Well, I can at least change the look of my blog...

Change is good!

Frequent Brain Stimulation In Old Age Reduces Risk Of Alzheimer's Disease

Science Daily reports that using your brain wards off Alzheimer's.

Bookmarking here for future reference. Also:

Exercise Stimulates The Formation Of New Brain Cells

I'm thinking of starting a community oriented site based around helping paranoid people like me ward off decreasing mental clarity as they age.

I know. Laugh away. If I can't update this site (I've finished 3 games since Mythica, which was when I set this site up) then how the heck am I gonna put together something new? Well, I'm gonna get to it! Ok?

In comic news, the quality of comics this year is still sliding. This last issue of Justice League just blew my mind in how unrewarding it was to read.




This monster crossover between the JSA and the JLA and the old-school Legion of Superheroes looked promising, but, in the end, there was no conflict. No one really fought anything. The characters didn't learn anything new. No one changed. There weren't even any villains. The Legion wanted to resurrect a member of their team: to do so, one of them would have to die by lightning bolt. But they didn't want anyone to stop them, so they were real sneaky about it. In the end, their plan worked better than they had thought: they got the essence or whatever they were looking for, in doing so, they brought back Wally West (the Flash) from the limbo he's been in since Infinite Crisis, and no one had to die because Karate Kid managed to "dodge" the lightning bolt. This book defines underwhelming.

In Countdown, Captain Atom shows up in his Monarch armor and suddenly he's acting like Doctor Doom (thanks Comics Should Be Good for that comparison). An old-school fan of Captain Atom, I picked up his miniseries last year, and he was still a pretty good guy. Then, he comes back from the Wildstorm universe, he goes into a coma, he begins to leak radiation, they give him this neato suit and BAM! He's a manipulative villain wannabe? Ugh.

I can see that, with the new 52 universe, DC is trying to show that the old Silver Age history is trying to reassert itself over the retconned history formed after the original Crisis, but I'm not sure that this effort isn't just highly indicative of how insular and inbred the industry has become, where you need to have a doctorate in comicology to know where all these characters and plots are coming from.

And so my content slowly devolves

As I promised, I'm going to talk more about comics in this space, as well as other, non-game stuff. First off, however, I'd like to say "Hi" to people linking in from Tim Longo's Blog. Hi!

First off: DC's Countdown

Countdown is this year's weekly series, dovetailing from last year's (mostly) excellent "52".

While 52 was a massive, multi-plot beast that brought attention and good stories to the reader about the year in the DC universe when Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman were unavailable, Countdown is a massive, multi-plot beast that brings kind of bland stories about the ramifications of the DC Universe being expanded to 52 separate universes.

Here are my problems with the series:

1. The comic is part crossover. For instance, it has used some pages of the recent JLA/JSA crossover, and this week has some scenes from the "Amazons Attack!" series going on right now. It's well and good that the book is following current DC events, but I generally hate having to buy extra books to follow the plot of a crossover.
2. The villains are lame. The main identifiable villains for the series are the "Monitors", who were invented specifically for the Crisis on Infinite Earths special in the 1980's that caused all the multiple earths to become one. They were barely developed then, and haven't much improved since. Further, all monitors look exactly alike (except for facial hair preferences) which dilutes any effort to characterize them.
3. I couldn't care less about the main characters. The writer is still developing his main characters, but they still haven't formed into people I care about yet. The characters are still reacting to everything. They aren't making decisions, aren't showing their core characters, and, especially, not showing a whole lot of depth.

I'll be writing more about Countdown in the future, certainly. I've bought in to the series, so I'm collecting it to its bitter end, but that doesn't mean I have to like it! (Heh...how stupid does that make me, eh?)

And... a bit about World War Hulk, which I'm not collecting: There's lots of excitement around this: the Hulk, angrier and more powerful than ever, returns to earth after a year in space and begins to beat down on earth's heroes. My problem here is that everything feels so set up.

1. Hulk gets sent to outer space where he can't hurt anyone. Fine.
2. Hulk finds himself on a planet where he has to overcome a lot of hard obstacles in order to survive and bring justice to an unjust world. Also fine: a plot that comic readers enjoy. Great drama.
3. Hulk finally defeats his enemies, falls in love, and gets everything he desires. Whoops! The writer has written himself into the corner of no return: the "Happily Ever After" corner. The same corner occupied by the likes of, say Aquaman or Namor when they finally defeat Atlantis' enemies and reign as king. Since comic characters can never retire into a Happily ever after scenario, the only way to dig them out is to:

Destroy Hulk's World! All his work is ruined. The love of his life and his unborn child are killed. Now, all that is left to him is... revenge. In an All Star Mega Event Certain to Change the Face of the Marvel Universe as we Know It!

It's plots like this that make me sad that Hulk is plaything in hands of Greg Pak. Like Hulk is action figure being tormented by the boy from "Toy Story".

I just can't get behind it...