Blackest night, JLA, and the ressurection of Ronnie Raymond

So, Blackest Night is over, and we go straight in to Brightest day. The final issue was pretty good, though I'm surprised Ted Kord (Blue Beetle) wasn't among the resurrected (while Max Lord was). I'm glad Ronnie Raymond (Firestorm) and J'onn J'onnz (Martian Manhunter) are back.

The big question, I guess, is what do you do with them, now? Give them each a new comic? I think we know what happens to 96% of all nostalgia-driven relaunches.

My geek wish list:
1) Ted Kord is alive, and joins Booster Gold in his comic. The Booster Gold comic is ok, but I'm not seeing it survive much longer.
2) I guess that's it.

Meanwhile, the JLA continues to flounder. Last month, I wanted to post some of the art to focus on what *not* to do. This month, more of the same. The comic really has no core vision. Same with the new JSA comics. It's like they both ran out of gas and are in a holding pattern until the next Geoff Johns appears to rescue them with his unparalleled enthusiasm for the characters.

I picked up the graphic novel collection of the Magic: The Gathering comics. I had paged through is at the store, saw some incredible art, thought about it for a couple of weeks, and impulse bought it. Here are the problems:

1) Requires in-depth knowledge of the novels. The characters are all acting like you know them already. They land in places that are tossed around like you (the reader) have been there a thousand times before. I would have been completely lost if I hadn't read the little bios at the front.
2) Many different artists, all trying to impress you with their imagery that fights the story every single panel. The art shifts a couple of times per comic. I hate comics that do that, it kicks me out of my suspension of disbelief every time. I like good art, but it needs to serve the story if it's in a comic book.

Otherwise, nice paper!

Now to see if this thing posts to my website! Tally-ho!

Two Things!

Two awesome things to report:

1) Watched the Planet Hulk movie today. It wasn't all that I had hoped. I should read the trade to see if the actual story made Hulk such a whiny baby of a hero. It was strange that Hulk started out in monosyllabic "smash" mode and then went into "Mr. Conversationalist" all of a sudden somewhere halfway through.

2) Blogger is shutting me down. I received an email saying that they are taking away all FTP functionality of their service here in a month or so. I'm not quite sure what that will do: I believe all the archives are stored on my server, but I'm sure it's going to be an inconvenience. I'll have to look up a solution. Or maybe I'll just let the blog die a natural death. Might be good just to start fresh. Maybe do a blog about ponies or rainbows or vanilla ice cream. Mmmm. Vanilla ice cream.

The end is nigh!

Two awesome things to report:

1) Watched the Planet Hulk movie today. It wasn't all that I had hoped. I should read the trade to see if the actual story made Hulk such a whiny baby of a hero. It was strange that Hulk started out in monosyllabic "smash" mode and then went into "Mr. Conversationalist" all of a sudden somewhere halfway through.

2) Blogger is shutting me down. I received an email saying that they are taking away all FTP functionality of their service here in a month or so. I'm not quite sure what that will do: I believe all the archives are stored on my server, but I'm sure it's going to be an inconvenience. I'll have to look up a solution. Or maybe I'll just let the blog die a natural death. Might be good just to start fresh. Maybe do a blog about ponies or rainbows or vanilla ice cream. Mmmm. Vanilla ice cream.

Obligatory "Best Of..." Blog post

Here we are at the end of the decade. What could be more appropriate than a blog post? Nothing, that's what!

I've been trying to think of some of the "bests" about this past decade. It's been a long ten years. The 90's basically flew by compared to this. So many things have changed: if I were trying to predict what life would be like in 2010 from the year 1999, I don't think I would have got any aspect of it right.

Anyway, instead of doing a painstaking review of everything that has happened this past 10 years, and then comparing each thing to another to distill what, indeed, was the best thing of the decade, I'm going just going to cover what I remember the best.

Best Comic Series of the decade: All-Star Superman. All Star Superman is Grant Morrison's masterpiece, as far as I'm concerned. Each issue is a gem mixing whimsy, wonderment, and a return to Silver Age sensibilities that satisfies on many levels.




Best Single-Player Game of the Decade: I'm going with Portal on this one. Portal really hit it out of the park for me, combining puzzle solving, great physics and a funny story.

Best MMO of the Decade: World of Warcraft. This needs no explanation. I sank more hours into this game than any other over the past 10 years.

Biggest Surprise of the Decade: Facebook. Facebook has completely redefined what my community is. I don't know if this is good, but Facebook is currently the closest thing to what we used to call "Cyberspace" that we currently have. Next step: cortical shunts. ;-)

Biggest change in the way we live our lives: Google and Wikipedia, putting information at our fingertips. I can't tell you how much I've come to rely on the internet and these applications to supplement my knowledge. It's like a separate part of my brain where I keep all my useless knowledge. Because everyone can access it, it's like I'm sharing this part of my brain with everyone else. It's like telepathy, kinda.

Biggest realization: All information is a lie. It's the two watch syndrome: A man with one watch knows what time it is, the man with two watches is never sure. The increase in information flow has shown us that opinion and fact are inseparable, and that no fact that we took for granted before the internet can't be challenged as false. Politics, science, statistics: all are suspect. Our road to the future is more uncertain than ever before. The next decade will be interesting, if anything.

So, as we head into the next year, I can't promise that I'll be posting more frequently. My free time shrinks consistently as I head into the future. But I'll try my best. ;-)

Have a great New Year!

When did journalists get so lazy?

I think I may have remarked upon this before, but I always laugh when I see journalists using message board quotes to represent the "man on the street" view. For instance, here's a short article about the recent kerfuffle involving David Letterman.

The journalist quotes one anonymous quote from the WashingtonPost.com site and "Mike G" who left a message on the Kansas City Star forums.

I think, from now on, they should just get reactions from anonymous players over XBOX Live: "Yeah, I think this whole thing is, like, totally ghey," remarked player ChumBuck3t as he teabagged an opponent in a COD4 CTS match.

Final thoughts on Prince of Persia

Currently, I've finished PoP and am grinding away through the downloadable content. Prince of Persia is a very pretty game. Technically, it's pretty inspiring, with huge areas and incredibly long views across some beautiful architecture. As I've mentioned, combat isn't too fun, with controls being fairly unresponsive to my button-mashing sensibilities. Interrupts are few and far between, and the Prince gets stuck in context-sensitive combat poses depending on what the enemy AI is doing.

The acrobatics and wall running are decent. The most incredible thing about them is how well the levels were set up so that it feels fairly seamless when the Prince does three wall jumps in a row, lands on a power jewel, gets flung into the air about 500 yards to another wall, where he instantly wall runs to another jewel, etc. That takes a lot of precision, especially if it's physics based. The level designer in me was impressed, especially since you know that, at one time or another, someone decided that the Prince could jump a little too far, or that power jewels weren't powerful enough, and suddenly every freaking wall location had to be changed to accept the new parameters.

As I said, the level design was good, but the gameplay depended a bit too much on the "Learn By Dying" principle. For instance, two of the power jewels, the green and the yellow, gave the Prince some freedom of movement. For the yellow jewels, the Prince would be flying through the air on some sort of rail. You could never figure our where the rail was going, so many times you would slam into a column that you felt for sure you were going to the left of when, instead, you were expected to go to the right.

Another minor complaint would be that the distance the Prince could fall wasn't consistent. I realize that the developers didn't want the Prince to go to some areas, and they would put "Death Triggers" wherever the Prince shouldn't be able to jump to the ground below, but it still felt like the game was cheating.

I play these games with my wife watching, and so she ends up being the final judge of the story. Her feeling was that the Prince and Elika's relationship had grown enough by the end of the game that they could at least admit that they have feelings for one another. Since this hasn't happened, she feels frustrated and disappointed that the relationship was developed to a certain point and then was pretty much forgotten and then pointedly ignored thereafter.

Final thought: PoP is a decent game with spectacular production values but, perhaps, a bit of an undeveloped soul.

Best Comic and other stuff

Nova came out of War of Kings with a great wrap-up issue. Guardians of the Galaxy suddenly got too serious, however. What is it with creative people and the urge to make everything darker?
Batman and Robin was also neat, because it's Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely and the weird force that makes everything they do together twice as good as if they did it apart. The new storyline is very dark, but, since it started out that way, it's ok. I just don't like books that I buy for the humor at the beginning turn into murderfests (I'm lookin' at you, Invincible!).
This has been the Dark Summer though, hasn't it? With Blackest Night and Dark Reign sucking the light (and lives) from the guttering, feeble candle of hope and humor from the big two, one wonders how there will ever be a happy comic ever again.

Prince of Persia remains an interesting game to study. The gamespace is divided into 4 realms. The first of these realms I defeated was the "Concubine" realm. In this realm, the overarching theme was "love and illusion" and the story developed the relationship between the two main characters. The next area I went to was the "Warrior King" realm, and it concentrated on "belief and honor" as a theme. Interesting, but all the character development I experienced working through "Concubine" vanished when I went to the new realm, and the relationship between the two characters was back to square one. The lesson? Non-linear stories are hard.

More Random Stuff

I like bulleted lists:

1) "War of Kings" is over. How many times does Vulcan have to tell us he's an "Omega Level Mutant"? Why is this supposed to impress anyone? Also, it is interesting how they kept ratcheting up his power levels as the series went on, because they suddenly realized that the Vulcan who went out in to space in Uncanny X-Men was pretty much Farm League when it came to fighting mano-a-mano with Black Bolt. Also: they have reduced the power of Black Bolt's voice. Having him speak inside a Spaceship should have ripped the entire ship apart, rather than merely flay the skin off Vulcan. Sheesh.
1a) Yes, I'm aware of how geeky the above paragraph makes me look.
2) I've been playing XBOX360 games for a couple months: Fable2, Oblivion, and now Prince of Persia. Note to Ubisoft: Prince of Persia's combat is teh suxor. When I hit a button, I expect it to do something. I'm going to have to resort to a gamefaq for learning how to fight better.
3) Blackest Night is continuing to roll on. I wonder if Geoff Johns went into Didio's office one day and said "Hey Dan, next year, I'm gonna kill off about 50% of the DC Universe and make them fight the other 50%."
4) Wikipedia entry on "Omega-Level Mutant":
Omega-level mutants

An Omega-level mutant is one with the most powerful genetic potential of their mutant abilities. The term was first seen in the 1986 issue Uncanny X-Men #207, but was completely unexplained (beyond the obvious implication of it referring to an exceptional level of power).The term was not seen again until the 2001 limited series X-Men Forever. Some abilities depicted by mutants described as Omega-level include immortality, extreme manipulation of matter and energy, high psionic ability, strong telekinesis, and the potential to exist beyond the boundaries of the known physical universe. No firm definition has been offered in comics, but the term clearly refers to extraordinarily powerful mutants, such as Jean Grey,[2] Vulcan,[3] Rachel Summers,[4] Iceman, [5] Elixir,[6] and Franklin Richards.

Yeah, they said Iceman.