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With the holidays upon us, we’ll be hither and yon. So that the staff of this site can enjoy the season with their families, Legomancer operations will be on hiatus, probably until after the first of the year or so. After that I’m sure there will be plenty of news, photos, politics, and geekdom to share.
All of us at Legomancer — Dave, Becky, and Beebo — wish you and yours a pleasant holiday season and an exceptional new year.
I took a break from my Manga-Fest to catch up on some American comics that had been building up. I find I tend not to read most of my comics as soon as I get them. Instead, I like to read five or six issues of a title at a time, to get a better angle on the story. (I’m not a very careful reader, and often I find myself forgetting what came before.) This is one reason why I think I’m turning more towards trade paperbacks. Anyway, here’s my thoughts on some recent purchases.
Queen and Country (Oni Press) - I’d been hearing good things about this book, so I decided to pick up the first TPB of it. It hooked me. It’s a modern day tale of spies for the British government, but not James Bond. They don’t have fancy gadgets, they don’t have amazing cars, they just have themselves. The characters are well done and the conflicts are very real. I also like the art style. I’ve since bought the second and third TPBs (I enjoyed the second one, haven’t read the third yet.) This is a new favorite title for me.
Ruse (Crossgen) - This title started strong and then went up and down. It’s the story of a Sherlock Holmesian pseudo-Victorian detective (”pseudo” because the book takes place on a different world that is close to but not quite just like our late 19th century) and his female assistant, Emma. The problem with writing a Holmesish character is that he’s much smarter than everyone else, and often that simply is achieved by giving him access to things only the writer knows. Sometimes this seems like a bit of a cheat. The fantastic elements in the story (including Emma’s magical powers, which are never explained and I assume are tied to the Crossgen universe as a whole) actually weaken it. There were good characters and stories here often hampered by silly plots. But now Crossgen has canceled it, and the end could not have been weaker and more disappointing. It’s a shame. Hopefully someone will pick up this type of book and give it a good treatment, because it really could be fun.
Love Fights (Oni Press) - I’m a shameless Andi Watson fanboy. I’ve enjoyed Skeleton Key, Geisha, and all his other miniseries and one-shots. Picking up this title was a no-brainer. It’s another entry in the burgeoning sub-genre of “stories of regular people in a superhero world”. What should we call this genre? I propose: “subhero”. Anyway, some folks may be turned off by the artwork: Andi is sparse with his lines and despite his efforts to prevent it, it’s sometimes hard to tell who is who. I had that problem the first time I read the first issue, but when I re-read it along with the next four, I didn’t have that problem. Like Andi’s other work, all of which I recommend, he captures characters very well, giving them a lot of depth and emotion with very little effort. I think he’s one of the best writers working today, and I’m enjoying this title.
Tokyo Storm Warning (Wildstorm) - Man, it must be nice to be Warren Ellis. Not only do you get fanboy adulation out the ying-yang, you can also get anything you want turned into a comic book, including this poorly-executed half-idea! I like Ellis okay, but this three-issue miniseries could have easily been done in ten pages by a different writer, with no loss of quality. What we’d lose instead would be panels and panels of meticulously detailed machinery and rubble, all doing…something. Since the big robot-on-monster battles are so poorly done, an epic fight becomes just a series of indistinguishable splash panels. (James Raiz and Andrew Currie are the artists here.) This is a blockbuster summer movie in three parts: there’s gorgeous visuals that completely fail to tell the story, a plot that’s paper thin to start and stretched thinner (opening up the holes wider: so Tokyo experiences these events that often for that long and isn’t just a heap of rubble?), and cliched characters being trotted out as though they’re completely original. (Ohh! The American’s tough as nails! These Asians are so inscrutable!) As a bonus, issue #1 features an incredibly awful cover. Pass.
Scooter Girl (Oni Press) - Like Chynna Clugston-Major’s other main work, Blue Monday, this six-part miniseries takes place on an alternate world where American teenagers still listen to British bands of the 80s, decorate their leather jackets with “Rude Boy” slogans, and ride mopeds. The book involves Ashton Archer, a pompous womanizer who is on top of the world and any woman he wants — until he meets Margaret, the Scooter Girl of the title, who confounds his universe time and time again. Of course, this only makes him want her more, despite the consequences. It’s fun and since I dig on the kind of music all the characters dig, I enjoy seeing the tunes Chynna picks for the “soundtrack” to the book (I usually download the ones I don’t know and have picked up some really good stuff that way.) There’s a bit of a problem with the story being told from Ashton’s point of view, since he’s such an obnoxious ass. Everyone else, including Margaret, is somewhat of a cipher, which I think hurts the story — four issues in I should know a lot more about her than I do. Also, the book takes a bizarre and quite over the top turn at issue four. But I’m enjoying it and will stay along for the ride.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol 2 (ABC) - Why did it take me so long to finish this, when I love it so much? Issue six came out after we moved, but had already come in at my old comic shop, so I waited until all my orders there were done before having Dave T. ship the stuff to me (thanks again, Dave!) What can be said? I loved the first one and I love the second one. Ain’t no one can touch Alan Moore when he’s at the top of his game, as he certain is here. The disparate pieces from various literary works mesh together and run like beautiful clockwork. Kevin O’Neill’s artwork took a while for me to get used to in the first volume, but now it’s second nature to me. If you haven’t read either volume (the first is now in a trade paperback) you are missing a great book.
Quimby the Mouse (Fantagraphics) - On first glace, Chris Ware’s oversize book seems to be simply a sprawling, disjointed collection of doodles. On second glance once can start to discern the hint of actual content, but the tiny, simplistic pictures that pepper the page seem to defy the reader to make sense of them. The patient reader, though, will be rewarded with a bittersweet collage that does indeed tell a “story” (though it is Chris Ware, so it’s a story of death, disillusionment, and loneliness.) Ware is simultaneously lauded as a genius and damned as an overrated hack. I personally lean towards the former in my opinion of him. His books are gorgeous, no doubt, but they also capture the heart as well as the eye. Any creator that can make you ache for the disembodied head of a cat is no mere hack. Quimby, a collection of earlier works, seems to journal Ware experimenting with the comics form, seeing how he can play with it, and even in these beginnings there is a great deal of skill and talent. If you enjoy comics as an art form, this is well worth checking out.
The Walking Dead (Image) - Yes, yes, yes, the beginning of this book is almost identical to the beginning of the movie 28 Days Later. And frankly, the part after the beginning isn’t completely different either. Let’s face it, if the world were overrun by zombies or zombie-like creatures, it’s pretty obvious what the surviving humans would have to do, and the movie and the comic both look at that. But the comic does get a chance to explore its characters a little more fully, and will, presumably, have more chances for plot twists (though there was one plot detail that was resolved a little too quickly for me). It’s only on issue three so far, but it’s already a regular pull for me. If you like zombies, it’s a worthwhile read. It’s from Image, though, so I wouldn’t get too used to it coming out.
Amy Racecar, vol. 1 (El Capitan) - David Lapham does a book called Stray Bullets that I’ve never read. In that book he introduced Amy Racecar, the most dangerous woman on Earth. Amy is a gangster, a murderer, a robber, and an anarchist, and she’s talked to God. During this trade paperback, which I bought based solely on the blurb in Previews, she destroys the Earth at least three times (one time she doesn’t really destroy Earth per se, just humanity). These stories are like Tarantino films - fun, wildly over the top, and clearly not set in our world (they’re set in “the future” and the dates on the newspapers are seemingly random, or Amy and the world are reincarnated over and over). The book’s a hell of a lot of fun, and now I want to check out Stray Bullets itself.
Kane: Greetings From New Eden (Dancing Elephant Press) - Paul Grist is doing a comic for Image now called Jack Staff, which I’ve picked up and sort of enjoy. Thing is, it’s a continuation of an earlier series, so I don’t follow some of it. Fortunately they’re collecting the previous Jack Staff stuff in a TPB, so I’ll get up to speed on that soon. Meanwhile, this is another book from Grist. Kane is the story of a cop, Kane, who had a bad run-in with his partner, resulting in him shooting the partner. He’s been cleared of wrongdoing, but the other cops still don’t trust or like him. Meanwhile he tries to go about his work in the city of New Eden. It’s not bad cop drama stuff, but the artwork is a little too sketchy, and it’s difficult to tell characters apart (there was a wrinkle in one of the plots I didn’t catch at first because I could tell who a character was.) There are other Kane books that I might get eventually, but for now I think I’ll hold off.
So that’s some of the other stuff I’ve been reading lately (at the expense of non-comic books). Hopefully it’s enough info to give you a good idea of what they’re about and whether you might like them as well.
A few years ago, after seeing a wave of bad movies in the theater, I decided that I was probably seeing too many movies. This coincided with my student teaching, so I didn’t really have the time to go to them anyway, but I still decided to increase the overall quality of the movies I was seeing by reducing the quantity.
It’s a decision I’ve never regretted. Since then there have been many movies come and gone that, before, I would have seen simply out of some geek obligation. I haven’t seen them, have no plans to see them, and don’t miss them. My rationale is that if it turns out later on that a movie I didn’t see was really good, I can always rent it. But others can’t un-see Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle.
There are very few movies I’ll go see without at least checking on Rotten Tomatoes to see how they are doing. Rather than the bizarre notion that reviewers have no idea what’s good, if 70 people who watch a lot of movies think something is bad, I’m inclined to think they may be right. Often I’ve seen people on message boards complain about bad movies they’ve seen, and nearly every movie mentioned was one that critics were saying loudly was awful and should be avoided. These people knew better, though, and spent $10 and 2 hours of their life.
So it was with interest that I came across this list of all the releases of 2003. (It comes from The Stinkers, a site about bad movies, hence its angle on the list.) I finally had a way of seeing just how many movies I’ve seen over the course of a year. The answer is, in 2003, I saw 7 new movies in the theater and an additional 4 on DVD.
The theater releases I saw were: Finding Nemo, Kill Bill: Vol 1, Return of the King, Lost in Translation, Matchstick Men, Matrix Reloaded, Pirates of the Caribbean.
On video I saw A Mighty Wind, 28 Days Later, Shanghai Knights, and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (more on this one in a moment).
Eleven new releases total. Counting only things I saw in the theater, the worst of them was, by far, The Matrix Reloaded. The best one is tough, but I think ultimately I have to go with Lost in Translation. I loved Return of the King, but the other movie stands on its own and worked for me on a deeper level. If you include the video releases, the best still stays the same, and possibly the worst does too — any movie with a plot, at least one interesting character, and an ending is always going to beat out Matrix Reloaded — but The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen certainly gave it a shot.
Why, you may ask, did I watch this, having said what I said above? I admit; I caved. I didn’t see The Hulk or either X-Men movie because I really don’t care about those characters, but I love the LOEG comics and I just had to see what had been done with them. We watched it last night, so I had absolutely no illusions that this was a good movie.
Good grief, where to begin? You may consider these paragraphs to be “spoilers” for the movie, but how do you spoil something that’s already awful? Let’s start with what sets LOEG (I’m not going to call it “LXG” because I know how to spell) apart from other superhero ventures: these are characters from literature, in the Victorian era. This is what defined the comics. Anyone can make a superhero team with an invisible guy, a strong guy, and so forth. Doing so the way Alan Moore did it was not the same old thing, and people responded. Stephen Norrington, the director of the movie himself, in one of the few DVD extras we bothered to watch, explains that he was uninterested in Moore’s other stuff because it all sounded too typical superhero, but this excited him because it was so different. Naturally, this director then went about removing these differences completely. If you made a movie where some characters from literature came to life in the present day, you’d have the same movie. Absolutely nothing sets this movie in the Victorian era. The technology is all more or less modern day. Captain Nemo’s Nautilus is simply a huge (far too huge) modern submarine. His car (a man who spends his life underwater invented a car why?) is simply a modern day car (pretty much. It even appears to be an automatic.), there’s machine guns, tanks, and yes, black leather. The Victorian Era doesn’t really make an appearance here, since there’s seldom anyone on the screen except the main characters. It’s just more of the same old thing.
Most of the characters were slightly changed or brand new, and honestly, most of these changes didn’t bother me. Tom Sawyer wasn’t a bad addition, and Dorian Gray was pretty interesting. Changing the Invisible Man from Hawley Griffin to someone else is puzzling, and I’ve no idea why this was done. Having Allan Quatermain be a bit younger and more ready for action made sense, given another choice that was made.
Which brings us to Mina Harker, the heroine from Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Oh dear. In the comics, Mina Murray is the disgraced, divorced leader of the bunch, being intelligent and having faced monsters before. What’s her “superpower”? She’s a smart and capable woman, and in a Victorian era, that makes her enough of a freak to qualify for this bunch. Alan Moore understood this. Apparently Stephen Norrington didn’t get this, and decided that Mina was actually going to be a vampire. Now, one might think that taking a normal person and making her a vampire would make her more interesting, but one would be extremely wrong. Peta Wilson plays Mina as a completely one-dimensional character. She’s a sultry vampire, and a boring one at that (I suppose Norrington felt that her being a vampire would be enough to make her fascinating, forgetting that most of the time she wouldn’t be a vampire.) Again, an element that made the comic stand out was removed for the same old thing.
These are the only reasons League threatens to topple Matrix Reloaded. I never cared about Neo and Trinity, so there really wasn’t much lost to me by the second movie, other than time and money (I chose not to repeat the loss by seeing the third movie). League, however, took something I did really like, and completely manhandled it. Reloaded can be seen as failing because it tried to do too much, assumed it was more important than it was. League fails for trying to do too little, and assuming the audience would be too dumb to accept the premise as originally written. I suppose I can forgive the former for not being able to live up to the standard it set, but I can’t forgive not even trying.
Speaking of movies, believe everything you hear about Return of the King. It’s a worthy finale to Peter Jackson’s series. This chapter of the story is one that I was least familiar with (I’m not a huge Tolkien fan) and so it was the one I went into knowing the least about beforehand, and it totally rocked. The extended cuts of each of these films are ones I will be proud to have in my DVD collection, and represent possibly the greatest trilogy of movies — certainly in geekdom, and possibly of all movies.
Looking towards 2004, before ROTK we saw trailers for Harry Potter 3, The Butterfly Effect, an unneeded sequel to Pitch Black, a remake of Walking Tall with The Rock, a supremely unneeded sequel to The Mask (featuring a CGI dancing baby. Shudder. If I hadn’t been there to see ROTK, I would have stabbed my eyes out right there. Hollywood, please stop with the CGI talking babies.), something with Viggo Mortensen and a horse that I’ve come to call “Viggo Horse Thing”, and something I had never heard of before: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
Sky Captain is a sort of pulp action steampunk 1930’s style retro-futuristic movie, and I’m totally there. I’ll say that now. Even if critics say that the movie does everything short of leap of the screen and beat you with a sack of pineapples, I will be there just to look at it. Zeppelins, air aces, clunky robots, it’s everything I love, and I’ll happily go see it, with headphones on if I have to.
We didn’t get trailers for I, Robot or Spider-Man 2, both of which others got. I’ve seen the SM2 trailer online, and it looks really good. I liked the first movie. I’ve also seen the Hellboy trailer online and it seems like they got the look of the book down and Hellboy’s attitude, though his voice throws me a little. That’s another one that, like LOEG, I may just have to eventually see no matter what.
I’ll probably end up seeing two or three more 2003 releases on DVD, but for now this is what I’ve sampled of Hollywood’s offerings for the year. Despite my movie feelings in general, there are some 2004 releases I’m already looking forward to.
Saw the midnight showing of Return of the King last night. The beginning was pretty good, but once the Ewoks show up, it’s all downhill.
There’s a new set of ‘Get Your War On’ cartoons by David Rees up. If you’re one of the four people that hasn’t discovered his site, check it out now.
Weather here is faaaaaaaaan-tastic! After a healthy dose of snow, we got some rain, then more snow, and we topped it all off with a nice glaze of freezing rain. It’s a winter frickin’ wonderland. Some of it’s in the process of melting, but they’re predicting both rain and snow again in the near future. It’s fun! One interesting thing was watching Beebo get his Legolas on, walking on top of the snow without sinking in (as it was frozen solid).
A disappointing note. I enjoy the website Democratic Underground, especially its weekly Top Ten Conservative Idiots feature. Alas, there was no issue of that feature this week, as:
In light of the weekend’s events, the Top Ten list we
wrote last Friday seems like ancient history. We feel
it is appropriate to skip the list this week, but we
promise it will be back after the holiday season.
Sigh. Another bye for the conservatives thanks to timid liberals. I’m sure the GOP was saying, when it heard Saddam was captured, “That oughta shut up the Democrats!” Apparently they were right. Slacktivist picks up the ball here, however, and runs with it.
Over in the chizat world, we did a Secret Santa exchange — or, “sekrit santar” as it was called there. My Sekrit Santar got me The Geek Handbook which is pretty funny and will be good inspiration when the Geektique edit comes up. He also got me GURPS: Steam-Tech. Though I’m not a GURPS fan, there’s some good ideas in here and the Steam-Fu RPG in my head is buzzing around again. Thanks, Sekrit Santar!
And finally, a preview of an article to come, discussing some good ol red-blooded AMERICAN comics I’ve been reading:
Tokyo Storm Warning (3-issue miniseries) Man, it must be nice to be Warren Ellis. Not only do you get fanboy adulation out the ying-yang, you can also get anything you want turned into a comic book, including this poorly-executed half-idea! I like Ellis okay, but this three-issue miniseries could have easily been done in ten pages by a different writer, with no loss of quality. What we’d lose instead would be panels and panels of meticulously detailed machinery and rubble, all doing something. Since the big robot-on-monster battles are so poorly done, an epic fight becomes just a series of indistinguishable splash panels. (James Raiz and Andrew Currie are the artists here.) This is a blockbuster summer movie in three parts: there’s gorgeous visuals that completely fail to tell the story, a plot that’s paper thin to start and stretched thinner (opening up the holes wider: so Tokyo experiences these events that often for that long and isn’t just a heap of rubble?), and cliched characters being trotted out as though they’re completely original. (Ohh! The American’s tough as nails! These asians are so inscrutable!) As a bonus, issue #1 features an incredibly awful cover, shown at right. Pass.
Congratulations to everyone involved for capturing Saddam Hussein. This is a triumph for our military and intelligence people.
I’m still against the war, but as long as the mess is already there, we may as well clean it up as best we can. Capturing Saddam is a big step in that direction, I think. Hopefully this will help settle things down there so that we can get moving on actually letting the Iraqis run their own country instead of Halliburton running it.
Of course, none of this changes the fact that we’re still over there because of a lie, though this victory will cause even the last traces of that to vanish. Despite the right wing’s sudden hatred for tyrannical despots (there are plenty more still out there, guys, if you want to keep the Freedom Train rolling!), we were specifically told that we had to attack Iraq because they presented a clear and imminent danger to America, which turned out not to be true. At all. For those with fuzzy, media-driven memories, we haven’t found any evidence of WMDs, haven’t found evidence of WMD programs, and Saddam hasn’t been linked with 9/11.
Which is not to say he wasn’t a bad bad man. He was, and it’s good for Iraq that he’s gone, though it would be better if we’d had some kind of a notion as to who to replace him with.
I’ve noticed everyone’s timid about saying that this will help ease the threat of terrorism. There’s two reasons for this: First, the 9/11 attacks were perpetrated by Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Ladin, who we don’t seem quite as interested in pursuing and who had no direct links to Saddam. Second, if we win the war against terrorism, the government might have to give back all the sweet sweet power it gave itself to fight terror. That ain’t gonna happen any time soon.
And as long as I’m somewhat raining on the parade, I’d like to say that surely there’s a line between “informing the public of an event” and “parading the prisoner down Pennsylvania avenue in chains”. We’re not quite at the latter stage yet, but enough with the damn beard-stroking video, people. We get the idea. Ding dong the witch is in federal custody. Though a word of advice to Saddam: this is why people in your situation usually opt for the bullet. There’s really no way for you to look good here, guy. I realize you’re probably nuts, but whatever you think might happen ain’t gonna happen.
Anyway, I’m not trying to diminish a job well done. He was found and captured alive, which wasn’t easy, and which will hopefully be a positive development over there. If only the Bush Administration could show this kind of dogged pursuit in other matters.
Okay, due to a number of factors all working more or less simultaneously, I recently decided to get past my prejudices and wander into the world of manga. (Some of my prejudices…it’ll still be a cold cold day before I’m watching anime again.) I wanted to share with you some of my discoveries. A lot of these were recommended by Michael, who I thank for pointing me towards them. Here are the titles I have explored (all are the first volume):
Planetes (by Makoto Yukimura, Tokyopop) - This is what got me started. The owner of my comics shop commented on their site that this was worth checking out, even if you didn’t care for manga. I did, and am glad I did. It’s beautiful. I love the art, I love the characters, I love the story. I highly highly highly recommend this book for manga fans and sci fi fans alike. It’s first-rate.
Sanctuary (by Sho Fumimura/Ryoichi Ikegami, Viz) - A recommendation from Michael. Interesting crime drama with some good characters. Though I must say, the way that the main character, Hojo, is drawn, I expected him to bust into some Spandau Ballet or Roxy Music. As others have pointed out, though, there seems to be a pretty misogynistic streak through here. Women don’t much exist except to satisfy the male characters’ sexual urges, and the female cop who could be a good foil regularly misplaces her brain. Still, I’ll probably pick up the next one.
Rebirth (by “Woo”, Tokyopop) - This is the story of a vampire reborn and looking for vengeance, hanging out with an “exorcist” and the daughter of a paranormal investigator. While reading this, I thought, “This is odd. This is goofy. This is dopey. Well, now that I’m in the swing of it, this is less goofy. This is kind of fun, actually. Holy cow, this is goofy.” I’m assuming there’s a videogame, anime, or card game based on this? Because otherwise I’m not sure why the battles resemble Dragonball Z fights and why I find out, in a sidebar, what “level” a monster is. There’s a sense of fun about it, but all in all, there’s too many elements here that are originally the reason manga made me itch, not the least of which are the constant panty shots on the (non-vampiric) main character. You can improve it by taking a drink whenever someone says “Is this the end?”
Battle Royale (by Koshun Takami/Masayuki Taguchi, Tokyopop) - Dan brought over this movie a while back and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The manga seems to be based on the book, so while it’s similar to the movie, there are enough differences (particularly in the students’ backstories) to make it worthwhile. The plot concerns a class of high school students that has been deposited on an island and ordered to fight to the death. How this affects each of the students is important, but don’t get too attached to any of them. I’ve read volumes 1 and 2 of this one.
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (by Hayao Miyazaki, Viz) - Early manga by the same guy that did Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away. It concerns a post-apocalyptic future where the remaining dregs of mankind threaten to be wiped out by giant insects and encroaching fungoid forests of corruption. You can see a lot of ideas that would be re-explored in his later works here. I like the art and the plotting, and will definitely be getting more of this. (And yet I didn’t really like his anime. I prefer reading comics to watching movies, I suppose.)
Firefighter! Daigo of Fire Company M (by Masahito Soda, Viz) - I got this one because I wanted to check out a title that was really unlike any American comics titles. This is the story of a rookie firefighter coming to terms with a difficult job. No giant swords, no robots, no guns, just a guy learning how to be a firefighter. The artwork gets to me a bit…it’s really thin and shaky in places. And the fire chief looks like George Bush to me, which bug me, but that’s my own deal. It’s a fun and interesting read, though not for everyone. They maintain a solid quota of about fifteen exclamation points per page. The pacing is a little odd. When Daigo’s High School Teacher Mentor is first shown, you know someone’s under her lighting matches, and eventually she’s gonna start burning…I just didn’t figure it would happen so soon in the series. I’m about halfway through it.
Purchased and unread so far:
Cowboy Bebop: Shooting Star (Cain Kuga, Tokyopop)
The Kindachi Case Files: The Mummy’s Curse (Yozaburo Kanari/Fumiya Sato, Tokyopop)
Now, lest you think I’ve transformed into an otaku boy who will now insist that anything produced in the land of the rising sun is automatically superior to home-grown fare, I assure you I still think a load of the manga they’re bringing over here is crap. Take a look at some of these sentences from synopses on Tokypop’s site:
“16-year-old Ryan doesn’t realize that supernatural beings descend on his town at night, but when he stumbles on the Faerie Bath, he ends up becoming guardian of Fanta, a grounded - and very fetching - faerie.”
“The enigmatic Sohma family shares a great secret, its members are possessed by spirits of the Chinese Zodiac, and when they are hugged by members of the opposite sex, they transform into their Zodiac animal!”
“When mild-mannered Collin Meeks’ cat Catreece develops a taste for surfing the fully interactive VIS, Collin has his buffer full trying to keep her out of trouble!”
“In the future, the most popular game in the world is Angelic Layer. Contestants must raise and train their own ‘Angels’ (or fighting dolls) to compete in tournaments.”
“With arms made of weapons, the power of flight, and retractable body armor, Melan is a powerful bodyguard indeed.”
“When Mink rushes to buy the latest CD by her favorite pop star, Illiya, she winds up instead with a software disc from the future that allows her to become whomever she wants.”
“Hideki’s luck changes when he discovers Chi - an adorable but seemingly stupid Persocom - tied up in a pile of trash. His first robot companion turns out to be a lot more responsibility than he expected, and she gets him into quite a few embarrassing situations.”
“When he sees his crush, Risa, he transforms into his alter ego, the phantom thief Dark Mousy. Unfortunately, when Dark Mousy sees his crush, Risa’s twin Riku, he transforms back into Daisuke.”
“After the abduction of his brother Kotaro by the Machine Empire, Teppei Takamiya joins forces with X, one of several highly-advanced, artificially intelligent machines known as B’ts (pronounced ‘beat’), to rescue him.”
Now, granted, a lot of these are no goofier than some of the stuff that shows up in Previews on a regular basis. That’s my point, though. There’s a lot of bad comics and some good comics, and some of each is American and some of each is Japanese. Rather than having idiotic discussions about which format and country is better, why not point out which titles — from either source — are worth reading?
EDIT: Please use the “contact” button to the left if you have other titles to recommend.
Speaking of the Zombies 3.5 expansion set in my earlier post, I wanted to mention that, for some reason, yesterday was a very Zombieful day, especially in the chatroom I hang out in with my friends. It all started when Anna mentioned that she and Kurt saw (and liked) the movie 28 Days Later:
[Anarkey] man i love love loved 28 days. signs i enjoyed, but 28 days was like OK MY MOVIE
[Anarkey] this director said to himself, hey what kind of movie would anna like to watch. OK I’ll film that!
This prompted spirited discussion of the movie, and everyone who has seen it concluded it was way good. Shas hadn’t seen it, though, and asked us not to spoil details:
[shasticon] No spoilers, please.
[shasticon] I didn’t get to see it in the theater. :/
[legomancer] well shas, at the end the zombie is luke’s dad
[shasticon] f**ker
[legomancer] Zombie: RAAAAAAAR! Luke: NOOOOOOOOOO! Zombie: RAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRR! Luke: That’s not true! That’s impossible!
[legomancer] then the zombie eats luke’s brain and realizes it was mistaken, was thinking of a different luke
Discussion then turned to other zombie-related movies:
[shasticon] Speaking of zombies, did any of you see Resident Evil?
[shasticon] The zombies in RE were…interesting. They were absolutely silent when you aren’t looking at them. This means that a zombie can walk up right behind you and stand there until you turn around, and just as you spot it, it goes RAAAAR to scare the shit out of you.
[shasticon] Often, the RE zombies enjoy a bit of hide and seek.
[shasticon] The heroine is creeping toward the ajar door, expecting a zombie behind it…she yanks it open! The music stings! There’s no zombie.
[shasticon] She turns around! The music stings!
[shasticon] No zombie.
[shasticon] She looks behind the curtain! The music stings!
[shasticon] No zombie.
[legomancer] OMG UNDER THE RUG
[shasticon] She closes the door! THERE’S A F**KING ZOMBIE BEHIND IT!
[shasticon] WHERE THERE WASN’T THREE SECONDS AGO.
[shasticon] I give it three thumbs down.
[…later…]
[legomancer] Pirates of the Caribbean was cool because the writer had a moment of genius
[legomancer] there had been zombies before. and monkeys. but he was the pioneer who thought ZOMBIE MONKEY
As always, we also had our eyes to the future, and discussed possible future zombie movies:
[legomancer] you know what the world really needs? A zombie movie from the POV of the zombies
[legomancer] did they ask to be zombies? no. they’re just trying to get by in a world that hates and fears them
[shasticon] Four zombies sitting around a table, playing poker. “So Stan, how’s the hand?” “Hell, I dunno. It’s probably crawling around here somewhere–” “Shh! You guys, I think there’s a live one out in the hall!” “Shit, man, hide the chips and start lumbering! RAAAAAAR!”
During the discussion, the following two Penny Arcade comics were presented and laughed at:
In addition, only a couple days before, I dashed off an email to Dave T. and the others in Illinois about an idea for improving the Zombies boardgame. It’s a very fun game, but a lot of people feel that the endgame is weak. Here was my suggestion for improving it:
Eliminate the competitive element. (Since you can’t kill or steal from other players through the rest of the game, it seems illogical that the endgame should suddenly pit everyone against each other.)
Once the helipad comes out, two things happen: (1) death becomes permanent, and (2) the zombie movement phase changes. As many people as want to can get on the helicopter, assuming they can get there alive. During the Zombie movement phase, all zombies move one space in whatever direction will get them to the helipad quickly. They all begin converging on the helipad. Everyone runs for the copter, and the people that have already made it there try to hold off the zombies until everyone else makes it (maybe there can be something that allows them to take off if the situation becomes too hopeless — “Get yourself to safety! I’ll never make it!”)
In such a cooperative game, you could also INCREASE the number of Zombies killed for victory, but all players’ killed zombies count towards the total. In addition, if two players share a space, they can exchange bullets and hearts; it’s in all players’ interests to avoid deaths and keep the zombie killed total high.
This, in my opinion, is more consistent with zombie movies. It’s Humans vs. Zombies, and we all work together to survive.
Zombies are an important part of our shared cultural heritage, and are too often overlooked. The contributions they have made to society are sadly ignored. So many people nowadays board up their windows, blockade their doors, and keep a shotgun handy and don’t know why! They lack the knowledge of history that would inform them that they do these things because of zombies. I’m going to write my Senator and propose that a month be chosen for National Zombie Appreciation Month. Maybe a week. At the very least, a day should be set aside for shambling, moaning, and consuming brains. Possibly giving zombie-related gifts as well. Appreciate zombies, folks. They appreciate you.
