Rich Reviews Everything

This week in DC Comics

2011-10-17T21:39:00.000-07:00

From Suicide Squad #2

At this point, these are the books of last week since the new books come out every Tuesday, but better late than never! Book of the week:

Demon Knights #2

This book is just head-and-shoulders above anything else out this week. I love it. The crazy barbarian biting into dragons stole the book. This book is a mixture of humor and awesomeness.

Batgirl #2

The Good Reads
Suicide Squad #2 - The Squad is dealing with a zombie virus that has broken out at a football game, allowing the diverse set of personalities to finally interact. Harley alternates between being a scene stealer and being just too far over the top.

Batgirl #2 - I feel mixed on this because the villain carried the issue, and Barbara Gordon just seems to have stepped backwards as a character. But I'm sure Gail Simone will keep this book going strong.

Batman and Robin #2 - More of a Bruce/Damian story than a Batman/Robin story this month, very light on action. Fortunately, Damian's a compelling character.

Resurrection Man #2 - This one was paced a little slow, but I kind of liked that I had to read to the end to find out what his current power was. I was disappointed that another character in this book wasn't in play at the end, but maybe he'll be a recurring character.

Grifter #2

Not impressing me...
Superboy #2 - Lab rat Superboy made for an interesting issue #1, but Superboy's first mission with Rose Wilson falls flat.

Green Arrow #2 - This book is actually one from last week that I forgot to read. I'm just not liking the characters, but the villains posting everything on youtube is a nice modern take.

Green Lantern #2 - Sinestro gives Hal a ring that he has complete control over, and spends the story putting him in his place. This just felt like a waste of an issue, taking up space until the action starts again next month. And it's still some of the ugliest drawings of Hal Jordan I've ever seen.

The Grifter #2 - As our Hitman continues to hear voices, this is the book that I want to quit but just can't bring myself to because I feel like it's going to get good as soon as I do.

Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E. #2

Dumped
Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E. #2 - It was an interesting idea; but it just did not click for me on any level.

Mr. Terrific #2 - This book is a huge disappointment for me. Because I'm such a big fan of this character, I'm quitting this book before they ruin him for me, and I'll watch for a new writer to take over.

This week in DC Comics...

2011-10-09T19:27:00.000-07:00

from Animal Man #2

I'm going to do a weekly round quick-hit of reviews now that I'm reading comics regularly again. Let's start with book of the week:

Action Comics #2

Just as great as last week, with Superman captured by the military (advised by Lex Luthor) who tests his physical limits. It's a shame that this is "five years ago" Superman, I'd rather this be the character running around the DC Universe.

Batwing #2

Other great reads of the week
Swamp Thing #2 - Holland still doesn't want to be Swamp Thing anymore, and the previous Swamp Thing comes to visit. The old Swampy tells Holland that the green was always in his blood, and that the accident that he thought turned him into Swamp Thing actually prevented him from reaching his full potential. Oh, and there's a great evil coming and prophecies of a green knight. Didn't blow me away like the first one, but it's still pretty engrossing for a really talky book where we haven't even seen the current Swamp Thing yet.

Animal Man #2 - Animal Man's daughter can bring dead animals back to life (making for the ugliest pets ever) and knows what the tattoos that have shown up on AM's body mean.Quirky, creepy book.

Batwing #2 - In spite of being another Batman derivative, this book has won me over with its beautiful art and a well-told story in a unique setting.

Justice League International #2 - The Hall of Justice burns, and while trying to secure the team, the JLI is attacked by a giant robot. It goes badly, and Booster is forced to call a retreat, causing some to doubt his leadership. This book may not have the humor of the classic JLI, but it's got the dynamic I liked of the dysfunctional team trying to come together.

Stormwatch #2

Enjoyable but not outstanding
Stormwatch #2 - Stormwatch is at war with the moon, as the recruiting drive continues and we get to know the team members a little better. Story's not really flowing for me at this point, but I am liking the characters.

Red Lanterns #2 - Still trying to find a direction for his team, Atrocitus contemplates what makes one rage more worthy than another. In the middle I started to feel like the writer needed a direction as badly as Atrocitus, but the point became clear in the end. I'm enjoying how this book is taking shape.

Detective Comics #2 - Joker's at large, and since he's literally left his face behind, he's particularly hard to locate. After last month's cliffhanger, having this book open with Bruce making business deals and hooking up with ladies was not holding my interest, and even once the batsuit was on, I felt like it was being dragged out. Nice reintro to a classic Batman villain at the end, though.

OMAC #2 - Last issue was fun, this issue was just there. Just not digging the protagonist when he's human, and he's a puppet when he's OMAC. Brother Eye is the star here.

Penguin: Pain and Prejudice #1 of 6

Dumped
The Huntress #1 of 6 - I don't understand how Gotham's least interesting vigilante keeps getting featured roles.

Hawk and Dove #2 - I was on the fence last month. In the first few pages here, we're introduced to antagonists Condor, Osprey, and Swan. I started contemplating how they could eventually team up with Robin, Black Canary, Hawkman, and Raven. Or maybe have a long-running feud against the Penguin. Oh, wait, didn't they mention a Hawkman tie last issue? I can't do this...

Penguin: Pain and Prejudice #1 of 6 - When Batman went serious in the early seventies, Penguin should have evolved as well. I think there's a potential for a good character, so I was hopeful with this book, but I ceased to care with the first "wah wah wah"

DC Comics: The New 52 - week 5

2011-10-04T21:16:00.000-07:00

Wrapping up the rest of the #1s! Here's my favorite clip of the week:

From Aquaman #1

Reviews of the internet were much more favorable to this weeks books than I was. A large number I didn't like, and even more are just barely hanging on. But let's get to the good stuff: the book of the week is...

All-Star Western #1

It seems to be the theme of this reboot... three of the four full weeks, my favorite book ended up being one that I had no expectations of liking. I had never finished a single Jonah Hex book in my life. Set in 1880's Gotham, Hex is working with Amadeus Arkham, of Arkham Asylum fame, to find a serial killer. A couple of other familiar names pop up over the course of the book. This was one of those reads I wanted to slow down and savor. I like the idea of getting to know Arkham and hopefully we end up seeing the early days of the asylum.

Green Lantern: The New Guardians #1

Other really good books
Aquaman #1 - I always liked Aquaman in the Justice League. Not so much in his own titles, because the Atlantis-based stories never appealed to me. Here, Aquaman's decided to abandon his claim to the throne and live on land. And the book's not afraid to have fun with the character, addressing talking to fish, villains and law enforcement being unimpressed when they realize it's just Aquaman. If they keep playing up the "nobody's favorite hero" bit, it's the kind of thing that could set him apart, ironically, put him on a few favorite lists.

Teen Titans #1 - A very marginal choice for the "really good" list; it was just simply a solid read. Apparently teenage metahumans are just starting to explode on the scene, and a group called N.O.W.H.E.R.E. is kidnapping them. When the baddie said that "N.O.W.H.E.R.E. is global," I wonder if the irony was intentional. Red Robin declares war on them, and we're setting the groundwork for the new team at this point. Love the new Red Robin costume a lot better than the old one.

Green Lantern: New Guardians #1 - So we get a re-hash of Kyle Rayner's origin, and then see across the universe different colored rings all abandoning their owners and heading to Kyle. Oh, and the owners are following too, a little pissed. This is a hard book to judge, because there's really not much here at this point. But I'm predisposed to like anything Green Lantern.

The Fury of Firestorm: The Nuclear Men #1

Not bad, I may ride with these for awhile
Voodoo #1 - Voodoo is a stripper, and a couple of people are interested in her. The book centers around her stripping, and at the end we get a glimpse of why the mysterious people are interested in her, and why they're kind of interesting themselves. It was a weak issue, but there's potential here and I like to support new characters, so I'll give it time.

Batman: The Dark Knight #1 - GOTHAM overload. As I was reading this, I was thinking that if there was one Batman title to skip, it would be this one. It's not bad, it's just... how much Batman do you want to read in a a month? But the last page revealed what could be the reinvention of an old Batman villain. I'm at least going to read one more issue to find out more

Justice League Dark #1 - When the might of the Justice League fails against Enchantress gone insane, the forces of magic begin to gather to take up the fight. Not wowed, but it's worth a shot. Plus, "Hellblazer" John Constantine has been imported from another DC line, and I'm a little curious. But maybe I should just go read those Hellblazer books instead.

The Flash #1 - As a character, Flash has always been one of my favorite concepts, but the book has always been hit-or-miss, and then they brought Barry Allen back and he just plain sucked... his character was stuck in the 80's. The character is actually a little fresher here, the de-aging seems to help. But this book just falls short for me. I'm more interested in Kid Flash over in Titans at this point.

The Fury of Firestorm: The Nuclear Men #1 - Jason is Firestorm. Ronnie is Firestorm. The two Firestorms merge to become an entity with a mind of its own called Fury. What I liked while both guys hate each other equally, the rivalry started when the geek was being an ass to the jock, rather than Ronnie playing fully to the stereotype. In the end, it's hard to particularly like one more than the other, and I'm feeling serious misgivings about the Fury entity. I fear this one won't be on my reading list long.

The Savage Hawkman #1

I just don't care
Superman #1 - While Action Comics #1 was all kinds of awesome, this was all kinds of boring. It seems the Daily Planet is no longer relevant in the digital age, and Clark is clinging to the past. Invites comparison on a couple different levels, but it wasn't a Superman I wanted to read.

The Savage Hawkman #1 - I don't like Hawkman, period. Which is a shame, because this was a pretty good story. I actually recommend it to anyone who appreciates Hawkman.

Blackhawks #1 - My eyes just kept glazing over. I'm not even sure what I read.

I, Vampire #1 - In contrast to Blackhawks, I was intently reading, seeing elements that I liked on individual pages, but I just couldn't follow what the heck was going on. Maybe I'm just an idiot; this book needed some Stan Lee narration or something. Exelsior!

2011-10-03T03:00:00.000-07:00

For the past six weeks, most of the traffic to this blog has been because I posted a pic of Ben Henderson's tattoo.

So in case you're wondering, I can be bought.

Final Fantasy XIII (PS3)

2011-10-02T22:43:00.000-07:00

I've played most of the Final Fantasy games up until this one, so in spite of the bad reviews, I wanted to give this one a try. I really liked it.

Let's get the ugly out of the way. This game suffers from one of my most hated sins: initially, it doesn't want to let you play. I counted, in this case. Two hours before I felt like I was actually given any control of the game. And I felt like the game kept the kids gloves as far as composing parties and individual character advancement, until about twenty hours in.

I've quit plenty of games out of frustration because I just got tired of being treated like an idiot. It's for this reason that I won't play Zelda: Skyward Sword until I can get it under $20. Because they told me Twilight Princess was good, too, but feeling like I still couldn't be trusted to control the hero after several hours of gameplay just got to the point where I snapped and couldn't handle another hour of "training" mode.

The story, too. Fal'cie, L'cie, cocoon, pulse..... terms that kept coming up to describe what was going on, and it took me a long time to remember what some of these meant and so the story didn't make a lot of sense. Guess I could've read the datalogs, but if I felt like reading, I would have picked up a book instead of a game controller.

I initially didn't like the characters either, but they grew on me. Perhaps because they all have character progressions, which helped me grow attached to them all... even the guy in the skull cap, who just screams "douche". So initially they're all annoying, and the only one that gives you and reason to keep playing is the quirky girl that's in every Final Fantasy game, hair color may vary. And even she has her secrets.

If you've ever played a Final Fantasy game, you know the one I'm talking about.

What really sets this game apart from games past is the paradigm system. As usual, you never command more than three characters at a time. But in this case, you're not controlling the individual moves of two of the characters... only the one you designate leader (well... once you're allowed to actually control party composition, about twenty hours in). And even the leader, more often than not, you're selecting auto-attack anyway.

Where's the strategy, then? Okay, this will take a bit of explaining, bear with me for a few paragraphs. There are six roles in the game, which you'll probably specialize to the six characters. But each character can eventually train in whatever roles you want. Let me clarify the roles:

Two DPS classes: physical (Commando) and magic (Ravager). Ravager attacks help build chains where your attacks progressively deal more damage, while commando attacks stop those chains from expiring between attacks.

A tank (Sentinel) and a healer (Medic). And two buff/debuff classes. Synergists buff allies, while Saboteurs jack up your enemies.

And within the confines of a tough fight, you'll have to have your characters jump between the classes they've learned. A commando and two ravagers will be your go-to paradigm for dealing swift-and-blinding fury, but what if you start taking damage? Maybe switch to a commando-ravager-medic paradigm? However, if you have an enemy that can kill with one hit, you may need a sentinel to draw damage for those fights... but when you've got that same enemy on the defense, you'll want your him to stop tanking for a few minutes and become a damager. Or what if your enemy goes berserk? You may need two medics just to keep the sentinel up!

Prepare your team for whatever awaits....

And managing tough battles where you have to jump between paradigms and select the best players before hand is actually a lot of fun. In every final fantasy game, there's a hunting area, and I've been there the last two days because the most fun in the game for me is finding the right party make-up and paradigm strategy for these "boss" battles. I am seriously enjoying the game that much right now.

But the system falls short in two areas for me:

1) Saboteur and synergist. more often than not, it's too easy to ignore them. And

2) For every character combination, you can select up to six paradigms. But they're not saved. Which means that each time you switch up characters, you have to go in and select your paradigms, because the two or three presets just won't cut it. I end up sticking with characters who aren't the best for a particular fight, because I don't want to spend a minute creating all my paradigms. It only takes a minute, but as many battles as there are in the game, those minutes could quickly turn into hours.

3) I keep wanting to at least control my main character, even though auto-select makes more sense. And so I keep pushing my button like an idiot between moves. I'm pretty sure this game is speeding up my eventual carpal tunnel, more than any game I've played in recent years. For all my appreciation of this system, I'm not completely adapting even after many, many hours.

But it's still a pretty unique approach to a party RPG, and I've really been enjoying it. I haven't finished it yet, but just based on the fact that I want to stay in the hunting area and fight "bosses" (and presumably gain lots of experience which will allow me to finish the game quickly once I leave) I'm ready to go ahead and score this: 4/5. There are still bugs in the system, but I hope it's not the last time I play this system. Maybe XIII-2 will perfect it?

I get why a lot of people hate this new party system, since it feels like you have less control over the individual characters. But for me, it's a different train of thought that feels no less exciting; I encourage anyone whose ever like a Final Fantasy or JRPG to try it for yourself.

A la carte a reality?

2011-09-28T22:21:00.000-07:00

A few weeks back, I posted some thoughts on the state of cable television, wherein I stated that the only way a la carte could ever happen would be through an act of Congress. Because any single cable company who attempted this would be fighting a losing battle against the channel providers.

Then I read this tidbit comes in:

Cable operators want to go "a la carte"
U.S. cable operators are privately working on a plan to force programmers to unbundle their networks and allow customers to subscribe to channels on an individual basis.

Wow. The cable companies are working together to force this on the channel providers. I did not see this coming. And I am very impressed.

DC Comics: The New 52 - week 4

2011-09-24T03:00:00.000-07:00

There was no real standout this week, but out of the new batch, only one book outright sucked, so I call that a win. Since normally I start this off with a pic of the issue of the week, instead I'll give my single favorite panel:

From Red Hood and the Outlaws #1

The sensitive side of me should be disgusted about what they've done to Starfire, but the lecherous side of me laughed my ass off.

Green Lantern Corps #1

The really good books
Batman #1 - The faces on this all looked weird. Not bad, but there were several shots where I was thinking, "This looks nothing at all like Bruce Wayne to me." After a bit of action, this issue takes a more casual pace centering around Bruce Wayne's plans to revitalize Gotham, and ends with a murder victim setting up a mystery villain. Fun read, and I appreciated a shot of Bruce, Dick, Tim, and Damian all together in suits.

Catwoman #1 - Most books that have tried to lure me in with sexy characters have failed. But I want more Catwoman.

DC Comics Presents #1 - Hard to make any claims about a book that will probably change writers and characters on a regular basis, but the first chapter of this Deadman story was a great introduction to the character.

Green Lantern Corps #1 - A couple of GLs killed, a taste of John and Hal trying to have normal lives before running off to OA to find a mission. Nothing that really stands out, but a solid read.

Nightwing #1 - Way too much Gotham this week, and we're barely even getting started. And wow, I thought it was overkill when they started a fourth Batman book like twenty years ago. But they seem to be getting some of their best people on these books. I liked him better blue, though. Red in the Bat-family is getting kind of repetitive.

Supergirl #1 - Another origin. Now, I've only briefly followed Supergirl over the years... I guess there've been like three or four in the last decade. So I welcomed a proper introduction/origin, and this was a good one. Hate the legwear though. When her super-hearing kicks in, she hears voices, and I recognized one of them as a quote from Batman #1... which makes me assume the other voices are quotes I just don't remember... and it's a nice touch. Even though it's hard to say what to expect from the series at this point, it was a nice start.

Red Hood and the Outlaws #1 - Another Gotham tie-in with Red Hood/Jason Todd. I'm not sure why Jason's suddenly something of a good guy, and I feel guilty for liking this.

Captain Atom #1

Not bad, I may ride with these for awhile
Birds of Prey #1 - Black Canary is forming a new team, and consults Barbara Gordon. Black Canary is wanted for murder. I'm unclear how much continuity has been rebooted, since they're vague on whether or not there's been a previous team, why Batgirl isn't going to be on the team. And is Black Canary's being wanted some new thing I can expect them to build to, or some holdover from the old continuity? Four members shown on the cover, but one (Katana) is only mentioned as a prospect, and another (Poison Ivy) does not appear in this issue. Weird choice, but I guess Black Canary and the new character Starling alone wasn't an exciting enough cover. I'm also not entirely sure of who we were fighting and why. For some reason, I feel compelled to stick around until the entire team forms to see if I like the dynamic.

Captain Atom #1 - Captain Atom seems to be resembling Dr. Manhattan a lot more these days, which would seem like a ripoff if Dr. Manhattan weren't a ripoff of Captain Atom to begin with. And Dr. Manhattan in the DC Universe is a pretty cool idea. He's also transforming matter, isn't that supposed to be Firestorm's thing? I never got exposed much to Atom before, so I'm not sure. Hard to say what direction the book is going in from the first issue, though.

Legion of Superheroes #1 - I mentioned for the Legion Lost book that I could never really get into a Legion book. That's not entirely true, there was a reboot a few years back that held my attention, but only for a few issues, and since then I still feel lost every time i pick up a legion book. And even though this apparently isn't a reboot for the Legion, it was a surprisingly good jumping-on point, in spite of trying track of 20 different characters with generic names like ultra boy, cosmic boy, and colossal boy, and star boy. If it does last for me, it will probably die about the time they try to cross over with Legion Lost, which completely bored me.

Wonder Woman #1 - This is weird. WTF am I reading? One more page...

I just don't care
Blue Beetle #1 - I had the read this one twice, because I didn't realize the first time through that it was a reboot/origin story. And the second time through, it was still pretty uninteresting. But apparently, the Blue Beetle, or "Reach" scarabs are so bad that Green Lanterns come running to destroy these things. Which is intriguing, but if this issue was any indication, any good ideas will be buried in bad storytelling. A shame, because from what I've seen of him in recent years, Blue Beetle seems too interesting to be at the bottom.

Last batch of #1's coming next week! I'm especially looking forward to Flash #1... wish they'd bring back Wally, but maybe they'll finally make Barry interesting!

Netflix lets in the competition

2011-09-23T15:30:00.000-07:00

I'm sure you've heard that Netflix is splitting their DVD service off into Qwikster. I'm assuming from the fact that they're not calling it 'mailflix' or something like that that they plan to sell off the DVD service at the earliest opportunity.

I barely even watched DVDs anymore, my rentals would literally sit around for months. But there were two reasons I never went to streaming-only:
1) Netflix was convenient and affordable; it was so easy to just not change anything.
2) The number of streams I could watch at once was tied to the number of dvds on my account. With four people in my home who like to occasionally use the service, having two streams available was pretty safe.

As a result of this change, there was no longer any benefit to keeping my DVD service, so it's gone. But will I keep the streaming?

Hell yes. No other service can touch it at this point. But here's the thing... now it's just another streaming service. Many companies went to war with Netflix and lost when they were a DVD rental company. I think this was in large part because it was just too hard to catch up to Netflix's huge inventory and the number of shipping centers.

Catching up to streaming might be a different matter. I don't think matching content will be as hard as it sounds. I believe some companies have an ax to grind with Netflix and might be willing to negotiate better deals with competitors, or that competitors might be willing to adopt business models that competitors will be more open to. I'm paying about $10 for Netflix... I wouldn't think twice about paying $20 for a service that gets the newest movies and television episodes faster.

At one point, comparing Netflix and Hulu was comparing apples and oranges. Now, Netflix has narrowed the playing field themselves. I get why they did it; I just think it was a little too soon, that they're too vulnerable at this point. I think Blockbuster would agree with me, as they just announced they'll be starting their own streaming service.

The thing that sucks will be the exclusive deals. For example, ABC may get in bed with Netflix, while FOX pledges her love to Hulu. Same for the movie companies. I hope that a business model will develop similar to the one for cable tv stations, where it behooves the content providers to get their programming to as many providers as possible.

Before I'll even consider Blockbuster, they'll need to get their software on my gaming systems (I think I heard gaming systems account for 44% of all of Netflix's streaming?). Hulu's already on my PS3, maybe I'll use some of the money I'm saving from DVDs to give Hulu a trial run. Thanks for opening up streaming to competitors, Netflix!

Green Lantern: The New 52

2011-09-20T08:02:00.000-07:00

Batman and Green Lantern have been such solid sellers in recent years, that with the reboot their continuities have been allowed to continue more or less where they left off. A quick look at all the Green Lantern-related books:

Hal Jordan will likely feature regularly in both Justice League and the flagship Green Lantern title, although he didn't make the cover of that latter! We'll come back to that.

John Stewart and Guy Gardner share top billing in the Green Lantern Corps title, and Guy Gardner is also part of the Justice League International.

Kyle Raynor looks to be a part of a separate team of crayola rings in Green Lantern: New Guardians. When I start putting together the previews that have been released for the first few books, I think major changes are coming to the Green Lantern universe sooner rather than later.

But the Red Lanterns appear to be going their own way, as Atrocitus tries to find his path now that he no longer has his lifelong goal of revenge to drive his rage.

Alan Scott died recently in the Justice Society of America books. And while recent Green Lantern history remains, Alan Scott was never really a part of that. And the whole concept of the Justice Society in general doesn't seem to fit on New 52 earth. I suspect that JSA will eventually get its own reboot on some other earth in the multiverse with Alan Scott alive and well, but that they didn't want the titles to go multiversal just yet.

So onto the point of this blog:

Green Lantern #1

The cover tells the story: Sinestro is a Green Lantern again, and as we discovered within the pages, Hal Jordan is not, having been fired by the Guardians. We're picking up right where the "War of the Green Lanterns" storyline left off, with Hal pissing off the Guardians one too many times by teaming up with the crayola rings to go after Krona, and despite saving the universe from Krona, the Guardians have stripped him of his ring. But in the process, to the shock of Sinestro as much as anyone, a Green Lantern ring chooses him once again. The Guardians uphold the choosing, believe Sinestro can be redeemed. Sinestro promises that he's not playing by their rules, but since he revealed in the War that he still loves the Corps and the Order that it stands for, he's keeping the ring.

So far so good, but here's where I have a problem: How many times has Hal Jordan found himself ring-less and once again been "chosen"? Heck, the ring he had taken away just chose him the issue before. Granted, the fact that his sector already has plenty of lanterns works against him, but the rings seem to work by their own rules at times, and rings seem to really like Hal.

It feels like a huge plot hole that the Guardians should address, especially in the wake of Sinestro getting a ring. Otherwise, when the inevitable happens, it'll be like, "Seriously, what did you expect?"

And now that I think about it, there's definitely an inherent logic flaw on the part of the Guardians that they would uphold the choosing of Sinestro while firing Jordan who normally couldn't keep a ring off his finger if his life depended on it.

Awkward...

So the new Green Lantern title splits its time between Hal, to remind us he's not going anywhere even though he's a really pathetic human being now (wonder if any of the crayolas will try to recruit him?) and Sinestro, who's on his way back to his own sector and his homeworld. Oops... Sinestro left his yellow corps in charge of Korugar, and the yellows are none too thrilled to see a green ring on his finger. Looks like it's going to be Sinestro versus the Sinestro Corps!

As a final note, I mentioned I don't normally give art much attention unless it's bad? Wow, some of the drawings of Hal in this book are BAD.

FAIL if your answer is not along the lines of "buying pepper spray".

DC Comics: The New 52 - week 3

2011-09-19T23:05:00.000-07:00

Back for week 3, which was nowhere near as impressive as week 2. Since I live for Green Lantern, I'll address the #1 separately. As for the rest of the week, there was one that stood head-and-shoulder above the rest:

Demon Knights #1

Like Swamp Thing last week, this was an unexpected surprise. Set just after the death of King Arthur, any comic book that has ever attempted anything medieval has always left me cold. And aside from showing up in the Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League, I've never read a Demon story I liked. This seemed like a pairing made to make me claw my soul out a few pages in. But wow... I don't know how to do this story justice, but when the Demon and Madame Xanadu meet up with Vandal Savage and his giant axe, and decide to stop into the pub for a drink, magic happens.

Suicide Squad #1

Other really good books
Suicide Squad #1 - In spite of the character travesty committed against Amanda Waller, Suicide Squad has always been a great concept. This is also the perfect place to give Harley Quinn a spotlight. What's not to love?

Superboy #1 - It should be noted that Swamp Thing implied that the Death of Superman is still in continuity, but apparently Superboy is no longer part of that particular story, as we're introduced to test tube Superboy. We're also told that he's a mix of Superman and some human donor, but the lead scientist dies before he could tell who that was. "Oh, we already know it's Lex Luthor", but wouldn't it be an interesting swerve if they make it Bruce Wayne or something?

Resurrection Man #1 -For those unfamiliar, every time Resurrection Man dies he comes back with a new power. An interesting idea, but you really got to have great writing to make it work. I think I was sold when the title character fighting on an airplane said they need to take it outside, despite not having any flying power or mutant healing factor. It's not a sure bet at this point, but I'm going to put myself on the line and say that this one is gonna be great

Batman and Robin #1

Not bad, I may ride with these for awhile
Mr. Terrific #1 - I'm really, really disappointed that I couldn't rank this one higher. I thought this guy was, well... terrific in the JSA, and have always expected him to be a major player one day. Here is his shot, and he stumbles out of the gate. Just way too obnoxious, but I intend to stick because I don't want to miss when it finds its groove.

Batman and Robin #1 - Maybe I just liked Dick and Damian too much, but watching Bruce Wayne trying to be a dad just isn't clicking for me. I'll probably stick this one out just because it may be the only book that I'll regularly encounter Damian, who I really like.

Red Lanterns #1 - An interesting start, Atrocitus may be trying to find his moral center, which as the embodiment of rage would mean skirting the line between hero and villain. Stories about bad guys can be tricky, but this could work.

Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E. #1 - I was initially turned off by this one, I think it had to do with the art. I read through a second time, and there's definitely a solid story there. I'm going to give this time to grow on me, but the wrong art may make it too much of a chore.

The Grifter #1 - If you're going to try to do a story about a bad guy, it needs to be a really good one. I don't know if Grifter is that story, but they've hooked me with curiosity about his whole abduction.

Deathstroke #1

I just don't care
Deathstroke #1 - Most of the books in this category I couldn't even finish. I had no problem finishing Deathstroke. But as I said before, If you're going to try to do a story about a bad guy... wow, it's really getting repetitive this week, isn't it? Unlike the other two I mentioned, I'm just not feeling any potential here.

Batwoman #1 - As often as the Batwoman and her sidekick take her clothes off, you'd think this would hold my attention a little better. I read it twice, because I'd heard good things, but I just am not warming up to the character.

Legion Lost #1 - I thought maybe this could finally be the Legion book I would get into. Why do I dislike the Legion so much?

Back soon for a quick bit on Green Lantern #1 and some thoughts on Hal Jordan as he stands now.

mmmmmmm.... nuggets

2011-09-18T06:39:00.000-07:00

From 1984 to 1996, KFC sold a product called Kentucky Nuggets. Let's hop into the wayback machine to 1984...

Marcie from Married with Children tells us to "Know our Nuggets"

To promote their new popcorn chicken, their current ads ask the question, "What part of the chicken is 'nugget'"?

Hold up, KFC... you sold me nuggets for twelve years... AND TO THIS DAY YOU STILL DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU WERE SELLING? You didn't "know your nuggets"? How am I ever supposed to trust you hypocrites again?

Oh, well. Here's MC Hammer eating KFC Popcorn Chicken v1 about twenty years ago:

DC Comics: The New 52

2011-09-17T08:29:00.000-07:00

Recently, DC rebooted their entire line of comics, and here in the month of September are rolling out 52 new number one comics. I decided to try them all! Here, at the half-way point, is what I think so far...

Week One:
This week consisted of two comics: Flashpoint #5, which marked the end of the old DC, and Justice League #1, which marked the beginning of the new. And I have to say, I'm disappointed with how it ended. I mean, Flashpoint was fine. But the beginning of Flashpoint was really the end (while the current books finished out their runs without acknowledging what was happening). It just feels like an awkward way to say goodbye. Especially since the story was all about Flash/Barry Allen, who's spent the better part of the twenty-five years since the Crisis reboot being... dead.

But onto the new...

Justice League #1

I'm of two minds on this first issue. The bad: This is the first issue of the new DC Universe! It was released all by it's lonesome! Look at that cover, what a blow-out this is going to be!

It's not. It's Green Lantern meeting Batman for the first time, the action being the back-drop for some getting-to-know-you banter.

The good: it's really fun banter. It's also visually stunning.... I'm not usually one to focus to much on comic book art unless it's bad, but so many of the panels blew me away, shots that I would be willing to frame and put on my wall.

This is a first-rate book, which helped dull the disappointment that it was a poor introduction to the new DC. And the next issue isn't out until late October? I wish they'd done something else this first week, or nothing at all, because the second week was far more satisfying.

Week 2:

Swamp Thing #1

There was some great, great stuff out this first full week. It was hard to pick out a favorite, but I going with Swamp Thing just because it was such an unexpected surprise. The character has never appealed to me, but when I opened this book I was instantly drawn into the narrative. This is in spite of weak art which resulted in possibly the ugliest Superman I've ever seen. But speaking of Superman...

The Rest of the Best

Action Comics #1

Holy &$@$, they made Superman cool! There's been a lot of talk about how they're altering Superman, but I look at it this way... if a character is so hard to write for that you only get one good story every few years, that character is inherently flawed for the purposes of comic book storytelling, and needs to be reinvented. And DC is happy to do elseworlds stories when they have one to tell, so the people that miss him will still get their supergod from time-to-time.

Detective Comics #1

It's Batman versus Joker. It would be wrong to spoil how this plays out, save to say it's really, really good.

And when two of the three best books of the week are the flagship titles, you know DC is doing something right.

Stormwatch #1

Other really good books

Batgirl #1 - the idea to bring back Barbara Gordon may have been flawed, but that doesn't stop them from telling a great story. They're holding out on explaining how she's up walking around again, but not pretending like it never happened. Barbara getting used to the changes in her life as a result, and being an ass-kicking superheroine again is actually the focus of the story.

Justice League International #1 - The Giffen-DeMatteis Justice League being an old favorite of mine may have me biased, but I just love having this group of characters back together again.

Stormwatch #1 - I almost dropped this down a category because it felt so all-over-the-place, but it did so many things right for me that I really believe in this book.

OMAC #1

Not bad, I may ride with these for awhile

Batwing #1 - I expected to hate this, the concept didn't appeal to me at all. but it was actually pretty decent.

Green Arrow #1 - Definitely an improvement... the old Green Arrow was so two-dimensional

OMAC #1 - I'm not a fan of the character design at all, but the story was kind of fun and I'm curious to see where they go with the character

Hawk and Dove #1 - Barely passable; I just never liked the concept or the characters, but the story and how it may tie into the rest of the DC Universe will probably keep me around for a bit

Men of War #1

I just don't care

Static Shock #1 - I was bored by page two.

Men of War #1 - Being a comic book fan, I feel like war comics are part of the heritage, and so I really, really tried to like this, but nothing. Others liked it a lot better than I, so if it sounds like your type of thing, don't let me stop you from trying it.

This took longer than I planned! Week 3 of 5 coming shortly.

Wing Tattoos

2011-08-16T12:53:00.000-07:00

Tattoos of wings on peoples backs always bother me. The picture above is one of the smaller tattoos I could find, to make my point... and that is, whenever I look at them, I just can't shake the thought that there's no way those things could support the person's body in flight.

Am I missing the point? Maybe, but in my head, it's like someone taped forks to their hands and tried to say they were Wolverine.

"When they come out, does it hurt?"

Then, while watching Sunday's UFC show, I saw Ben Henderson.

Now those are wings I approve of... realistically, they may still be too small, but not so ridiculously out of proportion that it hurts my brain. Ben Henderson, you're doing it right.

Why cable prices go up

2011-08-16T09:22:00.000-07:00

"Ambition is the willingness to kill the things you love and eat them in order to stay alive."

I worked for Dish Network for four years before the bastiches fired me, and learned a lot about the television industry during that time. This week, Gizmodo is running a #fixcable series, and discussed the rising price of cable. In it, the writer made this statement:

"But wait! What about satellite? Doesn't satellite fix everything? No... According to the Government Accountability Office, satellite services have little-to-no effect on cable prices."

I had my own viewpoint on this, which I attempted to share last night. It appears the moderators rejected my response, which is disappointing. So I will share it here:

Actually, satellite competition has had a big effect on prices.... it's driven them up. Because before satellite came in, the negotiation between the cable companies and the programmers was a take-it-or-leave-it deal from the cable company. Oh, the customers will complain if we don't carry the channel, but what else can they do?

Now, the programmers are in the drivers seat because they can hike their prices up and play the competitors against each other. Say you're a cable company that doesn't want to take the programmer's price increase. And they're so ballsy these days in that some come in wanting to double their price*... they say it's only a few pennies per customer, but when every channel in your hundred channel package wants a few more pennies, that can add up pretty fast.

So if you decide to stand up to them, they'll pull their signal and your competitor will fight their battle for them by launching a blanket campaign that they have the channel you don't carry anymore... which is somewhat short-sighted since the competitor is empowering that same hardball game when their own contract is up.

The programmers will just keep driving the prices up and up, until the whole system collapses in on itself. The only way I see wide-spread cord-cutting being stalled is perhaps if the government legislates a la carte, and lets the customers decide if each channel is worth what the programmers think they're worth.

Mel Brooks vs Woody Allen

2011-08-15T10:57:00.000-07:00

"Excuse me while I whip this out."

Did you know "At the Movies" is still around? It's back on PBS as "Ebert presents: At the Movies"... although Ebert doesn't actually appear on it. And when the chips are down (pledge time), it appears they're going back to the classics. In this case, they went all the way back to the seventies/early eightes when Siskel and Ebert hosted Sneak Previews, and it's a pretty interesting episode, wherein they debate which of the two alleged funniest filmmakers at the time was funnier.

But here's how I see it: At one time, Woody Allen was new and different. Once the newness wore off, then the debate began about whether Woody Allen was actually funny at all.

Mel Brooks is funny, and anyone who would question that is dead inside. So Brooks wins by default.

I'm not usually one to fish for comments, but this time out... post a Mel Brooks quote. Or Woody Allen, if you're one of... those people.

Hobbits indulge in Tea

2011-07-28T09:51:00.000-07:00

Filthy hobbitses.

Going a different direction here, giving my thoughts on some of the political goings-on lately. If you have easily offended political sensibilities, please skip this post so that we can continue to be friends.

Earlier today, John McCain quoted a Wall Street Journal piece on the Senate floor, regarding the debt ceiling fiasco:

"The idea seems to be that if the House GOP refuses to raise the debt ceiling, a default crisis or gradual government shutdown will ensue and the public will turn en masse against Barack Obama....Then Democrats would have no choice but to pass a balanced budget amendment and reform entitlements, and the tea party hobbits could return to Middle-earth...This is the kind of crack political thinking that turned Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell into GOP nominees. The reality is the debt limit will be raised one way or another."

"Clearly he's been corrupted by the ring of power." - Mark Meckler, founder of the Tea Party Patriots

"As in the fable, it is the hobbits who are the heroes and save the land. This Lord of the TARP actually ought to read to the end of the story and join forces with the Tea Party, not criticize it." - Sharron Angle

Sadly, O'Donnell doesn't join in on the middle earth metaphors, just accuses McCain of flip-flopping. Although oddly enough, when i googled her regarding this, I found that she once wrote an essay about the women of middle earth. You'd think she'd have a good joke, but she instead chose to chastise McCain for name-calling (while letting Angle's 'Lord of the TARP' comment slide).

One article i browsed speculated that the Tea Party may embrace the "tea party hobbit" moniker for themselves... which is pretty funny, IMO.

As far as the debt ceiling goes... I'd like to provide a couple of quotes:

"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better."

- Obama, 2006

"Raising the debt limit is necessary to preserve the full faith and credit of the U.S. Government. We cannot as a Congress pass spending bills and tax bills and then refuse to pay our bills. Refusing to raise the debt limit is like refusing to pay your credit card bill—after you’ve used your credit card. The time to control the deficits and debt is when we are voting on the spending bills and the tax bills that create it. Raising the debt limit is about meeting the obligations we have already incurred."

- Senator Chuck Grassley (GOP), chairman of the Senate Finance committee when he made this statement in 2006

The actors have traded scripts, and while I do think that Obama is right when he emphasized that raising the debt ceiling is "routine" and "responsible"... well, let me put it this way. I understand politics is a dirty game, and at the end of the day I'm really just trying to decide if said politicians have good intentions or if they are self-serving. I think Obama has good intentions... but when I see him so blatantly playing the game, I have to point and laugh. How can Obama try to tell us that using the debt ceiling this way is wrong when he himself was willing to do it in 2006, and wouldn't even vote for the "routine" increases in 2007/2008?

Again, though... whether or not I agree with his choices, I feel Obama's intentions are good, and that goes a long way with me. Here, on the other hand, are two politicians whom I would never vote for:

Sarah Palin: He [Paul Revere] who warned the British that they weren’t going to be taking away our arms. By ringing those bells and making sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be secure and we were going to be free.

Chris Wallace: You realized that you messed up about Paul Revere, don’t you?
Sarah Palin: You know what? I didn’t mess up about Paul Revere. Here's what Paul Revere did. He warned the Americans that the British were coming, the British were coming, that we‘ve got to make sure we were protecting ourselves and shoring up all of our ammunitions and firearms so that they couldn’t take it. But remember, the British had already been there for seven years in that area, and part of Paul Revere’s ride – and it wasn’t just one ride, he was a courier, he was a messenger – was to warn the British that were already there, that you’re not going to succeed, you’re not going to take American arms, you’re not going to beat our own well-armed persons, individual private militia that we have."

and Michelle Bachmann, when confronted on her claim that the Founding Fathers worked to end slavery:

Stephanopoulos: But that’s not what you said. You said that the Founding Fathers worked tirelessly to end slavery.
Bachmann: Well if you look at one of our Founding Fathers, John Quincy Adams, that’s absolutely true. He was a very young boy when he was with his father serving essentially as his father’s secretary. He tirelessly worked throughout his life to make sure that we did in fact one day eradicate slavery….
Stephanopoulos: He wasn’t one of the Founding Fathers – he was a president, he was a Secretary of State, he was a member of Congress, you’re right he did work to end slavery decades later. But so you are standing by this comment that the Founding Fathers worked tirelessly to end slavery?
Bachmann: Well, John Quincy Adams most certainly was a part of the Revolutionary War era. He was a young boy but he was actively involved.

I really don't care that they flubbed on their history. My problem is that, when caught in a mistake about something so inconsequential, rather than just say, "oops" and put a positive spin on it, they tried to twist it up and defend it to the death. While I think I'm pretty pragmatic about my expectations from politicians, these ladies have gone too far into weasel territory and I have no faith in either of them.

PSN Reviews - Classic Remakes Edition

2011-07-17T08:32:00.000-07:00

I recently picked up the pac-man remake, and decided to share my thoughts about a couple of other 80's remakes along with it, running the gamut from amazing to unplayable.

Pac-Man Championship Edition DX
What they've done here is brilliant. Even as a child, Pac-Man was a "pick-it-up, play it until I got bored" game. This is an addiction.

First of all, it's not an infinite game like the classic... it's a series of challenges ranging from one to ten minutes. So I go into it thinking I'm just going to blow a few minutes and then go do something productive, but it turns into a series of 'just one more game'.

'Pac-Man on crack' really describes it well, because it's keeps building up to ludicrous speed and becomes something of an adrenaline rush. "But I die within a minute at regular speed," you say. Well, there are two major differences here. First... when a ghost comes within striking range, the action freezes for about two seconds to give you a chance to change directions or, if no escape is possible, to use one of a limited number of bombs you have. Second, the ghosts aren't as smart, most of them just line up behind you, and before long you have a few dozen on your trail. And that's part of the fun... building up a huge ghost tail until you finally grab that power pellet and plow through the ghosts like a senior citizen driving through a flea market.

Here comes the pain.

There are also a lot of different maze colors schemes and character designs (ranging from overly pixellated to 3D... it's like the art team came up with several concepts and they couldn't just choose one, so they said 'screw it... let's include them all. The different mazes all default to different styles for you to experience, but you can modify them to whatever you want. The familiar sounds are all there... I can't emphasize enough how crazy it is that it can feel so much like pac-man and yet be so different at the same time.

This game is part of a "Namco Generations" line which is going to be doing Galaga next, and Galaga was the best of the best to start with, so I'll be on board for that one. But I really hope they'll hit Dig Dug at some point. It's a concept that always drew me in but lacked that something that put it at a level with other games.

I know that there are two versions of this Pac-Man remake. This is the more expensive one ($9.99 currently on sale for $7.49, I believe), and I don't know how it differs from the cheaper one. But the one I played I give the absolute highest recommendation. If there's any part of you that loves old 80's games, you absolutely have to have this.

Space Invaders Infinity Gene
The theme here is evolution. The first level is space invaders, and from there the invader evolve, and you evolve. And so it becomes something different while still feeling faithful. And it rewards continued play because every time you beat yet another level, you unlock something new. I think I got to the point that I kept playing just to see if they would run out of stuff to unlock.

The problem is I've hit a level that I just can't seem to beat, and it's a long enough level that after two or three tries I don't want to do it again, and put it away for few months. But that's not the end of my disappointment...

They have a music mode in here where they make a level that integrates music on your hard drive. I tried several of my favorite songs with it, but i never got the sense that the level was really flowing with the music in any substantial way. Then there would always be a boss fight at the end of the song. The very end... so the song restarts, and I've beaten the boss before it gets to the first chorus. It comes off really awkward. If I ever hear of a game that would make me feel like I'm playing a game shaped by my music, I'd be all over it.

I did get a fair bit of enjoyment out of the game before I hit that wall, and based on that, I give this a mild recommendation.

Frogger Returns

A frogger remake, and it's only $5? How can you not at least give it a try?

I'll tell you.. because it's completely unplayable. I kid you not. I would have had more fun lighting a $5 bill on fire and watching it burn.

The controls feel laggy. I didn't always know where I could and could not jump. And I couldn't always tell if I was completely in a safe lane, leading to even more deaths. I think I played this for about thirty minutes and then DELETED IT. Avoid. Avoid. Avoid.

The Men Who Stare at Goats

2011-07-10T09:19:00.000-07:00

More of this is true than you would believe.

I used to listen to Loveline years and years ago when Adam Corolla was one of the hosts, and when a wise-ass would get through the screeners with an obviously fake story, he would respond with the deflating phrase: "Is that true? Because it's not funny."

When the phrase "More of this is true than you would believe" flashed on the screen at the beginning of this movie, I knew I was in trouble.

Because throughout the movie, I found myself analyzing every scene wondering if it was real or if it was bullshit. Ultimately, after each scene I did a quick evaluation and decided that it was only entertaining if it was true. And since I didn't know, I had to assume that it was not true, and on that basis I was not entertained.

It actually picked up near the end. I also happen to think the end was the most fictitious, which leads me to believe that they should've thrown out basing on a true story, and gone completely over the top.

On the other hand, if they hadn't thrown the "partly" true bit at me, I probably wouldn't have analyzed the movie as much, and may have been a little more entertained. But ultimately, I think the best bet was to either be true or be crazy, because the in-between left a sour taste in my mouth.

According to wikipedia, however, the book was actually sixteen different, unconnected stories, and the movie attempted to merge those stories into common, fictitious characters. I think I actually would read the book if it landed in my lap; the subject matter sounds entertaining. If I surfed this movie on tv again, however, I would just keep going. 2 stars.

Voltron Force

2011-07-08T03:00:00.000-07:00

Alright, so when they remake the classics, I feel obligated to at least give it a shot.

The first scene rubbed me the wrong way, everything I don't like about modern cartoons. Teenagers with attitudes, that art-style that strikes me as a budget anime knockoff, mixed with CGI in a jarring way. A RAP THEME SONG. If I hadn't been distracted writing that Torchwood piece at the same time, I probably would've turned it off right away.

In the first few minutes, we establish that Voltron has been mothballed by an untrusting Galaxy Alliance, that at the pilot school you're not even allowed to mention Voltron. The original Voltron cast is still around, apparently more or less loyal to the Galaxy Alliance while Keith is an enemy of the state. And I quickly realize that the script for this pilot is actually pretty good.

Not great. Maybe if the kids who are recruited to be trained as the next generation of Voltron pilots weren't there... but at least they're not instantly walking in and replacing the old cast, and they're not as bad as they could be, even while they do get a couple of cringeworthy lines. And the lions are far more animated than in the original series, without going so far that they didn't feel like robots anymore. I did like the fighting scenes.

Ultimately, I came away with a feeling that they respected what's come before, and I appreciate that. But after I finished the three-part premiere, I watched the fourth episode, and the story wasn't up to that same level. If you were a fan of the original, I'd encourage you to try it out for yourself... yet I imagine I'll simply forget about it before too much longer.

Especially since another potentially great remake debuts July 29th.

Torchwood: A Primer

2011-07-06T21:13:00.000-07:00

Torchwood. Outside the government, beyond the police. Tracking down alien life on Earth, and arming the human race against the future. The Twenty-First Century is when it all changes, and you've got to be ready.

Torchwood: Miracle Day will be premiering on the Starz Network on Friday! This series is a continuation of the BBC series, and while I'm sure great care will be given to make the show accessible for those joining us for the first time, I wrote this for any newbies who would like to know what's come before, and any old fans who might want to refresh their memories.

Seriously, though... if you have Netflix, the whole series is available to stream there. So why not just stop reading now and go watch it? I won't be hurt.

As a disclaimer, the above picture is a promotional shot from the new series. As I've avoided spoilers (River would want it that way), I'm not actually sure who the two people on the left are. :)

spoilers below the cut

Torchwood is a spin-off of Doctor Who, and basically was marketed as a more "adult" sci-fi.. The fictional Torchwood was established in the late 1800's by Queen Victoria who, after meeting the Doctor, formed an agency to defend the earth against extraterrestrial threats... the biggest known threat being the Doctor himself, whom Queen Victoria had declared an enemy of the state. The Doctor didn't know of Torchwood's existence until 2007, when he traced a disturbance to their secret tower. Torchwood had inadvertantly opened a portal to a parallel dimension and an covert alien invasion was in progress. The Doctor thwarted the invasion, and in the process hundreds of Torchwood personnel were killed, and the main branch was closed.

The Torchwood series picks up with a much smaller branch (Torchwood 3) having moved into the Torchwood Tower to continue monitoring the ~~Hellmouth~~ Rift, as it has made the city of Cardiff a magnet for all types of weirdness.

The Characters:

Captain Jack Harkness - Leader of Torchwood Three, already known to Doctor Who fans at the start of the series. Captain Jack was a former "time agent" from the 51st century. Fans hadn't seen him in over a year when this series began... he had last been seen in the far off future, in an episode where he was killed and brought back to life by the Time Vortex, and then forgotten by his travelling buddies in the chaos of the "death" of the ninth doctor.

As we catch up with him here, we learn that as a result of the previous adventure, he is now immortal. And not too happy about it. We eventually learn that upon discovering his condition, he tried to travel back in time to consult the Doctor, but overshot and ended up in the late 1800's, with his time travel machine damaged. When Torchwood caught wind of a man who couldn't die, he was less-than-willingly recruited into their organization. At the start of the series, Captain Jack is still trying to catch up with the Doctor.

Gwen Cooper - Torchwood's "police liason", recruited in the first episode. Shown with her is Rhys. Rhys was Gwen's boyfriend as the show began, and completely in the dark about what Gwen did. In the second season, Gwen decides the secrets are ruining their relationship, and spills everything to Rhys. The two are married in the second season. In the Children of Earth miniseries, Rhys actively assisted the team, but has never officially been a member.

Jack, Gwen, and Rhys are the only characters expected to carry over into the new series. Here are the other major characters from the past:

Owen Harper - doctor
Ianto Jones - Torchwood agent, later develops a relationship with Jack. (Did I mention Jack is bisexual?)
Toshiko Sato - Technical specialist

Season One
The series starts with Gwen Cooper, police officer, spying on Torchwood conducting a murder investigation she's involved in. She watches them use a device to bring the murder victim back to life. She tries to sneak into Torchwood, but discovers she's been expected. They show her around, but give her an amnesia pill. Well, one of the members has turned to the darkside. Gwen continues her investigation which leads her to one of Torchwood's members, Suzie. Jack catches Suzie trying to kill Gwen, and Suzie ends up taking her own life. Gwen recovers her memories in the process, and Jack decides to offer her a spot with Torchwood.

The first season is more episodic than what's to come. I think you can pretty much watch every episode between first and last without being lost. In the final episode, relationships formed over the first season are used to manipulate the Torchwood members into opening the rift and releasing Abaddon, a demon who threatened to destroy the world by absorbing the life-force of anyone who it came in contact with. Jack realized that since he cannot die, feeding off his life could be bad for Abaddon, and the plan does end up killing Abaddon, and apparently Jack as well. Jack does wake up a few days later, and becomes aware that the Doctor is nearby and goes chasing after him.

Season Two
Jack returns after missing (having made guest appearances on Doctor Who in the interim) for several months. On his return, a former time agent and friend of Jack's named Captain John Hart (played by John Marsters, best know to geeks for playing Spike in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Braniac in Smallville) has found Jack. He's actually on the run from someone trying to kill him, and is willing to sacrifice the lives of Jack's friends to save his own. At the end, John flees, but leaves Jack visibly shaken when he tells Jack that he's found "Gray". Later in the season, we discover that Gray is Jack's little brother, whom Jack was supposed to watch during an evacuation of his planet during an alien invasion, but the two were separated.

Mid-season, tragedy strikes as Owen is killed. Jack uses a resurrection glove to allow the team to say goodbye to Owen (a device which brings a person back to life for a couple of minutes). But then... Owen doesn't die. But he's not fully alive, either. He doesn't breathe, can't eat, and his wounds don't heal. Owen laments that while Jack is going to live forever, Owen is going to die forever.

In the season finale, John returns and captures Jack and delivers him to his brother Gray, who holds a grudge against Jack. John and Gray bury Jack in a secret location for all eternity, but John leaves Jack with a ring that will allow Torchwood to find him. Jack escapes and tries to get Gray to forgive him, but ends up sedating Gray and putting him in a cryogenic freeze. In the meantime, a nearby power plant is going into meltdown as a result of bombs that Gray had detonated throughout the city. Owen is able to vent the radioactive waste, but his body is consumed in the process, finally granting him peace. Toshiko, herself bleeding out from a gunshot wound delivered by Gray, talks Owen through his last moments. The rest of Torchwood finds Toshiko moments before her own death. The season ends with the team finding a message Toshiko left to them in the event of her death. Torchwood, down to three members, resolves to press on.

"So if you're seeing this I guess it means I'm, well, dead. I hope it was impressive, not crossing the road or an incident with a toaster. I just wanted to say, it's okay. It really is. Jack, you saved me. You showed me all the wonders of the universe and all those possibilities and I wouldn't have missed it for the world. Thank you. And Owen, you never knew. I love you, all of you. And I hope I did good."

The depleted Torchwood team appears in the huge Doctor Who season final the following year. They use the rift to help send a message to the Doctor when the Earth is hidden away to allow the Daleks to invade. Jack joins the Doctor to overcome the Daleks, while Ianto and Gwen have to trap themselves in Torchwood, using a timelock to stop a Dalek invader.

Children of Earth miniseries
Rather than do a full season in 2009, the show returned for a five-night miniseries.

So all the children on Earth suddenly start simultaneously saying "they are coming". Some British officials tie it to some aliens called the '456' that they encountered about fifty years ago, an encounter that Captain Jack was involved with... and decide that Jack is a liability, and that they might as well be thorough and take out all of Torchwood. They manage to incapacitate Jack and plant a bomb in his stomach without him knowing. Fortunately, upon returning to torchwood, he's suspected that Gwen is pregnant, and after running a scan on her to confirm, he decides to... do a pregnancy on himself as well, I guess. Which is fortunate, because his bundle of joy has just about come to term. He evactuates Ianto and Gwen and allows Torchwood to absorb the blast.

The government continues to be thorough and collects the pieces of Jack, and wisely so, since his body immediately begins rebuilding itself in a gory, painful way. Meanwhile Torchwood, and by association, Rhys, are on the run. A conscientious worker inside the government reaches out to them and helps them break Jack out, while following up a lead about a single adult that's also affected when the children started talking in unison.

The man is revealed to be one of a group of children that Jack handed over to the 456 decades before to prevent an unwinnable ware, and when the British government reaches out to the aliens, they aliens state that they want more children... ten percent of the children of earth, to be exact. Jack and Ianto confront the aliens, who respond by locking everyone in the building their in and releasing a toxic virus, killing everyone inside. Except Jack, of course, trapped with Ianto, who has become his lover over the course of the series, forced to watch him die.

"A thousand years time? You won't remember me."

"Yes, I will. I promise. I will."

The governments of Earth begin making arrangements to try to deliver the children to the aliens before the adults can figure out what's going on. Rhys and Gwen go to Ianto's family to try to protect his family, and end up trying to protect all the children in the neighborhood from being captured by the government soldiers. Jack works with the government, who has brought in his daughter and grandson, to find a way to stop the 456. They realize they can send a signal that would harm the aliens back at them, but they would need a child to use as a focal point, and that child would be killed in the process. And with no time left to stop them, there's only one child close enough to use... Jack's own grandson. Jack sacrifices his grandson to save the Earth, as his daughter watches on horrified.

We pick up six months later, with a very pregant Gwen and Rhys meeting up with Jack. Jack is still devastated over all the death that has occurred, and decides it's time to leave earth.

While this is the last we've seen of Torchwood leading into Miracle Day, Jack shows up one more time in Doctor Who. The Doctor, in a terminal state, goes and visits his friends one last time before he regenerates into his new form. Jack is drinking his sorrows away in an alien bar, and receives a note from "that man over there". It's the name of the soldier sitting next to him, and Jack, who never could resist a man in uniform, uses the information to strike up a conversation.

So there it is. Jack and Gwen (with Rhys in tow) return when Torchwood: Miracle Day debuts on Starz on Friday, and if you miss it, you'll still have about 137 chances over the coming week to catch a replay. Starz, in the past, has also delivered its original shows to Netflix in short order, so it may be available to stream sooner rather than later.

Which reminds me, I still haven't watched any of the new season of True Blood yet. What's wrong with me?

Oh, speaking of vampires and Dr Who... the remake of Fright Night starring David Tennant hits theaters on 8/19!

Some PSN Games

2011-07-03T03:00:00.000-07:00

Peggle/Peggle Nights
Peggle is a fun little waste of time. It's downright addicting until it gets buried underneath it's own weakness. . You launch a ball from the top of the screen and try to shoot in a direction that will bounce around and hit as many pegs as possible before it's lost at the bottom of the screen. Along the way, you'll encounter levels where certain pegs will cause special things to happen, like helping you aim better, or making all the pegs around it explode.

So you get about fifty levels with the basic game. I had a lot of fun with them When you're done, there's a mess of challenges. But they were basically harder versions of the previous levels. And these challenges hammered home for me that weakness that I mentioned: the harder it gets, the more it becomes a game of luck.

But it didn't stop me from shelling out another $5 down the road to upgrade to Peggle Nights and get another fifty levels. Mild Recommendation.

Flower
Pretty. Relaxing... well, until you get to that fourth level anyway.

You are a flower petal. Or maybe you're the wind.... I'm not sure about that. At any rate, you guide your flower petal across pretty green fields, waking up other flower petals. Waking up enough flowers will activate other sections. Pleasant chimes play as you activate the flowers.

There's not a whole lot of challenge here, and I think you can beat the game in an hour or two. But every once in awhile I want to revisit those green fields. Mild recommendation.

Bionic Commando: Rearmed
To clarify, this is the remake of the original, not the disappointing successor that this was released to promote.

Bionic Commando is my all-time favorite NES game, and so when I heard they were doing a remake, I knew I had to have it. What the created is truly a labor of love, as this isn't just a fresh coat of paint, but rather tightening everything up and making it worth to stand alongside the other new and shiny platformers of this console generation.

What's funny is it's pointed out to me how lazy a gamer I've become. This was not an easy game originally. It was a game like Super Mario Brothers where you had to play over and over to master the early levels until you were good enough to play through it in one sitting, and there was no turtle waiting in world three to give you hundreds of lives.

Gameplay wise, the best comparison would be to another Capcom game.. Castlevania. Basically they replace your whip with a mechanical arm which is your primary mode of transportation. It's used to move from one platform to another, swing across pits, pick up itens, and knock back enemies.

I can only guess how many hours I put into getting good enough to beat the original, and even then I still liked to go back on a Saturday afternoon and see how quickly I can beat it.... seem to recall it could be done in about two-to-three hours. I no longer have that kind of dedication, but fortunately this remake had level setting the original didn't have, with unlimited continues, unlimited lives, and the easiest settings cover some of the pits of death so that if you miss a swing you escape death altogether.

This game also had an interesting multiplayer setting as well, but this wasn't one I cared to play with strangers, and didn't know anyone else who bought it.

A Rearmed 2 has since been released.. I can't imagine it being bad, but I understand they added a jump button which I feel completely misses the point of the game.

They took one of the games of my childhood, and made it better without changing anything that made it great. I can't imagine anyone who calls themselves a platform fan not liking this game. Highly Recommended.

Drive Angry

2011-07-01T11:20:00.000-07:00

I've become very good at avoiding commercials. In terms of movies, it means that I get to walk into some completely blind, which is nice. On the other hand, some movies escape my attention completely. Based on the DVD cover, for all I knew, this could have been a sequel to another movie I'd seen.

I don't know why I would make this connection.

So the first thing that I think needs to be said is that this is not a car movie. I mean, if you're looking for a car movie, there's probably enough here that you won't be disappointed. But if you watched this movie without knowing the title or seeing the promotional poster, you're not going to walk out thinking you'd just seen a car movie.

No, you'd probably walk out thinking "grindhouse". You've got the gratuitous nudity and violence, and something of a late-70's feel to the filmmaking. If I were to walk into the room in the middle of certain shots, I might think this was an older movie. Oh, and lots of old cars.

But there's another element to the movie as well.. a few minutes in, as they're talking about rituals and full moons, I got the sense that things were going to get weird. I was right. I don't know what trailers may have revealed, but I'm keeping this review as spoiler-free as possible.

Nicholas Cage plays Milton. We establish in the first seen that Milton is looking for someone, when he brutally kills a couple of said person's lackeys and leaves the third alive to send a message. The connection between the two characters unfolds over the course of the movie. I had a conversation about Cage not too long back... how he's the most hit-or-miss guy in Hollywood. When Cage is on, he's awesome. But even if you love Cage, you have to admit that a significant ratio of his movies were pretty bad. In this case, I think he turns in a weak performance, but not enough to make the movie unwatchable.

He picks up a pretty girl along the way, named Piper. She's entertaining, but I reached a point in the movie that I wondered why Milton is still dragging her along.

Jonah King is the guy that Milton is looking for. When you first see him, you instantly get a religious cult leader vibe. I wonder if it's a coincidence that the guy they cast as King happens to look like a young Stephen King to me.

"You know what this badge means, right? Federal Bureau of get the **** out of my way!"

The final major character is simply called "The Accountant", played by William Fichtner. Fichtner first caught my attention as part of the cast of Prison Break, and it's been a thrill for me every time he's popped up in anything since. Coincidentally, Den of Geek just did a write-up on him earlier this week. I skipped what they said about this film at the time, but going back to it now, they put it into words better than I did:

"It's so unusual to find a film where an actor seems to single-handedly outclass everything around him, feeling almost independent from any direction. Fichtner actually seems to have been spliced from a different league of film entirely and transplanted into Drive Angry as a saving grace."

As I had just written before I went back to that article: he steals the movie. I wish this movie had been "The Accountant"; I doubt this movie did enough business to justify a spin-off, unfortunately. I don't want to say anymore, because it's more fun if the character reveals himself.

I called this grindhouse, but don't go expecting anything on the Robert Rodriguez level here... but if you're looking for a double-feature to watch with Machete, this is a passable starter. Barely passable, though.... it it weren't for my Fichtner playing the accountant, I think this movie might have felt like a chore to get through. Two-and-a-half stars for the movie itself, plus another full star for the accountant, to give this film three-and-a-half stars.

Killzone 2, the Call of Duty series, and FPS's in general

2011-06-30T03:00:00.000-07:00

I've never been a huge fan of FPS's. My general attitude towards FPS's is that all I really need is to find the best one and pop that in once in awhile for some cathartic murder of strangers.

And Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare pretty much nailed it. I put many, many more hours into that game than I would have expected, and didn't even mind so much that my skills made me like a child playing in a grown-ups world (ie, I died... a lot). World at War and Modern Warfare 2 followed so quickly that I pretty much skipped those two, as I often do when i feel a game company is trying too hard to part me from my money. I did borrow a friends copy a few months back to play the single-player campaign for Modern Warfare 2....I have a hard time imagining how anything could top it at this point. Shortly after Black Ops came out, I knew I was going to have a lot of time on my hands, so I bit the bullet and bought it. Haven't played the single player yet, but the multi-player was a blast until the PS3 outage killed the joy. But the Call of Duty series is just about everything I could ask for. The three I've mentioned are all hands-down five star games in my opinion.

Now, about ten years ago... between Starship Troopers and Halo and Stargate Universe, I thought "space marines" (in this case, I'm using it as a generic term for any military-sci-fi fiction, regardless of whether it takes place in space or whether the military branch in question are marines) was one of the coolest concepts around and would never get old. When I popped in Killzone 2 last week I said, "Oh, no... not Space Marines again."

At this point, a new FPS has to give me something different... a good story would be sufficient. But another half-assed space marine story isn't going to cut it. Or something different in terms of gameplay, such as the over-the-top kills that Bulletstorm is promising me if I give it my time.

To be fair, this is part two... maybe part one on the PS1 felt a little more original in terms of both story and gameplay, and the sequel. I also started playing Halo 3 recently on my roommates X-box. I'm not blown away, but I'm definitely more entertained than with Killzone 2. Is Halo that much better, or is it lingering fan appreciation from the second game?

And to be even more fair, under different circumstances I might have seen this game through... there's nothing really bad. But it all comes down to this: whenever I play this, I'd rather be playing Black Ops. Or Halo 3 on my roommate's Xbox. I have such a backlog of interesting games that a game this average isn't going to hold my attention long enough to give it a fair review.

With the recent release of Duke Nukem, I remembered my multiplayer experiences on FPS's of the old, and realized that I'm missing something: the chase. Back in the day, it wasn't one-shot kills unless you managed to find a pretty badass weapon. It would take a few shots with our pistols.. time to run away, regroup, maybe catch that guy chasing you by surprise. Then the health bar died and 'realism' came in, and so it's become a game of who can get the shot first.

But the flip side of the chase that I don't miss is strafing. I don't even hear the term anymore, so younger gamers may not even know what that means. If you are one of those gamers, strafing technically refers to moving left or right without actually turning the direction you're facing... but in FPS terms you would be moving sideways in a circular motion to get in a position where you can fire shots at your opponent from the sides or behind where he can't fire at you. Of course, he's trying to do the same thing, and so you're both doing donuts around each other while wildly firing your weapons at the same time. Well, for me it was wildly, because I was never that good. Maybe it was child's play for the FPS surgeons.

This picture came up while I was seeing if there was a good google search image for strafing. I felt morally obligated to post this because this is a beat, uh, I can't touch.

Since I can't have one without the other, maybe that type of gameplay is better left in the past. But since 'throwback' is the word that keeps getting used with Duke Nukem, and since story-wise it will give me an entertaining story at best or at worst, a brief bit of nostalgia before I get bored and go back to stabbing people in AC Brotherhood again, I've got to give Duke a shot. Hail to the king, baby.

But I think I'll really scratch that itch when Twisted Metal comes out in October.

Game of Thrones: Season 1, Episode 10

2011-06-28T16:22:00.000-07:00

"How long do I have to look?"

"Fire and Blood"
So the axe dropped last episode, changing everything. The season finale deals with the aftermath, and sets the stage for what we'll see next year.

spoilers below the cut...

Jon Snow and his Night's Watch brother are heading north. His story was a slow starter, not really getting interesting until the end, and I would argue that his character was the driving personality of this episode. I heard an interesting theory regarding his mother recently.

Arya is disguised as a boy and being snuck away from King's Landing with criminals and misfits bound for The Wall. Some of that was actually from the second book which I just started re-reading after watching the final episode. Let me take a quote:

“Hey, Lumpyface, you gimme that sword.” His hair was the color of straw, his fat face all sunburnt and peeling. “You don’t know how to use it.”

Yes I do, Arya could have said. I killed a boy, a fat boy like you, I stabbed him in the belly and he died, and I’ll kill you too if you don’t let me alone. Only she did not dare. Yoren didn’t know about the stableboy, but she was afraid of what he might do if he found out.

Apparently TV Arya wasn't afraid! Her story is just getting started, and the reason I'm most excited about the next season.

Having read the story, Sansa was always my least favorite character... she just came off as so naively stupid to me. The showrunners have made her more sympathetic, and Sansa's scene where Joffrey forces her to view her father's head... the actress's defiant delivery of "How long do I have to look?" actually made me like her. Wow.

The scene with Pycelle just seemed really random. Did we at any point who all was making claims to the throne? I felt like that was an interesting point that should have been addressed... but maybe i got distracted. How evil is Joffrey? Man, people are hating that kid right now.

Tyrion has been appointed to go to King's Landing and take his father's place as Hand, and will be sneaking his prostitute with him against his father's wishes. But the scene that snuck most in my mind was Tyrion seemingly blown away by the faith his father placed in him.

And that final scene... wow... Dany in the remains of the fire, her clothes (but not her hair... but she's beautiful so I'll forgive it) burned off and our first glimpse of those dragons. How could you not want more after that final scene? Daenerys is such a show stealer. I have a friend, I kid you not, she went and bought the second book and just read the Daenerys chapters. She was very disappointed, because there were only four.

This shot was my second choice.... keeping it PG. ;)

After a five-year wait, Martin is finally releasing his fifth book next week.... I've forgotten some of what happened, so I'm slowly re-reading. Several characters were left out of the fourth book, so when i finally get to the fifth, it will be the first I've read of Jon Snow, Daenerys, and Tyrion since the third book came out ELEVEN YEARS AGO. So my hopes are kind of high. :)

Animated Movies of my Adulthood

2011-06-22T23:45:00.000-07:00

So this is more of a commentary than the semi-comprehensive list I did for the first part.

From time-to-time, someone from my generation laments that the current generation doesn't know the joy of Saturday morning cartoons. And I agree, their lives are so empty, trying to fill that void with four nickelodeons, two cartoon networks, a third disney channel launching in 2012, ABC Family, The Hub, streaming video, Redboxes on every corner, and a staggering number of animated movies.

Picking up where I left off yesterday, there was always seemed to be at least a couple of top-notch animated movies coming out each year throughout the nineties... and for the record... my all-time favorite animated film is Lilo and Stitch: aliens, a cute fuzzy construct of destruction, Hawaii, angst, Michael Duncan Clake, "family", Elvis... it's a bizarre mix of concepts with something for everyone.

In more recent years, While there were some great movies (usually with the name 'Pixar' attached to them) everything else felt like mediocrity at best... and at worst, you had a Shark Tale, Hoodwink'd, and Shrek 3. And let me just say, as someone who's read about twenty Dragonlance books, 2008's direct-to-video "Dragons of Autumn Twilight" hurt me to my core. I was starting to think that maybe it wasn't the movies, maybe... I was actually growing up. *sniffle*

As a result, I had been paying less attention to animated films. And so 2010 snuck up on me... like a dragon closing in for the kill. We had...

How to Tame Your Dragon

Toy Story 3

Shrek 4

Megamind

Despicable Me

Legend of the Guardians: Owls of Ga'Hoole

Tangled

Not a bad movie in the bunch... Shrek redeemed itself after that horrible third movie. I'm not sure who that people would get fired up about a movie about owls, but there it is, and it's worth your time. And Twisted is simply one of Disney's greatest. I only rank Lilo and Stitch, Lion King, and Beauty and the Beast above it. And Beauty only wins by the narrowest of margins because of the music. I liked the narrative in Tangled just a little better.

You may have mixed opinions on individual movies on this list, but how can you look at it and disagree that it was the greatest year ever? I know I'm not the first to say that animated put live action to shame last year, and I'll even go so far as to say this one year is better than the entire collective works of the seventies and eighties.

The only thing really lacking is hard action like Transformers, but on that front you have solid direct-to-video superhero movies, while in the theatres, Transformers themselves have gone 'live action'... but seriously, I think CGI has really blurred the line in so many movies that 'live action' is a misleading phrase.

And it's funny to think that just a few years ago we were lamenting the death of 2d animation. I suppose we had good reason; CGI animation was still pretty hit and miss. But I'm sure noone watching any of the above movies were wishing they'd been made in 2d instead. At this point, bad animation is no longer a limitation of the technology... it's just bad animation, and there's never been a shortage of that.

Anyway, I had one simple point in making this series of posts: to show just how far we've come. I haven't seen any of 2011's movies yet... sad to say, however, that I don't think this year will surpass the last. But I have no doubt that 2010 represents a golden age in animation.