Not logged in
Click here for instructions on how to embed "Conditional Axe" into an external webpage.
•
Used and abused
by Tyler Ohlew
at
Pressing Buttons
•
Gearbox better not be in trouble, or YOU'RE in trouble
by Tyler Ohlew
at
Pressing Buttons
•
My baby will have PC gamer blood in it
by Tyler Ohlew
at
Pressing Buttons
•
The crybaby's take on Mirror's Edge
by Tyler Ohlew
at
Pressing Buttons
•
Not Practising Dignity, or a terrible way to start off a post about NPD Chart discussion
by Tyler Ohlew
at
Pressing Buttons
•
Phoenix Down is provided, Tyler lives again
by Tyler Ohlew
at
Pressing Buttons
•
aaahhhhh!
by noreply@blogger.com (JD)
at
The Loud Music of the Sky
•
Celebrating One Year of Tamboril
by brian@clintonhillfoodie.com (Brian)
at
Clinton Hill Foodie
•
(Untitled)
by Brian R. Belida
at
appropriately[untitled]
From The Confederate Bohemian:
• 10-3-08
• Dear fellow North Carolinians--
Page 1 of 14 >>
So, we've been being vague and cryptic about it for awhile, but Matt Springer and I are co-writing a comic book.
Neither of us knows how to draw, so we're looking for an artist.
If you know anybody - or if you're reading this and you are anybody - give me a yell at the email address in my profile.
After a brief flurry of posting activity, I fell totally silent for a few weeks, no?
Sorry, Single Reader. I'm still in the wake of a major life change, and that includes moving, living out of boxes and, inexplicably, planting trees. No, I didn't go to prison. No, I haven't retired from blogging. No, I didn't get hit by a bus because I didn't forward a chain email to my 20 closest friends. No, I wasn't targeted by Teddy Crane, the Exterminape.
I survived Baltimore Comic Con without contracting the Con Plague that some of the attendees seem to have gotten. I got to hang out with Caroline and Jennifer from Fantastic Fangirls (who joined me in geeking out about Mark Waid and Jann Jones chilling in Einstein Bros. a few tables away from us), had a chat with C.B. Cebulski about our shared love of the 80s X-Books, and got a bitchin' sketch of the Silver Surfer from Pittsburgh-based cartoonist Jeremiah Witkowski. I'll scan it once I get a scanner again.
I think I'll adopt a regular posting schedule again soon. Be cool everyone!
If you're like me, and your ultra-lucrative portfolio has been dashed to pieces on the cruel, sharp rocks of the credit crunch. But I'm not getting too down about it; I'm putting my energy into formulating a real, workable solution.
See, the problem is the dollar. It's devauled almost to the point of irrelevance. What we need is a new currency: something with very little inherent value of its own and a large, untapped supply.
If you like what goes on here, you might want to check out:
The Alert Nerd group blog, which I'm the junior member of. Someday, they'll even put me in that fancy Twitter widget they've got.
And of course, I'll be helping with BCC coverage this weekend for my paymasters at Newsarama.
And, not linked to my red-hot desire for self-promotion at all, check out Fantastic Fangirls. Being neither fantastic nor a fangirl, I have no dog in that particular race, but I do like intelligent, well-written comics ruminating, and FF has got that all taken care of.
Echoing conversations that I've had with Kevin and Rich within the past week, the too-young death of DC's Minx imprint seems to be symptomatic of DC's chronic allergy to self-promotion outside of its oh-so-clever house ads. Individual books in the line got some glowing press (The Plain Janes, Re-Gifters and New York Four - which are my favorite three of the ones I've read, incidentally) but I'm not aware of the books ever finding their target audience. Instead, the Minx line was relegated mostly to existing fans of the authors and artists involved, and I've noted the disparity between the target audience and the audience actually excited about the books in the past.
Why? I can't tell you the number of times that I've seen a Minx book in a Borders or Barnes and Noble, and I've certainly never seen promotional materials for them beyond the sampler I got at this year's NYCC and the promo copy of Janes that Jim Rugg gave me at last year's. In fact, I wouldn't have been excited for Minx at all if it weren't for Intertron pal Hugh Stewart, who's been a bigger booster for the imprint than he's had a right to be without being compensated by DC.
DC reminds me more and more of myself circa every middle school dance I ever attended. I stood against the wall, looking aloof, and wondered why the girls weren't noticing. But hey, the people already in my clique thought I was awesome.
September 25 is likely to become a holiday among gamers in years to come, a less obnoxious alternative to the grudgingly-fun but way-played-out Talk Like A Pirate Day.
Why? Because Jack Thompson is disbarred. And while this doesn't mean that Thompson is no longer two servings of Grape Nuts shy of a well-balanced breakfast, it means that his ability to antagonize gamers through the courts and as a talking head has been diminished pretty substantially.
As a sometimes gaming journo and a former Penny Arcade forums regular, I tingle with an undefined glee at the news of his long overdue comeuppance.
In the wake of his vicious, Twitter-based assault on former employer BOOM Studios, Kevin Church will be developing a new miniseries for Marvel. The project? Dazzler/MODOK: Strange Love.
Geoff Johns may be crafting the story of DC Universe Online, but fan favorite Roy Thomas has volunteered to write a 60-issue series explaining all of the inconsistencies between the game and established comics canon. When reached for comment, Thomas went on for two hours about the hidden connections between Tarantula and I, Spyder.
The much-hyped Bendis Vs. Kirkman panel taking place at Baltimore Comic Con this Saturday is not a debate. It's a pudding wrestling match.
Pre-emptive Spotted on the Con Floor:
One of the programming ingenues from my place of employment recently left us to go to college, and he's not happy with his roommate.
My Roommate Is A Creep is his chronicle of daily proof that hell is not other people per se, just the people that live with you (a truth I can attest to).
Some of the observations on display:
Welcome to college, Matt.
This morning I sprayed the entire room with Oust. I just got back from lunch and the room smells even more than before I sprayed it. Now, there’s a faint smell of Parmesan cheese. I really don’t appreciate the level of sanitation that it has come to in here.
I just got done reading A Darkness Forged In Fire, and as solidly okay as it ended up being, it was another fantasy saga with a world-weary outcast hero, his unlikely animal companion (that is symbolic of his repressed inner nature) a love interest that the hero could 'never be with' due to some social convention or another, a dwarven friend who has an especially genial relationship with the hero's cowardly friend, and a barbaric friend who is totally smarter than he first appears to be. That totally doesn't sound like anything I've read before.
Everything about it is a page from a Fantasy/Sci Fi Mad Libs, up to and including the title.
I don't normally hate DirecTV - it gives me Food Network, Jurassic Fight Club, reruns of the 90s Iron Man cartoon, and records shows for me, too - but right now, I kind of do.
When my wife worked second shift at el hospital, it was imperative for us to record new shows and watch them later that night. Once she switched to days, the habit stuck, and we're exceedingly used to watching stuff whenever we want to, a habit that betrayed us tonight.
We were visiting my wife's grandmother in the hospital following a joint replacement surgery, and didn't get home until maybe 8:40. Of course, we weren't worried about missing House or (my wife's current favorite show) 90210, because they were set up to record. Just like Fringe was set up to record immediately afterward at 9pm.
Which is great in theory, but in practice I came home to find that the Tivo box had malfunctioned, leaving us with duplicate 3 minute recordings of both House and 90210, duplicate recordings that started at 8:12 and ended at 8:15. I would later discover that Fringe didn't record at all.
I can set up the Tivo (if it still works) to record the latest installment of the 902-verse when it reairs tomorrow night, but damned if Fox is planning to rebroadcast that episode of House anytime soon.
Yost/Miyazawa, Secret Invasion: Runaways/Young Avengers #3So, gas costs are still something like eighty dollars a gallon, and I drive a half hour to get to my comics retailer (insert another plug for Scranton, PA's The Unknown). That creates a financial quandary, and the answer is cutting my pull list. And yes, one solution is to simply outsource my comics buying to Heavyink and cut the drive out altogether, but I like supporting local businesses, and local comic shops (so many of which have gone extinct) even moreso.
So, I'm taking a look at my pull list and seeing just what exactly I need to have.
DC
All-New Atom
Batman
Birds of Prey
Booster Gold
Blue Beetle
Final Crisis
Green Lantern
JLA
JSA
Legion of Super Heroes
Manhunter
Teen Titans
Wonder Woman
Marvel
Avengers: The Initiative
New Avengers
Mighty Avengers
Secret Invasion
Amazing Spider-Man
Captain America
Invincible Iron Man
Immortal Iron Fist
Punisher: War Journal
Uncanny X-Men
X-Force
X-Men Legacy
Young X-Men
Image
Dynamo 5
Invincible
Noble Causes
Dynamite
Zorro
It now looks a little something like this:
And I don't care how magical a shark it is.
Because sometimes, you just want to review some comic books.
It was a light week, but a good one. I didn't pick up my books until Saturday, and I read them last night. So, without further ado, here are all my issues:
DC Comics
The Authority #2
It would be inaccurate to say that I love The Authority. Instead, I think it's safe to say that I love certain authors writing the book. And so I figured that Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning - a writing team that I typically follow anywhere without regret - would be authors that I loved writing the book. And it kind of falls flat. Maybe because I don't follow WildStorm religiously enough to understand what the hell is going on. Whatever the reason, the Authority running a homeless shelter in postapocalyptic London isn't that enthralling to me. The first issue was engaging enough that I wanted to check out #2, and actually found the Midnighter/Apollo scene kinda moving, but this issue was a revisit of the same ridiculous villains and 'giant catastrophe/millions die' plots that have become the trite joke-summation of the entire series to date. I can't blame the writers, either - I just don't think that WildStorm as a concept has much juice left in it.
Fables #75
This was a hell of an issue. Fables is consistently one of my favorite books, so that shouldn't be a surprise, but this was a truly epic read. Buckingham's art, whether it's a two page spread of a crashing airship or one panel of the Cow That Jumped Over The Moon being riddled with arrows, is breathtaking and painstakingly detailed.
With the war officially over, I can't wait to see what Willingham & Co. have in store next. This one is a must-read.
Jonah Hex #35
This is the first issue of Jonah Hex that I've read. Ever. I've been trying to cull my pull list, what with the rapacious cost of oil, and I had reservations about adding something new, especially if it didn't 'mean anything' in terms of DCU continuity. But I've been hearing such overwhelmingly positive buzz that I had to try this issue, which has some amazing art by JH Williams III and features Hex being drugged and sexually assaulted by a marshal and his wife. It's hardboiled, Western badassery and it looks great. Will I read the next issue? Oh yeah.
Secret Six #1
I love this team. Perhaps more than the Gail Simone/Nicola Scott team behind it. And my massive fancrush on Gail Simone is a matter of public record. The combination of their camaraderie and their too-good-to-be-bad/too-bad-to-be-good antics. The debut of the Six in an ongoing series is some of the best news I heard during this year's convention season, and the issue itself is a hilarious, horrifying offbeat tale of dead girlfriends popping out of cakes, noses being broken by ice cream and a glimpse of Deadshot's nurturing, educational side. And Ragdoll. The more Simone writes Ragdoll, the more comfortable she seems to get in his demented little head and the more cringelarious he becomes. Can't wait for next issue to see who fills the coveted sixth spot on the team, and just how long it will take for Ragdoll to murder her.
Marvel Comics
The Amazing Spider-Man #570
New Ways To Die has been the strongest arc under the Spidey Brain Trust to date. This issue's three-way brawl between Venom, Anti-Venom and Spider-Man was one of the best-executed comic book brawls I've seen all year. And John Romita Jr. doesn't hurt, either. Even if you've dropped ASM recently, I'd check this arc out.
Invincible Iron Man #5
This is the book Matt Fraction was born to write. Like I said five months ago when this book started, this is the title that finally manages to recuperate Tony Stark into a likeable, heroic guy. One of the best books that Marvel's putting out right now. Another great, extended super-brawl this week and one hell of a cliffhanger.
Image Comics
Noble Causes #36 
This issue wraps up the first post-five year jump story arc and it's another great issue leading up to the book's impending finale. NC and Dynamo 5 are two of my favorite superhero books right now and it'll be a shame to see one of those books go and wondering who's going to be lucky enough to work with Yildiray Cinar next.
Dark Horse Comics
Buffy the Vampire Slayer #18
You know, I've not been digging the Fray arc as much as I thought I would, but it's still not bad, you know?
I love ghosts. I don't believe in them, but as I pointed out all the way back in my very first post, I find the subculture that does absolutely fascinating. And perhaps as a tangent off of that fascination, I love ghost horror.
Which is how I came to watch Shutter.
Well, that's a bit of a lie.
The real reason I watched Shutter was that my wife made me because Joshua Jackson is in it. And my wife fucking adores Pacey. But I could have just torrented the Fringe pilot for her in order to sate her lusts. So I confess that I wasn't objecting to her movie choice overly much.
Shutter is basically a 90 minute breakdown of why a Fatal Frame movie, though it sounds good on paper, could never be good - I need to wait for a Polaroid to develop before I can get tense, anxious or scared.
It also doesn't help that the emotional point of view character in the movie is played by the Australian girl from Transformers - you know, the totally emotionless one. So we've got a dull protagonist and a nonthreatening antagonist. Which is when the ghost starts appearing in reflections, too, and that seems like a different gimmick altogether.
If there's one element of Shutter that I didn't hate, it's that they actually managed to take a relatively trivial character trait in Pacey's photographer character and make it pay off at the end. From the moment we see the character around women other than his wife, there are all kinds of nonverbal clues that he's a bit of a womanizer. Nothing's ever made of this in the dialogue between him and his wife, but there are all the right glances and body language going on. Watching it helped me to predict the "shocking twist" near the end with a precision that really annoys my wife, but that kind of I-told-you-so feeling is better than the actual surprise at the revelation any day.
At its best, Shutter is inoffensive and it looks okay - it just lacks the emotional core and the actual horror required to make it a standout ghost film. Watch it if you're bored and have seen all the other pay per view options. Or if you like Pacey.
The All-New, All-Different Second Issue of Grok - the web zine for hip, fashionable people who are driven to succeed - is available as we speak for your digital or print perusal.
Within its pages, find a maudlin tale of my youth and other, much more interesting content.
And remember to check out the locative journal that goes along with my ruminating. It has pictures.
It seems like I can't go to New York City without some overenthusiastic person asking me (over and over again) to take a stress test. For the unfamiliar, these people are Scientologists and I'm sure that when you submit to their test they place tiny, psychic worms in your ear canal that beam telepathic suggestions compelling you to join their pyramid-scheme religion, beat up anybody you see in a V mask, or buy copies of Dianetics for everybody you know this Christmas. Or all of the above.
While walking to a movie theater in Manhattan back in April, pal Rich and I were accosted by one of these Xenu-riffic ambush parties. The encounter ended with me shouting and ranting about them for the next hour or so, as we walked into a screening of Journey To the Center of the Earth that turned out to be a screening of the first reel, walked out of the screening after the obnoxious line didn't warrant seeing twenty minutes of something we both knew was going to suck, got pizza, had a lengthy conversation about the Pope, and hoofed it back to the ferry. The pushy, abrasive treatment I got at the hands of those misguided Hubbardites just ensured that I will never, ever join their silly club.
Which is why I have to side with the Internet's great white devil in wondering who exactly wants to be marketed to that way - other than people who buy ShamWow. That the answer is "people who buy comics" gives me a bit of pause. I've heard anecdotally, and I think that Rich may have been present for this, that a retailer here refused to sell a customer a book (I think it was an issue of The Flash) and proceeded to rip the book up, placing it in a bag and posting it on the bulletin board as his review of the week. I started frequenting that retailer less after that, and now - surprise - that shop is out of business. Who'd want to shop there, other than a goon squad of dolts who share the retailer's exact taste, or are willing to pretend they do to feel like they're part of the crowd?
One of the things that I like about my current retailer is that he doesn't complain when people buy books that he doesn't like. Now, you can claim that that's self-serving and poor customer service, but it's not. There's no surer way to alienate a geek then telling him that his interests have no value, because it's likely that the geek believes that his or her hobby has enormous, unplumbed value.
I know it's cool to hate on stuff on the Internet. I'm a comics blogger, for crying out loud. Hate is my candy. But I think the smart marketing move is to promote things you like. Instead of giving me a caustic review of a book that I like in order to 'keep it street' or whatever, have a conversation with me about what you like and position those books so that, if I'm getting your emails, I can walk into the store and see the good books that you're talking about without having to hunt for them. That entices me twice to try the book out and if it's a light week for me, I'll definitely drop a few extra bucks to try a new book.
Promotion without invalidation. That's all it takes. If you tell people you have a good product, they will want to come to your shop. If you tell them you have a bad product, they won't want to come in. There are ways to cultivate trust with your customers without going negative, and there are way to promote positively without being salesy. Whether it's comics or preaching the evils of the Galactic Confederacy, don't drive your potential customers away with an abrasive encounter.
Outside of maybe The Amityville Horror (and even there, only the original), I don't know that putting the word "Horror" right there in the title of your movie does a lot to inspire me, Flu Bird Horror. I kind of regard genre as one of those things you should be able to figure out pretty easily. I mean, Rob Schneider's The Hot Chick wasn't called The Hot Chick Comedy and the greatest John Travolta film of all time isn't called Battlefield: Earth Sci-Fi/Action, although in those particular examples, it would be a welcome aid for the audience.
As both a Sci-Fi Channel original film and a movie directed by Leigh Scott, nobody should have any expectations that anything about Flu Bird Horror would be any good. You can infer that from the title. Or from Leigh Scott's name attached to it. If you haven't learned this lesson the hard way and already sat through a Leigh Scott film, make me a promise right now that you never will.
As you might guess, a low budget horror film is bound to have some problems. And a Sci-Fi original movie is bound to deliver inelegant solutions to those problems. For instance:
Problem number one: Despite the annual day or two of widespread news attention it gets each year, avian flu really isn't all that scary, especially if you don't live in, say, Bodega Bay. Solution? Turn the birds into dinosaurs. Dinosaurs flying around a national park infecting people with avian flu.
Problem number two: Killer flu dinosaur birds threatening a small town requires lot of extras. Solution? Let's forget that there's a town and put everybody out in the woods as fast as possible.
Problem number three: Where did these dinosaur birds come from? Solution? Um...let's just ignore it.
The movie is seriously awful, guys. It's got a totally slapdash plot structure, less-than-one-dimensional characters, horrible special effects and, well, I don't need any other ands, do I? I mean, unless you want to include actors that can't act and the rushed, nonsensical ending that makes the ending of Skeleton Man (fistfight with a ghost in a nuclear power plant) look radmazing.
So, don't watch Flu Bird Horror. But then again, you probably already know that.
Bahlactus loves Ithorian on Arkanian action.