This is kinda transmogrifying into a WoW Blog, isn’t it? I need to discuss Kendo or workouts or my big personal electronics project one of these days. Put some stuff in here that adds some more words to the old Tag Cloud over there. Anyhow, I do like comics. My big faves are The Walking Dead, Powers, and the BPRD/Hellboy continuum. I started picking up the World of Warcraft comic though, because I do play the game and PR people said that the comic would feed into the continuity of the game. Turns out that wasn’t just tangential (That doesn’t look right. Spellcheck checks out though) stuff too; the events in the comic would reshape the game for good and ill. I’ve got a few problems with the comic and the way it was handled though.

First, the art and lettering is VERY inconsistent. Every character in the comic comes off as that annoying guy from Friends with the weird speech pattern. Bold, italics and caps are thrown around in everybody’s dialogue boxes like they are going out of style. Art is very rarely on-model with orcs depicted as even more monstrous pinheads than the game makes them out to be. And I realize that the armor styling is pretty misogynistic on females, but seeing Valeera’s entire ass on every page is a bit over the top. Hell, she SLEEPS in that thong. Between Doomsday, Aeon Flux and Underworld I thought the skintight leather catsuit for an agile combatant was making a comeback… Not that those were good movies, just that they did feature chicks in catsuits.

Second, they are abusing the game pretty heavily. C’thun is listed as “Dead” in stage directions in the edge of a panel just so the Twilight’s Hammer can have a Sekrit Fort in AQ40. They couldn’t use any of the already existing Twilight’s Hammer setups scattered all over Azeroth, they had to make the comic and the game incompatible. C’thun is still in AQ40. If I got a few friends together tonight we could go kill him. Before that, during the Varian Wrynn arc, Wrynn rescues Marshall Windsor and goes off to slay Onyxia. There is no reason to break the most cinematic experience in Vanilla Wow. Prestor can remain in the capitol city, running domestic affairs while Wrynn concentrates on his campaign against the Horde and the Lich King. This allows Windsor to still be spring from the Ring of Law and the showdown between Onyxia’s Royal guard and the Stormwind peeps to still go down. Hell, you could even put Wrynn, Broll and Vareesa in the fight. Increase the number and quality of Onyxia’s guards, and you have a deal. This goes back to the neglected midgame as well, something I’ll probably talk about in the future.

Third and finally, they are using the completely cliche Chosen One storyline now that they are finished with “The Adventures of Varian Wrynn in a WRD Arena Team.” Turns out not only is Garona Halforcen still alive, but she’s had a Quarter-orc/Quarter-Draenei/Half-Something-else (Human?) kid and the kid is some kind of secret angsty Chosen Shaman Hero (I wonder if Thrall knows his role is being usurped). Not only is the walking angst ball the Prophesy Fulfilled but he’s training with an Undead Mage who is not Scourged undead. He is just dead and still living for other reasons. A completely ridiculous contrivance given that there are already Undead Mages who would already be angsty and vengeance driven. World of Warcraft as a whole is anti-Chosen One. Everybody in the game is chosen for something or other even if it is just taking out the trash (dailies) or running a book back to the library (Dire Maul).

The fact of the matter is that we don’t need any of it. None of the crazy over the top punctuation, inconsistent art, lore stamping or insane cliches. There is a great world out there, full of characters and situations that beg to be told. None of this silly epic fantasy crap needs to be involved. If I was writing it, the comic should would an anthology story showing people all over Azeroth getting involved in the weird crap that makes up their daily lives. Here’s a Paladin investigating the Deadmines, here’s a rogue stealing something from a mage, here’s a hunter chasing a rare animal to tame, here’s a warrior locked in a life and death struggle with some ogres. Show a swordsmith running all over creation gathering materials for a rare and potent weapon then hocking it on the auction house only to have an enchanter break it down for dream dust. Do a series from the perspective of the kid ghost in Darrowshire. Show Tirion Fordring’s In Dreams questline. Show an impromptu battle (DOGPILE!) for the Arena Master trinket in the Stranglethorn Arena. Do an issue from the POV of those chuckleheads in Zul’gurub as a party works its way through the instance. Just two guys talking trash as a 20 man group battles everybody else then mostly wipes to Mandokir. I loved the “Ding!” when he killed somebody (and gained power) answered by a “Grats” from the other guy. There are tons of stories waiting to be told a la World War Z all over Azeroth.

One bright light though, the Ashbringer comic is really quite good. Not good enough to pay $20 for a hardcover edition of four comics with no added concept drawings, interviews, timelines, or bonus material to speak of. There is one single page of “Lineart to finished page” transition stuff, but not only is it one physical page, but it uses a full page of art as an example, splitting that page into four small boxes. In the day and age of multiple director commentary + posters + trailers + behind the scenes features DVDs, such a high price/low content special edition is crap. But that’s DC/Wildstorm for you. It took ten years to get all the Starman issues collected, let alone the sidestories. And I’m paying out the ass for it.

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I’m trying out more random limited series stuff recently, and I have to say that I like comic series with a definite beginning middle and end. It makes for a bit of a change from the open-ended craziness of Bleach, but if you never read anything with a planned complete arc then the constant feature creep would get old after a while. That said:

Atomic Robo: I never “got” 8-bit Theater. I don’t know why. It just sat next to VG Cats in the “not really all that amazing” pile. This, on the other hand, is gold. I love the Robot-son-of-Tesla thing and the Fightin’ Scientists thing. Pretty much all of the book is great. This will be one of the ones I pick up in trade.

Umbrella Academy: Yes, it is by the guy from My Chemical Romance. Don’t let that turn you off. It is actually a good, pulpy little adventure story. The art is top-notch the writing is punchy, and the character design is great. Another keeper in the collected edition. Also, it seems that I’m missing issue 3. Rather like Robo… maybe I missed a week at the old comics store.

As always, Walking Dead and Powers seem to be falling behind. My two favorite comics have such a random release schedule that I can’t really count on Walking Dead week (or Powers week). It is dang annoying.

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I’ve been slack about the Wednesday Comic Update thing, so I’ll talk about the Abe Sapien solo series. Its running right now from Dark Horse Publishing, pick it up from your local comics store, or wait for me to buy it and bug me (if you know me).

The first thing you notice about a comic is the art, like it or not. I know our mother’s told us not to judge a book by its cover, but it is hard to do that when half the thing is the artwork. This is great stuff. It isn’t exactly Mignola’s style like the first few issues of BPRD were, and this is a good thing. If you try to hard to emulate Mike, then it drives home just how much you aren’t the creator of Hellboy. The art needs to be atmospheric, but at the same time unique, so you can enjoy it while not constantly comparing it to the original. Like Guy Davis’s work on the latter part of BPRD, this works. The coloring is spot on as well, the environment and the characters have this realistic washed out appearance that frames the punchy action sequences well.

Second is the writing. To write a good Hellboy/BPRD you need to have the right level of pulpy bombast, but you need to take it seriously enough to still be genuinely horrific. This was something that latter day Howard and Lovecraft fan-authors need to get right. If you spend too much time laughing at the conventions of the genre, then when it comes time to legitimately be creepy/action-y then you can’t close the deal, because there is still too much chuckling going on. The writing here is spot on.

The overall plot comes later. How does it fit into the Hellboy mythos? How much does this feel like a Hellboy story? This storyline works perfectly. It starts with a Victorian paranormal investigator leaping out of a zeppelin onto a genuine Flying Dutchman in order to jam an enchanted dagger into the heart of a dead Dutch warlock and it gets cooler from there.

Abe Sapien is a great series. One I’ll look forward to in my pull box each month and one whose collected edition I will pick up for potability’s sake when I want to fill my shoulder bag with good comics.

The Walking Dead: Still great, still intense as hell. I’m waiting for a shocker of and ending. If a major character doesn’t die (or two) I’ll be so ticked at Kirkman.

Proof: Bigfoot works as a special agent for an agency that tracks and polices “Cryptids,” creatures that would feature prominently in X-Files episodes. This would be a good series if the author would lose his fascination with flashbacks and simultaneous action stories. This isn’t Lost. Just tell one story and tell it well.

Also Kristi and I are going to Flogging Molly later today, so whoo hoo!

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All right. I’m back. I spent most of the weekend being a lazy bastard, so i’ll be backdating this week of posts in order to make up for it. Expect to see posting more frequently over next week. Temporally this will be confusing as i’ll be pretending that this is “last week:” a la i have not yet seen the Matrix.

So to start off, comics.

Batman: Nevermore #2: Guy Davis pens a Batman/Poe crossover, and it feels a whole lot like “The Marquis.” Batman looks like the titular character from Davis’s other series, and the writing shares the baroque feel of Marquis. I’ll hunt down the first and wait for the later issues, in the vacuum of no Marquis i’m enjoying this one.

Powers #31: I always thought that Powers needed more naked monkey people. Thankfully Bendis took my concerns to heart and did an entire issue with just monkey man grunting and lots of naked neanderthals. Seriously though he and Oeming have either gone completely insane and destroyed the series or they’ve started a ball rolling that will revolutionize comics as we know them.

The thing is they may have actually done both. In the short term this issue doesn’t stand on its own very well. On the other hand, it serves as a bellweather for increased future rocking. See it concerns the very beginning of time. There’s this tribe of monkey people and they do monkey people things. Foraging, avoinding lions, doggy style monkey whatnot and all that. However, these neanderthals have superpowers. That woud be the novel twist part. The next issues proport to be a further history of a human society that grew up completely side by side with powers. I think this could be interesting, as far as i remember we’ve got powers suddenly appearing around WWII and then exploding all over the place. At least in the Marvel-verse and all that. This could just be me not seeing things though.

Wolverine: Snikt!: Tsutomu Nihei’s style is perfect for this sort of thing. I really enjoyed it, but then its Wolverine vs. a billion skeletal robots, and what’s not to love. There’s very little dialogue, but that fits the story. I’ve always liked that “Man with No Name” thing so this works out really well. I’ll be buying it issue by issue and probably later when it gets collected.

Randy: Welfare Problems: As much as i hate to say it i think this isn’t a very good album. I’ve been listening to it for a while and it just does less and less for me each time i hear it. The first problem is that its a $15 album with only 12 songs on it. Second problem is that they just seem to be off. Something’s just different about their music. The guitars aren’t as lound, the vocals are subdued, and the message is off. They aren’t really singing about much in general, and its all way too similar. I still hate to say it, but i may not end up buying the next CD. Which sucks, as i’ve really enjoyed almost all of their other stuff.

Luckily there’s a Dropkick Murphies CD coming out soon, and apparently the new Live disc isn’t half bad.

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And like all Wednesdays, I spent part of this afternoon at the local comic store dropping some hard-earned cash on this and that. Among them a good pile of comics and an RPG suppliment.

I got the new Powers, and i won’t even bother to tell you it is great. Bendis is still stringing me along with the literal bombshell he dropped last month, and damn but i’m now saying “It wasn’t enough, i need more Powers!” Damn that is one hell of a comic, and like always he manages to turn the whole superheroe genre on its head, but maintain a storyline and make the whole thing more than just an experiment in fiction.

The new Eden’s Trail was bought too. I’m not sure if i enjoy it, but i bought it anyway. What they are doing with light is impressive, atleast. The way that they are showing almost everything that is outside in this burned yellow tone makes me think of Pitch Black (the Vin Diesel movie), and i did enjoy the lighting on that flick. The rest of the story… well, its a bit Trigun, and the guy is either Korean or a veteran of self-published doujins. The explaination there is that he tends to leave a lot of the action “between panels.” Where another artist would take a few extra panels to set stuff up, or devote an entire page to one panel, he has about eight or more per page. That’s a solid reminder of somebody who either had to pay out of pocket for each page, or is from Korea. I’m not sure why, but all manhwa (K-spelling of manga) that i’ve read seem to be heavy on the panels-per-page count. I don’t know why.

There was an issue of “Lady Constantine” though, but that is just because Joanna rocks all ass. Seriously, not buying that would be like not buying the “All Flesh Must be Eaten” book i bought.

Which lets the zombie out of the bag. I also bought “Pulp Zombies,” an expansion for AFMBE. Damn but it rocks. That was never a consideration though, it had to be bought on principle. I mean just look at the damned thing. Warning, the page is hungry for more than brains, it wants all your RAM for its javascripts too. Anyway, the descript as “Two Fisted High Adventure” should clue you in that your ass is about to be kicked. Seriously, this is Nazi zombies, undead Gangsters, and the men (and women) who take them down. Soon as i get the core rules i am so playing this. The only problem is that the core rules are about to be revised (in March) so dropping the $20 on it now would be a little silly.

I mean damn though, mentalist powers, detectives fighting zombies, its CoC without all the death and insanity. I might be able to make a character who could span multiple campaigns with this… Damn i need to get up to Florence this weekend (we’ll see what the ‘rents and woman want from me), that D&D character is starting to gather dust for god’s sake.

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I’m seeing Two Towers tonight. You’d better belive i’m taking tomorrow off work.

I’ve also had early comic book day, as i haven’t been to Silver City in a while, and they are so refreshingly free of all the Heroes-related drama. So i think i’ll talk about what i bought at the comic store.

First off, i bought an issue of Lone Wolf 2100 that managed to not piss me off. See, at best the book was a guilty pleasure. I did like the art, its demi-anime depressed metal look (you’d have to cract the book to know what i was driving at, but suffice to say that is actually a pretty accurate description), but the writing left more than a little to be desired, as atleast once per issue there is some truely crige-worthy exchange. However, Issue 5 changed all that: the little girl spent the whole issue in a radiation suit (and is mute anyway) and Itto said nothing at all. Add that to the visuals of destroyed Sungshan and you have a hell of an issue. Too bad it didn’t really connect with the rest of the series. I get the impression that there was an entire missing issue that they glossed over to get to the robot fight scene between number 4 (last issue) and number 5 (this issue).

I also got Powers #25, and if you aren’t reading Powers now, then what the hell is wrong with you? Powers is probably the best montly out there, bar none, in writing, ink, or colors. The only books i put even on the same level are Kabuki (not monthly) and Hellboy (on indefunate hiatus). Honestly, go get your ass a copy of “Who Killed Retro Girl” and start from the very beginning, but after that you only have “Roleplay” and “Little Deaths.” There have been nothing but amazing story arcs in this series, and nearly every issue finds a new way to portray either superheroes, cops, or the relations between superheroes and the public. In short you need to be reading this one.

I also bought some Warren Ellis book by the name of Mek, and i honestly wish i hadn’t. Why do i keep buying things by this guy? I never really enjoy them. Ah well, i’ll just chock this one up to disliking social commentary that tries to ram the fact that it is ment as social commentary down my throat. If you want to entertain me while making me see your point, do so. If you want to present to me a long-winded discussion of why drugs should be legalized in the guise of cybernetics, you can stuff it, windbag.

I also scored the Moriboto Type-2 robot from Jinki-Extend. I’ll be posting pictures later, but suffice to say its a Kaiyodo robot toy in all that that implys. The thing has nearly 30 points of articulation, no feeling that arms are about to fall off, comes with over five different weapons (one a spear that has multiple interchangable blades) and can stand on its own. Take that Todd McAssface!

Remind me never to search for Big O Season 2 on WinMX ever again. As big a fan as i am of “Oops - Big tits bouce out of bra,” that really wasn’t what i was looking for. Unless season 2 makes some really odd character changes.

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So yeah, apparently Marvel is coming out (double meaning?) with an openly gay cowboy charater with the not-at-all aptly named Rawhide Kid. And think i just have one thing to say: I don’t give a damn. Honestly. Not that there’s anything wrong with being gay or anything, but the only reason that sexuality enters into a comic is either to give the Green Goblin somebody to kidnap who has some connection to Spiderman, or to give teenage boys some tits to stare at. There is no body anywhere who has ever said “Oh sweet! The new Batman is out, and he’s got a new girlfriend! This is the best issue ever!”

I read Hellboy, Powers and Kabuki, and thank the gods but relationships should probably never darken those particular doors. Well, i think Kabuki and Akemi had a little fling-thing, but that was combined to two emotional headcase agents kissing in a bathtub. Both of whom, i think i should mention, were serving as each other’s sole confidants while they underwent extreme psychological torture and brainwashing.

Hellboy and Powers, however, will probably never (i say probably) delve into the whole ess-e-ecks thing, and that’s a good thing, because neither have anything to do with the issue. I read Powers for incredible writing and spot-on artwork, i read Hellboy because it is brilliant in a pulpy, madcap way. What i’m saying, really, is that if the focus of a comic is sex (or sexuality), the audience will be more than a little limited, to say nothing of the plot.

And yes, i do own a lesbian porno comic. I have no idea how i got it, but Amazon just shipped it to me one day. I also have no idea how to ship the damn thing back, because they have no record of me purchasing it, and i’m worried that returning it would put my name on a list somewhere. “People who buy comics about girls having sex with eachother” perhaps. And then i’d get even more porn spam. None telling me to “Knock down walls with my monster cock” however, which may be a good thing.

Well honestly, i haven’t bought a Marvel book since the X-Men: Onslaught thing just ruined my taste for garden-variety superhero books. I can say that i don’t miss X-Men a bit, and there’s a damn lot that Marvel would have to do to win me back. Starting off with promicing me i’ll never have to buy a copy of Thor or The Hulk to find out what the hell is going on with the damned X-Men. When i want to find out if Cyclops is dead or alive, i want to look for Uncanny X-Men number eighty-billion and five, not “This month’s Captain America!”

Ah well, that’s that then. And i think i’ve babbled enough.

I’ve hit a snag in Metroid: Fusion though. That damn security robot is back, and it’s whooping my ass. Its not the seeker missles, or the damn small window of time i have to hit the damn thing, but rather the fact that it seems content to just drop me in the middle of electrified water and then laugh at me. The fact that it continuously beats the daylights out of me, however, only serves to intensify the love i have for this game. I think its the finest game i’ve ever emulated without playing the console version first.

So when are you guys coming down here to see Equilibrium? (or are you even planning on doing so?) Just so i know not to try to start moving shit over to the new house. Speaking of new houses, my address is changing once again, and this means i’ll have to change the address on my Amazon wish list (i think it’s still 93 Miles, which could be a problem as my ‘rents moved out of there almost six months ago) and on Paypal. Lord getting a parking space is more annoying than it should be.

(Read the article)

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Yeah, also my Mom was coming back from Texas and we were celebrating my girlfriend’s dad’s birthday… all in all a bad weekend for leaving Columbia. I really should check these things before making plans, no? And its not like i don’t have multiple PDA’s to help me with these things.

So i bought Lawrence Marvit’s abso-fuckin’-lutely incredible Sparks graphic novel. I have to say that any Eisner nomination that this book recieved was very well deserved. His art really shows an animation background (particularly a Chuck Jones Studios animation background) so every posture, action, and expression has just the right amount of dynamism to look absolutely appropriate. As for the writing, well, think of a more adult version of “The Iron Giant.” The reason i say “adult” is because the movie (which i have mentioned i unashamably love, and which made me sob like a little girl) is themed on friendship, while Sparks is themed on love and all that. Basic plot rundown: Socially maladroit female auto mechanic builds “perfect man” out of scrap metal, lightning brings said to life, plot ensues. It is fiendishly well written, and again probably the most “moving” (i hate that term, but it is better than “depressing”) thing i can read is innocent life’s steadfast dedication to dignity and innocence in the face of the loss thereof. Ah well, i’m murdering an attempt at a review, so just go buy it. Fair warning, it is both weighty and expensive. It clocks in at about $35, and the author added 170 extra pages to tie the story up. It had almost twice that before he did the adding.

So i still haven’t saved anything to the 80 gig drive. I maintain that somehow i could magically ressurect all my old crap. I admit that the 80 gig thing is excessive, and that i had never even filled one solitary gigabyte up… Doing a mental inventory i really only had old webpage copies and downloaded fanart taking up space but still, there was stuff on there that i’ll be missing. Some of it i’m not sure that there is a way to replace. Here’s a list:

1. My nearly encyclopaedic EGC archives — Without pause i had the EGC from its inception about to the leaving of the original location. I have all of the Venus Tenure on this webserver somewhere. The current Diaryland location i have none of. I was quite proud of those Archives.
2. Cristal Thomson’s After the Ride chapter’s 1 - 5 — This one i think is lost most permanently. Atleast in the form that i had on my drive. I was proofing a novel that a friend of mine was writing, and it was quite cool. I think she’s started writing it again, or re-writing it, so the version i had is most likely apocrypha.
3. Chatty’s first gift fanart for me — Hey, it’s a birthday gift, i can be annoyed with i inadvertantly reduce it to zeroes.
4. All of my mp3’s — I can get those back, but geez that’ll take a while. And in the case of the wierd canadian filk, how will i remember all the titles?
5. Every webpage i’ve ever designed, including my only commercial web design — They weren’t awfully good, but still, it was a nice thing to look at and tell myself that i’ve come a long way design wise.
6. Some really kickass ADOM savefiles — i’m actually kind of glad these are gone. Gives me more incentive to beat the sucker again.
7. My Book’s preface — The internet wayback machine should be able to find this. I’ll let everybody who reads this page know. Nope, no dice. I hope that the actual written copy can be found somewhere, but what with the massive purge i did while moving i’m not so certain.

Just so i don’t look too morbid, i’ll tell everybody that i’ve caught the X-Com bug again, this time hardcore. I’ve checked some FAQ’s and found out that the alien’s that were kicking my ass so badly are the most annoying of aliens, and that my innattention to reasearch was getting my ass kicked in the first place. So i need to work on as much research as i can and get laser rifles and heavy plasma all over the place… and use the tanks more… and have more than one heavy weapons guy. Either way i need to change most of my playing style completely.

You know what the game needs, thought? Patent applications. You can sell stuff you manufacture as an arms dealer, but if you could apply for a patent on it and all that, and get a monetary income based on research that would kick ass. And of course you’d have industrial espionage by other firms seeking to either discredit or just make a buck off of your defending of the world. And if you left a UFO crash site unsecured or uninvestigated, there would be the possibility that another company would send people out there and either the illegal recovery team would get killed and make X-Com as an organization look bad, or they would research UFO Flight or something, make flying cars, and as a consiquence you would have to lease your UFO’s as well as your fighter jets. Just some odd babbling in general, but since the developers have long since gone broke, there is no need not to speculate what could have been in X-Com: Genesis.

I think i’ll stop here, and see what i can do for recovering my drive. Damn i’m preoccupied with this. I don’t have laundry to do though, so i guess i need something…

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