's hard to imagine anyone having doubts about the casting of the lead after actually sitting down and watching the film.

I'm looking forward to seeing Thor interact with the rest of the Marvel pantheon soon.

Most of the rest of the casting was solid. Again, I had doubts about Anthony Hopkins playing Odin. And again, guy knocked it out of the park. One of the biggest "Holy crap" moments occurs early in the film and demonstrates just exactly how imposing Odin can be on the battlefield. Sif was perfect, though I would have loved to have seen more of her. The Warriors Three were actually pulled off a little better than I expected. You can't have a 900 pound Volstagg running around onscreen, I get that. Fandrall appears to have been ripped straight off the pages of the books. My only problem was with Hogun. See, when I think of Hogun, I think this:

This picture is saved as "Hogun Being Awesome.jpg". Not kidding.

And instead I got a fairly diminutive Asian man spurting raspy lines and striking poses. It almost felt exploitative to me. Like, "Oh that one is Mongolian or something like that, just cast someone and write a few lines for him in a raspy voice." Not to downplay the actor who played Hogun, I just felt that the character wasn't treated with as much sense as probably should have been.

Pictured: Not a Norse God. But still awesome.

Of course the big controversy over the casting was with Idris Elba as Heimdall. I've stayed out of that fight as much as I could out of the sheer absurdity of the argument. But, here's the deal. This is not a film about Norse Gods. It's not. Its about comic book characters who (in their own continuity) inspired the legends of the Norse Gods. There's no reason whatsoever why anyone should criticize the casting of Elba as Heimdall based on the color of his skin. Period.

And for the record, Idris Elba is a pimp in this movie. Just a stone cold badass. I want to find some audio clips of him talking and use it as my wake up alarm in the morning. I don't even care what he's saying. Could be reading the Asgardian phonebook for all I care.

Natalie Portman as Jane Foster? Better than I expected. I actually kind of liked her in the role. Its not the same Jane from the books, of course. I'm ok with it. Her friend Darcy on the other hand, the comic relief? Eh. Annoying. She's a little TOO cute for what she's doing on screen. Almost a distraction. But ably performed.

Loki? Masterful. Tom Hiddleston IS Loki as far as I'm concerned. I see the guy walking down the street I fully expect him to be wearing that big horned helmet of his.

Anyways, I'm rambling. The film itself was great. A little more fanciful than the Marvel films we've seen so far and THATS THE WAY IT SHOULD BE. We are moving in a very good direction here, and I can only hope the box office sales reflect that direction. I already want to buy a second ticket and go see it again. I want to buy tickets for all my friends and take them to see it. My family. My coworkers.

Well...maybe not my coworkers. Not a very lively bunch, there.

But you get the idea.

If you are a regular reader of the site, you know I don't do scores in my reviews. If I did, this film would rate nearly perfect. I loved it. I'm going to see it again. You should go see it and love it as well. It's not perfect, but its damn close, and certainly a step in the right direction for comic book interpretations on the big screen.

You can also check out my review of the Thor: God of Thunder video game.. I...was not as favorable of that one.

For Asgard!
~Michael

Weekly Ketchup, 4-28. Mortal Kombat and Portal 2

2011-04-28T11:03:00.000-05:00

Its that time again.

So whats new? Well, Portal 2 and Mortal Kombat. Thats what.

Both games have been taking up a good portion of my dwindling free time lately. And I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised by both games. I mean, Portal 2 was obvious. Who DIDN'T think that was going to be awesome? But it was Mortal Kombat that really impressed me in a way I wasn't expecting.

You see, I'm not really into fighting games. I did my time in the arcades, playing the old MKs and Virtua Fighters and Soul Edge and countless others. And Marvel vs Capcom will always be special to me, but thats more for the comic side, rather than the actual fighting game side.

But back when I was a kid, Mortal Kombat was IT. I never dove deep into it, but all my friends would lose their minds whenever a new one came out. So I would watch them play and get the gist of the story. I always thought it was interesting, but never really hooked me.

However, on a whim, I got this one on release day. Took a chance. And it really paid off for me. The combat (kombat?) is accessible, not difficult to learn. Anyone, absolutely anyone, can pick up the controller for the first time and really feel like they aren't getting stomped into the ground. When you land a good combo, you really feel like its because YOU landed that combo, not because you were wildly mashing buttons like ...well...you know. Like you normally do. (come on, admit it.)

Anyways, the story mode was a lot of fun for me. I'm not going to recap it here, because you apparently have access to the internet and can look that up yourself. That's how we roll around here. But here's th basic idea. Remember the new Star Trek movie? Its a reboot but not a reboot its really a sequel but its not a sequel its a reboot? Its just like that, except less lens flares and more horrible brutal deaths. (Which I maintain would have made Star Trek that much more fun to watch.)

I haven't really played with a lot of the extra features, of which there are many. The challenge towers and bazillion other modes will probably keep me busy for a while. The one complaint I had was that some of the character designs were...

umm....

...subtle.

As for Portal 2, what can I say? The game was awesome. Even better than the first, if you can believe it. The addition of two new speaking roles could have easily been a major mistake but both Wheatley and Cave Johnson now belong in the same ranks as GLADoS as entertaining and hilarious guides in this puzzle game. The gameplay was tight, less focused on agility based problem solving and more on thinking and reasoning out the puzzles. And the co-op is performed flawlessly, even on a split screen. You MUST try it, I promise you will be hooked.

I've totally run out of steam on writing this thing, and so I'm done for now. I know, I know, thats unprofessional blogging and all that to say such things. But it's my blog. Go away now.
~Michael

Seriously. Is it just me?

2011-04-14T15:23:00.001-05:00

Okay, I try to make a point not to criticize someone's hard work. Especially artists. Everyone has their own style, and not everyone is going to agree on what looks good. I get that. But let me ask you a question.

Who thinks THIS looks right?

Let me more specific. There's not anything wrong with the costume, or the backgrounds. And I even like the slimmer circle design for the shield. No, I'm referring specifically to this:

"Derp."

This is meant to be an imposing figure strolling out of an explosion looking awesome. Instead this looks like someone wandered off the short bus on the way to a cosplay party. (oh god I'm going to hell for that joke.)

Again, I don't like to criticize someone's work. But REALLY? THIS made it to print? Somebody saw those googly eyes and thought "Yeah, this is fit for mass audience consumption."

Maybe I'm just hating on Howard Chaykin. I've never been a big fan of his style. And maybe thats on me. Maybe I'm just not open-minded enough to appreciate this art style. But I saw this and was taken aback.

Anyways, just wanted to share that with you. I'll go back to NOT getting paid to do work for a major publisher now.

Weekly Ketchup 4-13-11

2011-04-13T14:23:00.003-05:00

I guess if I want to keep this blog I'd better write on it occasionally. Not that I don't love addressing you, my huddled masses, its just that its difficult for a father of 2 (soon to be 3!) with a full time job to find the time to write about the things I love discussing. But you didn't come here to find excuses, did you? Oh no you did not. You came here for the same reason everyone else comes here! Because Google Image Search told you to!

Google needs a catchphrase. Am I the only one who thinks so?

So this last week I've found myself in a bit of a deluge with my gaming. I had all these great games, Dragon Age II, Dead Space II, Crysis II (there's a joke to be made in there somewhere, but the guy who writes the jokes is on vacation), and yet I just wasn't able to commit myself to any of them. So I did the logical thing to do. I traded them all in at Gamestop and bought a bunch of older games I'd played to death already! So now I'm neck deep in Shattered Dimensions, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and Red Dead Redemption. Which, by the way, between watching The Walking Dead tv series and playing Undead Nightmare on RDR, I'm seeing some serious potential for crossover. Not really, of course. Wishful thinking. Kind of like how I put as many licensed characters as I can into my Bethesda games. Maybe I'll make a Rick Grimes/John Marsten team-up the next time I have a go'round with New Vegas.

Lose an appendage or two and thats basically the tone of the book, right?

But I'm rambling.

Picked up a few great books this week. Nonplayer #1 was a book I am very excited about. It crept up onto my radar on release day, I hadn't heard much buzz about it prior to picking it up. It reminded me very much of Greg Pak's Vision Machine, which I enjoyed very much.

Fear Itself kicked off this week with Thor and Odin acting like a couple of white trash hillbillies and ended with the gods leaving town. There. Spared you $3.99.

AHHH I'm just kidding. I had a great time with it. Odin being a jerk is the best kind of Odin. Though between this and Avengers #11 I'm starting to wonder if Uatu the Watcher is needing some kind of gym membership or something. Boy is looking portly.

Speaking of Avengers #11, big last page surprise. No spoilers for any of you that haven't read it. But it's [CENSORED]. [CENSORED] is there. [CENSORED] shows up. Surprise.

Censorship is never not hilarious.

I still am trying hard to break into DC. I've been a Marvel guy for so long that it just feels unfair for me to ignore DC, especially when I do actually like so many of their characters so much. But let me tell you this, despite what anyone says, those books are impenetrable. I even had to stop reading Batman Inc because I just COULDN'T follow the damn thing. I'd like to be a Batman fan, guys, I really would. Somebody help me out here.

Oh hey, I also picked up Write More Good from Amazon this past week. For those of you who don't know, this thing was written by the writers of the Twitter account @FakeAPStylebook. They got a book deal out of their parody twitter account and they did something really impressive. Instead of just copy/pasting the feed into a word processor and call it a day, these people actually wrote a damn book. I've barely cracked the damn book, I'm like 12 pages in MAYBE, but I bought the thing just on principle. When these guys optioned to do some real work and create some real content instead of just slapping together something easy and cashing in on it, that sold me on it. And I'm passing that recommendation on to you folks. If you don't already, follow @FakeAPStylebook on Twitter, go to Amazon and buy the book. I don't even care if you like it (though you probably will), but do it on the premise of encouraging real original content by creators who are willing to work for it.

Okay, thats enough out of me for today. As always you can find me on Twitter @MichaelWearden, you can email me at Mike@MikesComicBlog.com. If anyone out there wants to put some content out there, let me know. If any of you artists want to put something on display, hit me up. And if you writers have some work of yours getting published soon, let me know and let's get the word out.

Later folks, I'll see you next time!

Nathaniel Richards: Jerk

2011-03-30T10:34:00.000-05:00

Mike's Ketchup

2011-03-23T10:27:00.001-05:00

I'm going to start a new feature here on the blog where I just catch you guys up (GET IT?? THE TITLE IS A PUN! THATS HILARIOUS. PUNS ARE FUNNY) on what media I've been consuming and what I think about it. Because if there's one thing the internet doesn't have enough of, its my opinion.

So Crysis 2 came out yesterday, and to be honest, this game wasn't even on my radar. Yesterday morning I'm sitting here at work, getting ready to take the afternoon off. Then I saw this launch trailer:

And I thought to myself, "Hmmm...first person shooter...but with superpowers...just like FAR CRY!"

I better explain myself there. I loved the original Far Cry.

I know I know, it had plenty of problems. But Far Cry Instincts Predator was one of the first games I played when I bought my first Xbox 360, so it had a special place in my heart. Plus, the concept was pretty much "What would happen if we made an FPS with Wolverine?"

And it worked.

Besides it had this really awesome map creator that was really my first digital creative outlet, so I spent months in there just building up the perfect maps to wander around on alone because I didn't have multiplayer connectivity. It was my own little sandbox.

Anyways, back to Crysis.

I saw that trailer and immediately went to buy the game, based on what I had seen and my own speculations alone. Never played the original. Half out of lack of interest, half out of the fact that I didn't own a supercomputer with a terabyte of RAM and a graphics card that made you feel insecure about your masculinity. (HAHA, ITS ANOTHER JOKE!)

So I picked up the game, went home, and immediately popped it in my PS3.

Now, I'm not gonna lie. I'm about to rip on how the game didn't really let me play for a while. But before I do, let me praise the opening sequence. That first mission gave me a sense of danger and immersion that I hadn't experienced since the original Bioshock.

Okay. So about the game not letting me play...I...uh...dammit. I lost my stride. The point was that the game has a lot of cutscenes that want to turn you epileptic, and frequently during the first few hours of gameplay you get control yanked away from you so the game can show you how it wants to be played.

"Umm, excuse me? You're supposed to read my manual first."

That's the bad news. The good news is that the game really is fun to play. Yes it is an FPS, but it has its own twists. The suit is a great example of this, as you can activate special powers and abilities such as invisibility for stealth attacks, or armor for frontal assaults. Couple that with a powered sprint and enhanced jump, and you've got some pretty neat possibilities on the battlefield. But thats not all!

Many of the battles take place in open-arena sandboxes a la Batman: Arkham Asylum. You generally start at a vantage point that surveys the battlefield so you can plan your attacks. Tactical locations like flanking opportunities or stealth approaches are highlighted, so you can feel free to take out the opposition in the manner that best befits your gaming style.

I only have three real complaints. Since it is so high powered graphically, there's a lot going on on-screen. Sometimes it is not easy to see the marines shooting you in the face until after said face has been shot. Also, the difficulty is BRUTAL. And finally, level design is baffling. I'm no novice gamer, I'm pretty good at adapting to new games and styles, and I can usually pick up on the visual cues in the level design. But I've encountered two or three incredibly frustrating scenarios where I just could NOT figure out where to go, and in one instance in particular, I feel like I kind of had to bend the game rules in order to escape the situation I was in because no conventional exit could be found in the area I had fallen into. It doesn't help that some doors can be opened by walking into them, and thousands and thousands of others might as well be painted on as no amount of punching or exploding will ever get them to yield. Oh, and there's no visual way to determine this until you are upon the door.

One of these doors will open. The other will not. You get one try.

However, I still sunk about 6 hours into the campaign and about an hour into the multiplayer yesterday, so you know I enjoyed it still. I'm hoping that it fulfills a few more of my expectations before the end credits, but we'll have to wait and see.

In other news, I finally caught up on The Walking Dead, the comic not the show. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It had a very "Y: The Last Man" feel to it. That same kind of apocalyptic desperation is kept high and very tense throughout the entire run. And one thing the book did that I wasn't expecting, NOBODY IS SAFE. I'm not going to spoil anything for those of you who haven't read it yet, but be prepared, because NOBODY is guaranteed to make it through intact.

I also got my OnLive console in the mail a few days ago. I'm loving it in concept, and liking it in practice. I think I might need to beef up my bandwidth connection or something, because while 90% of the time the games all run smoothly, the other 10% of the time I get that Netflix effect. You know the one, where it looks like the content is streaming through a dial-up connection and everything is fuzzy? It's not there often, but when it is there its enough to make me turn off the system because it's so frustrating. That said, OnLive does some great sales pretty much every week, so you can usually find something great to play for really cheap. And the best thing about it is exactly what they promise, instant access. Pay for the game, and in 30 seconds you are playing. No downloads, no installs, no patching. Its great. Oh, and the controller looks like someone took an Xbox 360 controller and a PS3 SixAxis and forced them to breed this monstrosity.

Lets see, I also decided to join Hulu+. Mainly to try it on my PS3. I've pretty much used it for Colbert and Family Guy (ugh, I know, I hate the show too, I just can't stop watching it!) but I see a lot of great stuff on there. I think it'll be a nice compliment to my Netflix Watch Instantly service.

There's a lot more to consider that I just don't have time to talk about here. I'm playing Dragon Age 2 and Dead Space 2, I recently picked up [Prototype] and Infamous AGAIN. I started Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light last night. I've been reading all the comics I can get my hands on. Got the first iZombie trade in the mail last night that I haven't had much time to process yet. So there's plenty of media out there waiting to get absorbed and I'll try to tackle some of that in the next edition of this feature. This feature with the stupid name. I'll probably have to change it once I think of something better. Also, I definitely shouldn't make up a dumb graphic to go along with it.

Thats all for today folks! Go out, enjoy some content, thank the creators, support your local comic shop, and go create something yourself! Good night folks!

~Mike (At 10:00AM. Its not nighttime. Just roll with it.)

A History of Valve

2011-03-17T14:31:00.001-05:00

Another bit of content for you to chew on while you wait for me to get it together.

Source: Guide to Online Schools

And now for something a little different...

2011-03-17T14:26:00.000-05:00

Here's a couple things to keep you guys entertained in these dry spells between postings. Sorry its been such a drought lately, been travelling for work. Haven't had a lot of time to post. Thankfully, I do have some content for you to keep yourself entertained with until I come back with some new words of wisdom for you. Enjoy!
~Mike

Source:Guide to Online Schools

Digital Visions 04 Review feat. Sam Johnson

2011-03-03T12:20:00.002-06:00

I'm gonna catch some flak for that title, I know. It SHOULD read "Digital Visions 04 Review feat. Sam Johnson, A. David Lewis, Karl Altstaetter and Robert Napton." But damn if I'm not a believer in putting your best foot forward. Also, that'd be a really long title.

Digital Visions is Visionary's free anthology series, showcasing talent in short stories, primarily creator-driven works. It's a great place to get a taste of various 'other' stories you won't find at the Big Two publishers. All these stories tend to have that indie feel to them, undiluted by too many editors and conflicting opinions. You get the real sense that these stories are being told like their creators wanted them told.

This particular issue, (which I feel compelled to remind you is FREE), showcases the talents of Sam Johnson and Bruno Letizia (with Rodrigo Diaz coloring) on Sam's original character Cabra Cini: Voodoo Junkie Hitwoman.

Yes. That is the appropriate amount of descriptors. She's the Voodoo Junkie Hitwoman, and no part of that isn't awesome.

We have a new short story by A. David Lewis featuring Gangland Avalon, a mobster/magic mashup that bears keeping an eye on.

Karl Altstaeller and Robert Napton bring us a new chapter in Deity: The Darkness and the Light, picking up where the first Deity series left off. Altsaeller's pencils are sharp, and a solid coloring job makes the story great eye-candy, but this one is not going to be for everyone.

Okay. Back to Voodoo Junkie Hitwoman (I LOVE saying that).

Sam Johnson is a rising up-and-comer, having some work published in various anthology series. (While not covered here, keep an eye on his 'Gold Town' stories - some real potential here). Cabra Cini appears to his most ambitious work to date, creating a character strong enough to survive her own book. This is the story of prostitute-turned-mystical badass Cabra Cini. Is she a detective? A straight up assassin? WHO CARES? This is something new altogether, kind of a throwback to the old Ditko Stephen Strange tales where things got real crazy, real fast. At a blazing fast pace (this is an anthology, short book), we are introduced to Cabra, given a backstory, a sum-up of current events, and a mystical ethereal fight with a sinister foe.

His name is Mr. Mash-up. Look me in the eye and tell me that's not awesome.

The gist is, Cabra was more or less a crack ho. Charming, right? Abusive pimp/boyfriend Ray pushed her too far, and she gave up her life of subservience and humiliation in favor of magic and guns. (I swear guys, the more I talk about this series, the more I am loving the concept.)

I'm not going to go through the whole story for you, because you can and SHOULD go read this book for free. I'll post some links at the bottom of the page.

I know you guys have been reading long enough to know that I don't do traditional reviews, so I won't be scoring this or anything. But I do give it my recommendation. Strongly. And I for one will definitely be keeping an eye on Sam Johnson's future progress.

You can follow his work at Sam Johnson's blog.

And click on the cover here to read Digital Visions 04 for free on Wowio!

The Toys are Not Alright

2011-02-19T10:36:00.001-06:00

So we're gonna take a break from my usual comic book and video game commentary and discuss something I want to talk about. Something I think needs to be brought to the attention of everyone, in the interest of goodness, decency, and yes, national security.

I have a concern. A major concern. You see, I went shopping last night for a birthday present for my almost 2 year old son. And as I browsed the brightly colored toy aisles at my local Target (Yes, I shop at Target, you wanna fight about it?) I made a disturbing revelation.

Toys today are NOTHING like they were when I was a kid.

Let me remind you of some of the toys of yesteryear, the kind of stuff I used to play with.

Ah, Stretch Armstrong. An inspiration to us all. He proved to us that a man can go on to be an upbeat quasi-celebrity or possibly some kind of personal trainer with great hair despite being born with a crippling deformity causing his hands and feet to grow out as some kind of nub. It also evidently causes flesh to be about twice as saggy as it should be. Poor guy. High school was rough on him. Also life.

Okay, I was originally going to post a picture of the original Ninja Turtle toys, because hey, who DIDN'T love those damn toys? I had the blimp, the party van, and roughly half of all 953 tangential characters related to that cartoon. But then I ran across a pic of this guy, who I can only assume is Samurai Leonardo, or possibly Hibachi Grill Leo. Not sure. Anyways, I had this guy. Sure I did. And let me tell you, every piece of that guy is hard angular plastic. This is the only toy I know of that doubled as a home security device when thrown. Getting cracked in the head with this guy meant a major league headache and possibly bleeding from the head. Get that looked at.

Thats a stick. It could be a gun, a sword, or just a stick. The possibilities were endless.

But I go to the store last night and DAMN. I think parents today love their kids a little more than ours did. Or maybe we're just all growing up and having kids and swearing that our kids won't be forced to play with the same crappy junk we were saddled with. Because there is some awesome and horrifying stuff out there. Let me give you a sampling.

Nerf Weaponry:

No no no. Not talking about pistols. Are you kidding me? Get that weak s$#t out of here. Check out THIS bad boy.

They call it the N-Force Warlock, because "A f$%*ing Battleaxe" was deemed too literal of product name. This isn't just a one-off deal, either. There are entire arsenals of this stuff.

These bad boys are all foam, just a bit harder than the foam used to make those Nerf darts we used to shoot all over the house. They make them harder so that when you hit your brother in the head as hard as you can, by God he's gonna feel that. And the sword/gun/vest combo comes packaged together so you can be the unequivocal lord of backyard warfare.

Stink the Garbage Truck:

This one must be seen to be believed.

That is AMAZING.

But its not all awesomeness.

Oh no. Sometimes the creative process brings forth such an unholy creature that simply buying one marks your soul as lost. I leave you with one such horror. I'm ending the article here because after watching I feel I must get my affairs in order. You see, this video is not unlike that tape in The Ring, and I've begun to feel a sense of finality in my life.

I give you, the Sing A Ma Jigs.

God help us.

A Brave New Frontier

2011-01-14T10:23:00.001-06:00

Any excuse I can find to recycle this image, I will take it.

Well, I made the call. And the winner between Blogger and tumblr is....
...
...
ME!!!

AND

I've decided to keep them both. Because if there's anything this crazy world doesn't have enough of, it's websites about me.

With that in mind you can now go to http://tumblr.mikescomicblog.com and see the new site!

For those of you with format questions, it will work like this. The main site will stay active with more traditional postings. Reviews, articles, photoshops, things you are used to. I'm going to try to up my schedule to posting here at least twice a week. The tumblr, on the other hand, will feature much shorter, bite-size bits o'Mike. Might be comic related, might not. Might be original content, might be links to other sites. But I'm going to try to put things on there on a daily basis. And as an added bonus, there is a mobile version! just type http://mikescomicblog.tumblr.com/mobile and enjoy the Mikey goodness on the go! So for the literally thousands* of you who have been begging me for more content, shut up already! Now you have it!

*not thousands

Changes Incoming

2011-01-13T12:47:00.000-06:00

Just a quick update to let you guys know, I'm strongly considering moving the site from a Blogger format to a Tumblr. I'm just toying with the idea right now, trying to figure out how I'd make everything work with the custom domain and everything. Once I get this all figured out, I'm going to automatically have the domain moved to the tumblr version of the blog. For the foreseeable future, I'm going to try posting on both sites, but eventually...

Anyways, I'll let you guys know whats going on as soon as I figure it out.
~Mike

Happy New Year!

2011-01-03T10:39:00.002-06:00

Well it sometimes feels like I go years in between posting content for you fine folks. I'll skip the corny jokes and suffice to wish you all a prosperous year ahead of you.

I consumed a lot of media this weekend. I didn't go to any parties or really spend much time with family. My wife, kids and I all just stayed home and enjoyed our time together. I sank a lot of time into Fallout New Vegas on my laptop, dropped about 8 hours into Mass Effect 2, and goofed around with Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny on my PSP. I also finally got around to reading the fantastic Judd Winick and Pablo Raimondi miniseries Red Hood: The Lost Days.

You really don't need me to talk about Fallout New Vegas at this point. You've heard all the hype, both good and bad.

"It's just Fallout 3 in the desert. Booooring."

"Its Obsidian this time around. Super glitchy."

"OMG ITS SO AMAZING!!!!1!1!!111"

and so on and so forth.

I'm actually in the camp of that last one. Loving the game. Sure, its very similar to Fallout 3, but I loved Fallout 3, so I fail to see the problem here.
Besides, every time a new Bethesda game comes out, I eventually always end up picking up a PC copy in order to gain access to all the user-created mods.

There's this great site I use for Bethesda mods, and the New Vegas version is http://www.newvegasnexus.com. They have similar sites for Oblivion, Fallout 3, Dragon Age, etc. Its a great resource for finding all the great stuff out there. I won't go into too much detail here, check out the site for yourself, but there is some really great stuff in there for anyone who's curious. Most mods are easy to install and troubleshoot, and you can end up with some really great stuff. I'll probably end up making a list of cool screenshots I was able to pull off with mods and compile them into a later post.

**Update**
Here's a teaser for you guys.

[That is Batman chasing Wolverine down the road. Its amazing.]

That's pretty much just awesome.
The Batman mod Ashara's Batman and Catwoman mod (Ported by TedMani)
And the Wolverine mod Wolverine Perk Mod by Theoneness

I'll probably do a whole series of hilarious screenshots if I get some feedback on this feature.
*****

Mass Effect 2 is another one of those great games thats been around for a while now, but I recently picked it up again to give another crack at it. I ended up taking a break from the game for several months because any Bioware game is going to require a good time commitment, and at the time of its release, I simply had other projects I was more interested in at the time and I couldn't devote that kind of investment into it. But here I am again, thoroughly enjoying my time aboard the Normandy.

I have a bad habit of wanting to start over again and again. Character creation is one of my favorite aspects of any game, and the classes offered in ME2 are so diverse that I want to play them all. Sometimes I'll get 8 hours into a character and think "Woah, I've got to try this same thing with a different class." and I'll end up scrapping all that time and effort in favor of creating something new. It's a problem, I know, but I enjoy the hell out of it.

I've never been much for fighting games. I enjoyed Mortal Kombat, but haven't played much in recent years. I missed the Tekken boat completely and haven't played a Virtua Fighter since the arcade days. Marvel vs Capcom has always been fun, but more of a distraction than an actual time investment to me. But Soul Calibur has always been a lot of fun to me, and while I acknowledge its many problems, I still enjoyed the hell out of Soul Calibur IV. Like I mentioned before, I love character creation, and the Soul Calibur creator is one of the most fun to play with. So when I heard the PSP game had the same creator, I had to jump in. Again, I haven't sunk a ton of time into this one, but its basically a trimmed down version of IV, and I actually like using the d-pad more than an analog stick, despite the protests of the fighting game purists.

It does lack a tradition story or arcade mode, however, that is one major disappointment, but the character creator is solid.

It's no secret that I haven't been quite as in touch with the DC books as I have been with Marvel. Old habits die hard. But it's damn hard not to like Batman. I always try to grab the DC animated films whenever possible, because they really are kicking the crap out of the Marvel animated films. Under the Red Hood was one of my favorite animated movies in recent years, and as I am more or less a casual Batman fan, I am not terribly familiar with the cast of Batman characters as I am in the Marvel books. But after watching that movie, I tracked down this series by Judd Winick and finally gave it a read this weekend.

There's nothing here thats game-changing or terribly innovative, but it was a good read. Jason Todd is a fun character, kind of a "What if Batman had no moral code?" aspect. I won't spend too much time on it, but I do give it my recommendation, especially for those curious about the character after seeing the film.

Well folks, thats probably it for today. I'll try to devote some more time towards putting forth some good content on this site. Remember, these kind of things live and die based on feedback. Don't be afraid to hit me up and tell me what you like, don't like, whatever.

I'll leave you with this week's entry for baffling moment of the week.

[From Avengers #8 - on sale now]

Behind the mask, Tony's going "Say whuuuuuut?"

Ultimate Avengers 3 #4 Thoughts

2010-12-10T13:26:00.002-06:00

Okay guys, generally I try to stay away from doing comic reviews. I try to leave that to the 'professionals' (i.e. the ones who get paid to do it). But here's one I just can't pass up. Maybe this will be more of a discussion than a straight up review, but here we are.

Ultimate Avengers 3 #4. Mark Millar. Steve Dillon.

Here's the thing, like so many other comics readers out there, I had pretty much given up on the Ultimate universe right around Ultimatum. Not because I hate Jeph Loeb, only because I hate all the crap he did. (Thats an objective opinion, right?) I hated to see how so many beloved characters were changed and cheapened and meh. I'm not gonna re-hash all that here and now. The point is I had pretty much stopped buying any of the Ultimate line of books. But when Mark Millar took back over some writing duties, I would just randomly peek in on it now and again to stay more or less aware of whats going on.

Then I found this book. And it opens like this.

Keep in mind exactly who we see on the cover of this issue, and you'll see where I'm going with this.
I won't spoil the several beautiful moments this scene has to offer, but I'm sure you get the idea.

I know its fashionable (and therefore, trashy) to hate on Twilight at this point. Its all over and done with. But with God as my witness my heart cheered when I read that panel. Thank you Mark Millar, for bringing a little light into my day. Watching "Edgar" up there high-tail it for the woods is an image thats gonna be with me forever. Now if only I could figure out how to make some kind of hilarious gif out it.

Now of course, the rest of the book I'm more than a little lost on, which is understandable given my reluctance to purchase these books. But from what I can gather, Cap (the insufferable Ultimate Captain America) has been bitten by a vampire. The vampire outbreak is being attributed to some kind of biological weapon. Blade, of course, is Blade the half-vampire badass. You remember Wesley Snipes, don't you?

Seen here, after successfully ice skating uphill

Sure you do.

Anyways, it seems a bunch of vampire superheroes are gathering to build a big vampiric army and blah blah blah. No, the much more interesting addition to the formula comes from these two.

Thats right, folks. Tony Stark has a douchey twin brother. Who can do everything Tony can do, but faster and better. Why? Because Mark Millar, thats why.

Also this happened:

Guys, that is vampire Hulk straight up punching a dude's head off. Nothing I could say could possibly add anything to that moment.

Wait...

Jeepers, Its a Mystery!

2010-11-18T14:43:00.001-06:00

Check out the look on his face. He knows.

"I'm so boned."

Well, thats what he gets for not being the doctor!

Whats that? He IS a doctor? Like, a real one, PhD and everything?

...
Shut up.

I'm gonna keep using that image until someone makes me stop.

The Secrets of the Miagani Revealed!

2010-11-04T15:27:00.000-05:00

Force Unleashed 2 Review

2010-10-30T15:52:00.002-05:00

I have a soft spot in my heart for bad games.

Ouch

Not all bad games, mind you. There are some games that just have no excuse. But there is a certain type of game that didn't do as well as it should have, not because of the failure of its developers, but because it reached too high and just couldn't reach its goal. I guess, 'bad games' is the wrong term. It's like, if you and I both decide to create an exercise regimen, and you set your goal to run 10 miles every day, and I set my goal to walk around the living room. It's going to be a lot easier for me to reach my goal than it is to reach yours. But even if you fall short of reaching your goal, and feel like a failure because of it, you still did one hell of a better job than I did, even though I met my goals.

This is how I felt about the first Force Unleashed game. All said and done, it wasn't a bad game. Not at all. It's still one of my favorites. But it didn't exactly light the world on fire like it was expected to. Beneath all the flash, what you ended up with was still a fairly average third-person action game mixed in with a few cool Force powers. (This genre previously having been dominated by the often under-appreciated Psi-Ops, which not only did Force powers right, it did them using last-gen console technology.)

The Gun. A elegant weapon for a more awesome age.

Still, the original Force Unleashed provided less than it promised, but more than was, on average, expected for a game of its time. And for that, I commend it. Especially since it continued to provide worthwhile DLC in the form of new playable characters, and downloadable missions that were, on the whole, just as fun to play as the original game, if not more so.

Sadly, the same cannot be said for its sequel.

Here's the thing. The Force Unleashed 2 takes all the gameplay mechanics from its predecessor and improves upon them. The lightsaber combat is faster, the obnoxious loading screens in the upgrade menus are nowhere to be found, and if the original game turned the dials on the Force powers up to 11, then this one surely found knobs that go up to 15. It's a lot of fun to play around with your abilities and watch windows shatter and lighting fly out in arcs from your lightsabers.

This never gets old. Until it does.

The problem is...about 20 minutes into the game (after you've been actually playing for about 5 minutes), you've seen all this already. And it becomes readily apparent that the game isn't going to be giving you much more to work with. Then, a sense of worry begins to set in, and you think, "Is this all I have to look forward to for the entire rest of this game? Like, another 6-8 hours of just this?"

Well I have good news for you, player! The entire story mode took me less than 4 hours! So you don't have to suffer through for long. (And the fact that I actually just used the word 'suffer' in relation to this game might say something on its own)

Pictured: 1/10 of the game.

I wasn't expecting a Bethesda-esque 80 hours of gameplay here, but the standard for a linear chop-em-up kind of game like this is around 8 to 10 hours, 6 if you really just run out of content. 3 and 1/2 hours in, I'm looking at the game thinking "we're only in the second act of this story, I must be about halfway done." Nope. Roll credits!

But I haven't even discussed The Force Unleashed 2's greatest crime. An unspeakable crime, and one that I'm currently debating whether or not to describe as 'unforgivable'.

You see, the first game, while a little silly, actually had a cohesive and entertaining story. So much so, in fact, that it is literally considered to be Star Wars canon.

You guys.

That video game

is considered canon.

"Suck it, Timothy Zahn."

Kind of a big deal, don't you think? I mean, I haven't read a Star Wars Expanded Universe book that was written in the last ten years, but even so, there were some really really good books out there. Heir to the Empire, Jedi Acadamy, I,Jedi , these were all great books. Not canon. Doesn't count. Didn't happen.

But Vader secretly training a Sith assassin who ends up falling in love and starting the Rebellion which would eventually overthrow the Empire and establish a New Republic? Totally.

And I was okay with that. Because despite its absurdity, the characters were there and they were believable. Starkiller was a conflicted bad guy, with the signs of good and pure traits shining through so you still enjoyed playing as him. Proxy was (believe it or not) a droid that actually added something interesting to the mythos by being a totally awesome concept. And right off the bat, Vader was established as a bad mother-f**ker that you don't want to f**king cross.

The doctors told him to quit after the respirator was installed. He killed them.

But the finale of Force Unleashed 2 turned Vader into a total bitch.

Oh no! No Stop! What are you doing? Ahhh my childhood!

You see, the whole game leads up to a big final confrontation with Vader. And when you finally get there, you totally have this big fight worthy of the Jedi vs. Sith tradition, with lightsabers flying and Force Lightning spraying everywhere, in a big climatic, challenging and rewarding battle!

Oh no wait that totally doesn't happen.

Instead, you chase Vader (guys, you CHASE DARTH VADER, WHO IS FLEEING FROM YOU) around for a while, hit him with a lightsaber once or twice, then he runs away again. It's less like a lightsaber fight and more like chasing a cat around the house. Sure you get a few kicks in, but then he's gone and you have to chase him for another 20 minutes before you get close enough to smack him again.

And the thing is, when you hit him, you only chip away his health a little piece at a time. Then he's gone, and you fight a bunch of minions, then you chase him, then you chip away at his health, maybe 2 or 3% of his health bar per strike, then you start chasing again. It's incredibly repetitive, boring, frustrating, and I have a hard time imagining Vader running away and fighting like punk like this.

And then we have the ending. I won't ruin it for anyone who hasn't played it. But just like in the last game, there is an ending for light side and an ending for dark side. In the first game, the light side ending was the one that was considered canon, so that's what I chose this time. Without ruining anything, that ending blows. Hardcore. Like really really bad.

Pic Unrelated

And just to add insult to injury, we have cameos. Oh yes, guy. Yoda and Boba Fett are totally in this game. In the cutscenes. For about a minute. And neither one does much of anything. Yoda sits, and Boba Fett walks. Oh and Leia Organa makes a last minute phone call to some secondary characters in a conversation that has no impact on the plot, does not move the story forward, does not explain anything. She might as well have been calling to say she was going to be late for dinner tonight.

It takes a lot of work to be this useless.

Sooooo...is it a good game?
It's alright. It does some things better than the first game, but overall the original was better. It'll be fun for anyone who ever wished they were a badass Jedi. Is it worth the price of admission? Nah. Rent it. You'll finish it in an afternoon, get some good fun out of it, then return it. You're better off spending that money on enough booze to forget that you ever played it.

Deathclaws Aren't as Scary as Bugs

2010-10-26T10:33:00.000-05:00

So New Vegas came out last week. It's a lot of fun. If you liked Fallout 3, you'll most likely like New Vegas. But its becoming apparent that the game made it to consumers without the rigorous bug-testing we've come to expect from high profile games. The above image was the result of attaching a 10mm laser sight and a 10mm silencer to a Weathered 10mm Pistol (from the Classic Pack DLC). I'm not sure which item is causing the missing texture, but I got to say, this one is kind of hard to overlook.

Comics I bought this week

2010-10-25T10:56:00.003-05:00

I went to the comic shop yesterday, and actually had time to sit down and read what I bought. Some of which I was very happy with, others...not so much. So, here's my thoughts. (I didn't feel like taking the time to scan the covers of all the books I bought, so all images today are brought to you via Google Image Search! don't sue me )

Steve never questioned the effectiveness
of flamethrowers on robots.

Steve Rogers: Super Soldier #4 of 4

A good old-fashioned spy-romp beat-em-up! This series has been four issues of Steve Rogers doing what he does best: reminisce about dead people and punch other people in the face. Here we get Steve uncovering a plot to recreate the Super Soldier serum. We have Machinesmith (one of Steve's wackier villians), the grandson of Emil Erskine, and a woman who looks suspiciously like one of Steve's lost loves. (Spoiler: Its a robot. An honest to goodness robot. Built by a robot-man who wears another robot man suit and whose consciousness can jump from robot to robot. Robot.)

This issues wins bonus points with me for successfully utilizing the plural form of "Steve Rogers." (Rogereses)

Loki ponders the practicality of his helmet,
and the location of the toilet paper

Thor: First Thunder #2

Oh guys. Okay. This issue, as far as I've been able to tell, is a retelling of the original Thor story where Donald Blake finds the magic walking stick and turns into a Norse god. However, it appears that this is a bit of a reboot or retelling, as the entire story is told as though every character has a bad case of the mumps.

Listen, I do my best not to criticize an artist, because even a bad comic artist is still a thousand times better than I am. But I couldn't even read the speech bubbles in this book because every time I did, Thor's deformed Rocky-Balboa-after-a-fight face DEMANDED that I return my visage to his malformed countenance.

...the art sucks, you guys.

It's a documented fact that Thor will not pose
for your book cover unless there is a lightning
flash behind him.

Ultimate Comics New Ultimates #4
Ultimate Ultimately Ultimates Ultimate Edition

Call me a hater if you must, but I just 100% lost interest in the Ultimate Universe after Ultimates 3 by Jeph Loeb. I happen to be a big fan of Joe Madureira's art, but after seeing what Loeb did with the characters, I just stopped caring. Ultimatum just sealed the deal, and I stopped reading anything with the word Ultimate on it.

But hey, Thor! And he looks PISSED!

Not much to say about this, except that Thor enjoys wrecking dudes. But we do get a slightly more in depth explanation of the drastic changes in Thor's character in recent years. (SPOILER: Odin gave him an Anger-Lobotomy. Seriously. That's the explanation for one of the best re-imaginings of Thor in years. His dad 'calmed his anger' and sent him to earth.)

I hate that so much.

Spider-Man tries to ignore the obvious tumors
in his arms as Iron Man practices his angry face.

Carnage #1 of 5

If I had to see the entire world for the rest of my life drawn in the style of one particular artist, it'd be Clayton Crain. (Possibly Mark Bagley SHUT UP SHUT UP I LIKE BAGLEY, OK?)
Crain's work on Ghost Rider is so fantastic I would blow up and frame just about any panel and hang it on the wall, and this issue is no different.

This miniseries seems to be a bit of a throwback to the old Maximum Carnage crossover in the 90s, bringing back some of the major players from that time and reuniting them, while giving Spider-Man and Iron Man an excuse to buddy up and exchange one-liners for 5 issues.

And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Thor's swing has been a hot topic among the
golfing community, but you can't argue with results

Hulk #26

When Jeph Loeb (yeah, that guy again) introduced the Red Hulk to the Marvel Universe, he drew a little controversy on himself when one of his first actions was to STOMP THE BEJEEZUS OUT OF THOR.

Now that Loeb's been banished from the sandbox, we get to see a rematch between two of our favorite action figures, without resorting to such infantile tactics as "Nu-UH my HULK power is stronger than your ODIN power."

Anyways...here we have a book where Rulk and Iron Man talk a little, Steve Rogers drives a flying car, Thor taunts Rulk with his superior power, and the Watcher shows up again for good measure, presumably to give Rulk a stern talking-to regarding the last time the Red Hulk punched him in the face. I don't know.

Loki can barely contain his excitement as he finally discovers
the "On" switch.

Loki #1 of 4

Awwwwwww Snap. Just look at that cover. Look at it. Tell me you don't want to read that book.

I was a big fan of Days of Thunder, where we got to see the Asgardians in a presumably more natural role. This issue, if not directly connected to, seems at the very least inspired by those stories. We see Loki in hiding, recovering from some traumatic event. When Thor arrives to find out what happened, Loki recalls the story of how Mjolnir found its way to the side of the thunder god, and how it should have been Loki's all along. But something is amiss in Loki's story...has the Trickster gone mad after all?

My favorite book this week, guys. Brilliantly told, beautifully illustrated, this is my Trust Me for the week. Go buy it, you won't be disappointed.

Lacking In Subtlety

2010-10-23T10:13:00.000-05:00

Hey guys, remember when that awesome superhero died and everybody was really upset, and it made newspapers and everything?

Oh yeah, that was a big deal wasn't it? And other people had to step up to fill his position?

But then we found out that he wasn't really dead.

And then he came back with a new costume!

You guys. I love comics SO much.

(I probably could have kept that going a while longer...but I think the point's been made.)

The Most Important News Story You'll Read Today

2010-10-14T14:06:00.000-05:00

"These characters all sound the same! Hmmm...must be Bendis."

My daughter bought her first comic book yesterday! I couldn't be more proud.

...Hey. It's my blog, I'll post what I want to post.

Brett Favre Fail

2010-10-12T12:50:00.000-05:00

"Aw maaaaaaaaaaaaaan"

For those of you who don't follow geriatric sex scandals like the rest of us internet people do, Brett Favre recently got into a bit of trouble when he sent sexual voicemails and pictures of his grampa-dangle to Jenn Sterger.

Yeah, this chick.

I totally had this picture just lying around.

To be fair, she got mad when I did the same thing.

I'd like to take this opportunity to point out the dangers of sexting among senior citizens. This is a serious problem, people, and it needs to be addressed. Stop laughing. This is serious.

All Star Batman And Robin - Frank Miller Knows Crazy

2010-10-05T15:31:00.000-05:00

You guys, Batman is f--king nuts.

I mean it, Bruce Wayne lost his mind years ago. His parents were shot in front of him, and now he dresses up in tights and spends billions of dollars on themed gadgetry. He's always been one of the superheroes who you had a hard time relating to. I mean, Spider-Man is a younger guy struggling to pay his bills. I get that. Batman? No matter what kind of terrible crap you've gone through in your life, you still have no idea whats going on in Batman's head. So why do we love him so much? What's the big deal with this guy?

I just started reading All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder, which started in 2005 written by the inimitable Frank Miller and art by the always-superb Jim Lee. I'd avoided the series for a while, but recently discovered that the series is soon to be rebooted under the title Dark Knight: Boy Wonder, with Frank and Jim returning to the series to finish it out.

Now, as popular as All Star Superman was, I was very surprised to hear of the strongly negative critical response to Miller's take on Batman. I finally decided to see what the big deal was and read the series, at least the Miller issues, myself. And hey, you guys...

Frank Miller is f--king nuts.

See what I did there?

Of course, you already knew that. Everybody knows that. I mean, look at him up there! That is the face of pure unbridled insanity just waiting to burst out all over everybody. Anyone who has ever met the guy is expecting crazy to leak out of him, leaving a slug trail of madness wherever he goes. What I wasn't expecting was this:

Oh. Okay. So that's Batman up there with Black Canary, slipping a few bats into her belfry. (Side note: That was the worst thing I've ever said about anything ever. The worst joke I have ever made. I am still smiling over it.) Yeah, okay. So Batman is such a man's man that he makes love whenever the mood strikes him, regardless of who he is with or where he is. In this case, a slutty bartender and a back alley off the docks. Fine, I can handle that. But the best part is yet to come. (must...stifle...giggles...at...bad...pun...)

Okay folks. Let's break down how much hilarity can be drawn from the image above. First off, the fact that a lightning bolt is used to indicate Batman's ...uh... 'arrival' is absolutely fantastic. Also guys, Batman is straight up the type of dude to get his rocks off and then immediately ask you if you need a ride home.

Not Pictured: A Cuddler

What's even funnier to me though is how we have one panel of Batman and Black Canary getting their groove back, then a flash of lighting, then its over. Look at Batman's face up there, look at it. He straight up does not care in the slightest that he just redefined 'quickie.' Batman got his jollies, now its time to move on.

"You're still here?"

THAT'S HOW FRANK MILLER WROTE THE BOOK.

I was all prepared to write this article about how Batman according to Frank Miller is abusive to little boy, a homicidal maniac, about how he's smiling and laughing despite the fact that Batman doesn't smile or laugh. But seriously.

Batman. Nailing a chick in an alley. Then suggesting that its time for her to leave.

You're in an ALLEY, man!

All that was missing was him tossing some cab fare money at her. And he can get away with that. And you KNOW why. We all know why.

Because...

City of Heroes VS Champions Online

2010-09-29T16:22:00.001-05:00

I'm gonna save you the trouble of reading to the end. City of Heroes is the better game. There, I said it.

...

For those of you who stuck around, I have a slightly deeper perspective on the matter I'd like to take you through. Yes, I do firmly believe that City of Heroes is a better game than Champions Online, pound for pound. However, I am paying for Champions Online subscription, and I am no longer playing or paying for City of Heroes. I'll tell you why.

I am a recent convert to PC games. I've been a console gamer all my life, enjoying my Xbox and PlayStations. I only started to pick up computer games a couple of years ago, when Sins of a Solar Empire caught my eye. When my friends caught me playing games on my laptop, I was told that I simply HAD to try World of Warcraft. I had several friends who were deep into the series, and as addicts tend to do, they tried to drag me down with them.

Nerds: A dirty, dangerous breed.

I bought the game mega cheap at a failing electronics store and played for a couple of weeks. I don't know how much street cred I'm going to lose with the nerd crowd for saying this, but I just could not enjoy World of Warcraft. It was not my cup of tea. I thought I really would like the Fantasy setting, having enjoyed Lord of the Rings and such, but the game itself required such a time commitment to make any progress, and I felt overwhelmed and way behind the times. I quit playing after about a month and moved on.

I encountered City of Heroes soon after, and being a big comic book fan, it felt like much more of my kind of thing. And for a good long while, it was. I am a total sucker for character creators. The deeper the creator, the more time I spend on it, making character after character after character, sometimes not even actually playing them, just creating them.

However, City of Heroes, fun as it was, still required a decent time commitment in order to make real progress. If I wanted the most basic of superhero icons, the ability to fly and wear a cape, then I had to level my character to level 20 before I could obtain that. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the game, obtaining level 20 requires a good 6-10 hours of game play time depending on how you play. I'm not a terribly social person, I play rather casually which is something we'll touch on in a moment, so playing solo as I do means I have to grind and grind and grind for hours before I can get this seemingly basic superhero standard.

Pictured: Dozens of Hours of Work

You see, I am both blessed and cursed enough to have a life outside my nerd interests. As much as I'd love to spend every hour of the day playing games and reading comics, I have responsibilities. I have a wife and two children. I have a job, I have a house payment. I have bills and a lawn to maintain and all the other 'grown-up' stuff in my life. When I get off work, I want to see my wife and kids, spend time with them. And if I get a little time before bed to play a game, I have to choose carefully, because an hour or two is really all the time I'm gonna have to devote to playing.

So when an MMO wins the battle for my playtime over all the other games stacking up higher and higher waiting to be played, I have to be able to get in, have some fun, and get out without too much trouble. Maybe the baby is crying, maybe the dishwasher exploded and soaked the entire kitchen, maybe the wife gives me that little wink and nod saying that I need to get to bed RIGHT NOW, and I don't have time to explain to each of my teammates why I have to leave mid-mission. So when I play an MMO, it needs to be casual-play friendly.

Which brings me to Champions Online, a game in the same vein as City of Heroes (and designed by several of CoH's original staff, I might add). I could sit down at my computer, right now, and have a hero designed complete with cape and flight abilities before I even enter the game proper. I can create a character start to finish, and have that character fully realized before I even begin playing the character in the actual game.

Pictured: 30 Seconds of Work. Also, Copyright Infringement

The control scheme is easy to pick up, and even offers variety in the schemes to cater to those who maybe used to a certain style already, making it exceptionally easy for someone who's converting from another MMO to this one.

As far as game content goes, Champions Online has much more early game rewards for the player. The starting list of power pools dwarfs that of City of Heroes, and while CoH may have a more robust character creator overall, Champions does not limit the player by caging them to only certain types of abilities. Wings, capes, weapons, glow effects, all of these are available to the player up front at the very beginning. More advanced set pieces can be purchased or earned in-game, but the starting options available to the player are more than adequate.

City of Heroes is the better game. I admit it. It has much more content, especially, as I understand it, more 'end-game' content for high level players. But for players like me, who rarely have the time to take a character beyond level 15 or so, Champions Online is much more accessible as a game, much friendlier to time constraints, and for me, is much MUCH more fun to create characters in.

And Occasionally Hilarious

That's my unprofessional opinion. And if any of my readers out there happen to play a little CO from time to time and see me in-game, say hi, give a shout out. But don't ask me to team up with you. I think my wife just sent a wink and a nod my way...

"One More Day" Deconstructed

2010-09-20T12:20:00.000-05:00

This is something I've tried to put off talking about for a while now. When writing about comics, its very difficult to put aside your own personal feelings about the characters, the stories, the writers, and just focus on the cold hard facts. And maybe thats the way it should be, who can say? However, I sit down at my computer this morning to write, and I can't get the subject out of my head, so here we go.

Back in November of 2007, a controversial storyline ran through the Spider-Man books, which at the time were running under the titles of Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, The Sensational Spider-Man, and Amazing Spider-Man. The storyline was called "One More Day", and dealt with the consequences of Peter Parker's actions during the Marvel Civil War, which had concluded earlier that year.

In the context of the books, Peter had unmasked himself as Spider-Man to the world, exposing himself and his loved ones to retribution from various villains.

To summarize, Peter's Aunt May was caught in the crossfire, and lay dying of a gunshot wound. Mephisto, a Satan-like character, appeared to offer Peter and his wife Mary Jane a chance to save the dying geriatric. Mephisto would restore May back to health in exchange for Peter and MJ's marriage.

Without getting too metaphysical, the breakdown of this deal would be that Mephisto would change events so that Peter and MJ never tied the knot. What Mephisto gets out of this deal was that Peter and MJ's souls would remember how events had previously unfolded, and would scream forever in agony that they could never be together again. Which, apparently, the exact sort of thing a twisted individual like Mephisto would get off on.

In a baffling turn of events, Peter and Mary Jane agreed to sell their marriage to the devil under the condition that nobody would remember that Peter was Spider-Man, thus giving Peter a chance to start again as Spider-Man without fear of anyone knowing his secret identity.

The reasons behind this storyline are many and varied, and there's been enough publication on the story that these issues don't need to be rehashed here. Suffice it to say that the entire event was managed so that Spider-Man could be returned to a simpler, more classic superhero, without the added storyline elements of handling a marriage and several decades of convoluted backstory. (Essentially: 'It all still happened, we're just not going to mention it much.')

At the conclusion of One More Day, the three Spider-Man books were consolidated into a revamped Amazing Spider-Man, which sees a lighter and more carefree Peter Parker as a single, swinging bachelor (PUNS! ha!). The book launched with 3 issues/monthly, and became a more accessible version of the webslinger, with revamped classic villains, a lighter tone, a new art direction, and lots and lots of fanboy rage.

Fast forward a few years to Amazing Spider-Man #638-641. We now have One Moment In Time, which goes back and explains the altered events leading up to One More Day, and how Peter and Mary Jane's marriage vanished from the history books. Go buy the books if you want specifics, but the basics are a Butterfly Effect style history in which Peter was detained from making it to the wedding on time, which caused MJ to get cold feet. Peter then enlists the aid of Doctor Strange (who turns to Tony Stark and Reed Richards), for a Sentry-style universal mindwipe of the knowledge of Spider-Man's secret identity.

Congratulations, you're all caught up.

I've been called a fanboy by some, and I don't disagree with that fact enough to properly contest it. Spider-Man got me into comics when I was a kid. The first comic book I ever read was a reprint of Amazing Fantasy #15, the first appearance of Spider-Man, an old collection of reprints I had found in my grandfather's attic as a child. Spider-Man books have always had a special place in my heart, and I grew up with Peter and MJ already being married, that was the Spider-Man I knew and loved. (Also Ben Reilly, but thats a can of worms for another day)

The Question becomes, was it all worth it?

Many people believe that Peter Parker acted severely out of character in order to do a deal with the devil type scenario. Others believe that the events unfolded in a reasonable and understandable manner. But can we argue with the results? A cleaner, easy to understand continuity, a best-selling series on the stands, some of the greatest Spider-Man stories in the last decade have spun out of Brand New Day, and the character seems to be more popular than ever.

Yet I've lost the Spider-Man I knew and loved. I grew up with Peter Parker, I learned life lessons from him, and even gleaned lessons on how to make my own marriage work from my time as a child watching Peter and MJ interact with each other as husband as wife.

But is it the creator's responsibility to preserve my childhood, to keep ME happy? Is my fondness for the character so important that it outweighs any other direction the character might move in? No! No, it is not.

No matter what happens to a character, there will always be someone who disagrees with it, who hates it, who stops reading the book because of it. This is childish and immature behavior, and for the first time in my life, I found myself on that side of the line. I dropped Amazing Spider-Man from my pull lists, picking up the book occasionally just to catch up on whats happening, but I am no longer a regular Spider-Man reader. As much as I may understand the reasons for One More Day and the changes it brought, I just can't enjoy the book the way I used to, and thats okay. Because comics aren't about making ME happy. And I take joy in being able to participate in a media and culture that isn't weighed down by its fans.

I mean, let's face it. Anyone who's ever been in a comics forum or read a letters page knows that if the direction of these characters were put into the hands of its fans, we'd see the end of the medium altogether.

I love comics. I love Spider-Man. I hated One More Day. I don't like Brand New Day.

And that's okay.

Tony Stark Has a Lot of Dough

2010-09-18T15:42:00.000-05:00

[From Invincible Iron Man #30]

*groan*

Doctors Are Snooty

2010-09-16T11:37:00.005-05:00

To be fair, he DID go to medical school. Daimon looks more like the art school type.

Panels That Make Us Love Comics

2010-08-31T11:35:00.001-05:00

[From Astonishing X-Men #35]

I'm not sure what I like better here. The phrase 'Wheelchair of Death', or the fact that Logan and Armor are having a lengthy conversation right in the middle of a game of Patty-Cake.

...well what would YOU call what she's doing there? If she was gonna push him, he'd be on the ground before the end of that first sentence.

Panels That Make Us Love Comics

2010-08-28T16:11:00.001-05:00

[From Namor: The First Mutant #01]

Here's the thing. "Vampire Squid" as a phrase is awesome enough to be in this category all on its own, regardless of what the artwork was showing. However, what really drove the point home for me was that reddish tentacle thats curled up like a boxing glove in front of Namor's face there. A giant squid that can drink your blood and look scary as hell is bad enough. A giant squid that creates an appropriation of a boxing glove with which to bop you in the face with...thats just straight up creative.

Panels That Make Us Love Comics

2010-08-25T09:47:00.003-05:00

[From Thunderbolts #147]

Really, what else is there to say at this point?

Steve Rogers Doesn't Put Up With That Sissy Crap

2010-07-30T10:09:00.001-05:00

Hank Pym is in for a surprise.

2010-07-20T17:19:00.000-05:00

Batman Knows How to Deal with Mel Gibson

2010-07-14T17:48:00.002-05:00

"Mel? We need to talk."

"Hey buddy. Whats going on?"

"They dont call me the World's Greatest Detective for nothing, Mel.

How long did you think you could really hide from me?"

"I swear, Batman, I have no idea what you are talking about!"

"Dammit Mel! I know who you are!"

"BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!"

"So you know my terrible secret? No matter,

I was tiring of my secret identity anyways."

"I'm bringing you in, Mel. You must pay for your crimes

against humanity. And for your many misdemeanors."

"I'm Mel f#$&ing Gibson, you fool! I'm untouchable!

I'll never go to prison!

Awww, what are you gonna do? Cry to your parents?"

"..."

Edward Norton Is No Longer the Hulk...And That Makes Him Sad

2010-07-12T12:39:00.000-05:00

"Ed? We need to talk."

"Whuzzat? ...Robert? How did you get into my house?"

"Right, silly question."

"YOU CANT BE IN MY MOVIE!"

"What the-? Movie? You mean Avengers? Why not??"

"I'LL GIVE YOU TEN REASONS. HERE'S A HINT. THEY ALL INVOLVE PUNCHING."

"Um...Joss, right? Was that a threat?"

"I'd listen to him, Ed"

"Hold on ONE second here guys..."

"I'll give you two seconds."

"IT ONLY TAKE WHEDON FIVE SECONDS TO FIRE YOUR ASS"

"Hold on a second, Joss, let's hear what he has to say."

"The hell? Did your hair just change color?"

"Listen Ed, I like you and all, but this is my movie.

And I really think that I'd need an actor to play Hulk

that I have a history with. You know...like me.

I hope there's no hard feelings."

"I weep for the future of this franchise."

"NOW WHEDON SMASH ULTRA-FEMINISM STEREOTYPES"

"I am so boned."

So apparently Ed Norton will not be reprising his role as Bruce Banner in the upcoming Avengers film. This should come as no surprise to anyone who was following this business between Norton and his supposed conflict with Marvel execs, namely Avi Arad. There were rumors of Norton being difficult to work with, and he was reported as saying he wasn't happy with the final cut of the Hulk film.

However, the fact that he met with (all but announced director of The Avengers) Joss Whedon was a promising start, and personally, I would have loved to have seen Norton back up there next to Downey and Helmsworth, doing his thing. But let's be realistic. The Avengers movie is going to so full of big names and big characters, and with Hulk being a completely CGI creation, Banner would have had a cameo in the film at best, and I don't see Marvel shelling out Ed Norton size paychecks for that small of a scene. I do hope they cut Banner out of the film altogether, just to avoid destroying what little credibility the recent Hulk movie had as part of this established continuity, but they don't consult with me on such matters.

Anyways, here's a mindless little exchange between Norton, Whedon, and Downey regarding the change in cast. Not my best work, but I'm sick, so cut me some slack.

Really, Internet, you should expect better of me.

2010-07-06T19:35:00.001-05:00

This is my hackjob method of raising awareness for Adam Warrock debuting his new single "Starving Artist." Its a pay what you want system, so yes, you can be like Mr. Cage up here and download the song for free. Of course, if you do, you never know who might come after you. Help a brother out! Download the song and throw a few bucks his way.
Click here to get "Starving Artist" by Adam Warrock

General Ross Really Loves Him Some Chic-Fil-A

2010-07-05T10:39:00.000-05:00

The Best Part of Waking Up...

2010-07-05T10:13:00.000-05:00

...is AB Positive in your cup!

Yeah, so I totally stole this segment concept from Chris Sims over at The ISB. Hopefully he's not the vengeful type.

If Winnie the Pooh had a love-child with Johnny 5...

2009-09-24T10:49:00.004-05:00

Military advances in technology is not a subject I normally tackle on this venue, but this was too good to pass up.

The Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot (or BEAR) is designed to remove wounded soldiers from the battlefield.

I feel I must stress this point. Its a freaking BEAR! Just the thing you want to see scooping up your battered and helpless body right before you die. Cold, mechanical arms lovingly clasp your lifeless frame and, presumably, take you back to its techno-cave to feed off your limbs before it hibernates for the winter.

Also, its face, and I must emphasize this thoroughly, looks like a freaking bear. Albiet a tiny, disconcerning disproportionate teddy bear head that somebody apparently stuck on top of Wall-E to make it more friendly. The only thing missing is glowing red eyes and a voicebox that mutters "You're going to be okay, I'm here to take you away from this horrible place," and the terrifying illusion would be complete.

Face It, Tigger, You Just Hit The Jackpot...

2009-08-31T20:26:00.003-05:00

It was just announced this morning, and yet its already old news. Disney proposed a 4 Billion dollar acquisition of Marvel Entertainment this morning. Should this takeover be voted through by the shareholders, (and Disney, offering a marked up 29% payoff and partial Disney shares to all Marvel shareholders, will certainly make sure that it does) it would see the entirety of Marvel's properties, including over 5000 characters, become assets of The Walt Disney Corporation.

The current state of the proposition would keep all prior Marvel distributing agreements in place. So franchises like X-Men and Spider-Man would remain with Fox and Sony Pictures Entertainment, respectively. At least, until the current contracts expire. Disney has expressed their interest in eventually recovering the distribution rights to the entirety of the Marvel roster.

This, understandably, has the internet all up in arms. Some are seeing this as an opportunity, citing an upcoming Pixar/Marvel collaboration, editorial changes, and greater structuring for Marvel. Some are seeing this as a bad move, claiming Disney will make normally edgy titles more 'kid-friendly', and would take control over the content the publishing company has as yet retained to themselves.

After Disney bought out Pixar, the relationship between the two companies remained largely unchanged, with Disney allowed the Pixar execs to run business as normal, while having the resources of the massive Disney corporation at their disposal.

Consider this: Disney paid $4 Billion dollars for Marvel, which even by corporation standpoints is an obscene amount of money. You dont drop that kind of cash unless you know that there is some potential down the road.

Who got the better end of the deal here? Disney, who received full rights and privileges to the legendary Marvel stable? Or Marvel, who recently got hoisted out of bankruptcy, now having the resources of one of the largest multimedia entities on the planet?

Wormwood: Gentlemen Corpse, Guest Reviewer

2009-07-30T18:08:00.000-05:00

Comic: Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse—Calamari Rising, written and illustrated by Ben Templesmith

4 out of 10

“Calamari Rising”—the fourth and final installment in IDW’s “Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse”, drops readers off in the battle between Medusa’s girls and the squidle things. Confused? One of the many things this comic lacks is a review of the previous three books, so newcomers not unlike myself cannot get immersed in the story of the witty undead. If you are new to the title, this comic is about the immortals that have to work to afford their place before the afterlife. When squid-like beings attack, Medusa (one of the immortals) and Wormwood must fight to save what is left of the world. “Calamari” starts off where Wormwood has been pulled into a different dimension by the inter-dimensionally challenged Elvis who is fighting all his counterparts so he can be the one true King. Written and illustrated by Eisner award nominated Aussie Ben Templesmith, Wormwood is a horror/humor comic first published by LOFI magazine until it was picked up by IDM. The name Templesmith ringing some bells? He is most noted for his work on “Hellspawn” and “30 Days of Night”.

The miniseries consisting of five comics has a few nearly critical flaws. The story itself is overly complicated, but stated in an over-simplistic manner that leaves many questions unanswered. It’s like trying to explain quantum physics in a pop-up book. With space restrictions, all thoughts aren’t completed, and times, places, and people get muddled. Further adding to the mayhem is the blend of gothic graffiti and pastel-esque artwork, which leaves you clueless in some panels. Several times, characters make popular culture references to everything from The Godfather to Forrest Gump that detract on the whole from the storyline and adds nothing to the dialogue. The comic’s slow pace prevents it from being an all together confusing jumble, but it also fails to capture your attention. And the obscene side notes, such as “goatscrew Elvis” the farm-animal romancing fairy (see what I mean about confusing?), sticks out awkwardly and is out of place. It feels extremely forced, trying to add an element of sexuality in an otherwise impotent comic.

There are, however, several redeeming factors to “Calamari Rising”. The witty repertoire between Wormwood and all of the other characters keeps you chuckling, and the artistry has the charm of a Stephen Gammell painting. The juxtaposition of the comical dialogue and ridiculous scenarios against the dark artwork has a gothic appeal, and Templesmith has a unique perspective on otherwise mundane concepts, such as traditionally delicate fairies as tough, incestual Rednecks. The writer’s overall derision of Elvis is snigger-worthy, too, and makes this comic worth at least perusing.

This comic was not a complete disaster, but needs some general maintenance work. The TPB is currently going into third printing, according to the writer, and will in all likelihood be less expensive than paying for all the four comics and the prequel separately, and will prepare you for the eventual release of the “Wormwood” series. Until then, other titles from IDM include “Transformers: The Rise of Starscream”, “Doctor Who”, and “Angel: After the Fall”.

Guest Writer: Who Is Red Hulk?

2009-06-17T16:33:00.003-05:00

Of all the questions plaguing the nation right now--when are we coming out of this recession? What about universal health care?--there is one that has been paramount on many minds--who the bloody hell is Red Hulk?

The best-selling series written by Jeph Loeb has been going strong for a year and a half, and yet, we are no closer to puzzling out the identity of this infuriating character than we were in the beginning. In mingled annoyance and anticipation, we continue to buy every issue released, silently begging Jeph Loeb to put us out of our misery, while knowing all the while this is why we so love him. Why we find his work so irresistable. He provides for us the thrill of mystery, sparking spirited debates amoungst fans on how he will tick us off next.

That drive to know, to unravel the mystery, is what caused me to buy the Rulk trade, despite my smoldering fury over the disrespectful treatment of the iconic character, Thor. (If you do not know what I am talking about, buy the trade, and prepare to seethe.) In reading this trade, I have dug to the very heart of the matter. I believe I have discovered the true identity of the Red Hulk.

As a disclaimer, I am aware of the fact that Loeb is more infamous for twist endings than M. Night Shymalan, and he seems to revel in bastardizing our beloved characters. I am probably just gleefully chasing the red herring Jeph Loeb has thrown out there, but as it is, I believe my sumation holds the value of logic, and I am holding it dear to my heart until Loeb takes mercy and throws us the true identity--more than likely Steve Rogers or Kitty Pride, as that will stab most fans right through the heart. And as everyone knows, Jeph Loeb feasts upon the tears of fans.

That being said, here are the facts as we have them:

The first known act of the Red Hulk was to track down Emil Blonsky, also known as Abomination, and to beat him beyond recognition, before shooting him beyond his ability to heal. No mere killing, this was brutal punishment, exacted revenge. Emil Blonsky was responsible for the death of Betty Ross.

Rulk has military experience and a very tactical mind, making him an even match of the Hulk.

Doc Samson and Thunderbolt Ross are responsible for the creation of Rulk, and presumably had a familiarity with the test-subject that became the Red Hulk.

A-Bomb, or Rick Jones, states "I thought you were dead" to Red Hulk, suggesting that he is aware of his true identity, and that we as readers probably also assume he is deceased.

Rulk's mission in life seems to be to destroy Bruce Banner, which points to a deep-seated hate. To have even agreed to undergo a transformation to make him become this gamma-irradiated monster would be indicative of true pre-existing loathing.

The publisher of the Rulk series did not (as far as we are aware) need permission from any other title to use the character that made the transformation into Red Hulk. Meaning, it needed to be a nobody, or a character that they all ready had the publishing rights to.

Don't you see? Could the Red Hulk be any other than Major Glenn Talbot? The former lover of Betty Ross? Sworn enemy of Bruce Banner, an individual with a wealth of military experience?

But, you sputter, Talbot died in Japan years ago!

So, I pose to you--if even Bucky Barnes can't stay dead now-a-days, how can we condemn anyone from rising again?

Mark my words--Glenn Talbot is the Red Hulk. Checkmate, Jeph Loeb.

Osborn's Paradox

2009-03-31T20:36:00.025-05:00

With Norman Osborn running the biggest show in the Marvel Universe, I figured it was time to take a look back on the history of the most sane, stable figure in a position of authority over the lives of other innocent civilians who most certainly do not deserve to die in horrible horrible ways brought about by a complete madman with all the worlds armaments and ordinance at his disposal. ...wait...what?

Let's go ahead and assume that a man who made his first appearance in a halloween mask and straddling a flying rocket powered vibrating phallus has it all together. From his first appearances wrangling the Enforcers into a faux movie shoot to trap Spider-Man into disgracing himself on-camera, we can clearly see that Norman Osborn is a man with a plan who clearly has a firm grip on reality...as well as his broomstick.

Broomstick...broomstick broomstick people, flying rocketpowered broomstick on which his straddles and grips firmly and proceeds to attempt to grab Spider-Man's crotch with his flaming hand. Clearly this is the man who needs to be in charge of the safety and security of all the babies and puppies in the world.

In an unrelated matter, the Hulk on this cover is rediculous. Almost...as though...he was ...attempting to escape...activities of a sexual nature....involving his nether-regions...and a vibrating broomstick...

The next few years are a picture of cranial stability, as Norman spends his days managing a multi-billion dollar industrial complex, and spends his nights dressing up in green tights and crafting explosive devices out of halloween decorations in his basement. He flies around on a considerably less penile apparatus, and whiles away a saturday afternoon by following a young college boy around hooting taunts and passive-aggressively threatening elderly police chiefs.

And then, just as things are calming down, Norman gets down and freaky with Gwen Stacy, symbol of all that is pure and holy, and impregnates her with twins.

After Gwen refuses to allow the crazy man access to the two innocent babies, Norman respondes with appropriate retaliation and throws her off the Brooklyn Bridge.

Ten years later, Norman convinces the children (who, due to his mutated DNA have aged to maturity) that Peter is their real father and that he is responsible for their mother's death, and sends them to kill their father in misguided rage. Listing this on his resume, he was able to obtain the keys to the kingdom of SHIELD, and made the new Nick Fury of the world, monitoring the safety of the public from the inside of his Steve Rogers inspired Stark Industries armor.

However...though Osborn is obviously crazy-pants...let's examine his recent actions.

Norman wiggles his way out of prison on a government-sponsered deal to lead the Thunderbolts, a team of super-villains redeeming themselves by turning super-hero.

He polices the Civil War on the side of the "good guys" by hunting down the lawbreakers.

He talks the Skrull Captain Marvel from turning on the humans and convinces him to do the right thing by turning on his own race and defending humanity.

After the death of Janet Van Dyne at the hands of the invading Skrulls, Norman retaliates by shooting the Skrull queen in the head with a high-calibur weapon.

Norman is offered to be head of SHIELD, he accepts immediately.

He reorganizes SHIELD into HAMMER, a world defense organization dedicated to protecting the world from any threat. He takes his most efficient Thunderbolts and reforms them in the guises of trusted heroes, and names them the new Avengers.

Norman engages in therapy sessions with the Sentry, the single most powerful man on the planet, and assuages his fears of the Void. He recruits the Sentry into his new team of Avengers and continues to protect the world as the Iron Patriot.

S0, Norman Osborn...crazy madman puppy-kicker psycho in charge? Or a lost soul, attempting redemption by taking the world's safety into his hands?

...What do you think?

Costume Changes

2009-03-08T23:03:00.006-05:00

A superhero's costume is a defining attribute to their identity. Comics being such a visually based medium as it is, we tend to associate the hero with the costume itself, instead of the person inside of it. Sometimes this is appropriate, Iron Man definately defines his abilties through his costume. When Spider-Man wore the symbiote costume, his powers were enhanced by the black suit he wore. But for the majority of the heroes, when a costume change takes place, it throws the readers world for a loop, for better or worse. Without further fluffing the article to justify blogging, here's some of the best and worse costume changes through the years.

Stay tuned for Part 2

Caption Contest!

2009-03-07T20:07:00.005-06:00

Caption Contest!

Mercenaries 2

2008-10-01T23:38:00.008-05:00

I'm usually wary of games that come roaring off the shelf with such intensity that I worry it might try to rape my cats while I sleep. Such a game plays to the 'Oh SNAP!" crowd of gamers, an annoying and surprisingly high percentage of the gaming crowd that caters to unusually high doses of testosterone. You know the type, the ones who think Grand Theft Auto is all about killing hookers and who buy every Madden game that gets put out because its manly to watch little 3d renders of players you see on tv grappling each other. These are the same twatmouths who buy games like Mercenaries 2 for the explicit purpose of blowing shit up so they can bounce up and down on their couches with their drunken buddies staggering about, laughing and swearing with fervor at the pretty explosions and rippling muscles.

Mercenaries 2 probably never would have appeared as even a blip on my What-To-Buy radar if it weren't for a delightfully catchy little song playing during the adverts (which I now have set as my ringtone for all unknown numbers so that any debt collector calling me from an unsaved number has his presence alerted to me by a song about suckas trying to play me and not paying me.) However, soon the game flitted in and out of my memory. But earlier today I wandered into the game store looking for something to kill time with while I wait for the real games to come out later this month and found myself staring at a wall of boxart shite sitting drolly on the shelves waiting for some poor kid who doesn't know any better to beg his mom to buy them so they can be released from this gaming purgatory. While my friend and I stood by that used game wall, paying our respects like the last surviving soldier of our unit resting his weary hand against the memorial wall inscribed with the names of our fallen comrades, Mercenaries 2 stared me down from its high spot on the wall, daring me not to buy him. As you can see from the box art, the main character in this game is a horrible fountain of manliness and aggression who looks like a cross between Dog the Bounty Hunter and James Cromwell.

And when James Cromwell the Bounty Hunter throws down, you cannot deny him. So I brought the game home and played it for the next few hours.

I was immediately sucked into the experience by sitting through 5 alert messages before I even got to the main menu. Apparently you don't get to enjoy the full experience of the game unless you are a paying customer of Xbox Live, and the game makes sure to rub that in your face as it tries to connect you three times and then shows you all three REJECTED messages at the same time. So, with my spirit being thoroughly stomped on, I readied myself to begin a new game, chose which character I would be controlling (James Dogwell, of course), and plummeted directly into the intro sequence.

My first impressions were sketchy. Good ol' boy Mattias the Merc gives off all the depth and character complexity as a moldy sponge, tossing around taunts and macho-speak like it was taught as a secondary language in idiot school. Not once did I find myself ever believing that I was controlling a unique character as every line of dialogue felt like it came out of the spare parts room of a stock dialogue festival. However, sketchy character development and a cookie cutter copy/paste storyline aside, let's look at the gameplay.

I was thoroughly perplexed by a number of baffling inconsistencies with the gameplay. I can jump off of a 5 story parking garage and limp away mostly unscathed, but I lack the vertical hops to climb a 5 foot fence. I can take a 4 ton tank and plow through shanty after shanty of poor, underdeveloped, third-world poverty hovels but I cannot raise my arms above my hand to scamper over a concrete divider in my front yard. And its not just with the core gameplay either, the physics are utterly perplexing.

For example, at one point I found myself hurtling along on a sports bike at about 80 miles an hour. The speed lines were blurring my vision and control was almost a joke by this point. I aimed my speeding missile of manliness at an iron gate that was swinging back and forth like someone had left the screen door halfway open and crashed into it with a force some likened to an F-16 playing a game of chicken with a rhinoceros. My bike exploded into a flaming chariot of chaos while my body became a deadly projectile smashing into the (halfway open) gate, knocking a good 12 to 18 inches more open, allowing my broken, ragdolled body to drop to the ground in a shameful display of ineptitude. "All right" I reasoned, "So the physics engine isn't going to let me get away with hilariously realistic crashes, I can live with that." But I was to be proven deceitfully and inexplicably wrong only moments later when on the exact same model of sports bike I ran into a hefty and thick tree at a lingering 25 miles an hour only to have it explode into shards of scraps and splinters like it had just been detonated from the inside by a Keebler Elf suicide bomber.

I try to give new games a fair chance, especially as of late when my current library of games is growing staler and more boring by the day, but Mercenaries 2 was just boring to me. It played almost identically to Just Cause except without the gleefully entertaining grappling hook and magic parachute. Running around a tropical island befriending guerrillas and overthrowing political factions felt a lot more like dirty work than any game ought to. I guess I should end up being nicer to it, as it brought me at least a half hour's worth of distraction. But then again, if all I wanted was a half hour of distraction I'd play a game that actually brought me fun along with it.

~Michael

P.S. Oh, and Force Unleashed was too short, but at least it got the 'fun' part right.

Looking at Turds

2008-09-15T18:11:00.004-05:00

"Dear Mike,
I'm scared, Force Unleashed got a "meh" review....I want to like the game, but after Too Human I'm afraid of being hurt again...what do I do?"

Let's take a break for a moment from the thin veneer of pretending this site isn't just a forum for me to rant about whatever I want, and let me rant about whatever I want for a bit.

Like a mother and father giving their son away to the man of his dreams, I am disappointed. You see, Too Human promised hours of fun, innovative combat, a quirky take on Norse mythology, and over the top, Devil May Cry style action. What I got was a right analog stick begging for mercy, a bastardized Norse world where classic characters like Thor and Loki and Heimdall were all assimilated by the Borg and turned into complete and total tools, and over the top, Devil May Cry 2 style brokenness.

I had been looking forward to Too Human for quite some time, as I had bought into the underground hype that followed the game around for the last 45 years, or however long it took the development team to get the nuts and bolts in the right places. So imagine my surprise when I read a review the day before I purchased the game declaring Too Human a monumental failure. I read with tears in my eyes and a cold sliver of ice in my heart, scanning each word multiple times in the vague hope that I might unlock some secret code the writer had worked into his review. "Help, help me!," it would say, "I'm being held captive by Norwegian pirates! If you rescue me I will write the real review next week!" I hardened my heart that I would rescue this poor writer from those Norwegian bastards and then sit back down on my ass and play the legendary game and love it.

Alas, such things are not meant to be.

When I played Too Human, I tried to be tough. I tried to stay the course. For the first week I stubbornly defended it to my wife and friends. "Look," I said, "its a fun game! I'm killing robot things, and I have a sword and two guns, that's just like Dante, it is! Kick ass!" But deep in my heart I knew I was living a lie, and I started finding excuses not to play my brand new game. "I shouldn't overplay it," I would tell myself. "I'll get burned out on it. Maybe Assassin's Creed deserves another visit, or Bioshock or Oblivion!"

But eventually I was forced to admit my folly and realize the truth. My beloved Too Human was a bad game.

The crash was devastating, and made all the worse so because I had read that review the day before that steeled my heart against it. If I had gone into the game with no expectations, I would have promptly declared it a monumental turd and gotten on with my life.

So I say this to you. A review is still just some asshole sitting at his computer, sipping a beer, and thinking of what he is going to say to get his point across without coming off like an ignorant prick. At the end of the day, a review is still just an opinion. An opinion of another person who will look at a product under his own idiotic perceptions and proudly proclaim to the world that he has solved the mystery of the quality of this game, and now he's going to share it with you.

I have loved some shitty games that got terrible scores, and hated some honestly quite good games that got great scores. My advice to all of you is to read your reviews, but don't let them make any decisions for you. Because even if The Force Unleashed turns out to be a bigger turd than Dane Cook, if you enjoy it then its still worth getting and still worth playing.

For the record, I don't care who reviewed the damn game, I'll be at the store tomorrow morning, money in hand, ready and willing to shell out my hard earned cash to get this game, and no review, opinion, or angry wife is going to keep me from playing all day.

So now that you have my opinion, bugger off. I'm drinking.

A Look at Comics in Video Games

2008-09-06T16:16:00.011-05:00

I like comics, I like video games. I also like doughnuts. That makes me a twenty-something, fluffy-around-the-middle, world class nerd. Or dork. Or...something. I cant follow what you crazy kids are calling it these days.

The point is, when a game comes out that draws its inspiration from my favorite medium, I find myself compelled to play it without any thought as to how bad it will often inevitably be. Unfortunately, most developers cannot make the distinction between making a game that is based on a movie that is based on a comic, and making a game that is based on a comic. Its a difficult concept to grasp, I know, but I'd think that someone, anyone who isnt a freaking tard can probably figure it out.

I've noticed that any game that claims to be inspired by a comic, but in reality is tied to some summer blockbuster tends to be, well, shite. Lets look at a few examples.

Making the switch from Bryan Singer to Brett "Series-killer" Ratner is kind of like swapping out your steak and potatoes for a grilled cheese. So it should come as no surprise that a game made about a sub-standard movie should be relatively sub-standard as well. And since the standard of movie video games still sits roughly somewhere between biting into a soggy apple and flossing your ass with razor wire, thats got to mean a lot. However new levels of shite-ness were reached with X-Men: The 'Official' Game when the development team dropped those flashy animated cut scenes in favor of gluing paper cutouts of the characters to popsicle sticks and walking them around the screen like a goddamn puppet show!

My wife is still teasing me about Iron Man. I loved the movie so much that I had to buy the game, and I actually spent the better part of week playing this thing telling myself that it wasnt a bugger-all kick the nads before I came to my senses and realised after all that 'bugger all, this is a real kick in the nads!' Committing the unforgiveable sin of gaming by having eternally respawning enemies and flight handling like Tony Stark trying to get home safely after Mardi Gras, Iron Man earns a place of honor in gaming hell.

Oh, no. No no no, god no.

But, of course, for every ten or fifteen Spider-man 3's we get something out of the mix like Ultimate Alliance or Ultimate Destruction that doesnt make me want to Ultimately gouge out my eyes with a potato peeler. But I dont feel like talking about those today. Now stop bothering me.

Like we did when Spring began...

2008-09-02T17:43:00.002-05:00

It occurs to me that I have a tendency to jump on board half-baked ideas and ride them into the ground, and then sulk off in disappointment when they dont take off quite like I had hoped they would.

You see, I had set out to make my own blog that focused on something I loved, comics. I had hoped, somewhere in the dark unspoken recesses of my mind, that it would become a popular site for comic enthusiasts.

However, after writing for a bit, I had discovered that writing actual articles and entries was quite tiresome, and I fell into the old cliche of reviewing comic books. But any jerkhole with a keyboard can write a review, that doesnt mean his opinion is worth reading. So I decided to try and round it out by reviewing as many comics as I could in a week. Maybe that could have been my hook, the thing that drew people in.

Of course, thats me jumping off half-cocked again. Not thinking about the time and effort that it would take to review that many books when 1) it wasnt my intention to begin with and 2) I'm working, going to school, starting a family.

And so, as most projects tend to do, this one fell into the dust and began to mold. It now resides in the pit of other unfinished projects such as my written fiction site and numerous bands I've played in that never got off the ground. Each time one has fallen, I sadly turn my back and walk away to sulk, but eventually get on with my life.

And yet, here I am, writing on this blog again. You see, for some reason or another, I could leave this in the dark pit of forgotteness. It ate at me, it bothered me. Here was something that could have done well, that I hadnt refined, but rather compromised.

Getting to the point, I'm ready to take a chance again, ready to put my love on the line with you. Been living with nothing to show for it. You get what you get when you go for it, and I'm ready to take a chance again with yoooooouuuuuuuuu!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm going try this site again, but I'm not going to go at it half-baked. I'm going to be reasonable with it. I'm not going to have any hidden expectations that will only disappoint me when they go unfulfilled, I'll save that for when my children are a little older. I'm not going to advertise or hawk my own site. I'm just going to do what I love, and I'm going to do it the way I want to do it and when I want to do it.

Review: Captain Britain and MI 13 #2

2008-06-11T23:21:00.004-05:00

Captain Britain and MI 13 #2
Score: 9 out of 10

It always excites me when a new ongoing series launches. I know that these days it feels like a new ongoing is coming out each month, and only maybe half are worth reading. JMS' Thor is a winner, most people (not me) think that Loeb's Hulk is not. ( I like the new Hulk, but I'm a bit of a masochist at times.) One of the perks of a new series coming out is that, theoretically, you could own every issue of the series. This is a boon for collectors, and a staple of comic geeks the world over.

Of course, with the recent invention of the Trade Paperback, its become easier than ever to own every issue of a series, but the purists out there will still profess that have each individual issue sealed in their bags and boards makes the experience far more rewarding. I much prefer to just read the stories, so my collection of trades almost outperforms my longbox.

All that to say, I was not looking forward to this new Captain Britain series. I wasn't very familiar with the characters or subject matter, and the idea of a British writer writing a book about British characters in Britain, while a naturally flowing concept, didn't appeal to me as a very American-influenced reader. However, when I heard that the first arc would tie in directly to Secret Invasion, I had to pick it up. For if there is anything more thrilling to me than owning each issue of a series, it's owning every tie-in to a story arc.

Issue 1 really intrigued me. The characters were vibrant and memorable, the writing was clear and easy to follow, and the much more magical tone endeared me to a concept of a more colorful Marvel Universe beyond the comfortable circles most casual readers remain in. Of course, the first thing I did after reading Issue #1 was Wikipedia every character in the book to gain a greater familiarity with what was sure to be an all star cast.

And now, Issue 2 has left me with a smile on my face. As I write my review, I am distracted by thoughts of re-reading both issues again. This issue is dealing with the Skrull's technological invasion of Avalon, the mystical realm of the United Kingdom. Morale is low as every British man, woman, and child have physically felt the loss of their beloved hero Captain Britain, and the Skrulls are pushing forward, giving no quarter to the mythological beings that occupy their lands.

Its hard to find enough good things to say. The writing is good, the art is good, the characters are great. Except for one new addition that feels a little tacked on, all the new material presented in this issue moves the story along at a reasonable but enticing pace. Simply put, I can't wait for issue 3.

This issue gets a 9 out of 10.

Review: Secret Invasion #3

2008-06-07T20:51:00.009-05:00

Secret Invasion #3

Score: 8 out of 10

I'm one of the few comic readers that actually enjoy big event crossovers. I know they are sometimes cheap publicity stunts designed to squeeze a few extra dollars out of the loyal readers, but damn if they aren't entertaining.

Issue 3 of Secret Invasion does exactly what it is supposed to do: move the story along piece by little piece, hoping to give you just enough information to keep you interested in buying the rest of the series. Fortunately, it delivers on this point four or five times throughout the course of the issue.

When Brian Bendis promised that Secret Invasion would not be like most big events and wait until the very end to make all their big revelations, and that all the cards would be laid flat on the table at the very beginning, I was skeptical. And in truth, I do feel like the reveals made thus far have failed to live up to that promise, but I cannot in good faith hold that against the writers, because they have done an astoundingly good job of keeping each issue full of enough satisfying revelations without giving too much away right at the front. You have to keep some big ideas back for the end, because nothing is worse than having a big event fizzle out at the very end, as most people believe was done with the infamous World War Hulk.

There are some great character scenes in this issue, and a few panels that are so well drawn (I'm not even a fan of this style of artwork, and groaned a little inside when I saw that Leinil Yu was attached) that you could very well imagine the scene taking place on a movie screen. One panel that sticks out in memory is a shot of skrull-Jarvis standing on the landing strip of the downed Helicarrier drifting amidst the waves, having crashed landed in the ocean (who knew that helicarriers could float?). The wind blows his coat around him and the waves crash behind him and it seemed almost an illusion that the waves were not moving on the page.

There are a couple of moments here that try to convince us that something especially devious has taken place. Those of you who have kept up with the Secret Invasion tie-ins know that it has been hinted that Jessica Drew is not only a skrull, but is the skrull queen herself. We have yet to see any beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt proof of this, but it is heavily hinted to. Now we see her confronting a member of the Mighty Avengers, claiming that he is a skrull agent and his mind has been wiped to better preserve the illusion. As I said before with Spiderwoman, I am holding off judgement on whether this is true until I see some green bumpy chins on these characters.

The Young Avengers and the Initiative are busy tangling with the oh-so-discreet super-skrull attack on New York, and both teams suffer what appear to be fatal losses. And a surprise guest who has no understanding of the term 'subtle' makes a special entrance on the last page.

While I wish the issue had given a little more substance, I find myself wishing that on a lot of books these days, and have a hard time holding this event book to a higher standard than that of a monthly ongoing. Still, it did not disappoint, and is keeping me interested. This issue gets an 8 out of 10.

Review: Secret Invasion #2

2008-05-08T09:11:00.003-05:00

Secret Invasion #2
Score: 8.5 out of 10

SPOILER ALERT: I will be discussing this issue's secrets and surprises in this review.

When all the superheroes of Marvels vintage collection stepped out of that ship near the end of Secret Invasion 1, I'm pretty sure every reader let out a quick gasp, allowed for a moment of hope, and then resolutely resigned themselves to the fact that this was just too good to be true.

Despite this issues hardened attempts to convince me otherwise, I'm still convinced that every last one of them is a damn dirty skrull.

Thankfully, the issue doesnt dwell too long on things we aren't really interested in, and spends a lot of time with the superheroes of both eras interacting with each other. I'm impressed with seeing the different incarnations of each character side by side, as its fun to see how their personality has evolved over the years. Luke Cage in particular is blacker than ever, and Jessica Jones is just as fun and foul mouthed as we'd imagined. I'm going to go ahead and tell you that not all is as it appears, as at least two of these supposed 70s heroes are in fact skrulls. The question is whether or not the entire group is just a skrull mind game, or whether a few of these individuals are the real deal, and the skrull agents were placed there to keep them comfortable.

They really really really want us to believe that Mockingbird and (gasp!) Captain America are the real deal. Mockingbird I can ALMOST see. Cap? No way. I'd love to have Bonnie back in the mix after all these years, but I just can't believe in happy endings. Its going to tear my (and Clint's) heart up when Mockingbird is revealed as a Skrull, I just know it. The reuniting of Clint with his ex-wife tugged at my heart in a way that a book had not done for me in a long while, and its going to hurt when that gets shattered. It already disheartened me when 70s Spider-man and Hawkeye were killed and went moldy and bumpy chinned. (Oh, that was one of those spoilers I warned you about.)

Meanwhile, the Young Avengers find themselves caught up in the frey when a Skrull ship drops a truckload of the most delightfully ridiculous super-skrulls you've ever seen right into the middle of New York. So much for the 'Secret' Invasion. But the final page splash must have been the most fun panel to draw in a Marvel book for the past 20 years. Seriously, buy the book solely to flip to the back.

My only real complaint with the issue is that I feel like I waited a month for some great fun, and only got a small taste of it before it ended. It felt way too short for me (though it was the standard length in terms of pages) and I'm disappointed that I must wait another month before I can get another skrull fix.

However, the book does NOT disappoint, and only builds on the tension. This issue gets an 8.5 out of 10.

Review: Invincible Iron Man #1

2008-05-08T09:09:00.004-05:00

Invincible Iron Man #1
Score: 9 out of 10

With all the Iron Man hype running around the media these days, a new Iron Man series seemed inevitable. Thankfully, although the new series is a bid to bring new readers to the character, it is not ignoring what is currently going on with the character. Tony Stark is still director of SHIELD, and still trying to fix the world all by himself. We've got naked foreign girls, high tech toys, a cameo by Rhodey, and an uncomfortably near-nude Tony in his extremis undersheath. Oh, and Pepper Potts. Pepper is awesome.

The premise here is that somebody is suicide bombing small villages in the middle east with distubingly familiar Stark-esque technology. Ezekiel Stane (yes, of the Jeff Bridges Stanes) has given his body an upgrade, and AIM apparently has an offshoot faction that focuses less on science and technology and more on killing everybody.

Oh, and Dum Dum is back. Skrully? We don't know where this fits in with Secret Invasion. If I had to guess, I'd say after the invasion, so maybe the real Dugan is back? He's not wearing his hat, and that makes me sad.

What makes an Iron Man book worth its appeal is the fun technology Stark has tucked away. Yet this series seems to be placing a focus on what's actually going on in Tony's head while he thinks up this kind of crazy stuff. Specifically, this issue brings up what Tony considers his 5 worst nightmares, and eerily foreshadows how they all might be coming true.

Ezekial Stane is shaping up to be one fine villain for the series, as his new bodily upgrades are genuinely fascinating to learn about. I'll be picking up the next issue solely on the basis of seeing him again.

Invincible Iron Man may end up being just another cash in for people who are curious after seeing the movie, but it's sure not starting out like one. This issue gets a 9 out of 10.

Review: Amazing Spiderman #558

2008-05-08T09:07:00.005-05:00

Amazing Spiderman #558
Score: 6 out of 10

I guess maybe if they just keep ignoring what happened, we'll forget all about One More Day and just accept Spidey's current situation as what is supposed to be happening.

... .... ....Eh, I'm okay with that. Its not worth it to fight it.

Besides, it's not exactly like Brand New Day has sucked so far. We've had fun characters, interesting stories, and a light heartedness we havent felt from Pete in years. Amazing #558 is basically picking up the peices from the Freak Out arc a few weeks back. Freak is back, and actually looking respectable as a villian for once.

Of course, aside from Freak, everything else about the issue is vaguely unremarkable. Menace shows up and, um, menaces some people without actually doing any real damage. Aunt May implies that she's happy Pete is moving out, and Curt Conners is as whiney as ever. (Best line of the issue: "Damn this one arm!")

What I can't figure out is why Joey Q has banned all forms of smoking in any Marvel Comic, even for the bad guys, under the premise that he doesnt want kids to be influenced to smoke, but we can have a Spider-man (the most popular comic amongst young age readers) villian smoking meth on-panel, and digging his entire face into (what he believes is) a Tony Montana-size pile of cocaine?

Kids, you just got Quesada'd.

We have one powerful moment between JJJ and his wife, showing a little bit of surprising depth to the angry newsman, but other than that there's not a whole lot of character development...for anybody. I feel like this could easily have been condensed into just a couple of pages and lumped in with the next issue.

Still, not a terrible issue, just kind of boring. This issue gets a 6 out of 10.

Review: Mighty Avengers #13

2008-05-08T09:03:00.005-05:00

Mighty Avengers #13

Score: 7 out of 10

The Mighty Nick Fury!

Just like last issue, Mighty Avengers #13 focusing entirely on everyone's favorite St. Nick as he makes his preparations for the Skrull invasion. This time around, he's gone recruiting, sending fan favorite Daisy Johnson around the world to pick up the sons and daughters (and grandsons) of various super powered individuals. Apparently the offspring of such beings as Ares, the Phantom Rider, Griffon, and Doctor Druid have in some way, shape, or form inherited some measure of abilities from their sires.

In other words, Nick Fury is building the New Young Avengers. The Young New Avengers? The Avengers Who Are Young But Also New Yet Not The Young Nor New Avengers! Woot!

For the record, Nick Fury really needs to stop disguising himself as Samuel L Jackson with an eye patch. Somebody's going to get confused. Especially with that other Nick Fury who actually does look like Samuel L jumping universes. Now my head hurts.

I'm actually kind of disappointed with this issue. Not because it's a bad issue, it just didnt give me much to work with. We've clearly established that Nick Fury has gone underground and the only person he trusts is Daisy Johnson (who, by the way, has green eyes. ... ...just sayin), and is now making the rounds for putting together his own super team of hyper-powered losers.

Well, not ALL losers. Layla Miller was apparently supposed to be on the team. But she answered the door in her underwear and said she was busy. Which brings me to the most important question this issue raises: How old is Layla, and am I supposed to want to see her in her underwear? Is she legal yet, is this okay? Wasn't she like 14 when she was first introduced?

...Yeah, thats really the most important thing this issue brought to the table. That and Nick's penchant for ironic disguises.

This issue gets a 7 out of 10.

Review: Thunderbolts - Reason In Madness

2008-05-08T08:30:00.007-05:00

Thunderbolts - Reason In Madness

Score: 8 out of 10

I am not what you'd call a Purist. I dont believe things should stay the way the are simply because thats the way they've always been. Change can be good. There cannot be progress without change. That's the risk you take with evolving a story, if you change something, you take the chance the the results might be good or bad. I'm a big fan of making changes and seeing how they work out.

That being said, I am NOT a fan of Mac Gargan as Venom.

It's nothing personal, Mac (dont eat me), I can certainly understand why. I was watching when the symbiote ditched Fortunado in mid-jump (Marvel Knights Spiderman series, simply fantastic) and saught you out. But as cool as it is to have Venom back, you just bore me.

Which isnt to say that we need to bring back Eddie Brock. I think its about time we let him die in peace. I'm just saying that when we are seeing more Mac than Venom in an issue, it tends to drag down the ride for me.

Norman Osborn, on the other hand, cannot be boring no matter how much Tommy Lee Jones they stuff into the character. That's the great thing about this guy, he hasnt worn a Goblin mask in quite some time, and yet we never forget exactly how dangerous the guy is. But I distract myself, on to what we're here for.

Thunderbolts one-shot Reason in Madness is basically a team-up buddy issue between Venom and Osborn. Long story short, a small crew of b-list super villians try to convince Gargan to blackmail Norman for a lot of money, in exchange for helping Venom disable the nanochains in his system that essentially keep him on Osborn's leash. Fortunately, Mac's been on the team long enough to know that you just don't screw with the Green Meanie.

The art is mediocre, looking like a cross between watercolor paintings and something you'd find in one of the not-funny funny page strips. Still, it's not bad, it only feels a little bland.

Still, a Thunderbolts one-shot makes a great read for anyone with a couple dollars left in the comic budget and wondering what else to pull off the shelf. This issue gets an 8 out of 10.

Review: Thor - Ages of Thunder

2008-05-02T13:58:00.005-05:00

Thor - Ages of Thunder

Score: 9.5 out of 10

There are few things as convulted as the concept of time in the Marvel Universe. By tradition, unlike most other fictional constructs, the MU operates on a sliding timescale policy. Without going into too much detail, even though the Fantastic Four have been in existance since the 60s, they've only been in existance in the MU for about 15 years. This makes for a tricky situation when you plan to go back and tell a story that does not take place in the current here and now.

However, a few years ago, at the end of Thor Vol 2, it was established that Asgard exists within an ever-repeating cycle of Ragnarok, thus placing Asgard effectively out of the main MU timestream, and giving writers an almost infinite amount of wiggle room when telling backstories. This allows the writers of the new Thor series of one-shots to have free reign over what kind of stories they tell.

Thor - Ages of Thunder takes place long ago, in one of the previous cycles of Ragnarok. The story is about Asgard's war with the Frost Giants, and the giants lust for Idun, the Enchantress. All the key players are back in full swing. Odin, Thor, Loki, Heimdall, Hogan, Fandrall, Idun, and all the golden apples you can eat.

The entire book has a very mythological feel to it, which considering the subject matter, is very appropriate. When reading the book you get the distinct familiar feeling that you might have heard this story before, in a parable or mythology book. There is a sense that everything is happening to teach some greater lesson to either the characters, or to the readers.

Thor is terrifyingly awesome. This isnt the hippie-wannabe you readers from the 90s remember, this is Thor in his prime. The first time you see Thor lobotomize a Frost Giant with Mjolnir, and then decapitating it via a nose ring, you'll never look at him the same way again. Odin conveys a frightening precense, and you almost feel a twinge of sadness for Loki and his trickster ways. Idun is presented in such a way that you almost have to wonder if this is the Enchantress we remember, and even the Warriors Three and Heimdall, while only given small roles in this story, are shown in ways we dont get to see from them very often.

Aside from all the cool new ideas being brought to the table, this one-shot is just a well written book. Told in narrative form, and illustrated in a very dreamy, ethereal form, it feels like we're being read a classic, epic story from some dusty old tome. One of the best parts about this type of story-telling is that absolutely anyone, no matter who you are, can pick up this book and enjoy it without ever having to know anything about any of the characters. If you have ever been curious about the gods and the world they occupy, pick up this book. I can promise you it won't be your last venture into Asgard.

This issue gets a 9.5 out of 10.

Good Ol Days: X-Factor #111

2008-05-01T14:37:00.007-05:00

'The Good Ol' Days'
Comics of Seasons Past

So it seems I've survived the first round of approval, the editor liked it anyway. Seems I'm lucky enough to stay around. Now before I continue on with my path, I wanted to first open the door for more. I'd like your comments. I already have the opinion of the creator, but I welcome all thoughts as well. Also if you want a particular old issue that you loved put before the stand, let me know. We'll see how it has fared against time. With that offer on the table, I reach blindly yet again for...

X Factor #111

Now, let me begin by saying that when I read a comic, I like to read slowly. I like to enjoy the imagery and interaction. I read over several times to make sure I saw and read everything from cover to cover. This process usually takes about 10-15 minutes. However, with this issue of X-factor, I was done with it and threw it behind the television racks in my office within five minutes. I felt cheated and abused. You know how a lot of people felt about the whole 'One More Day,' I felt that way about the last five minutes of my life.

To start off, this issue made absolutely zero sense the entire time. A bunch of aliens show up to reclaim something the teleporter Lila Cheney stole. We don't know what it was, we don't know why she took it. But apparently, stealing a 'music box' from some aliens is a death sentence. An entire city was rigged to explode if this thing wasn't returned. The entire time we see the X-factor team hunting down this music box that Lila had already sold. And in the end, they find it, give it to the aliens, and the aliens leave. Wow.... this was so important. I mean, people back then would have been completely lost in the series without this story. And it got worse, I'll get back to that literary cancer soon enough.

In all fairness, I have several things that annoy me in storytelling. I'm a tad more critical over certain things than most people, but I do try to keep an open mind. These are things that just rubbed me the wrong way, but Mr. Editor would disagree with me on those things. First, the use of names is something sacred to me. I do know Scott Summers is Cyclops, and I understand that Jean Grey will always refer to him as such; nonetheless, to the outside world, his name is Cyclops. X-factor is supposed to be a government sanctioned team of mutants... code names count. I have never seen any of my uncle's Air Force buddies refer to him as anything but his call sign. It's a matter of respect. The fact that nobody in this issue is referred to by their code name bugged me to no end. The only one who got proper respect was Forge, and that was because there is only a handful of people who even know his real name. And as much of a weak name Strong Guy is, I find it better 100x over than Guido. This fact also ruined dialogue for me. The dialogue was far too pointed towards making sure everyone knew each other's real names. Every command, every observation was started with a name. It got very old.

The artwork here for action was still high ranking. I liked the way the action looked, but two characters seemed very off to me. Wolfsbane looked far too human for who I knew her as. She looked like a normal girl, only with purple skin for most parts. They did however, make her look fantastic in wolf form. It really did look like she was about to jump off the page to kill me. Havoc in this issue didn't seem to be a part of anything. Bruce Banner without any sign of Hulk could have been more menacing than him this round. Cyclops would have been ashamed.

Now, there was a very redeeming factor at one point. An amazing scene at the end that seemed to make it all worth it. I saw Strong Guy get enormous and almost Hulk out on the world. He absorbed so much energy from a bomb that he easily looked to be bigger than Abomination. He was snarling and punching almost everything in sight to diffuse everything he had absorbed. It looked fantastic. I think at that moment, he could have knocked Hulk unconcious with a single punch. The scene went from badass to sad when Strong Guy started having a heart attack because the energy was too strong, he had grown too much. I was on the edge of my seat as Lila jumped down to give him CPR. But was unable to affect anything due to the man's size. Spielberg couldn't have envisioned a more emotional scene of a fallen warrior. And then...

oops... nevermind.

It was taken away. Everything and everyone turned to glass and broke into nothing. With a caption explaining, 'And two decades collapse -- because none of this ever happened--.' I fell from my chair cursing obcenities to John Moore. I truly was robbed of my time. Now... retconning seems like a cool idea to some writers. But trust me... it's not. Telling a story that overwrites something, that's okay. Back to earlier arguments, the way some people felt about One More Day, I understand that it hurts sometimes having your world changed. But to J. Michael Straczynski's credit, he told a story. A story that explained what was happening. To me, that's not retconning. That's continuing a story. But to end with just saying all this never happened is weak, unimaginative and a waste of time.

I love plot twists, and I love cliffhangers. But this was neither. This was simply an editor or writer changing his mind on what was going to happen, but waited till the day something was needed to be printed to say something. This goes beyond, 'But wait a minute,' moments. This is merely "I changed my mind but did it too late to make it look good, so now I have to throw something in at the end to make it work." It is a completely different thing to end this issue on the heart attack cliffhanger, and then go into the story of how this will change. I know they have somewhere to go with it, because the series didn't end here. But please... to all comic writers out there, "STOP THAT." Tell the story first, not the outcome.

I wish I could give this issue the worst comic ever rating, but I cannot. That title is reserved with many others in line before it. But alas, I can say with all honesty... don't waste your time on this issue. If you want to go back to X-factor, that's good... but go straight from 110 to 112, because it's not worth stopping for the 'Smile Time' episode of X-factor.

I give this a saddening 1.5 on the 'Must Read' scale. Don't waste any time on this thing unless you looking for the achievement for reading every comic in the 616 universe.

Chris Young

Review: X-Men Legacy #210

2008-05-01T08:54:00.004-05:00

X-Men Legacy #210

Score: 6 out of 10

Okay, I know its like an X-Men tradition to have some great reinvention of the main characters every few years, but you'd think after a while somebody would stick a new idea up on the chalkboard.

X-Men founder Charles Xavier has been killed more times than you can count on both hands, and everybody stopped caring right around the the 3rd or 4th time. He actually has a tombstone around behind the X-Mansion that reads "Here Lies Charles Xavier. See you next year!"

So when Bishop shot X right in the noggin, my thoughts were, "Really? They're going this route again?" And it came as no surprise when X was revealed to be still partially alive like, the next week. And so now he's back. Woo-hoo. And with a rather convenient partial mind-wipe to boot. Now its so sad for Chuck because he cant remember any of the horrible things he's seen and experienced through his life and has a chance to reinvent himself as a character.

Yeah...that's real subtle.

On a related topic, I'm gonna go ahead and call Skrullsies right now. There's just no way X isnt a Skrull.

And I am thoroughly not impressed with Magneto being depowered. He could be a really deep and wise character, but I feel like he's just being prepped for repowerment, and in the meantime he's just making connections. If all we're waiting on is some event to return him to full power, then lets get it over with and just do it. Its already becoming apparent that "No More Mutants" was more of a suggestion than a directive.

Basically this issue is about X and Exodus battle on the mental field, with Exodus drudging up all X's bad memories in an effort to remind us of...I'm not even sure.

This issue gets a 6 out of 10.

Review: Ultimate Human #4

2008-05-01T08:52:00.005-05:00

Ultimate Human #4

Score: 6.5 out of 10

When I picked up this issue, I had no intention of featuring it on the site. The mini-series started off well, but has been in a gradual decline the past two issues. In fact, I was midway through the book and was already tired of it when ONE PANEL caught my eye and changed my mind.

Mind you, this was an interesting panel, but there was nothing in it that was so amazing that would change the rating of the book. You see, I had dismissed the book because I felt it to be, well, boring. It felt like an average idea to me, and while decently-executed, there was nothing in it that jumped out so much as to make the issue memorable. Then this one panel caught my eye and changed my mind. Its a quiet subtlety a split second before something explodes. (Oh no, I hope thats not too much of a spoiler; something explodes in a Hulk/Iron Man book!)

Unfortunately there's just not a lot I can say about this. The series wraps up as neatly as it began, and when all is said and done, not much has changed. I know that its about the ride, not the destination, but when the ride is yawn-inducing, I'd expect a big finish to make the series stick in my imagination. Sadly, I'm afraid that the Ultimate Human mini will go largely unremembered.

This issue gets a 6.5 out of 10.

Review: New Avengers #40

2008-05-01T07:29:00.009-05:00

New Avengers #40

Score: 8 out of 10

I'm going to put this simply. If the idea of the Skrulls Secret Invasion even remotely appeal to you, you need to read New Avengers #40.

This issue is a SI tie-in, and for once actually gives us some insight as to whats going on behind the scenes, specifically, what the Skrulls are doing. The tagline for this issue should have been, "EVERYONE IN THIS ISSUE IS A SKRULL!!!" Aside from a brief cameo by a certain world-eater and his herald, the whole book is about the Skrulls, why they decided to take earth, and how they plan to do so.

Back in interviews for the Secret Invasion, Bendis made the powerful claim that they weren't going to wait until the end of the run to make all the big reveals. He promised that world-shattering revelations would be made available to the reader from the very start all the way through to the end. If you heard this claim, and then read this issue, you might be tempted to think that quite a few reveals have been made, or at least implied, withtin the pages of this book.

I'm not so sure. There are a couple implied 'reveals' that are so in your face and blatantly obvious that I have to question if this is basic misdirection to keep our suspicians up. Let me inform you, not once in this issue do we for-sure no-doubt find out who another skrull agent is impersonating. There is one big implication at the end, and a few slight implications throughout, but never once can we for sure point someone out and say "This person is without a doubt a skrull agent."

What we DO get, however, is insight into the background of the new Skrull Queen, Veranke, and some wrapping up to that elusive Illuminati first issue. We find out why the Skrulls are now able to avoid detection, and how they choose which targets to impersonate for the infiltration. A lot of skrully business going on here, and we get to see it all first hand.

On the technical side, Jim Cheung does good work. Plain and simple. This is how comics need to be drawn, where the details are clear and the action is apparent. I've never been a fan of comics that got too 'artsy' with their interpreation of whats going on. Which isnt to say that I believe that this style of artwork is superior to a more interpretive style, its just not my preference. So when I open to that first page and I can clearly establish a character's emotions from a facial expression alone, it makes it that much more likely that I am going to enjoy the book.

New Avengers #40 is, quite simply put, essential for anyone who is reading a Marvel book today. The Skrull invasion is touching the entire Marvel Universe (even if a couple books are refusing to acknowledge it), and this issue gives you invaluable insight as to what is going on, and (possibly!) who has been replaced.

This issue gets a 8 out of 10.

The Good Ol' Days: Moon Knight #39

2008-04-29T13:41:00.013-05:00

Today we start introducing the first of a series of columns written by a guest writer. Over there on the right you can see under "Site Features" all the different sections of the site. The "Good Ol' Days" Column is written by guest writer Chris Young, and will highlight retro reviews of non-recent comics. As always, thanks for visiting, and support your local comic shop! ~Michael Wearden - Editor

'The Good Ol' Days'
Comics of Seasons Past

Although the editor of this blog series wouldn't like me going into the story of why I'm here, I feel it is necessary to start off with just that point. History is fun for a lot of people, and in the land of Marvel, DC, etc this is no different. While part of the world continuously moves forward, it is also important to take the time to study how we got there. Not to say that my analysis of old comics found in a shoebox or at the local comic store brings this site legitimacy. However, I just loved the our older stories and characters more than some of the ones today. So here our path begins, reaching randomly into an old shoebox hidden away in our editor's closet we start with...

Marc Spector: Moon Knight #39

First off, you just gotta love Moon Knight. The idea of a jewish man empowered by an Egyptian god who wears all white even after Labor Day. Ah, and he also never seems to stay dead. Mar-Vell should have been paying attention. But onward we march.

Issue #39 is all about completing Spector's new adamantium armor. I like that in a comic, explanation through lab tests that this suit can withstand fire and bullets. I get tired of the the Adam West version Batman where at any given point in time you could just say 'Thank god I installed that special dolphin mind control adapter in last Tuesday.' Yes, a surprise is nice from time to time, but I prefer legitimacy. I like to be able to look back a few issues and be, 'holy crap, I missed it.' You don't get that much in today's comics. Stark builds a new suit for Spiderman and you know nothing of the capabilities until he hits the Adam West switch.

This issue also sets up the Sensor Squad who work for Dr. Doom. These were bionically enhanced people, but each one only served one, single function. There was one who could control radio waves of communication, another to hit things, one who could track smells on people, etc. In theory a great idea, but overall, they were just weak support characters for such a great villain as Doom, he deserves much better. No villain beats Doom in my opinion in overall character development. He is evil and a genius, but I've always seem him showing extreme compassion for his Latveria citizens. And that doesn't change in this issue, you see a fallen grenade from one of the Sensors, and Doom falling on it because there were a few Latverians in the vicinity.

On to the technical side. The artwork here is not the greatest visually stimulating series you've ever seen; however, it is not confusing. It is easy to follow action, placing, and character recognition. Bullet wounds are hidden behind frame but physical reactions let you know someone just got shot. Keep in mind, this was published in the early nineties, back when blood was a no no for most children oriented materials. Thank god Mortal Kombat won that back for us. Overall, the artwork was on the decent to good range.

Something that annoyed me, but didn't really affect the overall feel of the issue was how some things were put into the speech balloons. Several places the dialogue was written inside the foriegn language angle brackets. Example:[NO!!] [He's getting away!]. It held no purpose. Nothing was held back to any other character. The background people clearly understood as well did Moon Knight and Doom. If it held no purpose, then why use it? Like I said, annoying, but not overall off putting.

I have never read this particular issue before, it was a delight for me. Even some of my coworkers picked it up and read through it while I was busy. I always was a fan of Moon Knight, and this comic didn't disappoint. However, I do believe Frenchie could have beat up Spector just a little bit more during the early armor tests. I give this issue a 'Must Read' rating of 7 out of 10.

Chris Young

Review: X-Men First Class #11

2008-04-28T13:22:00.006-05:00

X-Men First Class #11

Score: 2 out of 10

If you can read only one comic book this year, read this one.

Did you read it?

Good.

I bet you're pretty pissed off right now.

Everyone is guilty of wishing they could step into the pages of comics and exist in the same universe as our favorite heroes. This issue is about three kids who do. Through some reality-warping event, three teens are sent a slew of Marvel Comics from our reality, giving them the chance to see events in the MU before they happen. Yes, its just as confusing and muddled as it sounds.

I suppose if it were done right, this could have been a novel idea, but I can't imagine that even under the best of circumstances that this idea would have held my interest past an issue or two. The most fun I can imagine this being was being able to see some of our favorite events through the years through the eyes of casual observers. But then...no....no no, even that would get boring.

As it is, the entire issue feels so rushed and off-pace that I couldnt figure out what was happening. Even though I understood the concept, and each panel was furthering the already complicated story, I had to force myself to turn page after page, each time hoping the next page would be an all-too-welcome add so I could distract myself from actually finishing the issue. I felt like this story was a random creative idea some writer had while waiting to start the new arc.

Perhaps the greatest crime this issue committed was that it simply was not fun to read. The art was uneven and inconsistant, the storytelling was complicating needlessly a shallow idea, and there was never any real threat or conflict. Mysterio is somehow going to take over the universe? Ok. How was he stopped? I have no idea, and I just read the thing.

Its always sad when I have to give a low score. I'm generally pretty favorable to the comics I read, and I have a bad tendency to only write reviews over the issues I like. But all the justifying in the world couldnt save this issue. It was no fun at all, and I honestly can't see myself ever reading it again, nor can I in good faith recommend it to anyone. Sad day for X-men First Class.

But the next arc looks promising, right?

This issue gets a 2 out of 10.

Mike's Comic Blog

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Weekly Ketchup 9-12 - Deus Ex, Fight for the Light, X-Men First Class, and More

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Captain America: Super Soldier Video Game Review

Old Folks Home *Review*

The Abormals Special by Grant Springford *Review*

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A Response to 'Thor' Reviews

Thor: God of Thunder Game Review

Thor Movie Review

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Digital Visions 04 Review feat. Sam Johnson

The Toys are Not Alright

A Brave New Frontier

Changes Incoming

Happy New Year!

Ultimate Avengers 3 #4 Thoughts

Jeepers, Its a Mystery!

The Secrets of the Miagani Revealed!

Force Unleashed 2 Review

Deathclaws Aren't as Scary as Bugs

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The Most Important News Story You'll Read Today

Brett Favre Fail

All Star Batman And Robin - Frank Miller Knows Crazy

City of Heroes VS Champions Online

"One More Day" Deconstructed

Tony Stark Has a Lot of Dough

Doctors Are Snooty

Panels That Make Us Love Comics

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Steve Rogers Doesn't Put Up With That Sissy Crap

Hank Pym is in for a surprise.

Batman Knows How to Deal with Mel Gibson

Edward Norton Is No Longer the Hulk...And That Makes Him Sad

Really, Internet, you should expect better of me.

General Ross Really Loves Him Some Chic-Fil-A

The Best Part of Waking Up...

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Face It, Tigger, You Just Hit The Jackpot...

Wormwood: Gentlemen Corpse, Guest Reviewer

Guest Writer: Who Is Red Hulk?

Osborn's Paradox

Costume Changes

Caption Contest!

Mercenaries 2

Looking at Turds

A Look at Comics in Video Games

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Review: Captain Britain and MI 13 #2

Review: Secret Invasion #3

Review: Secret Invasion #2

Review: Invincible Iron Man #1

Review: Amazing Spiderman #558

Review: Mighty Avengers #13

Review: Thunderbolts - Reason In Madness

Review: Thor - Ages of Thunder

Good Ol Days: X-Factor #111

Review: X-Men Legacy #210

Review: Ultimate Human #4

Review: New Avengers #40

The Good Ol' Days: Moon Knight #39

Review: X-Men First Class #11

Old Folks Home Review

The Abormals Special by Grant Springford Review