Author: admin

Amish Otaku, Comics, Vertigo

Midnight Days: A Taste of Neil Gaiman’s Early Work

Sandman: Midnight Theatre
Vertigo Comics

I’ll be honest. When Neil Gaiman reveals he was just twenty-four when he began writing for DC and that most of the scribing he did was after midnight, I felt a connection since I am also twenty-four. I also attempted to give his stories some justice by only reading through them late at night, but I haven’t been making it to midnight. I’ve been crashing early and reading Days around 11:30 p.m. at the latest.

Nonetheless, Days, a mulligan’s stew of sorts, was written early in Gaiman’s career and contains several stories, the first few of which occur in the Swamp Thing comics magazine. Ever since I saw a cover of SWAMP THING #34, lovingly painted by Stephen Bissette, when I was twelve, I had wanted to read a Swamp Thing story. The image’s romanticism sucked me in with both an anti-traditional superhero quality and a fiercely trusting human quality, even though Swamp Thing’s costume is his ever-evolving plant matter construction and only resembles the human form in profile. Continue reading “Midnight Days: A Taste of Neil Gaiman’s Early Work”

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Amish Otaku, Comics

Star Wars Legacy #12: Getting a Fresh Look at Star Wars

Art from SWL #6
Dark Horse Comics

The only thing that kept me writing about the 30th anniversary of Star Wars was pure fear in coming off as even more of a total geek than just the comic geek. Loves comics and Star Wars? Strike Two! But I do love Star Wars. I read the old Marvel series religiously, picked up a lot of the Dark Horse stuff and have enjoyed most of the novels. But I wasn’t a huge fan of the Old Republic- and Prequel-era comics. There were a couple of gems in there (and this creative team did some great work on a bunch of them), but I’ve always been the type of person to want to know what happens NEXT. With Legacy, the Star Wars story goes forward 100 years past the events in the current Star Wars novels or, more precisely, 137 years after the Episode IV: A New Hope.

Ostrander has done an incredible job in creating a new universe for these characters. Gone is the Sith rule of two where there can only be a master and an apprentice. The evil Sith Lord Darth Krayt has dozens of Sith working for him. The Empire has been reborn and is more of a political power than ever before. The Jedi Order that was re-established in the post-trilogy novels seems to have been completely decimated once again. The only hope that people have comes from the one called Skywalker. Cade Skywalker. The only problem is that Cade is a pirate who abandoned his Jedi teachings and has gone out for himself. He doesn’t want to acknowledge, let alone embrace, his legacy. Continue reading “Star Wars Legacy #12: Getting a Fresh Look at Star Wars”

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Amish Otaku, PC, Video Games

The Secret World: Funcom’s Newest MMO Revealed

London before
Funcom

If you go to Funcom’s main page on their website, you’ll see that their newest project isn’t even in the “Funcom Links” panel. It doesn’t have a graphic representation there yet. In fact, the only mention of it on the front page is a link in their news panel.

Click on the words “Funcom reveals The Secret World,” and you will be taken to a company written article about the announcement of their latest MMO being revealed earlier this month.

According to the article the game will be a “different kind of online world, something scary and contemporary, something deeper and closer to our reality.” The game promises to offer fresh material, something different from the standard sci-fi/fantasy MMO faire. Continue reading “The Secret World: Funcom’s Newest MMO Revealed”

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Amish Otaku, Genesis, Sega, Video Games

Phantasy Star II

The protagonist and Nei face off against two species of biomonster
Sega

Phantasy Star II brings players back to the Algol solar system more than 1,000 years after the first game in the series, with all the technological and social improvements one might expect from such a period of peace. Rather than a revolutionary seeking revenge for a murdered sibling, the main character of the second game in the series is a secret agent working for the solar-system-wide government – a government headed by a supercomputer named Mother Brain.

In contrast to the somewhat clichéd “defeat the evil king” plot of Phantasy Star, the overall plot of PSII begins in a mystery. At the start of the game, the main character is sent out to discover the source of the recent outbreak of attacks by genetic mutations – called “biomonsters” – that have been plaguing the otherwise tranquil planet of Motavia. Continue reading “Phantasy Star II”

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Amish Otaku, Video Games, Xbox

Marvel vs. Capcom 2: A Modern Masterpiece from Capcom

Spidey giving Wolverine the toss
Capcom

Marvel vs. Capcom 2 for the Xbox, despite its mixed reviews at launch, has managed to become a mainstay at video game tournaments around the world and remains one of the most elusive and expensive titles of the last hardware generation.

I can understand why the game got mixed reviews: So little had changed from the previous iterations and so many fighters were on the market at that time, it’s no surprise IGN.com gave it a four out of ten. But there is something about the formula Capcom had been tinkering with since Street Fighter II that has really taken hold with this game.

There are more than fifty different characters to choose from, Continue reading “Marvel vs. Capcom 2: A Modern Masterpiece from Capcom”

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Amish Otaku, Comics

True Story, Swear to God

 
AiT/PlanetLar

TSSTG is the autobiographical retelling of the creator’s relationship with his soul-mate, Lily. Tom was a designer working in California and Lily was a DJ working in Puerto Rico. They met by chance at Disney World and began their love affair, first as a long distance romance and then with Tom uprooting himself and moving to Puerto Rico.

These stories were originally published as online comic strips and mini-comics, then Beland self-published his work through Clibs Boy Comics and last year the acclaimed series moved to Image Comics.

One of the most difficult things in doing one of these autobiographical books is to make the stories appealing to people outside ones’ immediate family. What makes one person’s story more interesting than anyone else’s? Why should you care about what some cartoonist in California is doing with a woman from Puerto Rico? The easy answer is because Beland is doing this as good as anyone else in the field of comics. Continue reading “True Story, Swear to God”

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Amish Otaku, Comics

Comic Book Virgins: Meet Ted

With the plethora of comic book films coming out in recent years and the success of such ventures like the annual Free Comic Book Day, I thought it’d be interesting to see what non-comic book fans think of today’s comic books.

Our first experiment this time out is Ted. Ted is twenty eight years old and read a couple comic books as an early teen but wasn’t a serious collector or anything like that. He considers Batman Begins the best “comic book” movie but also has enjoyed the Spider-Man, X-Men and Superman films as well as a few movies like Ghost World and A History of Violence that Ted didn’t even realize we based on comic books.

So Ted tagged along with me for Free Comic Day in early May and picked up a couple of new titles, along with a couple books off the rack that caught his eye. What will Ted think? Continue reading “Comic Book Virgins: Meet Ted”

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Amish Otaku, Movies

Spider-Man 3: Twenty things I learned – and re-learned

  1. Components needed for theater motion-picture survival: caffeine, nicotine and protein.
  2. Three fourths of a smoke, 20 oz of asphalt-flavored gas station java, a tinkle and a bacon/egg/cheese bagel are still enough to outlast an IMAX screening on 3 hours of sleep.
  3. IMAX, without 3D, still leaves you feeling like you’re a smashed insect holding on for mercy on the camera lens.
  4. Bryce Dallas Howard, a natural redhead, is a MUCH hotter blonde than Kirsten Dunst, a natural blonde.
  5. Dunst is a smidge hotter as a redhead than Howard, but is still not hotter overall. Continue reading “Spider-Man 3: Twenty things I learned – and re-learned”

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Amish Otaku, Video Games, Xbox 360

Halo 3 Beta: Let the Carnage Continue

 

Having missed every opportunity to get into the Halo 3 beta for free, I – like many others – opted to purchase my beta key for $60 in the form of Crackdown. Now Crackdown isn’t a bad game, in fact it’s pretty good, but we all know I only bought it for Halo 3. Thank god it’s finally here.

The public beta was launched this past Wednesday, unfortunately a minor glitch kept the players with the Crackdown key from downloading and playing the game until late Wednesday and even then errors persisted. Continue reading “Halo 3 Beta: Let the Carnage Continue”

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Amish Otaku, PC, Video Games

Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar

 

Currently, if you log into Lord of the Rings Online, you’re going to see a lot of chatter about how the game compares to World of Warcraft. “The graphics are better/worse.” “The gameplay is better/ worse.” “WoW has more grinding.” “WoW has the better interface.” “No it doesn’t, LotRO does.” “LotRO is too cartoony.” “Are you kidding me? WoW is the cartoon!” “LotRO is just a WoW clone…”

Whatever the argument, players aren’t going to avoid the debate for long and it can get pretty heated.

So why the debate? Well, for one thing, since the game has gone public a good portion of WoW players have come over for a while to see what the game is like. Let’s face it, this is standard practice for gamers. If something new comes out, we want to get a peek at it even if we don’t plan to leave the other game we’re already playing for it. Continue reading “Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar”

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