Counter-Geek

Transformers 1986 first-draft script

2010-12-11T09:40:00.001-07:00

Uh, so, apparently, Ron Friedman sold a copy of the first draft of the 1986 Transformers movie to members of the Transfandom, or something. It is available here:

http://boltax.blogspot.com/2010/12/heritaage-auctions-transformers-movie.html

This is A Very Big Deal to all Transformers fans. Big ups to David Willis (creator of the webcomics Shortpacked! and Dumbing of Age, both of which are also in the bookmarks I shared a few days ago!) who made me aware of this piece of Transformers legend.

Holy cow.

Thank you, retailers

2010-12-11T09:37:00.001-07:00

I noticed that Christmas decorations and whatnot mostly waited until after Halloween to be brought out, this year. Thank you to the heads of all the major chains who helped prevent me from raging at Christmas decorations in stores during September.

On Competitive Gaming...

2010-12-07T06:00:00.004-07:00

While I'm generally a rather passive and laid-back individual, I do enjoy competitive entertainment, from time to time.

My two biggest competitive outlets are games that are both infinitely different and incredibly the same, all at once; WWE Raw Deal, and Super Street Fighter IV.

I've been playing Street Fighter games since 1993 (go back to the "Fighting in the Street" articles from earlier this year for that story), and I tend to try and keep up with whatever the latest offering Capcom has to offer is in the fighting genre - Be it a highly technical game such as Street Fighter III: Third Strike, a flashy so-unbalanced-it's-balanced combofest like Marvel vs. Capcom 2, or a lackluster game with high potential such as Capcom Fighting Evolution. Since Super Street Fighter IV is the latest in Capcom's fighting offerings, that's what I've been focusing my time on, lately.

WWE Raw Deal is a collectible card came that came out in 2000, back when World Wrestling Entertainment was still known as the World Wrestling Federation. At first, I bought a Triple H-themed starter deck and 2 or 3 booster packs to try the game out. I was convinced that there was no way a CCG based on pro wrestling would be any good - despite the fact that I enjoyed both CCGs and wrestling! But a friend of mine who didn't like wrestling at all (at the time), but was willing to try out any new game told me that it was actually fun. And, honestly, that's the exact kind of endorsement you need for a game with a pitch line like, "It's a collectible card game based on the WWF," because that game could have VERY easily turned into an unmitigated disaster.

Without going into every facet of Raw Deal, you begin by picking your wrestler, and construct a deck of 60 cards. Each wrestler ("Superstar") has a specific Ability; For example, The Rock gets to recover 1 card from his discard pile to the bottom of his deck before each of his turns starts. The Undertaker can discard 2 cards from his hand to pick up 1 card from his discard pile. Edge gets to go first, etc. Each Superstar also has a variable number of Superstar-Specific foil cards with their logo that represent their signature moves and theatrics. Only Stone Cold Steve Austin can use the Stone Cold Stunner, and only Triple H can tell you "I Am The Game." Generic maneuver, reversal, and action cards make up the rest of your deck. Later expansions introduced a side deck of 20 horizontally-aligned cards, where you could play 5 of them before the match, and 5 others during the match, increasing the options and strategy required in the game.

In Super Street Fighter IV, you begin each match by selecting a character you want to use. Each Street Fighter has a move set of over 100 attacks, with a universal block, throw, focus attack, and taunt command shared amongst the 35 selectable players.

So, right off the bat, it is highly advantageous to the player to know what both their Street Fighter and/or their Raw Deal deck are capable of doing. Building a deck of random cards will likely not work out in a Raw Deal player's favor, and jumping into a game against an opponent with a character you've never heard of will likely not work out well for a Super Street Fighter IV player.

Working within the confines of the rules of the games, things become apparent; both require knowledge not only of your own character's moves/cards, but also knowing what your opponent is capable of can only help your playing ability. Both games require the ability to execute particular strategies at particular times, either as an offensive means, or in response to you're opponent's latest attempt at beating you; In Raw Deal, it's a matter of having and playing the right card in your hand at the right time, while in Street Fighter, it's a matter of knowing what move or combination of moves will work, and the ability to execute the controller commands for these moves.

I've played both games competitively, and entered into many local tournaments; particularly in Raw Deal, as Arizona had a very strong Raw Deal community for several years. And I always performed respectably in either tournament. I'd win it all sometimes, and lose before the finals other times.

I jokingly used to refer to myself as "The Most Average Player on the Planet," as I'd often have about a 50% win ratio in tournament settings in either game. But all of that changed when I read a book that is literally thousands of years old:

The Art of War by Sun Tzu.

I know it sounds kind of strange, but reading the tactics and strategies that an ancient Chinese General came up with actually enhanced my competitive play in gaming.

If you're a competitive player of any game, be it fighting video games, collectible card games, sports, or whatever, I cannot recommend reading The Art of War enough. It will give you an edge that your opponent doesn't expect, and it will open up your mind to new ways of thinking about your game that you would have never considered, before.

Also, nothing beats old-fashioned practice. After all, those new, ancient Chinese strategies won't do you any good if you don't learn HOW to apply them!

I hope that your game improves!

Why manga is cheaper.

2010-12-06T07:00:00.000-07:00

As a comic store owner of two years, one of the questions I get asked the most is why manga is so much cheaper than American comics.

I'll preface this by saying I have done absolutely zero actual research into this answer. I've just used some common sense.

First off, manga tends to be printed in black-and-white, and on low-grade paper. American comics are printed on high-grade, glossy stock paper, and in full-color. Oftentimes, nowadays, with full bleed, meaning some of the artwork goes off the edge of the page.

Go to your nearest photocopy shop. Ask them to reproduce something in black and white on the type of paper used in manga, and then ask them to reproduce something in full color with full bleed on American comic paper stock. Notice how the American comic reproduction is going to be at least three times as much, because of the higher-quality product.

Secondly, let's look at what companies are putting out: Manga publishers are re-printing translated material. American comics publishers are creating 20-24 pages of original, brand-new content, every single month. Now, both types of publishers are paying for printing, advertising, distribution, etc. But what different things are they paying for?

Manga publishers are paying for the licensed rights to reproduce already-created material and translations. Sometimes they pay for newly-designed covers.

American comics publishers are paying for original scritps, artwork, inking, coloring, cover design, editing, continuity checks (in many cases, as ignored as they may be), and, sometimes, even licensing. And every single person along that line needs to be paid enough to make a living doing their job.

Hey, reproduction is cheap. Don't believe me? Compare the amount of advertising found in most American monthly comics with the amount of advertising found in their trade paperbacks and hardcovers. That's right - Montly comics will have 8-12 pages of ads for 20-24 pages of comic, while the TPBs and HCs have NO ADS. Why? The creators have already been paid for the original work, and, until recently, very few comics creators had royalty clauses built into their work-for-hire contracts.

Once the work is created, reproducing it is cheaper than creating new work. As a result, manga and American comics reprints actually end up being about the same price, when you consider the differences in paper stock and color versus black & white.

This isn't to say that either is BETTER. I only bother to read stories that I think are good stories, regardless of their country of origin, or, in some cases, even the cost, if the story is good enough.

So, manga is cheaper than American comics because, in the United states, manga costs less to produce. That's all.

Fraudulence

2010-12-05T07:00:00.000-07:00

In my attempt to keep frequent updates, sometimes I write posts several days ahead of time. For example, I'm actually writing this post on December 1, even though it won't appear until December 5th. I apologize for the deception.

It's not that I don't WANT to give legitimate updates, every single day. But, many days, I either do have or don't want to take the time.

And some days, oddly, I actually feel like I have nothing to say.

Just figured I'd let you know. My apologies.

Interrobang!?

2010-12-04T11:00:00.000-07:00

From Dictionary.com:

–noun
a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question.
Also, interabang.

Origin:
1965–70, Americanism ; interro(gation point) + bang1 , printers' slang for an exclamation point

Bookmark sharing!

2010-12-03T11:00:00.001-07:00

These are the websites in my "Regular updates" bookmark folder, posted in a completely random order. You might like some of them! You might not! Some are by my friends! Some are not! I like exclamation points!

http://www.brawlinthefamily.com/

http://www.penny-arcade.com/

http://lillincoln.smackjeeves.com/

http://www.goonpatrol.com/

http://calderholbrook.blogspot.com/

http://kayin.pyoko.org/

http://www.dumbingofage.com/

http://www.krakowstudios.com/spinnerette/index.php

http://broiledbuffoonery.wordpress.com/

http://www.shortpacked.com/

http://tomleveen.livejournal.com/

http://veryemily.com/blog/

http://lemonandraspberry.com/

http://cupcake-castle.blogspot.com

http://harkavagrant.com/index.php

http://x-entertainment.com/updates/

If one of these websites is yours, a link back would be cool, but not mandatory. If you have a website and you think I'd like your content, leave me a comment!

Oh, hey. It's December.

2010-12-02T10:38:00.000-07:00

Eh. Whatever.

Yes, I'm bitter about the holidays. I'm not going to go calling Christmas a humbug, but between the fourth Friday in November and December 25th, I generally just kind of hate people.

Cheer and good will towards man? Yes. Absolutely. Let's celebrate that in December. But you know what's a better idea?

DOING IT THE REST OF THE FUCKING YEAR.

If you're only allowing yourself to feel and spread love and giving and togetherness and sprinkles and magic and laughter and cheer for one-twelfth of the year, you're missing out on three-hundred and thirty-four days (335 days on Leap Year) filled with 86,400 opportunities to be happy (presuming you average one opportunity per second). That's 28,857, 600 opportunities to feel awesome that you're just ignoring, just because it's not between Black Friday and Boxing Day.

TWENTY EIGHT MILLION CHANCES.

Look, if you want to be happy and be all, "Oh, but it's Christmas so let's do this nice thing for someone else" about December, that's awesome. But for 2011, can we please make it, "Oh, but today ends in 'Y,' so let's do this nice thing for someone else?"

If the world is going to end in two years anyways, can we at least spend those last two years being awesome to each other?

Maybe I'll like December, again.

In progress.

2010-12-01T10:31:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend, I re-arranged my TV room.

That's not even really true. I just continued improving the room, so that it looked more full of entertainment. The bookcase that houses my DVDs is overflowing, with three stacks of DVD boxes on top, with everything from A through H remaining, more or less, in alphabetical order.

I took all of my Sega Saturn, Playstation, Playstation 2, and XBox 360 games, and put them in CD binders, while stacking all of the cases on a smaller book case. This allows me easier access to the discs the games are on, but I still have easy access to instruction manuals. Plus, one can see my awesome collection of (mostly fighting) video games without there ever being a case out of place.

I moved the PS2 into the room, so I now have all three consoles I play the most frequently in one place. This will be nice when watching DVDs, since the PS2 is way quieter than the XBox 360.

The room's not perfect. There's still a closet full of STUFF that I need to go through and organize. And then it's on to the work room; I need to clear some stuff out of there, too, and move another desk in from elsewhere in my home.

Eventually, I'll have a pretty sweet-ass apartment. But it's slow-going. I've accumulated a lot of crap over the years, and some of it is just stuff that has been around forever, and really just needs to go away.

But I'm working on it. And when I'm done, it'll be awesome.

You say tomato, I say tomato...

2010-11-25T20:23:00.000-07:00

This was inspired by a comment I made on my buddy Kayin's blog, over at http://kayin.pyoko.org/?p=916 ... and it's taken on a mind of its own. Enjoy!

========

I enjoy things that other people do not. I do not enjoy things that other people do.

For example, I do not, generally, enjoy horror films. I will occasionally watch one, but it's very rare that I end up ENJOYING myself. Body mutilation, be it self-inflicted or forced upon someone, does not appeal to me. Most "suspenseful"horror movies are so utterly predictable that I just find them boring. No, I do not find it interesting when our scantily-clad heroine is walking around the house, with creepy music slowly dragging on towards a crescendo. I think it's boring and dull. Yes, there are exceptions - Bram Stoker's Dracula, by Francis Ford Coppola, is an amazingly well-made movie. Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, with Kenneth Branagh and Robert DeNiro, is a fabulously-made film. I enjoy watching those two. But since the only two kinds of horror movies that get made anymore are slasher and suspense, that basically covers that entire genre. And I don't care for it.

But you might.

Relatedly, I don't enjoy Role-Playing video games. RPGs, generally, I find to be tedious. If I want to read a bunch of menus, I'll go eat out. If I want to take turns attacking and being attacked, I'll play chess. If I want to read a bunch of dialogue, I can download a movie script. If I want to watch gorgeous CGI animation and listen to great voice acting, I'll rent a Pixar movie. These are not elements that I find to make a fun game.

But you might.

As mentioned in previous posts, I like professional wrestling. I enjoy watching real-life superheroes combat each other, week after week, in an attempt to hold a leather belt that indicates they're the best. Or maybe one guy turned on his friend, and now they're fighting to prove who is the better man. The faux drama in professional wrestling interests me. Plus, I appreciate the amount of care these athletes give to their bodies; Even the fat ones are in good cardiovascular shape, and all of them run around in their underpants, throwing each other around a canvas ring for 20 minutes, 300 nights a year. That's some serious work ethic. Most regular people don't work 300 days a year. All of this, just so that I can watch a few hours of phony fighting, each and every week. I really enjoy that.

But you might not.

I really like fighting games. Like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. The amount of knowledge it takes to be good at these games on a competitive level is staggering; Not only do you have to know your own character well enough to understand the range, damage, speed, and priority of your own attacks, you really need to have a decent understanding of what your opponent can do, too. And each character in these games is generally diverse enough to allow for multiple different playing styles -- Player A may jump a lot more than Player B, and Player B may block attacks more than player C, who is far more aggressive than Player A. This level of intimate knowledge about how to handle a joystick and hit the four to six attack buttons in proper combination is astounding, and I really enjoy the craft involved in creating it.

But you might not.

I don't like anti-heroes. I've spent plenty of time watching heroes who are basically just villains that murder people who they deem to be worse than they are, and, as far as I can tell, there's not really much there. I'm tired of this moral gray area, and I want to go back to White Hats, who always do what is morally and ethically right, vs. Black Hats, who always do whatever they want, regardless of how it affects others. Characters to fall in that middle, gray area? I don't care for their stories.

But you might.

I don't particularly care for movies that are too serious. Real life is serious enough; people die every single day. People fall in to and out of love all the time. Adultery is committed a basis far more regularly than anybody wants to admit. Folks are constantly getting screwed out of money, property, and belongings, just because some Black Hat decided they were entitled to something, just because they could get away with it. Movies that deal with these themes don't do anything for me.

But they might be fun for you.

I don't particularly want to listen to bands that give too many layers of depth to their music, and find a way to combine Latin influences with their love for Pantera. I want to listen to a simple, easy-to-remember melody with lyrics that intrigue me, either because they make me think, or I can relate to them, or they make me laugh.

And, you know what? It's okay.

Look, if you're the kind of person who enjoys the SAW movies, that's great. I don't, but I will never tell you that you can't. If you want to watch an anime series about giant robots, then please do! I may even join you, some of the time. You want to play a game with a turn-based menu fighting system? Fantastic!

Meanwhile, I'm going to watch poorly-written 80s martial arts movies, sitcoms, and Metal Slug 3. Because that's what I find fun. I don't really care if you agree or not, because you don't have to! And I don't need to agree with you!

This is a situation where EVERYBODY can and should agree to disagree, and it will make the entertainment industries a lot better. So let's all not judge each other based on what we like, and let's judge each other based on how decent of a human being we are.

Wrestling Themes: Randy Orton: Voices

2010-11-17T01:00:00.000-07:00

Today, I'm going to look at current WWE Champion Randy Orton's theme song, "Voices" by the band Rev Theory. A couple of users on YouTube were kind enough to upload versions that have the lyrics built right in to the video, so I don't need to re-type them all.

"I hear voices in my head. They council me, the understand, they talk to me."

So, first things first: Randy Orton is certifiably insane. He has voices, in his head, that tell him what he's going to do, what he's going to think, and how corrupt the rest of the world is.

Look, I'll be the first one to admit that the world is far from perfect. But seriously, Randy; If EVERY authority figure in the world has all these problems, maybe it's just the way that you see things.

"All the doctors are disease."

If I were a voice in your head, I'd be telling you the same thing, man! I'd be doing whatever I could to survive and continue driving you insane, getting you to do whatever I wanted.

And here's the thing about Randy Orton: Currently, he's playing one of the good guys. WWE has re-focused their programming to be a PG-rated show, aimed at younger audiences. And Randy Orton, with all of the voices he hears that tell him to trust nothing and no person, is being paraded around as a hero to children.

Does anybody else feel a little uncomfortable about this?

Television Theme Songs: The Jeffersons

2010-11-16T01:00:00.000-07:00

Believe it or not, I wasn't alive in the 60s or 70s, but those decades are where most of my favorite TV show theme songs come from. In fact, many of these shows I've never even seen, so I have completely untainted opinions about the songs, based purely on their own musical merits.

But, as much as I like some of these themes, they lose almost all meaning to me, because I've never actually watched these shows. Today, I'll be taking a look at the theme to The Jeffersons.

"Well we're movin' on up!
(Movin' on up!)
To the East side.
(Movin' on up!)
To a deluxe apartment,
in the sky

Movin' on up!
(Movin' on up!)
to the East Side!
(Movin' on up!)
We finally got a piece of the pie!

Fists don't fight in the kitchen
Beans don't burn on the grill
took a whole lot o' tryin
Just to get up that hill

Now we're up in the big leagues
Gettin' our turn at best
As long as we live
It's you and me, baby.
Ain't nothin' wrong with that.

Well we're movin' on up!
(Movin' on up!)
To the East side.
(Movin' on up!)
To a deluxe apartment,
in the sky

Movin' on up!
(Movin' on up!)
to the East Side!
(Movin' on up!)
We finally got a piece of the pie!"

So, this song means almost nothing to me. Don't get me wrong; I think it's a fun, upbeat, peppy song in its own right. But the lyrics are almost without significance to me.

Apparently, a soul-singing woman and at least one other person she knows have become successful enough to move up to Manhattan's East side?

I'm not from Manhattan, and haven't spent any time there, whatsoever. Is living on the East side a positive show of social status? And deluxe apartments that hover above the city? These were desirable in the 1970s? Where are our flying apartments, today? I want to visit deluxe apartment in the sky! I may want to live there!

Fists don't fight in the kitchen! Holy cow, this levitating domicile has magical powers that prevent people from boxing while cooking! AND it stops beans from burning on the grill! That's amazing!

I know all of my smart-alec-y questions would be answered if I'd just watch the show, but that's too much effort. I'd rather just enjoy the song for what it is, and wonder what hidden meanings the lyrics may have.

Television Theme Songs: Green Acres

2010-11-15T09:31:00.002-07:00

One of my quirks is that I collect theme songs; Both to television show themes and professional wrestlers' entrance themes. It intrigues me that the entire premise of a show or personality can be condensed into a tune with lyrics that lasts for anywhere between thirty seconds to four minutes.

Take, for example, the Green Acres theme.

"Green Acres is the place to be
Farm livin' is the life for me.
Land spreadin' out so far and wide.
Keep Manhattan, just give me that countryside!"

"New York is where I'd rather stay!
I get allergic smelling hay!
I just adore a penthouse view!
Darling, I love you, but give me Park Avenue."

"The chores!"
"The stores!"
"Fresh air!"
"Times Square!"

"You are my wife."
"Goodbye, city life."

"Green Acres, we are there!"

From this theme, we can interpret that the premise of the show is a married couple are moving out to the countryside; the husband (Eddie Albert) is looking forward to this new, relaxing, hard-working lifestyle very much, but the wife (Eva Gabor) enjoys the fast-paced, high-stress life of the big city. The most interesting is the pair of lines, "You are my wife," "Goodbye, city life." There's no way a line like that would make it into a theme song for today's television programs (ignoring the fact that most of today's TV shows are licensed overplayed radio hits, anyways), so you already get an indication that the show started before the women's liberation movement, when people still believed a woman's place was barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. Oh, 1966. How quaint you seem, 54 years later.

For the record, I do not believe that to be a woman's place.

I'll be taking a look at TV show and wrestler themes more in the future, analyzing and dissecting some of my favorites. Stay tuned!

Billy Mitchell is.. Mister X?

2010-11-07T23:31:00.000-07:00

It just occurred to me that Billy Mitchell, former Donkey Kong world champion, greatly resembles Mr. X, the leader of the evil syndicate from Sega's Streets of Rage video games:

Billy Mitchell

Mr. X

Now, don't get me wrong. I certainly don't begrudge Mr. Mitchell any of the success he's had in his life. Despite the fact that The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters portrayed him in a completely negative light, Bill Mitchell is a very successful man worthy of respect.

I just found the similarity to be a bit striking.

Insane Clown Posse

2010-10-15T22:21:00.001-07:00

That's right. I like the Insane Clown Posse.

First of all, chill out. I don't own all of their albums; Just 3 of them. I don't obsess over Faygo soda - I don't even think it's very good. There is not a single "Hatchet Man" logo to be found on anything I own, or tattooed on any part of my body. It would be almost impossible to classify me as a Juggalo. In fact, I don't even put that label on myself.

I don't agree with most of their lyrics, and I don't think that they're very good, on a technical musical level. I just think a handful of their songs are about scenarios so outlandishly absurd that they make me laugh.

And I respect the hell out of J and Shags for becoming one of the most successful underground bands of all time.

Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope

For about 10 years, Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope wrote rap songs about the coming of the "Dark Carnival," explaining that the truth would come upon the release of their sixth "Joker Card" album. They received no promotion from their original record company (which, interestingly, was owned by the Walt Disney Corporation), forcing the tandem to found their own record label, Psychopathic Records.

Between messages about the Dark Carnival, J and Shaggy rapped about death, murder, rape, sex, life in the ghetto, necrophilia, misogyny, cutting people with hatchets, their supernatural origins, and some of the most absurd, twisted, bizarre content you could imagine.

In 2002, "The Wraith: Shangri-La" was released, and on the song, "Thy Unveiling," Violent J revealed that the "Dark Carnival" was God, and the two were Christians. And they weren't sorry if they tricked you.

That's right. Two jackasses in clown make-up spent nearly a decade gathering the loners and outcasts of society and gave them a family to which they could belong. And when the Juggalo family were ready to hear the revelation, ICP admitted that the whole thing was a way for them to say, "We went through some shit, and God helped us get through it. We think he can help you, too."

I dunno about you, but I think it takes a hell of a lot of personal conviction and faith to do that. Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope risked absolutely everything that they had to make themselves into a success, with everything working against them. They received no promotion from radio stations or MTV, meaning any success they've had has been through word-of-mouth. The duo spent years putting all of their money into their music and albums. As proof, that's why they had dreadlocks in the earlier part of their career - They stopped buying shampoo or getting hair cuts, because they put THAT MUCH of their money into their belief that they could become a success.

And to risk what success they managed to garner by basically telling their followers, "Oh, by the way? Everything we've told you about over the last 8 albums? We pretty much believe the exact opposite of that." Seriously, they could have been done and buried overnight with that revelation.

And, a lot of Juggalos bailed after the revelation that the "Dark Carnival" was God. They felt hurt and betrayed. Others jumped on board and dedicated their lives to Jesus Christ and the betterment of the world. That's pretty impressive.

Look, I co-own a business, and even *I* don't have that much conviction in what I do. From a pure business standpoint, ICP have achieved what so many dream of and only the smallest bit of the population ever receive: The ability to do pretty much whatever they want, and get paid for it.

And if you don't like that I laugh at ICP lyrics or respect their success, I don't particularly care. These are, after all, two grown men in clown make-up and hockey jerseys. It's not like you should be taking anything they do or say all that seriously, anyways.

Retail Horror: Part 3

2010-10-13T08:00:00.000-07:00

Today, a story from Toys "R" Us!

This one, of all my retail horror stories, is the only one that could be considered at all my fault. This lady came up and bought a lot of small items. I don't remember exactly how many, but it was over a dozen items, and the total retail value was over 100 dollars. It was only my fifth or so day at the job, and the woman asked for gift receipts for each item, as most of the gifts were for a lot of upcoming birthdays.

Gift Receipts are receipts that don't include the price, so that a person may return an item without knowing how much you spent on them. Which is kind of stupid, because you can just look up the price of something online. But I digress.

Now, at TRU, in 2004, there were three options we were presented with, when it came to gift receipts. The first was No Gift Receipt. This was the most frequently-used option, as most people were just buying things for themselves. The second option was Single Gift Receipt, so all the items would be placed on one receipt with no prices listed. This was the Gift Receipt option that I saw used the most that wasn't none. Finally, there was Individual Gift Receipts, where one Gift Receipt is printed for each item being purchased, resulting in a multitude of receipts at the end of the transaction.

Also, it was totally still my first week, and this particular TRU store, at least at the time, did not do a very good job of training. I had three half-days of working with another employee, who showed me the basics of everything we do in the "R" Zone (video game section), and on my fourth day (which was my first full day), I was left alone to run the "R" Zone all by myself. I think this particular event took place on my first solo Saturday. Obviously, there were other people in the store, but not as many as you'd think.

The woman, in addition to asking me for individual gift receipts for each item, also asked me to hurry up. Apparently, she had left her child at the nearby Chuck E. Cheese's, and wanted to quickly get back to him. So, in my attempt to hurry, I accidentally hit the No Gift Receipt option, out of the habit I'd already formed after just a few days on the job. And the lady freaked out about this mistake, and demanded that I fix this situation, and re-do the entire transaction so she could have her gift receipts. Also, I had to hurry, because she had abandoned her child.

For the record, the only Chuck E. Cheese's nearby was one that was on the other side of the shopping center from the TRU at which I worked. Like, her kid could've walked over to TRU and it wouldn't have been a big deal at all. So it's not like she left her son very far away.

Now, why the heck this lady was paying for a dozen or so toys in the "R" Zone is beyond me - I was not the only register open, and you had to go completely out of your way to get to me, over any of the regular registers. Secondly, after exiting the "R" Zone, you had to go past all the regular registers, anyways, before leaving the store! So this lady thought that coming over to me, way out of her way, would be faster. Of course.

In addition, in order to void out her previous transaction, I had to call over a manager. But the store was always understaffed, because TRU corporate didn't give us enough hours to go around. So it took something like 15 minutes for a manager to get over to me, even though I had a walkie-talkie unit that I used to radio them, directly.

And, of course, by this time, there was a line of people who just wanted to buy one or two games lining up behind this lady, who was still complaining about the fact that she left her child alone at Chuck E. Cheese's.

LISTEN, LADY: YOU ARE THE MORON WHO ABANDONED YOUR CHILD. That is NOT *my* problem. Yes, I made a mistake. But if anything happened to your son, that's your own damn fault for being a fucking moron and leaving your kid unattended.

PLUS! I don't know what kind of sissy she raised, but if I was left alone at Chuck E. Cheese's for an extra 20 minutes, I wouldn't even have noticed. Or I would've considered it extra time to play Whack-A-Gator and Air Hockey. Or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game, if this story took place back when I was a kid. You know, back in the late 80s, when there were a LOT more skeevy people wandering around places like that, and security was nonexistent. And, uh, I turned out fine.

Which leads me to a thought about the media: There are SO MANY stories of child molestation and/or abduction out there right now. What about the 99%+ of the kids out there who are absolutely fine? This isn't to make like of things like that happening; They absolutely do, and we need to all be aware of such a thing happening to not only our own children, but everybody else's kids, too. But the fact of the matter is, these particular Toys "R" Us and Chuck E. Cheese's locations were in the nicer part of town, and both places were always totally crowded with loudmouth kids on Saturdays. So nothing was going to happen, and if anything did, they wouldn't have been quiet about it.

And, hey, look, I'm not saying my hitting the wrong key wasn't my fault. It absolutely was. But this lady went to the "wrong" register in the first place, while leaving her kid alone. And one of those was far more of an issue than me accidentally not printing her up some gift receipts.

So, anyways. The manager on duty comes over, helps me get through this whole fiasco, and then GIVES THE LADY A $20 TOYS "R" US GIFTCARD FOR HER INCONVENIENCE. THE INCONVENIENCE OF HER BEING AN IDIOT?!?

I could not BELIEVE that when it happened.

Hey, if something happened to that kid, I'm really sorry. But since we never received any complaints, the kid was probably just playing Skeeball for an extra 20 minutes and didn't even notice. And she was rewarded 20 bucks for being an asshole in every metaphorical sense of the word.

Meanwhile, I got yelled at by her for 20 minutes, and basically scolded by my manager, who told not to make that sort of mistake again.

I quit Toys "R" Us two weeks later, and shortly afterwards got employed in a cafeteria to clean tables, which was a FAR better job.

The moral of this story? Don't get jobs in places you like to shop, because the other customers are fucking insane.

Retail Horror: Part 2

2010-10-12T09:39:00.005-07:00

Continuing some of my more memorable retail horror stories from my days at Blockbuster and/or Toys R Us...

It's absolutely amazing how angry people can get over four-dollar late fees. After two and a half years, I had been called every single name you could imagine. But there was one day that will always stand out in my mind.

This lady who thought of herself as very well-to-do (you could tell, because her earrings cost more than my entire outfit... and her fur coat probably cost more than my house) was mad at me because she returned her movies something like two days late. The entire time I worked there, Blockbuster's late fee (or, "Extended Viewing Fee") policy was that if the movie was late, the renter had to pay for a full extra rental period. The fees weren't pro-rated or anything; After the movie was over 2 hours late, it was an extra four bucks (I have no idea what Blockbusters EVF policy is, now, but I know they've changed it a couple of times since).

But this one lady, man...She was SO MAD about the fact that she couldn't remember when to return movies, she took out her Blockbuster rental card, and tried to rip it in half, right in front of me. And when she couldn't do that, she THREW IT AT ME, and it hit me, RIGHT IN THE CHEST!

Not like it hurt or anything, as it was just a 2" x 3.5" laminated card, but still - That lady ASSAULTED me, because SHE couldn't be bothered to return her movies on time!

She demanded that I cut her card in half, and proclaimed that she would never do business with Blockbuster, again. So I charged the late fees to her credit card on file, and deleted her account.
In hindsight, 9 years later, I see that I may have acted a bit hastily in deleting her account, but, seriously...

Retail Horror: Part 1

2010-10-11T09:36:00.000-07:00

A good friend of mine (who shall remain anonymous for the time being) is considering starting a blog that contains his daily adventures in working retail. This has inspired me to relay some of my favorite retail horror stories, from my days working at Blockbuster and Toys "R" Us, over the next several days.

Hey, horror stories are appropriate for October, right? It's almost Halloween.

Let me first express that I hold no ill will towards Blockbuster or TRU for my experiences. These are the kinds of things can that happen at any retail location, and even though I ended up leaving both jobs (Blockbuster in 2003, and TRU in 2004), it was because I was leaving to do something else, not because of anything at the companies.

(And now that my paranoia of saying anything libel is satisfied...)

I started working at Blockbuster ten years ago, and left in 2003. So it's been a while since these things happened, but the one that will always stick with me happened on my 2nd or 3rd week. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon (we rarely have any other type of Saturday in the Phoenix area), and this woman came in to drop off her movies. As soon as you walked in the door, there was a drop slot for the tapes to go in, so that we could check them in pretty quickly. But this one woman decided that she was apparently too good to put her movies where they went, and she left them on top of the counter --

Which, by the way, is an absolutely TERRIBLE idea, because those tapes could get confused with ANYTHING ELSE that we put on the counters - Movies already checked in, movies other customers are renting, movies we're about to run back on the shelves... Just a bad deal, overall.

But, myself and a couple of the managers were up front that day, and we saw her put the movies there. Which would have been fine, except for one thing; The movies belonged to Hollywood Video. You could tell, because they were in the black-and-white-and-red cases that Hollywood Video used to rent tapes in, rather than the blue-and-yellow-and-white cases that Blockbuster tapes came in.

So I looked up at the woman, and said, as kindly as I could, "Excuse me, miss, these aren't our movies."

"WELL I DIDN'T EVEN RENT THESE MOVIES!!! I'M RETURNING THEM FOR MY FRIEND SO DON'T YOU DARE YELL AT ME!"

I was shocked and stunned; The only time I'd ever been yelled at, previously, was by my parents when I was little, and did something seriously wrong.

I later found out that she had actually called the store that night and complained about the way that I'd treated her. The manager on duty that night couldn't believe what he was hearing, and the following Saturday it came up at the store meeting. Fortunately, the managers that were there with me stuck up for me, and I wasn't in trouble for doing nothing wrong. But, still!

All I was trying to do was help this lady get her movies back to the correct store so that she wouldn't incur any late fees, and I was basically treated like I was the scum of the earth for it.

This was just the beginning.

Why comic books cost $3.99

2010-10-06T08:19:00.003-07:00

The biggest complaint I hear, as the co-owner of a comic book store, is about the rising cost of comic books. Why can't comics cost 1.25, like they did 17-20 years ago? Well, I'm going to break the fourth wall, as it were, and explain several of the key factors as to why comics cost $3.99.

First of all, when you buy a comic, you're paying at least four businesses: The comic store, Diamond comic distributors, the print shop, and the publisher.

The publisher wants to keep costs down as much as possible while maximizing profits. Each comic has a minimum of four people working on it: The writer, penciller, inker, and colorist. Sometimes these duties are doubled up by one person, but not often. Plus, sometimes inkers and colorists will have people do some of the more tedious tasks for them; For example, inkers will often have somebody do "blacks" for them, where they just fill in all of the large black areas. Colorists, similarly, will have someone do "flats," where they fill in large areas with a base color, over which the credited colorist will work their magic. And then there's the editor, who needs to oversee an entire line of books and make sure there aren't glaring inconsistencies amongst them (for example, if a character gets their left arm chopped off in one comic, it had better not be the right arm in another comic!), plus the Editor-in-Chief, who oversees the entire company's books to make sure that the editors didn't miss anything.

Already, we're at 8 people, amongst whom $3.99 has to be divided. If it were divided evenly, they're each getting just under 50¢ apiece, per copy. But that's not how it works. More on that later.

So, presuming everything goes smoothly, a single comic book issue is created. But it needs to be printed, so that everybody who wants one can buy a copy! This means the comic needs to be run through a printer. As a professional graphic designer, I've spent my fair share of time in print shops. The presses used to print big jobs like comics take at least two people to run them properly. This does not account for the people in shipping and receiving, to make sure the comics go out on time, or the people who keep the presses and building operating quickly.

Suddenly, our 8 people went up to over 20 people responsible for your comic, and, even though this isn't really the way it works out, let's continue to presume everybody's getting an equal share of the issue at hand. Now everybody's getting about 20¢ per copy of a $3.99 comic.

And then there's whatever shipping service gets used to transport the printed books back to the publisher, who need to make sure they got printed correctly. Those comics then need to be shipped to Diamond Comics Distributors, who will distribute the comics to the comics retailers. Diamond employs hundreds of people, but let's look at the bare minimum of who has to be involved in your $3.99 issue: There's the Diamond Representative who helps the stores decide what to buy (my Diamond Rep has always been absolutely fantastic with me, incidentally, and without giving out names, I appreciate everything she's done for me and my store).

And then there's the local rep, who swings by every few weeks to make sure everything is going okay, and inform the store of any new stuff coming out that we may have missed in the Previews catalog, or to let us know about any upcoming deals each retailer may have coming up, if they have any.

And then there's the people in their main warehouse, which, I believe, is now in Kentucky. When a store orders X number of comics, someone in that warehouse has to grab that many copies of a comic, put them in a box, and ship that to Diamond's local distribution center. Our is in Los Angeles.

So then the guys in the Los Angeles Diamond hub have to find out exactly how many copies of a comic we've ordered, put those in a box, and ship them to our local post office. And then, depending on the deal each store has with the post office, either they send someone to deliver the comics, or the store sends somebody to pick them up.

I've lost count of how many people have been involved in getting your monthly comic in your hands, but we're not done, yet.

Now that the store has the comics on Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, the store employees have to open the boxes, check the orders to make sure it's the proper quantity, check for anything that got damaged in shipping, and put them on the shelves.

Okay, so that's a VERY QUICK view of what each comic takes to get to you. By my quick math, we're down to less than 5¢ per copy per person involved, assuming there's only one person working at a comic store, and they don't pay for electricity, air conditioning, heating, insurance, telephone, internet, or rent.

But the money you pay for each issue isn't distributed evenly. Here's how that breaks down:

Diamond Comic Distributors takes all the orders for everything from every direct market comics retailer, and, based on a formula that has never been explained to me (I'm sure it's out there, somewhere; I've just never bothered to look for it), they determine a level of "discount off cover price" that each retailer gets. As far as I can tell, the discount is based on some combination of longevity and quantity ordered; the longer you've been a customer, and the more you order per month, the higher your discount.

If I remember my numbers correctly, the minimum discount Diamond offers is 35% off cover price. So for each copy of a $3.99 comic, a retailer with a 35% discount pays about $2.59. The maximum discount Diamond offers is 53%, meaning those retailers pay about $1.88. But MOST stores get a discount of about 50%. So, for the sake of easy math, let's call each $3.99 comic $4.00, and assume a store has a 50% discount.

When my store wants to buy a copy of NEW AVENGERS, we need to pay Diamond 2 bucks per copy. Which means that the store only makes two dollars for every copy sold. I don't know how the other two dollars gets distributed, but IF it gets distributed evenly (which I doubt), that's 1 dollar for Diamond, and 1 dollar for Marvel.

Which means, when you buy five comics (and let's say you're in New Hampshire or Oregon, so there's a 0% sales tax), you're giving $20 to the retailer. $10 goes to the retailer, $5 goes to Diamond, and $5 gets divided up amongst whatever publishers you just supported.

And when you buy five $2.99 comics, cut all of those values by 25%: $7.50 goes to the store, $3.75 goes to Diamond, and $3.75 goes to the publishers.

And this doesn't take into account licensing (IDW has to pay Hasbro in order to keep using the TRANSFORMERS brand name, for example).

And as a retailer, I'm far more inclined to suggest a $3.99 comic to a customer than a $2.99 comic. That's an extra 50¢ per issue that I'm getting.

Hey, I love getting as much bang for my buck as the next guy, but I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how comic stores stayed in business in the 80s and 90s with comics that cost under 2 bucks, using this model.

So, to everybody who wants to go back to the $1.25 price tag of 1993, thank you for wanting to bankrupt the entire comics industry. You're doing us all a huge favor with that one.

Mat Weddle

2010-10-02T09:22:00.000-07:00

Last night, I went to see a very good friend of mine play his first show since returning to Arizona. It was an acoustic concert at Winfield's Cafe in Scottsdale, Arizona, featuring Mat Weddle, of Obadiah Parker.

Mat, circa 2006. He still doesn't wear shoes.

If you've heard of Mat, it's probably from his band Obadiah Parker's cover of Outkast's "Hey Ya!," which became huge enough in 2006-2008 to become the subject of a question on Jeopardy!.

But I knew Mat before he became a trivia question. Mat and I worked at Blockbuster video, here in Scottsdale, back in September of 2000. I'd only been there for a couple of weeks when I got called in to cover for a handful of coworkers who didn't show up on a Saturday night. The store was completely understaffed, and, being new, I didn't want to disappoint my boss at my first-ever job. My dad agreed to pick me up afterwards, so when my shift ended at 12:30am, I called home to get no answer.

After trying to call over and over again for about 10 minutes, I'd conceded that my dad had fallen asleep, and would not be coming to get me. I had no idea what I was going to do. I lived far enough away that walking would've taken over an hour, but a drive would only be 10 or so minutes. A fellow long-haired clerk asked what was going on. I explained my situation, and the kind gentlemen offered to give me a ride home. This gentlemen was, as these types of stories go, the person this article is about: Mat Weddle.

Over the next couple of months, Mat became my favorite person to work with. I soon transferred to the new Blockbuster store that had opened up closer to my house, and shortly thereafter, so did Mat. We began going out and grabbing fast food after work pretty regularly, and I saw his band, Barefoot Prince, play a couple of shows around town.

When I took a History of World Religions class at Scottsdale Community College, one of my assignments was to visit a Christian service that I didn't normally attend. Since I was not Christian, I had no problem finding one of those. Mat told me that his band played worship music at his church every Saturday night, so I decided to go to that for my assignment. I figured that I would probably be the only person who would go to a bit of a concert for their report (which turned out to be true).

And, actually, the people at the church ended up being so nice, I kept showing up to events there. I still attend a Wednesday night Bible study at that very same church, eight years later (though they still have not been able to convince me to convert).

It was amazing to watch Mat and Barefoot Prince transform into Obadiah Parker, going from what was essentially nothing more than a worship band to becoming a local soft rock powerhouse. And I'm pretty sure I saw their first live performance of "Hey Ya!," which was inescapable enough at the time as it was.

Through the popularity the band gained due to that cover, Mat and I ended up losing touch for a while. The last time I saw him, I went to one of his shows at Chyro Arts Venue, which happened to be the night that he proposed to his girlfriend, on stage. Shortly thereafter, the couple were married, and went to Nashville to record Mat's still-unreleased first studio album. And then they moved to California for about two years.

And so, last night, Mat had his first show back in Arizona. I came in about 20 minutes late, while Mat was talking between songs (which he has a habit of doing), and it was really heartwarming and flattering when he turned to see who was coming in, stopped what he was saying, and welcomed me by name.

"I heard there was a thing going on here, tonight, with some I guy I knew. I figured I'd check it out," I responded. Sometimes, things sound way wittier in my head than they do when they come out of my mouth.

"There IS a thing going on, tonight! Welcome!" Mat responded (or, close to that. It was all so very sudden that I didn't have time to remember to remember the moment). I may not have seen the guy in over three years, but he hadn't changed a bit. Well, his beard got even longer. But his heart hadn't changed.

After the show, we caught up for a bit, and he invited me to go out with he and some of his family to Applebee's. I didn't see any reason to say no, and tagged along. And it was a whole lot of fun.

It's great to have you back home, Mat. You were missed more than you know.

And in case you haven't heard the Obadiah Parker cover of "Hey Ya!," or you just want to hear it, again...

Ryo Sakazaki: The Invincible Dragon

2010-09-28T08:40:00.000-07:00

In my Fighting in the Street streak of articles from a couple weeks ago (which isn't finished, yet!), I mentioned that SNK created Art of Fighting to compete with Capcom's Street Fighter. And, at the very least, it's pretty obvious from looking at the main character:

'Cause, you know. Ryo Sakazaki, there, doesn't look EXACTLY like somebody from Street Fighter or anything...

Ken who?!

Ryo even has fireball, jumping uppercut, and horizontally-travelling spin kick attacks like Ryu and Ken. But each is executed with slightly different timing and finesse. For example, Ryo only needs ONE hand to throw his Ko-Ou-ken fireball. And the Kohou uppercut is executed while facing the players, not away. Also, Ryo's Haoh-Sho-Ko-Ken super move was the inspiration for Ryu's Shinkuu Hadouken super combo. Clearly, Ryo is far more badass than his Capcom Counterparts. Or, at least, was more badass first.

Ryo is the son of Takuma Sakazaki, and the brother of Yuri Sakazaki. Takuma trained both Ryo and Ryo's best friend, Robert Garcia, in Kyokugen-Ryuu Karate, and while they were training, Robert fell in love with Yuri. Ryo fell in love with King, an androgynous bartendress who has a penchant for losing her shirt.

Some combination of Ryo, Robert, Yuri, and Takuma are generally the "Art of Fighting Team" in the King of Fighters games, while King is always on the Girls' Team. If it's the three Kyokugen men, then Yuri is usually on the same team as King. In games that don't feature Takuma, Yuri teams up with her brother and boyfriend. And in the KOF games that have four-member teams, all four Kyokugen fighters team up, while King is left to the Girls' Team with whatever other lady outcasts SNK has laying around, that year.

Team AOF '96

Takuma, in Art of Fighting II, decided that Ryo and Robert had grown too cocky in their skills, and developed the personality of "Mr. Karate." Mr. Karate is just Takuma in a red tengu mask, and, amusingly, everybody knows it's him, despite the fact that he claims otherwise.

Since AoFII came out so many years ago, SNK has seen fit to have Ryo take up his father's mantle of Mr. Karate, and in King of Fighters: Maximum Impact II (released in North America as King of Fighters 2006), there's a hidden version of Ryo called Mr. Karate II. Mr. Karate II made his debut in SNK's forgotten 3D fighter, Buriki One, and also appears in NeoGeo Battle Coliseum (where his alternate color is classic Ryo orange).

Ryo as Mr. Karate. Time to get serious!

According to Fatal Fury/Garou: Mark of the Wolves, Ryo becomes the leader of Kyokugen-ryuu karate, as is evident by his student found in that game, Marco Rodriguez (or, if you MUST use his North American name, "Khushnood Butt").

I'm not exactly sure what it is about him, but something about Ryo Sakazaki makes him extremely likable, in my eyes. Maybe it's the fact that he's like Ken Masters, but far less of a dickhead. Maybe it's the fact that he's got far more developed relationships than most of Capcom's characters - After all, there are 5 characters immediately related to Ryo.

Or maybe it was when he took up the mantle of Mr. Karate. I think that was the instant that I decided Ryo was a total badass; continuing his father's legacy as not only the master of Kyokugen-ryuu but also as a name as generically silly as "Mister Karate" is pretty awesome.

Either way, Ryo is easily my favorite Art of Fighting character, and one of my overall favorite SNK characters, period.

Kit F'n Fisto

2010-09-25T11:06:00.000-07:00

So, it may be completely illogical, but Kit Fisto is my absolute favorite Jedi from the Star Wars franchise.

See, here's the thing: I don't particularly like Star Wars. I mean, I don't hate it by any stretch of the imagination. But on the -10 (hate it) to zero (impartial) to +10 (love it) number scale of how much I care for Star Wars as a whole, we're talking somewhere between 2 and 4. There's some cool stuff in there, and the movies are enjoyable enough, but, holy shit, do people care WAYYY too much about a bunch of movies from the 70s and their various spin-offs!

Which is part of why my adoration for Kit Fisto is so strange! See, on that same -10 to +10 scale, he's somewhere around +7 or +8, and it's because of... the big piles of nothing he did in the prequel trilogy. Kit Fisto did absolutely NOTHING in those movies, except LOOK really freakin' cool. And I love him for it.

I know he's supposed to be really cool in the Genndy Tartakovsky-directed Clone Wars series of animated shorts. I haven't seen those. Apparently he's pretty cool in the ongoing Clone Wars series being featured on Cartoon Network right now. I don't watch that show. And he's seemingly done some cool shit in the Star Wars comics. Well, I don't read those.

My entire experience with Kit Fisto is based on his few minutes of screen time in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. That's it. And maybe I've subconsciously intentionally not gone and investigated more of Kit's life, for fear of finding out he's not really as cool as I think he is.

Kit Fisto even inspired me to invent a new word to describe his tentacles; "Squidlocks." Squidlocks are any tentacles that protrude from the head to resemble human dreadlocks. Davy Jones, in Pirates of the Caribbean parts 2 and 3, is another character who has squidlocks (as well as a tentacled beard; I haven't come up with a term for that one, yet).

I dunno, man. Kit Fisto is freaking amazing, and there's nothing you can do or say to convince me otherwise.

Hey dude, this is NO cartoon!

2010-09-22T13:54:00.000-07:00

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie

So, as a child of the 80s, I was unable to escape the popularity of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Even if I wanted to, I was helpless to stop the onslaught of awesome that they brought with them.

Fortunately for the producers of the Ninja Turtles, I was hooked from the very first episode, which I vaguely recall watching in December of 1987. My friends at school and I talked about how great the 5-episode pilot was, and we were excited for more new episodes!

But, two years later, when a live-action movie came out? Holy crap, dude. THIS was gonna be FOR REALS.

L to R: MRLD

I'm not sure, but I seem to recall going to the theatre on opening weekend. It was an overcast day in Massachusetts (which is most days up there, really), and my mom and aunt brought myself, my two-year-old brother, and my aunt's two daughters. Now, as 1990 was 20 years ago, and I was eight and a half at the time, I don't recall where the theatre was. But I do remember that the showing we tried to make it to completely sold out while we were waiting in line, and we went and got something to eat (probably pizza) before the showing we ended up seeing.

And, seriously; At the time, I didn't realize how huge of a deal this was, but the theatre lobby was PACKED with kids. By comparison, years later, my brother and I went to see the third Pokémon movie on opening night, as a goof (and ended up making fun of it from the back row the entire time, probably to the chagrin of the kids sitting in the row right in front of us, though potentially to their parents' delight). That theatre was not even close to as busy. In 1990, this was probably the biggest collection of kids I had ever seen, outside of school. Boys, girls, fellow elementary school kids, middle school kids, and probably some high schoolers -- though, when you're eight, high schoolers look like adults, so it's impossible to tell. Especially 20 years after the fact.

After all, who would've even thought that I'd start an Internet blog where I tried to recall memories from my childhood? I'm pretty sure Al Gore hadn't yet invented the Internet at the time. Or, at least, Sir Tim Berners-Lee's inventional of HTML wasn't really readily available to the public.

"...I'll bet he never has to look for a can opener!"

So, anyways, we saw the movie. Which, y'know, I suspect that most people reading this will have already seen, and have their own opinions about. I absolutely love the movie, and it's one of the few movies that I can watch at pretty much any time and have it hold my attention. Plus, it's one of even fewer movies that I can quote along with in its entirety, all-but-perfectly in time with the movie.

It's one of the few VHS tapes I intentionally kept in my collection after making the switch to replacing everything on DVD, and now that I'm contemplating selling all of my DVDs so as to support streaming movies online, it will definitely be one of the few DVDs I keep in my collection.

"Misguided, unloved, they called them 'The Foot!'"

The first TMNT movie is still easily the best of the three live-action Turtles movies, despite its mixed reaction. As of this writing, it's got a 46% rating on Rotten Toamtoes from the critics, but a 76% "liked it" from the audience. Roger Ebert gave it two-and-a-half out of four stars, stating "... this movie is nowhere near as bad as it might have been, and probably is the best possible Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie. It supplies, in other words, more or less what Turtle fans will expect."

And I think that really sums up the movie. If you're a fan of the Ninja Turtles, this really is the best introduction to the fabuloso foursome that you can give to somebody. If they dig it, there's a lot more Turtles fun to be had!

Donatello: The Neglected Turtle

2010-09-20T10:26:00.000-07:00

Donatello may just have been the most neglected of the Ninja Turtles. Which is ironic, considering he was TMNT co-creator Peter Laird's favorite of the fabuloso four. Just look at this part of the theme song:

"Leonardo leads, Donatello does machines. Raphael is cool, but rude, Michelangelo is a party dude."

So, from these four quick descriptions, we understand that Leonardo is the leader. Immediately, we get visions of a guy who's kind of a dick and maybe a little bossy, but everybody has kind of agreed that he's the best tactician and strategist of the group; Much like the Avengers and Captain America. And in the cartoon, Leo wore blue, which was most kids' favorite color. So he's a strong leader wearing our favorite color.

And then there's Raphael. He's cool - Which, to kids in 1987, is all we had to know. Raph was the cool one. He'd be the one who wears leather jackets and sunglasses, and probably rides a motorcycle. He's even probably in a rock band, getting chicks all the time. But he's also rude, which means he's the one with all the zingers and comebacks. Raph wore red, which was usually reserved for bad guys. So Raph was tough, cool, witty, and kind of a badass. That's pretty likable.

And Michelangelo is a party dude. That means he's the one making jokes at inappropriate times. He was funny, and it's really hard to dislike somebody who makes you laugh. Plus, he was obsessed with pizza, which is every kid's favorite food outside of peanut butter and jelly. Mikey wore orange, a bright, loud color to match his light-hearted, party-dude attitude.

Which leaves Donatello, who "does machines." What does that even mean? It sounds to me like Donatello is relegated to be nothing more than a plot device, giving the rest of the gang answers and creating techie solutions to science-fictional problems. He fought with a bo staff, which is a six-foot wooden stick. And he wore purple, which, in 1987, was traditionally known as being much more of a girl's color. Today, it is apparently the official color of gay pride. So Donatello plays around with machinery while holding his giant wood and wearing purple?

Running off to, um, "do machines," I guess...

Even in the live-action TMNT movies, Donatello was voiced by Corey Feldman. Except in TMNTII: The Secret of the Ooze. Apparently, Feldman had a high-profile drug bust at the time TMNTII was in production, so he was replaced by some guy who sounds absolutely nothing like what we'd come to expect from TMNT I, or what we were going to get in TMNT III. Again, overlooked for circumstances out of his control.

Poor Donny. Somewhere underneath that neglected soul, a great turtle has been waiting to get out for the last 26 years. Maybe Nickelodeon's upcoming TMNT series will be a chance for Donatello to develop a proper personality, but I'm not holding my breath...

-The Counter Geek

Fighting in the Street Part IV: The King of Fighters?

2010-09-17T07:00:00.026-07:00

While all the hype behind MKII and SSFII was overwhelming US gamers (The two games were basically all that my friends and I would talk about at summer camp that year, outside of the X-Men), SNK released a game that would be more important to the evolution of fighting games than anybody realized. The King of Fighters '94 offered a unique gameplay experience, where players chose 3-on-3 teams, mostly made up of characters from other SNK fighting games; Ryo, Robert, and Takuma from Art of Fighting comprised one team, while Terry, Andy, and Joe from Fatal Fury were another.

This meant that the SNK games were all part of a shared world, something not really ever explored in video gaming up until this point. Sure, Mario appeared in the original Donkey Kong game, Pin Ball and the Super Mario Bros. games, but that wasn't necessarily a shared universe; it was Nintendo re-using a character design for multiple games. King of Fighters was the first time we saw game characters in a shared world, like in comic books!

Japanese ad poster for KOF'94. SNK's games always do better in Japan.

And not only were these characters in the same game, characters from different games were on the same teams; Yuri and King from AOF teamed with Fatal Fury 2's Mai Shiranui, and Kim Kaphwan from Fatal Fury 2 teamed with original characters Choi Bounge and Chang Koehan.

In addition to characters from Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury, KOF '94

featured the lead characters from the Ikari Warriors and Psycho Soldier games; So it wasn't just the SNK fighting games that were a part of this shared world. It was potentially SNK's entire game library!

Unfortunately, the hype behind Super Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat II was so huge, The King of Fighters '94 got left in the dust. All of us serious fighting gamers knew it was there, but it wasn't making the US gaming magazine headlines.

This SHOULD HAVE BEEN the year's most exciting match-up in 1994. And, yet...

And, really, why should it? Art of Fighting was a piece of trash game. It had some great characters and cool ideas, but the actual gameplay was crap, and we all knew it. Fatal Fury was pretty okay, but nobody could find it in any arcades. Ikari Warriors and Psycho Soldier were both games whose days had come and gone - The inclusion of those characters was more of a fun bonus than anything else. And despite having 24 playable characters (the most in any fighting game up to that point), there were only 8 teams, and you were stuck with all 3 team members.

The King of Fighters was a fantastic idea that got held back because of its legacy and limitations. At least that year.

But by the end of 1994, Capcom's Street Fighter would be the first to do something that neither Midway nor SNK was really prepared for - Release a feature-length film!

Guile can't do this kick in any game.

Street Fighter starred martial arts movie star Jean-Claude Van Damme as Guile, in his quest to defeat M. Bison (played by Raul Julia), once and for all. The film was considered a financial flop, mostly because it sucked. Why was Chun-Li a news reporter? Why were Dee Jay and Zangief working for M. Bison? And why wasn't Balrog? Where was Ryu's trademark red headband? AND WHY WASN'T ANYBODY FIGHTING?! For a movie called "Street Fighter," there was WAY too much talking.

I remember my dad taking my brother and I to see the film, and FALLING ASLEEP in the middle. I have to say, I wasn't much more impressed with the movie, myself. And for a 12-year-old kid to be disappointed in a movie based on a franchise he loved, that's saying something. I mean, there were parts of it that I liked, but it seemed as if the producers hadn't even TRIED to make a good movie.

Australian pop sensation Kylie Minogue played the
British intelligence officer, Cammy White.
Sadly, this was one of the highlights of the film.

I have a much fonder appreciation for the movie, now, as the tongue-in-cheek, campy ride that it was probably intended to be. My friends and I will often make daft references to it while playing games over XBox Live (the "Each Bison Dollar will be worth FIVE British Pounds!" line, and basically anything Dee Jay said being amongst our favorites to quote). I own it on DVD, but I only paid five bucks for it, because I refused to pay any more. It did, however, introduce me to Kylie Minogue, who has become one of my favorite pop singers.

But with the two-hit combo of the film and the release of Super Street Fighter II Turbo, which introduced even more moves and a new secret boss character into the SF world, Street Fighter was undisputedly the true "King of Fighters." At least for the next several months...

Fighting in the Street Part III: Super Kombat

2010-09-16T07:00:00.000-07:00

MORTAL KOMBAAAAAAAT!

By the time September of 1993 rolled around, EVERYBODY had played Street Fighter. And those of us who stuck with it had all learned how to throw Hadokens with our eyes closed. We were Hundred-Hand Slapping the controllers fast enough to create Sonic Booms, and there were enough Tigers to shake a forest of sticks at.

So when Mortal Kombat came out on Mortal Monday, we were ready for a change. And what a change we had! Not only did a gallon of blood fly out of your enemy's head with every hit, at the end of a match, you could literally KILL your opponent!

This is why we have a video games rating system.

MK definitely inspired a faster style of gameplay - There were only two punch and two kick attacks, and a block button. But, unlike in Street Fighter, when you blocked in MK, you still took a bit of damage. But there was something lacking. MK had seven playable characters, five fewer than SFII Turbo, but everybody was completely different... Or did they?

See, the thing about Mortal Kombat was that, while everybody LOOKED completely different from each other (outside of Scorpion and Sub-Zero, who were yellow and blue versions of the same ninja outfit), everybody played basically identically. So it wasn't like you could get really good with Liu Kang and then have to re-learn how to play to master Rayden. You really just had to be good at Mortal Kombat, and learn which moves did the most damage and had the most priority.

"Get Over Here!" - Like I could mention Mortal Kombat and not use that quote!

And Sub-Zero was so incredibly overpowered in that game with his Freeze Ball and a slide attack that could hit opponents on the ground, that any high-level MK matches just came down to who hit the first Freeze Ball.

But by the time anybody really figured that out, Mortal Kombat had made its money, and a sequel was announced. Mortal Kombat II would feature twelve characters - Five returning, and seven brand-new fighters. Each character would now have TWO Fatality moves, and the entire game had been given a facelift; Not a single graphic from MK1 was re-used. The game was faster, bloodier, and more violent than ever. And gamers ate it up.

So, for fear of losing ground in the fighting game community that they started, what did Capcom do? Announce a new version of Street Fighter, of course! Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers introduced four new characters: Dee Jay, a dancing Jamaican kickboxer; T. Hawk, a native American powerhouse; Cammy White, a teenage British intelligence officer; and Fei Long, who looked, sounded, and fought just like Bruce Lee. In addition, the background stages and character portraits had all been completely re-drawn and looked better than ever, every character got at least one new move, and the four boss characters all had their non-special attacks completely re-animated.

Bruce who?
It's hard to say which game was the "winner" in 1994, but one thing's for sure - Whatever was coming next from either company had some huge shoes to fill, or there was going to be trouble.

But was there enough room for a third entrant in this battle for fighting supremacy? Around the corner loomed a game that claimed to be the KING of fighters...

Fighting in the Street Part II: The Art of Fatal Kombat.

2010-09-15T07:00:00.001-07:00

So special, it was rated too mature for 12-year-olds!

It took me just over a year, but I'd finally played and beaten Street Fighter II. And there were already TWO new versions in the arcade; Street Fighter II: Champion Edition which included a couple of new moves, varied the speed and range of some of the previous moves, and allowed a character to face him or herself in a new color. It also re-colored all of the backgrounds, to allow for easy visual distinction. Champion Edition also allowed players to use the four boss characters; Balrog, Vega, Sagat, and M. Bison. Finally, all 12 characters would be playable!

But by the end of 1992, we also had Turbo Street Fighter II: Champion Edition - Hyper Fighting, which replaced everybody's original color with a new 3rd color, and made the original colors the 2nd player color. It also increased the speed of the game by 15%, as well as introduced even more new moves, such as Chun-Li's fireball and Dhalsim's teleport.

"Yes, you have three hands. Can I go back to sleep, now?"

In late 1992, Capcom announced that Champion Edition would be coming to the Sega Genesis (known as the Mega Drive in every non-US country ever), making the Genesis seem like the ideal console for SFII playing. Except that its controller only had three buttons, and SFII required at least six. And then in the late spring of '93, Capcom announced Street Fighter II Turbo (a shortened title for the 3rd installment of SFII) for the SNES. In the summer of that year, SFII Turbo came to the Super Nintendo as announced, and SFII: SPECIAL Champion Edition came to the Genesis. What made this edition so special? It had all the same features as SFII Turbo on the SNES. So Capcom basically marketed the same game with two different titles.

Also, to make up for the lack of necessary buttons, Sega designed a six-button controller, and several third-party companies began designing 6-button arcade sticks, specifically to cash in on the popularity of Street Fighter II. Otherwise, players could press the Start button to swap the A, B, and C buttons between punches and kicks - Not ideal, but probably the best solution Capcom could've come up with that didn't destroy the integrity of SFII's control scheme.

Twice the buttons, twice the awesome!

I remember the first time we rented SFII Turbo on the Super NES, I was up until 3:26 am trying to beat the game as Vega. Even before I grew my hair out, I was intrigued by long-haired dudes. I think my early days of watching wrestling may have had something to do with that, as mullets were super-popular in the WWF during the early 90s. Plus, Vega had a claw similar to Wolverine from the X-Men comics, and had a cool sash. Besides, he was always the hardest character for me to beat in the original SFII, so he must be the best, right?

Anyways. I defeated all 12 characters that night, and didn't do anything besides play that game, outside of go to school and homework for the rest of the rental period. Oh, summer vacations...

In October of 1993, my brother got Turbo on the SNES for his birthday, the first copy of SF owned by somebody in my house! It was super-exciting. But by that time, Street Fighter's reign of excellence seemed to be coming to a close.

Midway, the company responsible for games like Smash T.V. and Arch Rivals, had released a competitor to Street Fighter II. Japanese company SNK had tried, but all of their games were only available on the Neo-Geo console.

Despite its huge graphics, Art of Fighting kinda sucked.

Now, the Neo-Geo was a wonderful piece of machinery; It had all the power of an arcade cabinet, and hooked up to your home television. The controllers it came with were two arcade-quality joysticks, and the cartridges were the size of video cassettes. The games found in these cartridges were arcade-perfect realizations of SNK's games. The problem? The Neo-Geo cost $500. That's what consoles are released for today, but back in the early '90s, the SNES debuted at $250. Not to mention, due to the high quality of the Neo-Geo cartridges, the games were all priced at around twice what SNES, Genesis, and NES games cost. Sure, I could have my arcade-perfect port of SF-competitors Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting, but not at a price anybody that *I* knew could afford.

Fatal Fury was AWESOME, but just too damn expensive.

But Midway did something else. Rather than try and beat Street Fighter at its own game, they used the cutting-edge technology available to them. Rather than create a fighting game with anime-inspired, hand-drawn graphics, as SNK's Neo-Geo games were doing, Midway used real people, and digitized the footage of these characters into game sprites. The lead designers for Midway's project, Ed Boon and John Tobias, also decided that SF wasn't violent enough for their tastes; They couldn't understand why, when Blanka dizzied an opponent, he didn't just eat their head. So ultra-violence was the theme of their game. Arcades had been abuzz of this smash hit for a few months, but in September of 1993, console gamers were told to prepare themselves...

Fighting in the Street: Part I

2010-09-14T07:00:00.004-07:00

It began in February, 1992.

My mom had only recently moved into her first apartment after she and my dad separated. My brother and I spent the weekends at her place, and most weekends we'd go to the Blockbuster Video that was about a mile from her house. My bro and I would each pick out a video game to rent and then we'd get a couple of movies. But something different happened this particular Saturday. Blockbuster had a single magazine up by the checkout, called GamePro, and it featured what was the biggest craze in the world at the time - The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

I begged with my mom to please get the magazine for me. I wanted-- No, NEEDED-- to know about this new Ninja Turtles video game coming out! She conceded, and I was happy as a pig in shit.

My first video game magazine.

The magazine was awesome. Not only did it have a two-page story about the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project on the NES, it also had reviews on a bunch of other games. I remember one for Megaman II on the Gameboy, and one for an arcade game that I'd never heard of before:

I wasn't quite sure what to make of this game, but it had a very unique premise: You could select one of eight brightly-colored characters, each with their own look, fighting style, and attacks. And this game had SIX attack buttons! SIX!!! As an NES owner, I was used to two buttons. My cousins had gotten a Sega Genesis for Christmas, and they kept bragging that those controllers had THREE buttons. But six?! This was unheard of!

The next month, not only was Street Fighter II featured, it was the COVER ARTICLE. I enjoyed the previous month's GamePro, I had to get this next issue, too. Thankfully, mom obliged me yet again, and I went home with this magazine dedicated to SFII.

Covered!

Now, don't get me wrong. The Street Fighter II preview in that initial issue didn't really do very much for me. I have only the vaguest recollections of looking at the article, reading it, and moving on to something far more interesting. And even when the March issue came out, it still wasn't a huge deal, but I figured the game had to be important if it got to be on the cover. After all, the month before, the NINJA TURTLES were on the cover! So SFII had to be at least almost as big a deal as a new TMNT game.

The subsequent months had articles and special insert pages telling the coolest moves and combos for each of the characters. Oh man, this game looked SO COOL! I couldn't wait to play it!

But wait was exactly what I would have to do.

See, the Super NES had JUST come out, so there was no way I was going to get my parents to buy me one so quickly. Plus, I had managed to talk my dad into buying me TMNTIII on a rainy Monday evening in the spring, and an entire Sega Genesis with Sonic the Hedgehog the very next day. Not only that, I had somehow managed to rack up something like 7 or 8 NES games at Christmas - Codename: Viper, Clash at Demonhead, NARC, and a new copy of Super Mario Bros. 3 to replace my broken one were just the tip of the iceberg. I had enough new games, so my dreams of a Super NES and the forthcoming Street Fighter II home release would have to wait.

I think it was October of the following school year, one of my new friends in 4th grade (whom I never saw again after that year) had gotten a Super NES for his birthday, and invited a bunch of us over to play games with him. If I remember correctly (you have to understand, 1992 was 18 years ago for me), his parents were going to be at work late that night, and his older brother was okay with people coming over to play video games. He was telling us that he'd gotten Super Mario World, Final Fight, Contra III, and Street Fighter II.

Humminabwah!? Street Fighter II?! The game that I had been reading about in GamePro for A YEAR?! Yeah, I was gonna be there for that, I don't care what kind of trouble I might get in (turns out it was none).

Blanka intrigued me.

I totally sucked at the game and lost every match, but holy crap, did I have fun! People were impressed that I knew all the special moves, even though I'd never played the game. I remember being pretty good with the manbeast, Blanka, although the fact that he turned around to do his crouching Roundhouse kick kind of threw me off.

That Christmas, Santa was kind enough to get me and my brother a Super Nintendo (along with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time...But more on that game in a future entry!), so the FIRST CHANCE I GOT, I rented Street Fighter II. AND HOLY CRAP WAS THIS GAME AMAZING!!! By this time, I had even memorized the code to play character vs. same character (Down, R, Up, L, Y, B at the "Capcom" logo screen), and I just could not stop playing.

As a ten-year-old kid, this game had been building up in my brain for a year. That was 1/10th of my entire life -- There was NO possible way that this game was going to be bad. None, period.

My first favorite character was Guile, because I could do the Sonic Boom and Flash Kick. I liked that he was an All-American "army guy," and his funny hair intrigued me. Plus, he had that weird upside-down jumpkick attack, and nobody else could do that.

Guile was my first favorite in SFII.

It took me forever to finally beat the game, even on the lowest difficulty setting. But I was so proud when I finally did. I felt like I could do anything in that game, now that I'd toppled the evil M. Bison, and crushed his crime syndicate.

After a year of build-up, I had finally played and conquered Street Fighter II. But that wasn't the end of the journey, my fellow Geeks. No, it was only the beginning...

My iPod Touch

2010-09-13T07:00:00.004-07:00

If there's one thing I love, it's that I'm privileged enough to get to live in the future.

And don't be mistaken, Geeks. We are, in fact, living in the future. It's the twenty-first century, and has been for over ten years, now. The Jetsons took place in the far-off year of 2002. Back to the Future's "Future" sequences took place in 2015, which is but a mere five years away.

We live in a time where we can have thousands of songs available to us instantly, right in the palm of our hand. A time where games like Tap Tap Revenge (pictured above) are available for free, and require nothing more than your fingertip to play.

A time where we have a digital calendar, calculator, day planner, and photo album all in the same device as the one which stores all of the above features.

And, the thing that may be my absolute favorite - A time where I can wake up in the morning, and check my email, Twitter, Facebook, deviantART, and Blogger accounts before I've even gotten out of bed.

There was an old print advertisement, back in the glory days of 1997, for BlockbusterMusic.com (back when Blockbuster used to carry CDs in addition to movies). In this ad was featured a black-and-white photograph of a gentleman in boxer shorts, a white tanktop, and a bathrobe, holding a cup of coffee. The ad described that this gentleman had just purchased the latest CDs from the day's hottest artists (I remember Counting Crows being listed in the ad, and I vaguely recall Jewel may have been there, too) without even leaving his house - Truly, a marvel of the technology we now had available, where we could purchase items over the Internet without even leaving the house!

I would like to propose that a triskadecade later, I have topped that gentleman. Not only am I able to order CDs from the hottest artists of today, I'm able to instantly and wirelessly transfer them from an electronic storage device of unknown location directly into the device in the palm of my hand - WITHOUT EVEN LEAVING MY BED!

Thank you, Apple, for the convenience your magical, touchable device has given my life.

I named it "Felix."

- The Counter-Geek.

Nine years later.

2010-09-11T00:01:00.000-07:00

"Andy, wake up. Chris is on the phone for you," my mom said.

"Uggghhhh. Whutthehulldoeshewant?" I mumbled to myself, lifting up the receiver. What the hell did Chris want? And why did he always call at the most inconvenient time possible (a habit which he continues to this day)?

"Andy?" Oh, it was the other Chris. Somehow, I've managed to keep at least three friends named Chris in my life at all times since 1998. It's a very confusing pattern of mine.

"Yuh...?" I attempted to respond.

"We're at war, dude!" Chris explained. Suddenly, I was a lot more awake than I had been.

"...what?" the fuck?

"Someone just bombed the Twin Towers!" Not fully awake or thinking correctly, my mind immediately went to the Twin Cities -- St. Paul and Minneapolis -- where my girlfriend at the time was living. I silently prayed that she was okay. Realize that I'd been awake for all of twenty seconds at this point.

"Shit..." was all I could muster.

"I gotta go. I just thought you'd want to know," Chris said.

"Uh, yeah. Thanks." I said, still not knowing what the FUCK just happened.

I was 19 years old. I had been working at Blockbuster Video for just over a year. I was still living with my parents, and had just started my first college class. My biggest concern the night before was what had happened on WWF Raw is War (Little did any of us know that it was the last time Monday Night Raw would go by that title - Also, for anybody wondering, The Alliance's Christian defeated WWF's Billy Gunn, the WWF's Hardy Boyz and Lita defeated WCW's Lance Storm, The Hurricane, and Ivory in a 6-person intergender tag match, WWF's Chris Jericho and the Acolytes defeated ECW's Rhyno and the Dudley Boyz, WCW' sBooker T defeated the WWF's The Undertaker, WWF's Tajiri won the WCW United States Championship from WCW's Chris Kanyon, WWF's Kurt Angle defeated ECW's Rob Van Dam for the Hardcore Championship, only to have RVD win the Hardcore Championship right back, and WWF's The Rock defended the WCW Championship in a handicap match against The Alliance's Test and Stephanie McMahon - Thanks, Wrestling Information Archive.).

And now, all of a sudden, none of that seemed to matter. I woke up, showered, and got ready for work... if there was even going to be work, that day. I went downstairs and watched the news with my mom, and we tried to make sense of the situation. We couldn't. Her work was cancelled, but of course mine wasn't - Blockbuster is open 365 days a year, come Hell or high water.

At work, my manager, Trevor, and I were the only ones who came in. We had the DirecTV kiosk turned to CNN, I'm pretty sure, and we watched in horror as they re-played the footage of the second plane crashing into the second tower, people jumping out of the windows onto the street, falling hundreds of feet to their deaths. We watched the towers collapse under their own weight, live.

We actually had a pretty busy day, or at least what passed for busy at that store. Everybody who came in rented something from the comedy section, and explained that they needed a break from everything that was going on. We understood, and it actually made me kind of glad that we were open, just so people could escape from the horrors of our new reality, even if it was just for a couple of hours.

They say that people who were alive in November, 1963 remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard that John F. Kennedy was assassinated. I very much think that the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 can be added to that list.

Make sure you tell your family and friends that you love them, today. Whatever grudges you're holding against people, let them go. Life is too precious, and sometimes we need a reminder that there are things far more important than our own pettiness.

Thank you all for reading.

Also, a very happy birthday to my buddy, Kayin, creator of I Wanna Be The Guy: The Movie: The Game.

You don't like that I like wrestling?

2010-09-10T07:00:00.008-07:00

First off, thank you to Blogger for finally allowing us to upload our own background images. I'll have something slightly more exciting in the near future, but getting to use the background from my personal site is far better than anything that they offered as a default image.

Secondly, I noticed that a few people who read yesterday's entry about my journey into pro wrestling decided to misinterpret some of the end of my entry, and think that I said TNA Wrestling was some sort of flawless entity. Not so; In fact, far from it. There's a lot of things TNA has done in the past that are inexcusably bad. But over the last several months, I think they've regained their focus, and I honestly feel that TNA is doing a much better job than either of the WWE's programs of keeping their World Championship as the most important thing in the company.

I don't care what wrestling company it is - WWE, TNA, ROH, indies, whatever! - If the between-match shenanigans aren't building towards a particular match either later that night or by the next PPV, then I'm not enjoying that segment, and it is a waste of my viewing time. For example, the entirety of Kevin Nash's recent storyline, about what happened in WCW over ten years ago? I don't care for these segments. I was watching WCW at the time, and rather enjoying the product (but, then, I've always been less cynical and far more forgiving than most wrestling fans on the Internet seem to be). And the biggest drawback to Nash's current storyline is that it's all based on backstage BS that never made it on to TV.

How is this relevant to any of today's fans? Bischoff and Hogan and Jarrett are calling Nash out on, what... the fact that he likes to get paid, in a capitalist society? And, really? Hulk Hogan is giving somebody shit about making money?

I think Ric Flair's "Fortune" stable vs "EV2.0" is being played backwards; Fortune should be presented as the young guys who have been with TNA for a long time, making their own name. Meanwhile, EV2.0 should be presented as the assholes who are coming in and taking up the young blood's valuable television time, despite having already had their chance in the spotlight.

What good is it to TNA's fanbase to have them booing the guys who will be with the company at the conclusion of this storyline, and cheering the guys who will all be gone by the end of 2011? This makes about as much sense as WCW's New Blood vs Millionaire's Club angle, which was basically the exact same thing... and when THAT version of this story was over, the New Blood was all that was left. But audiences had just spent the last year hating all the young guys, and had no reason to stop... probably driving a lot of the viewership to the WWF's product. And if the Fortune vs EV2.0 story isn't handled carefully, it COULD outright kill TNA.

However.

TNA is still doing a far better job of keeping the TNA Championship as the central focus of the company. Everybody is there with the intention of either winning that title, or helping to build its legacy. EV2.0 stuck around to hang out with TNA Champion Rob Van Dam. Fortune are a bunch of guys who think that EV2.0 don't deserve to be anywhere near the belt. Hogan, Bischoff, and Jarrett vs Nash & Sting is all about letting the young guys have their day in the sun, and not hogging the Championship on top of a glass ceiling. Meanwhile, Jeff Hardy, Kurt Angle, Ken Anderson, and D'Angelo Dinero have been setting up for the finals of the championship tournament at TNA's biggest PPV of the year, Bound For Glory.

The entire Knockouts division has been focused around Madison Rayne and her Knockouts Championship, for the last several months.

The Motor City Machine Guns and Beer Money, Inc. just had an incredible series of matches for the TNA Tag Team Championship.

Doug Williams has brought some attention back to the X-Division Championship with some unique championship defenses.

And AJ Styles winning the ~~Legends~~ ~~Global~~ Television Championship from Rob Terry and RE-re-naming it brings a LOT of attention to that title belt.

Again; In TNA, the focus is on the championships. On Raw, the focus is on mystery GMs and celebrity guests who do nothing to contribute to the actual matches, and just distract from the fact that half of the roster couldn't put together anything more than a basic match to save their careers, and a handful of rookies who can barely even put together a basic match. Smackdown, meanwhile, has never had a central focus since it began in 1999. It's always been the "B-show" that creates stars to feature on Raw.

One of my friends once described the WWE's product as "all sizzle and no steak." And I find it hard to disagree with that.

Which isn't to say that TNA is all steak. They've got plenty of sizzle, themselves. But of the two companies, I very much prefer what TNA is putting on television.

Or, at least, I did. I'm three weeks and a PPV behind. I could completely change my mind based on what's happened between The Whole F'N Show and No Surrender. Plus last night's episode.

Also, because I don't want this to become just another wrestling blog, this is the last thing I'm going to be writing about wrestling for a LOOOOONG while. For everybody else, back to your regularly-scheduled geekiness on Monday.

Finally, next time you have a comment about something I write, please at least have the decency to say it directly to me in my own comments section, rather than hiding behind somebody else's Facebook page. Let's all be adults, here, hm?

You don't like wrestling. part 2.

2010-09-09T07:00:00.041-07:00

Bret Hart and Mr. Perfect battle it out to determine who is the best!

Alright, so yesterday I pretty much just bitched about what I didn't like about UFC, which is exactly what I complained about them doing with pro wrestling. So today, I'll instead not talk about what I don't like, and try to focus more on what I do like about wrestling.

First things first. I'm a child of the 80s in basically every sense. I was born in 1982, so I'm young enough to still be in my 20s, but old enough to actually remember the world in the 80s. And what I remember was violence.

Not in the sense of wars; the Vietnam War had been over for almost two decades by the time I had ever heard about it. Not in the sense of gangs; I turned 8 in 1990, and lived in rural or suburban New England for a lot of my childhood. The violence I remember was on television.

I'll often describe The Transformers as "my first favorite thing after Sesame Street and/or Mister Rogers' Neighborhood." Transformers was a show about good robots who turned into vehicles battling evil robots who turned into vehicles. Before Transformers, I have vague recollections of watching He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, where an evil warlord is trying to overthrow the kingdom of Eternia, and battles with its defenders, the Masters of the Universe. I recall Voltron, where an evil sorceress and a twisted prince would send robot beasts to destroy worlds they wanted to rule, and they would be fought off by a quintet of robotic, Lion-shaped vehicle gestalt. G.I. Joe combated Cobra, a ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world. The Thundercats defended Third Earth from an evil, ancient Egyptian wizard. The Silverhawks confronted an intergalactic mob. The Real Ghostbusters would battle evil apparitions. The Super Mario Brothers were always trying to stop King Koopa from kidnapping Princess Toadstool. Link was in conflict with Ganon over the Triforces in the Legend of Zelda. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fought evil ninja.

Before wrestling, I loved the Transformers. And GI Joe, and Thundercats, and Silverhawks, and Mario...

My childhood was filled with violent entertainment. As far as I was aware, that's pretty much all there was for kids to watch - Action cartoons with heroes in brightly-colored outfits fighting against villains in secondary colors.

I was aware of professional wrestling, thanks to a few neighborhood kids having the video games, or my cousins inviting me to watch WWF Superstars of Wrestling with them when I'd visit on the weekends. But it wasn't until the morning of Monday, April 5th, 1993 that I would give it much of a second thought.

I was ten years old, and had only been living in this particular city for about a year. I'd made friends with some of the kids in my neighborhood, and we'd all walk to school together, a lot of mornings. We'd usually talk about any of the aforementioned action cartoons, or what video games we were playing (Street Fighter II on the SNES being the most popular bit of our gaming conversations). But not on that morning.

The night before was the World Wrestling Federations ninth annual Wrestlemania program. And, as my friends explained to me, in the main event, Bret "Hit Man" Hart was defending the WWF Championship against Yokozuna, the winner of January's Royal Rumble match, the first time the winner of the Rumble faced the champion at Wrestlemania.

At the conclusion of the match, Yokozuna's manager, Mr. Fuji, threw salt in the eyes of Bret Hart, blinding the "Hit Man," allowing Yoko to take advantage and take not only the win, but also the WWF Championship title. The omni-present Hulk Hogan came out to help Bret from the ring, but before he could guide the now-former champ to the backstage area, Mr. Fuji got on the microphone. Fuji claimed that Yokozuna could beat anybody, anytime, anywhere, and Fuji challenged Hulk Hogan to a match for Yokozuna's newly-won WWF Championship. Hogan reluctantly agreed, having had already competed in a tag team match, himself, earlier in the night.

If you watched wrestling between 1984 and 1993, knew this guy, like him or not.

As the second WWF Championship match of the night commenced, Mr. Fuji tried to throw salt in the Hulkster's eyes, as he'd done to Bret Hart, just moments before. But the Immortal One saw what was coming and ducked. The salt hit Yokozuna in the eyes, and the Leader of Hulkamania quickly scored a win (in under one minute), becoming the first-ever five-time WWF Champion.

Now, put yourself in my shoes. I knew Hulk Hogan was the ultimate hero in the land of the World Wrestling Federation, and I had just heard a tale of him overcoming what sounded like the ultimate in evils to re-take the title of the greatest warrior in the land.

To put it bluntly, that sounded awesome.

It was the exact kind of story I would expect in one of my action cartoons, except these were REAL PEOPLE. And I was ten years old, so I was a double-digiter. It was time for me to phase out those silly kid's cartoons and start watching something with real people; After all, that's how I understood the world to work, at the time. Cartoons were for children, live-action shows were for adults.

And WWF television sounded like the perfect transition.

I'm pretty sure it was that night (although, honestly, it could have been the following week) that I tuned in to my first episode of Monday Night Raw, back when it was still being broadcast from the Grand Ballroom in the Manhattan Center.

Crush was my first-favorite wrestler.

The first match I saw was a six-foot-eight, three-hundred-pound man in orange-and-purple spandex with the RADDEST blond mullet I'd ever witnessed in my entire life (also, remember, it was 1993, and mullets were just beginning to become popular. And, yes, in 10 years, everybody will laugh at you for combing your hair in front of your face the way people laugh at mullets, today). This wrestler was named "Crush," and that's exactly what he did; He CRUSHED his opponent, with seeming ease.

Crush quickly became my favorite of all the WWF's Superstars (They weren't just wrestlers. They weren't just stars. They were SUPER-STARS!), but over the next several weeks, I became intrigued by the egotism of "Mr. Perfect," the all-business attitude of Bret Hart, the youthful courage of the "1-2-3 Kid," and the cockiness of the Intercontinental Champion, Shawn Michaels (the Intercontinental Championship was the 2nd-tier title in the WWF).

I was also just getting into comic books at this time, and the parallels between the Marvel Universe and the World Wrestling Federation were rather astonishing. Both featured overmuscled men in bright, colorful tights covered in intricate designs, fighting for what they felt was right.

Every week, I would try to stay up to watch Monday Night Raw, and then I'd watch WWF Superstars and WWF Wrestling Challenge on Saturday afternoons at 1 and 2pm, respectively. WIthin a couple of months, I was even watching All-American Wrestling on Sunday mornings at noon, as well as WWF Mania on Saturday mornings at 10am. The WWF was the absolute coolest thing I had ever seen, and somehow I had never been privy to this world of excitement. And the best part was, it seemed like all of my friends already knew a lot about wrestling, so they could explain to me who guys were and what other wrestlers they'd had matches with before, and who'd they'd beaten.

Razor Ramon and the 1-2-3 Kid in 1995.

Over the next several years, I began watching as much wrestling as I could, exploring into the WWF's rival promotion, World Championship Wrestling. WCW had a very different product, but a lot of their roster was made up with wrestlers who were leaving the WWF when I started watching the "sport," so it was cool to get to witness them all again.

Somehow, I recall knowing that wrestling was "fake," right from the beginning. I don't at all remember how I knew this, but I know that I knew things weren't entirely legitimate. After all, if everything in the WWF was on the up-and-up, then Crush would surely at least be Intercontinental Champion, right? He was the best guy in the entire company!

And, really, I think that's what I like best about professional wrestling - It appeals to the ten-year-old boy in me who is fascinated by people striving to be the best there is at what they do (even if what they do isn't very nice).

Somewhere along the way, the WWF/WWE's writers lost sight of the fact that everything in the company is supposed to be about becoming the best of the best, and everybody should be striving for the championships. And as a result, I have progressively lost more and more interest in their product.

Shawn Michaels is arguably the greatest wrestler of all time.

However, leading up to their pay-per-view event in October of 2009, Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (with the unfortunate acronym of "TNA") really started to focus on making the TNA Championship the most important thing in their company. And when that happened, I was immediately attracted to their world in the same way I became obsessed with the WWF, 17-and-a-half years prior.

And that leads me up to today. The TNA Championship is still the most important thing in TNA, and, behind-the-scenes, the promoters and writers are still dedicated to putting on a new, exciting show every Thursday night, with fresh matches and exciting action.

1996 Olympic Gold Medalist Kurt Angle is a former TNA Champion.

Meanwhile, the WWE has this unspoken caste system amongst their "Superstars," resulting in endless tirades of rematches, and everybody builds their matches in basically the exact same way, using a lot of the same basic maneuvers and defenses. And there is far too much "ga-ga" between the actual matches for my tastes.

Now, I understand why the WWE operates the way it does; They're trying to get away with doing as little as possible and make a living off of not putting the folks they have under contract in any more danger than is necessary. It's a very smart business decision on their part, and as a businessman, I don't disagree with that decision. What is unfortunate, though, is that, at the end of the day, their product eventually becomes completely predictable. And if I see where a story is going before it gets there, I tend to find that rather tedious and boring.

And the bullshit they fill the shows with between the matches is abysmal dreck. A comment was left in yesterday's entry about how the storylines of pro wrestling are much like a male soap opera; "the invented stories of each are equally as stupid and trite." And I ABSOLUTELY agree. I wish it wasn't there.

I know a large percentage of the population apparently gets off on it, but I just don't care for the out-of-the-ring shenanigans. The "You hit on my wife and now I must kill you!" or "You're a smelly butthole and so we shall fight!" bullshit really doesn't do anything for me.

I just want to watch two guys get in the ring and beat the shit out of each other to prove which of them is the best. Right now, TNA is giving me that. The WWE is not.

But I still like watching brightly-colored violence, and there are few better places to get it than in a wrestling ring.

Let me get this straight: You don't like wrestling. (part 1?)

2010-09-08T07:00:00.005-07:00

"Yeah, I don't like wrestling. I like the real shit. UFC, MMA, that kind of thing."

This is the typical response i get from men who find out I like wrestling.

"I used to watch, back when it was the WWF/back when they had The Rock and/or Stone Cold," is the response I get from everybody else.

So, basically, when I mention that I like professional wrestling, everybody feels the need to not only tell me that they don't like it, they also tell me WHY IT SUCKS.

First of all, to everybody watching "MMA," that is the most mis-leading name of all time. "Mixed Martial Arts" is not a fighting style, and FUCK UFC and all of the other so-called "MMA Promotions" for confusing the masses.

Go back and watch UFC1, from 1994 or whatever. It was a boxer, a sumo, a kickboxer, a jiu-jitsu guy, a karate guy, etc. Eight guys out to prove what the best fighting discipline was. No pads, no "stopping the fight to protect the athletes," no weight classes, none of that bullshit. The Ultimate Fighting Championship was just that - an 8-man tournament to determine the Ultimate Fighter. And Royce Gracie was better at Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu than any of those other guys were at their respective disciplines. THREE TIMES.

UFC is a far cry from what it set out to be, and is now a bastardization of Pro Wrestling's showmanship and the Olympiad Games' overabundance of rules so deep you don't ever get to see an actual fight.

Or, in the case that you actually DO get to see a fight, you get two guys covered in tattoos (because they're that HARD, you see) hugging, while punching each other in the kidneys until one of them falls over. Then they try and wrap body parts around each other, often resulting in a "Triangle Choke," so called because the guy in the hold has his face in a triangle between the other guy's wang, left testicle, and right testicle.

Or the thing that plagued boxing pay-per-view events, 30-second knockouts. Hey, it's totally impressive for the guy doing the knocking out. It's not impressive for the sucker that just shelled out $50 for the event and spent $100 on snacks for his friends that he invited over.

In the mid-1990s, Royce Gracie was the best fighter in the world. In 2010, nobody can pronounce his first name correctly, nevermind even remember it. Instead, we get the "Ultimate Fighting Championship Champion" (thank you for calling the department of redundancy department) Brock Lesnar, canceling fights because his tummy hurts. Referees are suddenly stopping fights at indiscriminate times to "protect the fighters," or not, because "the fight is too important." Everybody's wearing padded gloves and boxing shorts. It disgusts me.

Now, to the crowd you "used to" watch "WWF" programming:

You're the equivalent of what traditional sports viewers call a "fairweather fan." You like something that all of your friends like, because it's doing well right now. People who watched Stone Cold and The Rock in 1998-2002 are the wrestling equivalent of the lady who went into Sports Authority a couple months ago, and asked if they had any Netherlands' jerseys, so she could wear one to the World Cup Finals. Ten bucks says that lady had never even heard of the Netherlands before April.

Look, Stone Cold Steve Austin was one of the most compelling characters on television, ever. There's no denying that fact. He drank on the job, he got to swear at and beat up his boss, he gave people the finger... He embodied what the blue-collar worker wanted to do every day at the office or on the construction site. So, basically, a pissed-off, drunken, sociopathic redneck. The exact kind of thing that reasonable people make fun of each other for being.

And if Austin wasn't your flavor, there was The Rock, a man so obsessed with saying things more outrageous than you could imagine that nobody bothered to notice that he was also probably the world's biggest asshole. No wonder his only friend was Mankind, a guy so dirt-poor and smelly that he hung out with a sock, when he wasn't busy getting thrown off steel cages through tables.

Nobody seems to remember that in 1998 and 1999, Ken Shamrock was one of the biggest stars in the WWF. You remember Ken Shamrock, right? He tapped out to Royce Gracie in under a minute, at UFC1. I mean, he was the guy in the red wrestling trunks who would go crazy and suplex referees all the time, because he had a temper that he just couldn't keep in check.

Or what about in 1999, when the Undertaker went even darker than usual and started abducting wrestlers, and brainwashing them into joining his "Ministry of Darkness." Really? You forget that a 7-foot guy called The Undertaker (who is still wrestling now, by the way), was BRAINWASHING wrestlers, and forcing them to join his cult of death?

How about in November 1999, when Kurt Angle joined the WWF? You remember Kurt Angle, yeah? He won the OLYMPIC FUCKING GOLD MEDALS at the 1996 Olympiad Games in Atlanta, Georgia in Freestyle Wrestling. Kurt Angle was to wrestling what Royce Gracie was to Mixed Martial Arts (back when they were still mixed) -- THE BEST IN THE WORLD. And then he joined the WWF, and started acting like the world's biggest dork; preaching abstinence, well-balanced diets, and spilling milk all over himself.

It seems that people who no longer watch wrestling only remember eight matches, and seven of them are The Undertaker vs. Mankind in the Hell in a Cell match atthe King of the Ring 1998 Pay-Per-View event. You know, the one where Mankind kept getting thrown off the steel cage, in what was one of the most brutal, disgusting, barbaric, revolting events in the history of humanity. The very fact that this match is as highly revered as it is makes me question the humanity of the people who talk about it fondly.

Mankind (whose real name is Mick Foley, which is what he's going by now) had one of his teeth driven up THROUGH HIS UPPER LIP during this match, and it got STUCK in his BEARD. No, think about that for a second. Imagine being thrown around so hard that one of your TEETH pops loose. And then, it gets driven THROUGH YOUR SKIN! And people talk FONDLY if the match where this happens.

(But don't forget, professional wrestling isn't real. UFC, the promotion where referees stop fights because one guy is getting punched by padded gloves, THAT'S real. But the one where a guy who gets a tooth driven through his lip is fake.)

The late 90s were a time when the WWF were in direct competition with rival wrestling promotion, WCW. The two companies had wrestling programs broadcast simultaneously on Monday nights, and both were always trying to one-up each other, in the war for that thing that stops intelligent television from existing: Ratings. People were figuratively and literally killing themselves just so one company could get a little bit ahead in the ratings, so they could charge a little more for advertising.

WWF totally ended up winning that war, by the way. One week in 1999, when WCW's show, Nitro, was pre-empted for the NBA finals, WWF Raw scored a 10.0 in the ratings. A TEN. That basically meant that at least one out of every 10 people you knew was watching wrestling, that night. And it didn't hurt that it was one of the better Raws ever produced.

WCW never recovered from that loss in ratings, and basically bankrupted themselves over the next year, trying to regain the lead (despite being owned by Time-Warner), They closed up shop in early 2001, and the WWF owner, Vince McMahon, was more than happy to buy his competition for a measly 3 million dollars (which was the cost of a month's worth of episodes of Raw, incidentally - So, basically, operating expenses). For that $3 million, the WWF gained access to most of WCW's talent, and every single one of their assets - Including their video tape library. McMahon saw ahead, and quickly began releasing DVD sets that included WCW matches for his more popular WWF stars.

A lawsuit with the World Wildlife Foundation forced World Wrestling Federation Entertainment, Inc. to "Get the 'F' Out," and become WWE. And that's when a lot of people stopped watching.

So, basically, WWF won the war, and then all their fairweather fans gave up on them. Way to go, guys.

I don't know what my point was in all this. I just really needed to vent about the stupidity i see in people's opinions about pro wrestling. Maybe tomorrow, I'll write about why I DO like wrestling.

But I'm not promising anything.

Virtua Fighter 5

2010-09-07T07:00:00.000-07:00

I busted out my copy of Virtua Fighter 5 over the Labor Day weekend, on the XBox 360. I forgot how much fun that game was. As a fan of the series from the very first release in the arcades in the mid-90s, and playing countless hours of VF2 on the Sega Saturn (it was a pack-in game when I got my Saturn!), when VF5 finally came to the XBox 360, I had to be there, right away.

Akira Yuki stands strong

Virtua Fighter is generally considered the very first 3D fighting game. Its use of polygons instead of pixels was revolutionary at the time, and Sega definitely saw what the future of gaming would be, arguably before anybody else. Between VF and Sonic 3D Blast, Sega was all on top of making 3D games before 3D games were the norm. I wonder what happened?

Anyways. VF is much like other fighting games, in that you pick your martial artist and go head-to-head against other fighters from all over the world. The controls are complex in their simplicity; In addition to the 8-way Joystick/D-Pad, there are just three gameplay buttons; Punch, Kick, and Guard. Pressing combinations of P, K, and G will execute different attacks; For example, P+G is a throw attack for every character. K+G is usually a stronger kick attack. Throw in directional pressed on the joystick, and you've got an infinite number of simple combinations that are executed instantly, each with their own range, power, speed, and priority.

El Blaze wants YOU!

One of the unique features of Virtua Fighter is that each sequel has only ever introduced two new characters, and only one of the characters was retired (Taka-Arashi, the Sumo Wrestler from Virtua Fighter 3, was apparently too difficult to calculate hit detection for, in relation to the other characters). But every game gets completely re-imagined backgrounds, and brand-new character models for each and every character, and cleaner, crisper controls.

VF5 introduced two new characters: El Blaze is a Lucha Libre expert, very reminiscent of Mexican Wrestling sensation, Rey Mysterio (before Rey got a bazillion tattoos everywhere). Also joining the cast is Eileen, a teenage practitioner of Monkey Fist Kung Fu.

Wolf Hawkfield is the best that's ever been.

Of course, with my being a pro wrestling fan, I've always gravitated towards the grapplers in fighting games, and VF is no exception. My character of choice is Wolf Hawkfield, a Canadian native American Heavyweight who integrates the most popular maneuvers of pro wrestling into his move set. In addition to all kinds of chops, clotheslines, elbows, and kicks, Wolf also has a wide variety of powerful throws and devastating suplexes, in addition to a handful of bone-crunching submission attacks. If only he weren't so slow, I may consider him the ultimate fighting game character.

That HORRIBLE monkey!

The only downside to VF5 is that the online community has all but vanished, as the game is nearly 3 years old, by this point. Two minor updates to the game have been released in the arcade since the XBox 360 release (re-introducing Taka-Arashi, as well as an all-new character, Jean Kujo). Even if Sega were to just release the most recent update onto consoles, it could breathe new life into the game.

Or we could just wait for Virtua Fighter 6. Which I'm perfectly content doing.

Janet Jackson Rolling Stone cover, 1993

2010-09-06T11:35:00.023-07:00

For those of you who didn't catch my "Janet Jackson" reference in yesterday's Duke Nukem article, here's the cover of the infamous Rolling Stone cover from 1993:

This cover has been copied numerous times. In addition to yesterday's image of Duke and Lara Croft here are a few other pastiches. L to R: Gen 13 #1 variant cover featuring Caitlin Fairchild, Cat Staggs' 2008 sketchbook featuring Dr. Girlfriend from Venture Bros., and Pregnancy Magazine feat. Jan from The Office:

This is one of those things artists do, where they take a super-popular image, and re-create it to draw on peoples' sense of familiarity with the original image. Theoretically, it makes the viewer enjoy the re-creation, as they recognize its inspiration. With most people that works. With some, they bitch and complain about the new artist being unoriginal and lame. Those are usually the kinds of people who have never created anything artistic in their entire lives, or their drawings absolutely suck.

I hope you enjoyed not looking at breasts as much as I did, today.

Duke Nukem Forever

2010-09-05T11:29:00.000-07:00

Duke Nukem: Forever was re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-announced this week at PAX (Penny Arcade eXpo, pronounced "Packs").

Duke Nukem: Forever was originally announced in 1997, but has been cancelled and re-announced so many times in the last 13 years that I've lost track. It's been the butt of many jokes about game development times (Many along the lines of, "Duke Nukem FOREVER? Is that how long they'll take to make the game?"), but it seems as though Gearbox has legally acquired the rights, and will finally release the game in 2011.

Duke's a fan of Lara Croft who's a fan of Janet Jackson.

Boobs, urination, guns, blood, and violence are what have been reported about the game, thus far. So, really, nothing we wouldn't expect from a Duke Nukem game. YouTube is littered with videos about the game, so enter "Duke Nukem Forever PAX 2010" into their search field if you care enough to see the game for itself.

Me? I'm won't believe it until it's on store shelves.

Kamen Rider OOO debuts

2010-09-04T18:08:00.001-07:00

Kamen Rider OOO (pronounced "Kah-men Ride-er Os, like Spaghetti-Os), the next installment in the Kamen Rider franchise makes its debut in Japan, this weekend, and the opening theme has hit YouTube.

If only that one dude didn't totally look like a woman, this could be a winner.

Not that I have anything against people who want to present as the opposite gender, but this is starting to become a trend in Kamen Rider, specifically.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles Season 1

2010-08-02T13:14:00.000-07:00

Summer Glau's does her best impression of Bush song, Machine Head.

So, as people who've known me for a while will attest to, Terminator 2: Judgment Day is often cited as being my favorite movie of all time.

It has all of the elements I most enjoy about fiction: Time travel, post-apocalyptic futures, a strong hero saving people less-strong than he/she/it, a seemingly-unbeatable antagonist, noticeable character development, and a complete lack of a romantic subplot.

(No, seriously, why did the US version of Godzilla have a romantic subplot? Godzilla is the absolute LAST movie that should have people falling in love. Stop it, Hollywood! Stop forcing every movie to have romance!)

If you ask me, the first Terminator movie is just okay. I appreciate it more for setting up T2 than anything. And as I cited immediately after seeing it, I felt Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines was basically just a high-budget fanfic remake of T2. Terminator Salvation was the closest we've gotten to a movie that lives up to T2 (which it does not), until now.

John Connor: Thomas Dekker vs. Edward Furlong

So I completely did not watch this show at all while it was actually airing, because I don't really watch television, anymore. I'm one of the consumers that waits for everything to hit DVD so that I can watch it on my own time. And even moreso, I wait until it hits the Netflix Streaming on my XBox360, so I don't need to leave my house to get the disc. It can be said that I am very lazy when it comes to televised entertainment. The thing is, though, I usually very much enjoy the things that I DO watch, and I want to experience them in their entirety. I don't like waiting a week between episodes, because I can't guarantee that I'll be home to watch the next installment. But, I digress.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles continues the story in 1999, two years after Terminator 2 ends. Sarah Connor (going by the name Sarah Reese) has been proposed to by her most recent boyfriend, Charlie Dixon. Fearing getting stuck in one place for too long, Sarah takes her teenage son John and they bolt. They find a new home and John is enrolled in a new school where John meets a pretty new girl, Cameron. On the second day of school, one of John's teachers is replaced by substitute, Cromartie, which turns out to be a Terminator (Cyberdyne Systems Model T-888, or just "Triple-Eight" for short). After exiting through the classroom window, John is running for his life, when suddenly he's saved by the pretty girl, Cameron in a stolen truck. She hits the Triple Eight, pulls up to John, opens the door, and says the first thing that made me totally mark out:

"Come with me if you want to live."

Summer Glau as Cameron Phillips, the new protecting Terminator.

This is the line that Kyle Reese first said to Sarah Connor in T1, as well as the line the T-800 said to Sarah in T2 while she was escaping the Pescadaro mental institute. To immediately introduce this line into the series showed that the producers did their homework.

Or that they were just also fans of the franchise. Which would also explain why they named the new character "Cameron," after the creator of the franchise, James Cameron.

Turns out that Cameron is a Terminator (though her model number is not given), and she's been sent back by John in 2027 to protect John in 1999, as well as warn him of the upcoming Judgment Day, which has now been pushed back to 2011. Through a series of crazy mishaps, the trio of heros get time-travel'd to 2007, where they need to begin their lives anew. And completely stopped T3 from ever happening, which was completely welcome.

Sarah Connor: Lena Headly vs. Linda Hamilton

I ended up marathoning through the entire first season in one night (which kept me up 'til 3am), and it was well worth the lack of sleep for all of the complexities and layers that got added. Each episode truly was like its own individual movie with an overarching plot.

I very much enjoyed the first season, and I'm looking forward to watching season two. If you dug the first two Terminator movies, then definitely watch them again and check out this series. And if you've never watched anything Terminator, watch the first two movies and see if it's for you.

Whoaaa.

2010-07-31T13:17:00.000-07:00

Apparently it's been a while since I've updated this thing. But a lot has happened!

Well, San Diego Comic-Con International happened. That and some design work for a couple of clients. That's really all that happened. But they all took a lot of work and energy!

Also, I got Transformers: War for Cybertron for the XBox 360.That game is pretty. And Awesome. And pretty awesome.

I'll get a real article up this weekend, promise.

Wonder Woman's new threads

2010-07-11T09:35:00.000-07:00

After taking a little time to think it over, I've decided to express my opinion on Wonder Woman's new outfit.

Fandom seems pretty much divided right in half. The first half is crying foul, claiming that Wonder Woman's outfit is too iconic to ever change. The other half seems to like it, expressing how impractical her classic outfit was, and citing this new one as rectifying that impracticality.

I tend to fall in the latter camp.

No disrespect to any of the creators who have worked on Wonder Woman over the years, but that classic outfit of hers is crap. Diana is an Greek Demigod, and a star-spangled bikini is just ridiculous.

Besides, superheroines who have their asses hanging out are not ever taken seriously; They are considered to be little more than sex objects used for adolescent male fantasies. Take Ms. Marvel for example:

Compare to this variation on her outfit:

The first one? All you can think about is looking at her posterior, and wondering who that fella she's talking to is (It's Norman Osborn). The second one invokes a sense of urgency and wondering what she's running after/from.

Studies have shown that women who work in an office setting and choose to wear pants and shirts that fully cover their chests are often taken far more seriously (and are often far more successful) than women who wear skirts and reveal cleavage.

Basically, regardless of your personal stance on it morally, most men treat women who dress like sex objects as though they were sex objects, and often little more. And in terms of American superhero comics, the majority of that audience is males in their teens and 20s - As in, the ones who are the most sexually active, and, therefore, more ready to objectify women.

So, that's all fine and dandy, but what's it have to do with Wonder Woman?

Simple: Her new outfit keeps her pretty covered up, and is far more mature and streamlined than the previous, "Classic" outfit. Diana Prince finally looks like Wonder WOMAN, not Wonder 20somethingOnTheStreetCorner.

Think about it - which heroines in comics are the most respected? The ones that are fully covered; Jean Grey, Rogue, Catwoman, Batgirl, Spider-Woman I and II, Storm in her 90s outfit, etc. And Wonder Woman is now welcomed to that club.

Plus, I don't know about you, but I always felt like Wonder Woman was more of a strong woman figure. And the last thing most of us want to see is our moms running around in a star-spangled bikini. Even if they are built like Diana.

GI Joe Resolute Finale

2010-07-07T12:16:00.000-07:00

USS FLAGG: Satellite communication is back up! Hooray!

Dial Tone finds that the satellite energy signatures that match the particle cannon that Scarlett and Duke blew up in episode 9. And the H.A.A.R.P. effect is happening again? But they just shut that operation down, last episode! That was, like, a MINUTE ago!

The USS FLAGG is being targeted!

Flint orders and emergency evacuation, and everybody gets clear just in time for the FLAGG to be exploded! Dial Tone got a lock on the signature... and it's in a town in the midwest. A town called...

Springfield.

Before Matt Groening turned Springfield into the home of The Simpsons, people who watched cartoons new Springfield as the city where Cobra had a hidden base. In the cartoon, it was mostly populated by artificial humans.

I haven't read the GI Joe Marvel Comics series, but apparently, that version of Springfield was where the Cobra Command got their start. It was a poor town, and when the man who would become Cobra Commander arrived, he turned the spithole around, and began Cobra, via a grassroots campaign against the government - Much like Adolf Hitler in post-WWI-Germany.

So, in short, Springfield is kind of a big deal, in GI Joe lore. GI Joe tracking this energy signature to Springfield would be the equivalent of the Ninja Turtles tracking the energy signature to the Technodrome.

Duke orders a massive strike on Springfield.

Cobra Commander is pissed. In less than 12 hours, everything has fallen apart. And he orders for major cities to start being blown up randomly until the United Nations gives him what he wants.

When a... Tele-Viper? Crimson Guard? I can't tell... explains that they don't have the energy to do that, CC cuts his head off. Because, y'know, THAT'LL get the job done.

Flint explains that if they can take out the Springfield particle cannon in two hours, they can stop Cobra from firing again.

Wal-Mar..er, MallSpot gets blown up by the Joes.

Huh, looks like the Joe team upgraded their jets to F-22 Raptors, from the old F-15 Eagles. The Decepticons did that, too. Interesting... I'm still left to wonder if any of the GI Joe's jets are robots in disguise.

HISS tanks! Vipers of every kind! Gunfire! Missiles! Explosions!

SNAKE-EYES KILLING THINGS!

Duke asks Snake-Eyes questions and expects an answer, because he's a dick.

And then they kill a bunch of Vipers together, because they're still friends. Even if Snake-Eyes silently hates Duke.

"We need some cover!" Duke yells. And then turns to Snakes like he's gonna tell him to call for backup, and remembers that Snakey can't talk, so he runs off on his own. What a dick.

The particle cannon is about to go off, but, fortunately, Scarlett told Duke everything she knew about the particle cannon system. Except Duke can't hack in!

Cobra Commander left a video recording explaining that Washington, D.C. is going to explode, and it will be all... GI Joe's fault? Wait, how?

Oh, it's not a recording. It's Cobra Commander behind bulletproof glass.

Duke shoots the door control, so Cobra Commander can't get out... and then redirects the particle cannon to explode Springfield. Since the entire city is made up of Cobra soldiers, it's not like anybody worth saving is going to die.

GI Joe flies away, and the city of Springfield explodes. D'oh!

Final report: They never found Cobra Comander's body. Well, you can't win 'em all. But at least the day is saved... thanks to the POWERPUFF GIR--uh, I mean.. GI JOE!

Yo, Joe!

Thanks for joining me in this daily-review endeavor. If you liked it, let me know and I'll keep doing it. If not, let me know so that I don't ever do it again. Either way, give me some kind of feedback so I know how it went!

Take care, geeks.

GI Joe Resolute Episode 10

2010-07-06T14:00:00.001-07:00

Recap: Cobra Commander's gonna blow up the world, but GI Joe -- America's daring, highly-trained, special mission force, whose purpose is to defend human freedom against Cobra (a ruthless, terrorist organization determined to rule the world!) -- is on the case.

Part 10:

H.A.A.R.P.: Roadblock and Gung Ho made it into a closet with a metal door before Destro's bombs went off, so they didn't explode, as the end of Episode 8 led us to believe. But Baroness has Predator-style heat vision in her sunglasses.

Gung Ho and Roadblock switch guns. "There ain't a gun on this planet I ain't trained on," says Roadblock. I told you he liked gunning. No, I totally did, in that article where I ranted about how his orange pants were stupid.

Destro and the Baroness agree that killing a hostage now is a good idea, to lure the Joes out, so they discuss about who's going to kill the first one, like a newly-dating couple argues over who's going to hang up first. "No, you hang up first!" "No, YOU hang up first!" "Nono, I insist. YOU kill a hostage, first!"

They're interrupted when Roadblock pings a grenade off Destro's metal head, and a firefight breaks out. Stalker comes up from the vent, and rescues all the scientists, while Destro and Baroness are hiding behind a computer...desk...thing. One sonic grenade later, and Gung Ho and Roadblock are holding the Cobra agents hostage, now.

Cut to Tunnel Rat, who realizes there are too many Stratollites to take out one by one. So he rewires one to explode the rest of them? Or something? And he records what is possibly a goodbye message, in case he doesn't make it back.

Stratollites explode, and Tunnel Rat parachutes down to safety.

The Siberian missile base explodes, with Ripcord, Duke, and Scarlett all safe and clear.

Ripcord informs Duke that everything is going to plan, and asks what the next move is.

Duke: "We make sure this can't happen again; We KILL Cobra Commander."

Oh, wait. There's an episode eleven? Uh, okay. Join me for that, tomorrow!

GI Joe Resolute Episode 9

2010-07-05T14:00:00.001-07:00

Recap: Cobra Commander is gonna blow things up. Zartan may have killed Duke and Scarlett. Destro may have killed Roadblock and Gung Ho. Snake Eyes DID kill Storm Shadow. Cobra Vipers of all kinds have been killed. There's about ten minutes left. Here are the penultimate five:

Scene: The decommissioned Siberian missile base. Duke and Scarlett are not dead, but ARE being shot at by not-orange Alley Vipers. And kill them all. Because they're badasses.

Zartan almost blows them up again, but doesn't. He fires another missile, and the explosion knocks Scarlett into a wall, almost KO'ing her. But she's still awake. She tells Zartan to walk away, reminding him that he was always just a mercenary.

Zartan says that he remembers the first job he ever did for Cobra, and we flash back to him shooting the Hard Master. Hey, it WAS Zartan, just like I thought!

Incidentally, in case you were wondering if you missed something: No, they never do refer to the Hard Master by name. It's just one of those things you pick up by having a really good friend who loves GI Joe so much that he can tell you exactly which action figure each gun came with, who that gun was reissued with, and what year that toy came out.

I was always more into Transformers as a kid, but since both shows were produced and written by the exact same people, we figured that worked out pretty well for us.

Zartan explains that he doesn't want to be a mercenary, anymore (which is fine by me, because with the amount of Deadpool crap coming out, I'm kind of tired of mercenaries, anyways), and that he likes the idea of just going around and killing whomever he likes, once Cobra Commander's taken over the world. He doesn't even want the money anymore - Just the killing.

So Duke shoots Zartan in the back, killing him. Duke took a bullet in the rib, so he sends Scarlett to turn off the particle cannon. So she does that, but it'll take six minutes to explode all the nuclear missiles. Duke says it'll take him six minutes to stand up. And then he says that he's staying. Scarlett says that it's taken her years to figure out what and who she wants, and it's Duke. So she's spending her last six minutes with him, too.

Suddenly, her red hair looks a lot less pretty, to me.

But Ripcord has a deus ex machina to get them out. After explaining the plan, Scarlett, who is still looking at Duke, says, "I love you." And then shoves Duke for being an idiot. She's loved Ripcord all along! Take that, you blonde-haired dick! Take that, Mutey Ninja McNoTalk! Scarlett wants to fly where the eagles soar!

So Ripcord saves the day, and the particle cannon explodes. So now Cobra Commander can't blow up any more cities. Well, so much for that plan.

Y'know, it's a good thing that Scarlett insisted upon going with Duke. She seemed to know a lot more about this thing than him. Plus, he got shot in the stomach, and became essentially useless for half of that episode. What if he'd gone in alone, as he originally planned? Cobra Commander actually might've won, due to Duke's machismo.

Which is an important lesson, kids: You might be pretty tough, but it's always smarter to take a pretty girl along with you, in case you get shot by a guy not wearing bright orange.

Now you know! And knowing is half the battle.

GI Joe Resolute Episode 8

2010-07-04T14:00:00.002-07:00

Recap: Y'know what? No. Just go read the previous seven parts of this series.

Part 8:

Back to Arishikage island. Storm Shadow says a ton of things to Snake-Eyes. Snakes has damaged vocal chords, so he can't say anything back. You ever notice how, when one person is talking a lot and the other guy says nothing, the dude doing the talking always looks like a fool?

Some fancy sword fighting takes place. There's not really much to say about it, unless I were to research a bunch of terms that I don't know. Unfortunately, unlike in The Princess Bride, the two of them don't go telling us all the fighting styles and stances and whatnot that they're using. But, then, Snake-Eyes doesn't tell us much of anything. Since he can't talk.

Snakey cuts off Stormy's arm bands, revealing the Arishikage tattoo on one forearm, and the Cobra tattoo on the other. And then he yells.

Aaaaand back to sword fighting.

"I don't need swords to kill you! I'll kill you WITH MY HANDS!" says Storm Shadow. Which is redundant for me to point out, since Snake-Eyes can't talk.

Stormy speculates that the Hard Master didn't teach Snake-Eyes the sixth or sevent steps, so he executes number six on his old buddy.

Oh. Except the Hard Master DID teach it to Snake-Eyes, who uses the seventh step on Storm Shadow, ending their little date. And a bird caws.

Snakes buries his old friend, and gets picked up by the Joe team.

So, uh. That was really short. I mean, the episode was five minutes, but it's kind of hard to review a fight scene. It was well-done, for sure. But there's not really much to say about it. And it's not like there was a lot of witty dialogue, since, y'know, Snake-Eyes CAN'T TALK. Maybe I should've written a recap...?

So, uh. I guess, join me tomorrow, for part 9. There's only two parts left, so all the action is going to be wrapping up really fast!

Happy independence day!

GI Joe Resolute Episode 7

2010-07-03T14:00:00.002-07:00

Recap: Comics genius Warren Ellis is writing a ten-part GI Joe short. In it, Cobra Commander has a plan that could actually work, involving satellites in the Earth's Stratosphere, called "Stratollites.". CC's sent Destro and The Baroness to hold some scientists as hostages. Snake-Eyes is dancing with Storm Shadow. Zartan may have just exploded Duke and Scarlett, who were on a date in the snow.

Tunnel Rat (He's one of the Joes) has a plan: Joes on hot air balloons will take out Cobra's Stratollites, which are equipped with anti-missile gear. Hot air balloons have no engines, so the anti-missile tech has nothing to lock on to.

They did that cool thing where he explains the plan while they show it in action, which is a visual storytelling technique that I very much appreciate. It prevents us from having to experience the plan twice.

Oh. Except there was a problem, and one of the Joes has apparently died.

At HAARP: Gung Ho, Beach Head, Roadblock, and Stalker are ready to attack. And Roadblock things a frontal attack is a good idea. But Stalker things differently...

Ah, a diversion! While Gung-Ho sets off an explosion, Roadblock (long established as the team's machine gunner) takes out all the Vipers. Awesome.

Roadblock, in case you don't remember, is the huge black guy with the camo tank top. In the Felsner Films PSA parodies, he was the Joe in the "Body Massage" one. He loves cooking and shooting. And in the GI Joe series produced by Sunbow (1982-1987), he loved to speak in rhyme. He did it all of the time! If Roadblock started a sentence, he was gonna finish it with a vengeance.

I preferred his second action figure, where he had the green flak jacket and the grey pants. It was far more visually appealing than a camo tank top and BRIGHT ORANGE pants. I know that yesterday I said I refused to accept any Alley Vipers that weren't wearing orange, but there's a difference. Cobra is a group of terrorists. They want to strike fear into your hearts. And when you go down an alley and there's a dude in bright orange carrying a huge-ass gun, you're going to see him, and you're going to be afraid.

Roadblock, meanwhile, is wearing a camouflage-patterend shirt, presumably so that he wouldn't be seen when trekking through some wooded area, like a forest, or a jungle. But then he ruins that by wearing bright orange pants, which are very easily seen. It's terribly inconsistent.

"What the hell?" Hearing cartoon characters I grew up with swear is just weird. Thanks for weirding me out, Destro.

Baroness knows it's GI Joe, inherently. So she threatens to shoot her hostages. Again. Stalker and Beach Head sneak in through the air vents. And Gung-Ho and Roadblock seemingly get blown the hell up.

S'what Roadblock gets for wearing those orange pants. Idiot.

GI Joe Resolute Episode 6

2010-07-02T14:00:00.002-07:00

Recap: Halfway through the series. Recap: Cobra Commander is explode the world if the people in charge don't hand over control of their own choice. Snake-Eyes and Storm Shadow are gonna play ninja together, and we saw how Storm Shadow killed their sensei. While Duke and Scarlett get ready to play in the snow, Flint is giving the rest of the Joes their marching orders. And The Baroness and Destro are up to their usual antics.

And now on to part six:

Oh goody, snow! We're finally gonna see Duke and Scarlett skiing!

"These packs aren't cleared." Because this show wasn't dangerous enough. Now they're using experimental gear to go skydiving into Siberia. Awesome.

Duke and Scarlet jump out of Ripcord's plane, and sprout wings. And have jets on their backpacks. Oh, Warren Ellis, you technophile. Oh, and then they just leave the jetpacks in the snow. And shoot some Snow Serpents? Badass!

Scarlett's red hair is really pretty. But I totally have a thing for fictional redheads. So, y'know, I'm a little biased.

Duke, meanwhile, looks like Street Fighter's Guile, but with a reasonable haircut.

Ooh, infrared sensors spring traps and alert a platoon of...

Alley Vipers! But... they aren't neon orange? Bullshit!

Image from YoJoe.com

As far as I'm concerned, if it doesn't look like the tip of a Super Soaker® gun, it's not an Alley Viper! Look, I know that the late 80s and early 90s color schemes for toys (particularly those from Hasbro) are not en vogue right now, but I'm REALLY TIRED of everything being greys and browns and olive green and other drab colors. I want some goddamn bright colors in my entertainment!

The grunge era has been over for 15 years, people, and Kurt Cobain died in 1994. Let's move on and lighten up a little bit, okay?

A combination of mist and a grenade take out the Alley Vipers, but more are on the way! Good thing Duke left them a present, in the form of another grenade.

Holy shit, Zartan just appeared out of nowhere! "Master of disguise," indeed! And is that Triceraton gun he's holding? I dunno, but it just shot something that blew the hell up! Badass!

Well, not as much skiing as I would've liked, but the winged jetpacks were kinda cool. All I know is that if this was the DiC GI Joe series, Duke and Scarlett (wouldn't have been there. But if they were, they) would have snowboarded to that decommissioned Siberian base. And that would've been awesome.

GI Joe Resolute Episode 5

2010-07-01T14:00:00.001-07:00

Recap: Cobra Commander is gonna take over the world with a really big gun. Snake-Eyes was invited to a play date by Storm Shadow. Duke and Scarlett are going to go paint wrestling bears in the snow. Flint is in charge, and he's bossing people around, left and right. The Baroness and Destro are totally making out in front of nerdy scientist-types who're probably all too shy to ever have gotten any. So, we've basically got the first few minutes of a typical GI Joe episode.

Oh, except that Major Bludd and Bazooka are dead. And we totally saw Snake-Eyes stab some Cobra Vipers. So... it WOULD be a typical episode of GI Joe, if it weren't totally awesome.

And now, part 5:

Arashikage island...or something. Snake-Eyes is climbing some stairs in the moonlight. And now he's walking around. And he sees the yard in which he used to train. He is remembering Storm Shadow talking to the Hard Master, who is also is uncle. Storm Shadow is jealous that Snake-Eyes has been getting special training. And he wants to know why the Hard Master hasn't taught him the "Seventh Step." And we get the typical scene where the student is terribly impatient, because, of course, the teenage student knows a lot more than the wise teacher. When the Hard Master says he will not teach Storm Shadow the Seventh Step, he gets assassinated by someone who appears to be Cobra agent Zartan. So apparently Storm Shadow was already in league with Cobra, at this point. No wonder he's such a dick.

Also, Zartan missed his first shot, and it apparently hit Snake-Eyes in the vocal chords. I'm not sure we needed that retcon.

Storm Shadow says that things are better this way, and now they can be real ninja. Without learning everything they need to know. Mhm. So Snake-Eyes challenges him to battle, and makes SS bleed. Stormy much be a sado-masochist, because he smiles about it.

Back to the present day. Snake-Eyes and Storm Shadow STARE at each other for a minute, before Stormy says, "All games end today," repeating what he said on the scroll in Bazooka's mouth.

I guess play time's over.

Halfway through the series, and STILL no snowy antics with Duke and Scarlett. Hopefully tomorrow!

Gi Joe Resolute Episode 4

2010-06-30T14:00:00.002-07:00

Recap: Cobra Commander blew up Moscow using a particle cannon and super-heating the Ionosphere, which, for the sake of simplicity, is a part of Earth's atmosphere. Snake-Eyes got a letter from his old friend-and-rival, Storm Shadow, saying it's time for the fun and games to end. Duke and Scarlett plan a skiing trip in Siberia.

We open up in Cobra Commander's hallway. He's musing about how he normally fucks up his campaigns to take over the world. He killed Major Bludd to get Cobra in line, which is a departure from his acting like a buffoon. CC he claims the buffoonery act was something he did to motivate his soldiers, and get them thinking. But he's tired of that. Now it's time for shit to get real, son. Stick with him, and you'll never go hungry again!

On the USS FLAGG, Dial Tone (who is now a woman), finds a string of anomalies in the stratosphere. Roadblock, Flint, and Gung-Ho try and figure out how Cobra's pulling everything off. But Dial Tone knows! It's those satellite things that Cobra launched back in the first episode! They're like mini-satellites, called Stratollites (Like I said yesterday, writer Warren Ellis is a sucker for tech that doesn't exist), which is how Cobra's been communicating with each other.

Flint asks Tunnel Rat to take care of the Stratollites. Tunnel Rat points out that he does two things: Diffuse stuff, and blow everything else up. Dial Tone says there's some sort of anti-attack things in place on the Stratollites. Tunnel Rat says he'll find a way around them, but even if he takes out the Stratollites, that doesn't get the Earth its satellite coverage back.

Oh, but Gung-Ho's JUST figured that part out. What a convenient time to enter the room with such appropriate news!

Oh, hey, it's H.A.A.R.P. Cobra took them over just a few hours ago -- Like, right before this all got started. And H.A.A.R.P. was made SPECIFICALLY to super-heat the Ionosphere, for "experimental purposes." Who ever would've thought?

I guess I can't give them too much guff for that. These episodes ARE all under five minutes long, after all.

Flint says to get strike teams ready for both the H.A.A.R.P. and Stratollite missions. Oh boy! I love when Flint is in charge!

Over at H.A.A.R.P., the scientists who work there are on their knees, cowering before a woman with an Eastern European accent. She says that the first one to speak gets to see two of their friends killed right in front of them.

Eeeyeah, that'd keep me quiet. It's one thing to kill me for talking. It's another for me to have the responsibility of two other peoples' death's weighing on my shoulders just because I couldn't keep my yap shut.

And the Eastern European-accented lady is, of course, The Baroness. Who's chilling out with Destro.

Maybe we'll get to Duke and Scarlett's skii adventure tomorrow!

GI Joe Resolute Episode 3

2010-06-29T14:00:00.002-07:00

Recap of the last two episodes (why you don't just go read them is beyond me): Cobra Commander wants to take over the world and to prove he's serious this time, he exploded Moscow. GI Joe is gonna show him what the other half of the battle is! But first, Snake-Eyes has some unfinished business with Storm Shadow.

We pick up back on the USS FLAGG, GI Joe's aircraft carrier base. Location: Classified. But it's in the ocean. Or possibly Lake Superion. But probably the ocean.

Satellite communications are still down around the world. It's Cobra's fault. Cobra has also killed everybody in Moscow. Duke reminds us that this is the biggest thing Cobra's ever done. Considering they once went bankrupt and tried to make their money back with a heavy metal video, I'd say that's pretty obvious.

Cover Girl is mad that they killed Bazooka. Cover Girl used to be a model, before she joined the GI Joe team. So before you go making fun of models for being braindead sexpots, realize that at least one of them can totally kill you 47 different ways using just her thumb.

Duke is also mad that they killed Bazooka. Bazooka was a good soldier. But GI Joe is more than just one soldier! Which... is obvious. Because, like, every member of the GI Joe team is in the room. I see Flint, and Wild Bill, and Beach Head, and Tunnel Rat, and Alpine, Spirit, Shipwreck, Gung-Ho, Rock'n'Roll, Doc, Stalker, Road Block, the aforementioned Cover Girl, and a couple guys I don't recognize. I wasn't the world's biggest Joe fan, as a kid.

Wild Bill calls in an order to dust off all the old vehicles, 'cause they're gonna need 'em. Flint finds out the Ionosphere has been super-heated, so nothing is going through either way. Gung-Ho finds out that there was a particle cannon (Galvatron?) shot up into the Ionosphere, which then travels along the Ionosphere, focusing on the target du jour. That's how Moscow was exploded.

For anybody reading this who isn't familiar with Warren Ellis' body of work, he comes up with some crazy sci-fi tech like this all the time. It's always pretty awesome when you're reading about it, but it never feels like it would actually work in the real world.

Then again, this is a cartoon that had a movie about ancient snake people. So I'll let it slide.

Flint points out that his team learned the particle cannon is in Siberia, and to set up something this advanced, Cobra would've had to have been there for a long time. Security is gonna be a bitch. Duke agrees, explaining that sending in a team would be useless. So it'll be a one-man job.

"Or a two-person team!" corrects Scarlett. Hey, if she can't be with Snake-Eyes...

Wild Bill says that there's vehicles about 30 minutes away. And then he reckons he's gonna transport Duke and Scarlett to Siberia. I hope it's to go skiing. The only other thing I've ever heard of people doing in Siberia is painting (X-Men's Colossus) and wrestling bears (Street Fighter's Zangief). Painting doesn't need to be done in Siberia, so that's a waste of a trip. And, as tough as they are, I don't think that Duke and Scarlett are looking to wrestle grizzlies anytime soon.

Join me tomorrow for Duke and Scarlett's skiing adventure!

GI Joe Resolute Episode 2

2010-06-28T14:00:00.001-07:00

Go read last night's post for episode 1.

Cobra Commander has threatened the world, and blown up Moscow. And all he wants in return is control over all 203 sovereign states. That's not too much. Personally, I think he should be asking for more. Like, all the chicken nuggets in the world.

USS FLAGG, GI Joe's aircraft carrier. Doc is performing an autopsy on Bazooka to find out what killed him. And there's something in his mouth. It's a scroll. Scarlett recognizes the markings on it as the Arashikage clan symbol, the clan that trained Snake-Eyes. "And Storm Shadow," Duke promptly points out.

Random points of trivia about the Arashikage:
- It's pronounced "Ah-ra-shee-kah-gay." Since it's Japanese, equal emphasis is placed on each syllable.
- Storm Shadow's real name is Thomas S. Arashikage. He's Cobra's ninja who wears all white
- "Arashikage" is Japanese for "Storm Shadow." "Arashi" = "Storm," "Kage" = "Shadow"
- WWE Superstar C.M. Punk has the Arashikage clan symbol tattooed on his right forearm.
- So does one of my best friends, who managed to get Ray Park's autograph for free thanks to the tattoo, even though Park was charging everybody else $35 dollars. Ray Park played Snake-Eyes in the live-action GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra movie.

Also, Snake-Eyes doesn't say much. His vocal chords got destroyed while on a mission with Stalker, prior to his being recruited to the GI Joe team. So if anybody ever asks him a question, he's not being rude. He just can't answer. I'm pretty sure the invention of text messaging made Snake-Eyes really happy, because now he can actually tell Scarlett how he feels about her gorgeous, flowing red locks and beautiful green eyes.

Those, um. Those are my words to describe Scarlett, not Snake-Eyes'. I wouldn't dare put words in his mouth. Mostly because he couldn't ever say them.

Duke accuses Storm Shadow of killing Bazooka and calling Snake-Eyes out. Snake-Eyes magically knows that there's a hidden note on the scroll, so he flashes a red light on it. Written in Japanese it says, "All games end today. Meet me where we first played." I know this, not because I speak Japanese, but because the subtitles told me.

Duke lets Snakes go settle his business, but Snakey had better be ready. Or else. "You can go with him, or stay with me. Your call. Make it now," he constructs Scarlett.

"You mean stay with the unit," she corrects.

"You heard what I said," Duke responds. This is a throwback to whom Scarlett is into. Most GI Joe fans consider the Marvel Comics version to be their official canon, where Scarlett is totally into Snake-Eyes. But in the cartoon series, she was into Duke. Well played, Warren Ellis.

She stays with Duke. Snake-Eyes looks sad. Or, at least, as sad as you can look, in a full-face mask. So he jumps out of a plane.

Oh! He's jumping out of a plane to go to his old dojo. "Where we first played," presumably. He's got armpit wings, like a flying squirrel, which allow him to glide... like a flying squirrel.

I never thought I'd want to compare Snake-Eyes to Rocket J. Squirrel from Rocky & Bullwinkle.

Snakes kills a couple of Cobra Vipers, because they're blocking his way. And then he blows some more up with the grenades of one of the guys he killed. And then he ran another guy through (possibly one who survived the grenades? It's not 100% clear where he came from) using his magic ninja speed.

Let me reiterate this. Snake-Eyes just executed at least four people, on-screen. They didn't jump out of a plane and parachute to safety. They weren't robots. These four people just got murdered in cold blood. By one of the good guys.

And Storm Shadow was watching. And he didn't do a thing to help his fellow Cobra troopers. That jackass.

Join me tomorrow for part 3!

GI Joe Resolute Episode 1

2010-06-27T22:25:00.001-07:00

A couple of years ago, comics writer Warren Ellis was hired to write a GI Joe miniseries. Entitled GI Joe: Resolute, the series ran for just 10 episodes, with each episode running about 5 minutes a piece. I watched the first few episodes as they came out, but never got around to finishing that.

So, for the next two weeks, I'm going to review an episode a day (probably skipping a day or two in the middle), so that I remember to watch the entire series before too long.

I'll go more into my GI Joe fandom at a later point in time. Probably. But for now, we got to get tough! Yo, Joe!

GI Joe: Resolute. Episode 1.

We open at what appears to be a murder scene. A red ponytailed woman with sunglasses and a hat is inspecting a corpse, who turns out to be.. Major Bludd. Holy shit, Major Bludd is dead? He was all kinds of a big deal, in the early episodes of the Sunbow cartoon! And here, we just find out he's dead, straight away. Well, my attention is caught.

And the woman turns out to be Scarlett. Of course.

Aboard the USS FLAGG, which is GI Joe's aircraft carrier, things just start EXPLODING! All the planes on deck, all the weapons in the armory, everything.

At the High-Frequency Active Aurora Research Program (H.A.A.R.P.), some power tower things just start turning on, and a red vortex appears in the sky.

Cobra Island. Everything is abandoned and destroyed. And then TV monitors start turning on. Missiles are launched into the sky... and into the upper atmosphere. The missiles reveal themselves to be mushroom-shaped satellites. And they are positioned all around the Earth. Well that's fantastic. Nothing bad can come from that.

At a decommissioned Siberian missile station, a green light emits into the sky.

Back on the FLAGG, Stalker informs Duke about all the shit that exploded. Roadblock reveals that Bazooka was on duty, and Scarlett reveals that he's dead. And then Roadblock tells us that ALL satellite communication, all over the planet, is down. "And somethin' is happenin' in New York."

Cut to the UN building. Representatives from various countries are taking their seats, as, in a far-off building, Firefly is setting up a rocket. Which he fires. It creates something of a sonic boom, completely disrupting a New York office building, before crashing through the wall of the UN building. It hits the wall, and a video screen appears, revealing...

Cobra Commander, founder of Cobra, a ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world! He's seen the error of his ways -- Which is to say, he's seen that his previous methods have been in error. Having money doesn't bring you power; Having power brings you money! He's demanding that the countries of the world hand over their power to him in the next 24 hours, or he'll start exploding things. And because he knows that nobody will believe him, he blows up Moscow. Population, pre-explosion: 10,382,754. Population, post-explosion: Presumably 0.

"You have twenty-four hours."

Yes. I'm awake. Major Bludd and Bazooka, two relatively major characters, are dead. Cobra Commander just exploded Moscow and turned off everybody's cell phones by killing all satellite communication. If nothing else, turning off cell phones would probably fuck up the world more than threatening to blow up cities, really. Because the head cheerleader at your old high school probably wouldn't mind having Moscow gone, but if she can't pix message her boyfriend pictures of her underage boobies, there will be hell to pay!

Now that you've read about it, you can watch the episode (at least until Hasbro demands that YouTube take it down):

Come back tomorrow for part two!

Battle Arena Toshinden

2010-06-26T08:55:00.001-07:00

Oh, Battle Arena Toshinden. The hours of joy you gave to me and my friends before I was any good at fighting games.

Battle Arena Toshinden, for those of you who may not know, was one of the early 3D fighters, hot on the heels of the original Virtua Fighter and Tekken games. However, unlike VF and Tekken, which focused on relatively more realistc brawling and straight-up Hand-to-hand combat, Battle Arena Toshinden focused on the more anime-inspired fantastic elements of games like SF and MK. With swords. In fact, Toshinden was the first true 3D-based fighter to feature weapons, though there had been a few 2D weapons fighters, prior. Samurai Shodown and Killer Instinct come to mind.

Like, if you crossed the original Street Fighter II: The World Warrior with Soul Calibur's predecessor, Soul Edge, that's about what Battle Arena Toshinden would be. Even though Soul Edge came out two years after Toshinden.

Battle Arena Toshinden also came out at the launch of the original Playstation, back over the summer of 1995, and, coupled with Tekken, was a serious factor in PSXs early success over the Sega Saturn. The Saturn eventually got Battle Arena Toshinden Remix, over a year later, but it just wasn't as pretty. There was an attempt to fix that the following year with Battle Arena Toshinden URA which featured some new, exclusive characters, but by then the PSX already had Battle Arena Toshinden 2, which was the best version of Battle Arena Toshinden up until that point.

Unlike Tekken, which featured expansive, nigh-endless stages, Battle Arena Toshinden had smaller ringed areas, like VF. But it also had dudes throwing fireballs and doing leaping uppercuts and stuff.

I suppose it might be more accurate to say that Toshinden is a cross between King of Fighters and Soul Edge, due to some of the characters' designs. The main characters feature that mid-90s "cool guy" look that SNK had perfected so well. For example, look at the main character, Eiji Shinjo:

Eiji keeps the Street Fighter theme of having the main character being a Japanese warrior who wears white and red and a headband, but the layout of his outfit is a bit more.. STYLISH, in the way that SNK is notorious for over-using (and the reason some of the newer SFIV characters were accused of looking like King of Fighters characters).

Alright, so Eiji looks just like Ryu. Moving on in the cast Kayin's best friend and rival, Kayin Amoh.

Kayin... is Eiji's rival/best friend. And has long, blond hair. And wears red. And has a name that begins with a "K" and ends with an "n." And they both have a fireball, leaping uppercut, and spinning kick attack. Seriously.

And then there's Eiji's brother, Sho. Who fights like Eiji and Kayin. Except he has air fireballs. And is apparently impossible to find images of, online.

Fortunately, other than Rungo Iron wearing cargo pants and a tank top with a flat-top, the similarities to Street Fighter pretty much end there.

One of my favorite characters was Ellis. She had the anime weird hair color thing going, but she was pretty adorable. Whenever Ellis would lose a round via time over, she would cry. That always made me sad for her.

Coincidentally, both this screenshot and the girl in it are 16 years old.

There's a handful of other, mostly forgettable characters. And by "forgettable," I mean, "would be totally remembered if Toshinden hadn't completely disappeared from everybody's consciousness after the second game." And I know everybody's forgotten about Toshinden, because I can't find images of the other characters ANYWHERE.

Oh, I guess people remember Sofia. Or, at least, they remember the busty chick in leather with the whip.

You could say that Sofia was the original DOA girl, if she was ever in DOA.

Regardless, *I* enjoyed Toshinden, and I think it's a shame that the franchise started off really strong, and quickly petered out into nothingness. Even having an anime movie directed by Masami Obari, the guy who did the Fatal Fury and Voltage Fighter: Gowcaizer anime films couldn't keep the franchise in peoples' minds.

Apparently it was announced in 2008 that Tamsoft is bringing the Toshinden name back, but the series will have all-new characters. That's the kind of news where I read it and get all excited, and then completely don't care by the end of the sentence, and not even because it's two years later. Such a shame.

I like Rodimus Prime

2010-06-24T13:30:00.000-07:00

In August of 1986, The Transformers: The Movie was released in theatres, and Optimus Prime was killed. Not just Optimus, mind you - Ironhide, Ratchet, Brawn, Prowl, and a handful of other season one Autobots were killed, while some of the older Decepticons were reformatted into Galvatron, Scourge, Cyclonus, and the Sweeps.

Continuing with the tradition of there being 14 times as many Autobots as Decepticons, Hasbro decided that upgrading Optimus Prime into the Ultra Magnus mold (As was the case with the pre-Transformers "Diaclone" line, where Convoy became Powered Convoy) wasn't good enough. No, there had to be a new Autobot leader. And he would be COOL. He'd be a hot rod with flame designs. He he would be voiced by teenage ruffian heartthrob, Judd Nelson. And, hey, since he turns into a hot rod, why don't we just name him... Hot Rod?

At the end of the movie, Hot Rod acquires the Autobot Matrix of Leadership, and it upgrades him into Rodimus Prime (possibly the most contrived non-Go-Bots Transformers name, ever). Of course, toys were released of both Hot Rod and Rodimus. But as a kid, I didn't want the Hot Rod toy. Rodimus was the new leader! I had to have that version! He was going to be the leader in the third season!

Now, remember, in late 1986 and early 1987, when season three of the Transformers was airing, I was 4 years old. I often describe The Transformers to be my "first favorite thing that wasn't Sesame Street or Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, because the series started when I was two, and I must have immediately fallen in love with it. I honestly do not remember a time in my life where I did not own at least one Transformers toy. But, I digress.

Season three of the Transformers cartoon showed us that there was a new crew of Autobots to follow - Ultra Magnus, Springer, Kup, Arcee, Blurr...Wheelie (whom, nobody loves)...and their new leader, Rodimus Prime. And since I was 4, I just accepted the fact that Optimus Prime died and Rodimus was his successor. My parents had explained to me that people die and that it was just a part of life. More importantly, it was just a cartoon, and my parents had done a terrific job of explaining to me the difference between real life and fantasy. I think that's why I spent so much of my childhood watching cartoons, and completely missing out on shows like Miami Vice and The A-Team - As far as I was concerned, shows with real people were shows for grown-ups, and cartoons were what kids like me were supposed to watch. Ooh, again with the digression.

So, Rodimus was important. Why? Because David Wise, head writer for The Transformers, told me so. As a kid, that was enough. I believed adults when they told me things, even if if the adults were telling me through the shows they were writing.

But I'm turning 28 this year. So, clearly, I need to get in line with modern society and come up with a good reason that involves things being "dark." After all, The Dark Knight is the most successful movie of all time (or was. I don't care enough to look it up). And that's dark, right? I mean, it says so right in the title. You want dark? Here we go.

Rodimus may be red and orange and yellow, but he's a DARK hero. That colorful "neon" (The quotes mean he's really not-neon, but he also isn't primarily BLACK. It's a toy collector thing. If you don't understand, just ignore it and accept that toy collectors are mostly idiots.) exterior was just a bright, cheery disguise for the pain and torment that Roddy was feeling inside. After all, Optimus Prime had been the leader of the Autobots for NINE MILLION YEARS, and, over that time, he had done a pretty good job. So much so, that the original VHS release of The Transformers: The Movie had a bit added on to the end labeling Optimus as "The Greatest Autobot of Them All." Rodimus, meanwhile, when season three started up, had been Autobot leader for about two weeks. And the first thing he does is get yelled at by Ultra Magnus for not being as verbose and loquacious as Optimus. Check out The Five Faces Of Darkness part 1 on YouTube, and wait for the first time we see Rodimus. He introduces the intergalactic Olympics or whatever, and then Magnus is like, "don't you want to say more words?"

Incidentally, who the hell is Ultra Magnus to talk? When Hot Rod and Kup's shuttle were getting shot down by Decepticons in the movie, when Magnus was the temporary leader of the Autobots (as HAND-CHOSEN by Optimus Prime, mind you!)Magnus' response was "I can't deal with that, now!" But now that he's not in charge, he suddenly knows what Roddy should be doing? Screw that noise! A friend of mine once nicknamed Ultra Magnus (in a non-homophobic way) as "Ultra Fagness." It's hard to disagree with that nickname. Ultra Magnus is stupid. He doesn't even know when his birthday was.

So, Rodimus is already down on himself, because he has huge shoes to fill. Here in the United States, we don't hear much about Andrew Johnson. You know why? Because he was the president AFTER Abraham Lincoln, who is pretty widely-regarded as the greatest President that America has had (except maybe George Washington, but he had teeth as wooden as Hayden Christensen's acting skills, so he doesn't count). Man, this article is filled with a lot more useless crap than usual. You could probably just read the first sentence of each paragraph and save yourself a lot of time.

So doubting yourself is dark, right? And then Rodimus goes and shorts himself out so that he can dive INTO the Matrix of Leadership on the off chance it might lead to the Autobots being able to rescue their recently-kidnapped friends. I'm pretty sure that nearly committing suicide for the sake of your friends is dark.

Then, this planet of perfection gets blown up, and the triple-changer Autobot, Sandstorm, says that his former planet is as beautiful in death as it was in life. And Rodimus says this: " Well, no need to get all mushy. Cybertron's a better place anyway—not so...perfect" I'm sorry, Cybertron is A BETTER PLACE than PARADISE? Seriously? Dark all over the place.

Jump ahead to the episode "Dark Awakening," where an Evil Robot Zombie version of Optimus Prime shows up. And Rodimus just hands him over the Matrix of Leadership without even asking questions. Yes, handing over the symbol of leadership to an evil zombie is dark. Plus, the episode has "dark" in the title, so that's clearly dark, too.

And in "The Burden Hardest to Bear," Rodimus gets pissed about everybody looking to HIM for leadership, so he drives off a cliff. No, seriously. He drove right off a cliff. And the Matrix fell out of him, and was absconded by Wild Rider and Dead End, two of the Decepticon Stunticons.

By the way, the Stunticons are my favorite of the combiner teams. I'll get to them more in the future, I'm sure, but just look at their basic info: Motor Master is a diesel truck like Optimus, but he's black and white and silver and purple (which happens to be my favorite color combination), and he's obsessed with becoming the most powerful thing on the street; Dead End is a maroon Porche 928 who is the most pessimistic defeatist you'll ever meet; Drag Strip is a yellow race car who CANNOT LOSE EVER, especially in racing; Wild Rider is a grey corvette with red windows (that color scheme is SO bad ass) who is FREAKING INSANE and DRIVES LIKE A MANIAC ON PURPOSE just to show people HOW insane he is; and Breakdown is a white-and-blue Lamborghini Countach who thinks everyone and everything is out to get him. And the Stunticons are the only combiner team in the entire series where ALL OF THEM get their distinct personalities developed. So freaking awesome.

Rodimus Prime is the archetypal "Chosen One" hero (like Luke Skywalker) who begins as a brash, impractical kid and develops into a worthy leader. Unfortunately, a bunch of crybaby kids wrote letters to Hasbro and Sunbow, basically forcing them to bring Optimus Prime back to life in order to keep ratings and viewers, which is terribly unfortunate for ol' Roddy.

And I can't even say, "Well at least we kept Hot Rod around after Optimus came back," because the show got cancelled three episodes later. So bringing Optimus back was pretty useless, anyways.

And I always felt (or, at least, since I was old enough to be able to think about such things) that Rodimus' imperfections and faults and self-doubt made him far more relatable than the Perfect Leader that is Optimus Prime. Don't get me wrong - I love Optimus and all, but I feel that he works better dead, as the standard to which everybody else is supposed to try and achieve. Kind of like Jesus is to Christians. Optimus Prime as Jesus? Interesting. But that's an article for another day...

The Many Lovers of Ranma Saotome: Kodachi Kuno

2010-06-22T08:06:00.003-07:00

Ranma 1/2 is one of my favorite series of all time. It's about a teenage boy (named Ranma Saotome) who goes with his father on a martial arts training mission to China, and while he's there, he falls in a cursed spring. Now, every time Ranma is splashed with cold water, he turns into a gorgeous redheaded girl. Warm water will change him back.

Boy- and girl-type Ranma

Ranma's father, Genma, falls into a cursed spring that turns him into a panda. Genma and his best friend, Soun Tendo, had decided to arrange a marriage between their children. Tendo had three girls: Kasumi, age 19: A sweet, home-maker, motherly type; Nabiki, age 17: a sneaky, conniving, money-grubbing gold digger; and Akane, age 16: A boy-hating tomboy who is determined to carry on the tradition of the Tendo school of Anything-Goes Martial Arts Dojo.

So, naturally, since Ranma turns into a girl, and Akane hates boys, the other daughters all agree that Ranma and Akane would be the best match for each other. But I'll talk more about Akane at a later date.

One of the interesting things about Ranma 1/2 is that Ranma ends up with half a dozen or so "fiancées," all promised to him in some manner or another by somebody other than himself. And, thus far, the series never officially ended (creator Rumiko Takahashi stopped production on Ranma 1/2 to focus on the god-awful series, InuYasha), leaving who Ranma ends up with completely open to speculation. So, I'm going to look at each of these lovers, individually, and see which one is most likely to end up with our boy, Ranma.

First up: "The Black Rose" Kodachi Kuno.

Kodachi is the younger, twisted, completely insane sister of Ranma and Akane's school-mate, Upperclassman Tatewaki Kuno. She is introduced as Akane's opponent from St. Heberke High School in the upcoming Rhythmic Gymnastics competition. The insane Kodachi will always attack her opponents before their matches, gaining an upper hand. As such, she is undefeated in Rhythmic Gymnastics (which, despite its name, is actually a crazy martial arts competition). When she nearly falls off the Tendo house, she is saved by Ranma. Immediately, she decides that Ranma must be madly in love with her, and she insanely obsesses over him for the remainder of forever.

However, when girl-type Ranma replaces the injured Akane as the representative for Furinkan High, Kodachi psychotically decides that the "pig-tailed girl" must be destroyed. Oh, duality!

Throughout the rest of the series, Kodachi tries proving to Ranma that she would make a great wife, by doing such loving things as baking him cookies filled with a sleeping poison so that she can take advantage of him.

Unlike many of the other, good-natured characters in the series, Kodachi sees the other girls who love Ranma as threats that must be eliminated. She absolutely HATES Akane Tendo, and is intolerant of Shampoo and Ukyo.

Much as her brother calls himself "The Blue Thunder of Furinkan High," Kodachi calls herself "The Black Rose." And, as we all know, black roses are a symbol of death. Because, y'know, THAT will attract teenage boys.

Did I forget to mention that Kodachi was completely insane?

Likelihood of hooking up with Ranma Saotome: Zero.

Who is the Warrior King?

2010-06-11T16:19:00.001-07:00

I originally wrote this article a few years ago, when I first started re-watching the Street Fighter USA series episodes I had on tape. At the time they were airing, I was ravenous for anything SF that came out, including the terrible cartoon series. But I came across an episode in season 2 that featured a strange character, so I decided to look him up online, and found practically nothing.

In order to help the world find more about the Warrior King, I wrote the following:
------------------------------

What do Street Fighter, the Savage Dragon, Mortal Kombat, and Wing Commander have in common?

If you said that there were video games, comic books, action figures, and rabid fan followings for each of those franchises, you'd be right. But there's something more specific that I had in mind.

In 1996, all four franchises had a cartoon on the USA Network's Saturday Morning lineup - Together, they were the Action Xtreme Team. And even more specific, on November 16th, 1996, the four shows had a crossover event.

Sort of.

Beginning with Street Fighter, (Season 2, episode 9: The Warrior King), we were introduced to The Warrior King. Attacked by those who would have his throne, the Warrior King's Orb of Power - Which can control the elements - was knocked into a dimensional portal. The Michael Dorn-voiced (yeah, Star Trek's Worf) emperor jumped in the portal after it, in an attempt to save his world.

Eventually, the Orb ended up in the hands of Bison, who used the orb to hold the world hostage. The Warrior King arrived in the Street Fighter's world, fell in love with Chun-Li, and battled to get the Orb of Power back from Bison. Unfortunately, the Orb was knocked into another dimensional portal. The Warrior King said his goodbyes to his new lover, and followed.

Next, on the Savage Dragon animated series (Season 2, episode 8: Endgame), the Orb of Power ended up in an alley, and was found by a bum. The Warrior King was soon to follow, but was arrested by the Savage Dragon, himself. During interrogation, we learn that the Warrior King's staff allows him to track the Orb.

Meanwhile, the Orb was found by the Dragon's enemy, The Fiend. After a battle at a prison filled with criminals arrested by the Dragon, the Orb was once again sent into a dimensional vortex. After thanking his new friend and ally, the Warrior King followed the Orb to yet another dangerous world.

The Orb next appeared in Outworld, on Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm (Season 1, episode 8: Resurrection). After Shao Kahn resurrects Shang Tsung (in a sequel story to the first MK movie), the Outworld's emporer gives the Orb to the Dark Wizard. The more evil the posessor of the Orb, the more powerful it becomes, and the two set a trap for Raiden and the Earthrealm's defenders.

In the end, Shang fails in his task. Raiden throws the Orb of Power into yet another dimensional portal, this time sending it "into space, where it should be safe from evil." Another portal quickly opens, and a shadowy figure follows from this new portal into the one Raiden just opened, unnoticed by the Mortal Kombatants. The shadowy figure was none other than the Warrior King.

Finally, on Wing Commander Academy (Season 1, episode 9: Recreation), the Wing Commander crew, on a mission to the planet Oasis, find the Warrior King in chryogeneic freeze, drifting in space. The King awakens from his sleep, and makes short work of the Wing Commander crew before being blasted from behind.

On the surface of Oasis, an elder villager tells a story about a "maker" falling from the sky, and turning the world from a desert world into a paradise. You guessed it - the Orb of Power. Unfortunately, the cat-like Kilrathi are after "The Sphere," as well. Once the Warrior King finds out that the Orb is nearby, he breaks out of Wing Commander prison, and forces his way down to the planet.

After a battle with the Kilrathi, the Warrior King is convinced that he must leave the Orb on Oasis - His world has already been destroyed. It would not be right for him do destroy their world, just to rebuild his own - He's been fighting for life, and was about to destroy the very thing he was fighting for. As the Warrior King commandeers a space craft, he leaves the Orb behind, solemnly telling the Wing Commander crew to never forget what they are fighting for, as he almost did, before flying into space.

And the Warrior King was never seen again.

There was no promotion for this crossover. No bumpers between shows. No advertisements. No "find out what happens to the Warrior King next!" Nothing. If you didn't happen to watch all four shows, you'd have no idea that such a thing even existed. Another oddity is that the shows were not normally run in that order.

That's right, the morning schedule was broadcast out of order, so that you could watch the entire Warrior King Saga in chronological order. With no previous explanation, so if you only watched one or two of the shows (as I did), you'd have no clue as to what was going on.

But the CRAZIEST part about all of this?

There is almost NOTHING about this guy on the Internet. I managed to find two pages about him on some Wing Commander fan site (http://www.wcnews.com/news/1543)- No SF, MK, or Savage Dragon fans seem to know what the hell is going on. Not even the mighty Wikipedia has any information on the Warrior King. The Wikipedia episode description for the Mortal Kombat ep mentions that an unknown figure travels through the portals, but there is no mention of his identity.

-------------------------------

Through the magic of the modern-day Internet, all of the episodes that the Warrior King appeared in have been posted to YouTube. So, I present to you, the Warrior King Saga, in its entirety. The entire thing will take a little over an hour to watch. Enjoy!

Street Fighter Season 2 Episode 8: "The Warrior King" part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Savage Dragon Season 2 Episode 8: "Endgame" Part 1

Part 2

Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm: Episode 9: "Resurrection" Part 1

Part 2

Wing Commander Academy Episode 9 Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

The Digital Comics Revolution?

2010-06-09T10:36:00.000-07:00

I wrote this as a long-winded response to a post made on Comic Zone's Facebook profile, yesterday. I figured posting it as a blog wouldn't be a bad idea.

FACT: Both Marvel and DC's editors-in-chief (Joe Quesada and Dan DiDio, before both of their recent promotions) have stated for a fact that they do NOT want to stop printing comics. However, after watching what happened to the music industry, they recognize that by NOT embracing digital publishing, they're missing out on an entire stream of revenue that will lead to future problems.

FACT: So far, Marvel is doing a good job of keeping 99% of things fair for the brick-and-mortar comic stores, as 99% of what hits their digital store comes out SIX MONTHS AFTER the print version. Yes, there are exceptions - the recent SPIDER-WOMAN series was a motion comic before the seven individual issues were printed, and the upcoming INVINCIBLE IRON MAN ANNUAL will see physical and digital stores at the same time. But eight items over the course of 9 months is nothing, when you consider that Marvel have had over 1,000 issues published physically six months before digitally in that time frame.

FACT: DC, meanwhile, have announced exactly ZERO plans for digital distribution. They seem to be content with things as they are - Which is an opinion that is hard to argue with; They're constantly in 2nd place in sales numbers and sales dollars, but they also print about 75% the material that Marvel does (if not even less!), on a per-month basis, and are generally not very far behind Marvel in terms of direct market sales. It's hard to make a argument claiming that DC doesn't want to print comics anymore when they have zero online distribution methods in place, currently.

FACT: Smaller publishers (Dark Horse and IDW, specifically) Are the ones who are jumping to the same-day distribution models a lot faster, particularly with their licensed material. However, maintaining those licenses is an added expense that Marvel and DC don't have, so it makes sense that Dark Horse and IDW would want to get an extra stream of revenue going as quickly as possible. Also, both Dark Horse and IDW make up less than 10% of the comics market share (even combined they make up less than 10%), so they're taking far less of a risk of alienating current fans and finding new ones.

FACT: Paul O'Brien of HouseToAstonish.com (formerly of TheXAxis.com) is an X-Men completist, and has reviewed almost every single issue of X-Men, ever. Do you really think he's going to STOP buying every X-family comic in print format just because online distribution is now available to him? I can tell you for a fact that he isn't, DESPITE the constant problems that the UK's postal service has, causing him to consistently have books shipped late.

It will take several years before online distribution becomes the norm for the comics industry. There are far too many people who have all 700+ issues of the various Avengers titles (Avengers, West Coast, Solo/Spotlight, New, Mighty, Initiative, Dark, Secret, new New, etc.) to just STOP the monthly habit of buying physical copies.

Will there be a shift in current readers who want to jump on the digital bandwagon? Absolutely. But it's far too early to tell what that percentage of current readership that will be, especially if Marvel continue their six-months-later policy.

But what we DO know is that their online sales have created new readers. And as long as people are reading comics in one form or another, the industry survives. And that's why the online distribution model began in the first place.

Kamen Rider: Double

2010-06-07T10:00:00.008-07:00

A little-known fact about me is that I absolutely LOVE Japanese tokusatsu film. Tokusatsu basically translates into "camera tricks," and is the term used to describe any sort of Japanese super hero or monster series - the Super Sentai series (which became Power Rangers in America) and Godzilla are the best-known examples of tokusatsu series.

While I haven't experienced as much of the genre as I would like, I'm always down for checking out a new one. And this weekend, I watched the first couple episodes of one:

KAMEN RIDER: DOUBLE

Older readers (ages 25+) may remember the Masked Rider series that ran during the heyday of Power Rangers' popularity. Much like Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was an adaptation of Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger, Masked Rider was another one of Saban's adaptations of a popular Japanese super hero show: Kamen Rider Black RX, the ninth show in the Kamen Rider franchise.

Masked Rider ("Kamen" is the Japanese word for "mask," no da) ran for around 35-40 episodes (Kamen Rider Black RX ran for 47), but the series was not heard from again in America the following year, unlike Power Rangers or Saban's other tokusatsu series, VR Troopers.

Kamen Rider Ryuki was brought to America in 2009 as Kamen Rider: Dragon Knight, but, again, the following series Kamen Rider Decade was not adapted for American television, nor was this year's series, Kamen Rider Double (often typset as Kamen Rider W).

Kamen Rider Double is the eleventh Kamen Rider series of the new millenium, and the twentieth Rider series, overall (they franchise basically didn't exist between 1989-2000). It's the story of "hard boiled" detective Shotaro Hidari and his partner, Philip. The two describe themselves as "a two-in-one detective." Shotaro is a typical noir-style detective (though, much more light-hearted, as the show is intended for children and teenagers), and Philip's brain apparently houses every non-fiction book ever written. Philip can enter his brain (in shots very reminiscent of The Matrix's "white room" scenes) and use Shotaro's keywords to find the particular book he needs, much like having a built-in search engine.

Meanwhile, the mysterious Sonozaki family has been selling "GaiaMemory" devices (which look like oversized USB drives) which allow regular humans to become superhuman monsters called "Dorants."

In the first episode, one of Shotaro's childhood friends comes to ask him for help in finding her boyfriend. It turns out that her boyfriend had bought the Magma GaiaMemory, and was a giant fire monster that was terrorizing the city. Shotaro and Philp both cried "Henshin!" ("Transform!") at the same time - Philip's consciousness left his body, and the two became Masked Rider Double, with Shotaro controlling the left half of the body and Philip in control of the right half.

Double has a series of his own GaiaMemory cards, each with their own special abilities. The default form for Philip is Cyclone, the green-and-gold half. Shotaro's default is Joker, the black-and-purple half, making the default form of Double, "CycloneJoker." The first change we see is Philip becoming Luna (forming LunaJoker), a gold-and-silver form that gives Philip's half stretchy limbs. Double's LunaJoker form makes quick work of the Magma Dorant, which causes Magma to return to his human form. But then, the former Magma is quickly tossed aside by a T-Rex-looking monster that came up from underground.

In the second episode, we learn that the T-Rex monster is, in fact, the girl who hired Shotaro to find her boyfriend in the first place. The two had a vendetta against the company they worked for, and bought the GaiaMemory devices to exact their revenge, but were then driven mad by their power, since absolute power always corrupts absolutely. The lady henshins into the T-Rex Dorant, and Shotaro and Philip become Double again. In this battle, we see Philip's Heat power (HeatJoker), which allows him to have crazy firey punches and kicks. During the battle, we also get to see Shotaro's Metal power (creating HeatMetal), and they use their Maximum Overdrive attack, Metal Branding, which explodes the monster and returns the girl to normal.

Of course, these are VERY abbreviated synopses of the two episodes, and completely ignore the subplot of Shotaro and Philip's new landlord, or the subplot of the Sonozaki family introducing what seems like will be a new, evil Rider to match power with Kamen Rider Double.

I know that Kamen Rider Double has already concluded, and it appears as though every episode is available on YouTube, but I haven't seen much other than a few cool action scenes that one of my customers at Comic Zone told me to check out.

Overall, the first two episodes were pretty cool, and if you don't mind watching a silly show with English subtitles, I'd recommend checking this one out. It's a little over-the-top and silly, but so is basically everything else that I talk about on here.

The MAXX

2010-06-06T14:24:00.001-07:00

A couple of days ago, a customer at Comic Zone asked me, "So, Andy, what is The Maxx about, exactly?" And I had no answer.

Cover to The Maxx #1

The Maxx was a comic book series created by Sam Kieth and published by Image Comics in the mid-90s. There was a 13-episode television series that ran as part of MTV's Oddities, along with shows such as Aeon Flux and The Head.

Hold on, "6 Underground (Nellee Hooper Edit)" by the Sneaker Pimps just came on the radio. I need to turn this up.

Okay, sorry about that.

The Maxx is probably the most successful existential comic series. It questions and blurs the lines of reality, all while telling the story of a purple-clad superhero who calls himself The Maxx.

Maxx exists in two worlds, simultaneously - the "real world," which greatly resembles New York City; and "The Outback," a land that resembles the Australian outback, (Hrmf, some Green Day's "Welcome to Paradise." What an overrated band) but is littered with strange creatures, such as the Great Northern Crabbit.

The Great Northern Crabbit

In the Real World, Maxx is a homeless bum super hero. "Super hero" may not be the right phrase, as Maxx really just stops everyday criminals from picking on the innocent. But in comics, nobody is just a "hero," so "super hero" it is. Anyways. Because he's a bum, Maxx is (Alice in Chains: "Rooster") constantly being taken in by the police, and is always being bailed out by freelance Social Worker Julia "Julie" Winters. The two have a very strange relationship that is beyond conventional explanation.

Julie and Maxx

In the Outback, Maxx is the protector of the Jungle Queen (occasionally called "The Leopard Queen"), who bears more than a passing resemblance to Julie. (Metallica: "The Unforgiven") Maxx also adorns an amazing headdress in the Outback.

Cover to Maxx #2, depicting Outback Maxx & the Jungle Queen

The enigmatic serial murderer Mr. Gone knows the truth behind the relationship behind Julie, The Maxx, and the Jungle Queen, and he could just explain it to them. But he's a sick bastard and has far more fun messing with everybody's head. For some reason that is not immediately obvious, Gone refers to Maxx as "Br'er Lappin."

And then there's Sara. Or Sarah. Kieth isn't terribly consistent on how her name is spelled. Sara is a high school girl who's self-described as fat and covered in zits. Also, her hair is kind of amazing. She wants to be a writer, but has no self-esteem. Sara's dad commit suicide years ago, causing her mom to regress back into her days as a hippie, 20 years after the movement ended. Sara's mom is friends with Julie, even though the two disagree about seemingly everything. Julie acts as a counselor to Sara, though Sara sees Julie's life as a freelance social worker to be nothing more than a way to have control over her life and the people in it.

Sara getting pulled over

So what is The Maxx about?

It's about the relationship between these characters - Maxx, Julie, The Jungle Queen, Mr. Gone, and Sara. (Now playing Primus: "My name is Mud") How are they all connected? What the hell are any of them thinking? And how will the truth affect them?

It took Sam Kieth 12 issues to set everything up, and another 24 to explore what the hell it all meant. Unfortunately, the cartoon only told the first 12 issues, plus the Wizard Magazine The Maxx 1/2 issue, and the few pages from Darker Image #1 that introduced The Maxx. So once all the pieces are in place, we basically have no idea what in the world is going on.

The cartoon was still awesome, though. (Jane's Addiction: "The Mountain Song") The animation was a mixture of traditional animation in a variety of styles, as well as taking exact panels of Kieth's artwork directly out of the comic and utilizing them for animation, in addition to including CGI elements and even some live-action silhouettes. It certainly belonged as part of MTV's Oddities, (Ramones: "I wanna be Sedated" - Hey, finding appropriate images takes a long time!) not just in story content, but also in its animation style. While it was FAR better-looking than Aeon Flux or The Head, it was a bizarre way of animating a cartoon. As far as I know, it was done in a manner that both was never done before and has not been done since.

The Maxx isn't for everybody. (The Eels: "Novocaine for the Soul") A serious modicum of intelligence and willingness to question your own life as well as reality itself are absolute necessities to even begin to understand what anybody's talking about. But if you're willing to go into it with an open mind, a magnificent mindfuck is awaiting your brain.

It's awesome.

Also, MTV has released the entire animated series to watch for free on their website, so you can check out all of this insanity for yourself, for free:

http://www.mtv.com/shows/the_maxx/series.jhtml

Marvel Universe: Post-SIEGE wrap-up.

2010-06-04T15:39:00.000-07:00

A couple months ago, on my Comic Zone blog, I speculated that The Sentry may have been too powerful a character to keep around the Marvel Universe. With his seemingly-unlimited powers, and his suffering from multiple personality disorder, it seemed like he was destined to be destroyed, because he was too great a threat to the safety of everybody in the Marvel Universe - Be it an innocent bystander on Earth, an unfortunate member of the bird-like Shi'Ar race, or even the bizarre Popuppians. And The Sentry was intelligent enough, himself, to recognize this fact, and had Thor throw him into the sun.

So, now, Norman Osborn is no longer in charge. H.A.M.M.E.R. is back to being known as S.H.I.E.L.D., and Steve Rogers is the new "top cop" in the Marvel U.

The overall feel of this era of the Marvel Universe is much lighter than the one that began with AVENGERS: DISASSEMBLED in 2004 and ended with SIEGE in 2010.

In 2004, there was an overabundance of mutants in the Marvel Universe. It seemed like every third character that was introduced was a mutant, for no reason other than just so another origin wasn't needed to be written.

The Avengers experienced their worst day in history, when the Scarlet Witch went insane and killed Hawkeye, Vision, Jack of Hearts, Scott Lang/Ant-Man, and cause She-Hulk to go into an insane rage.

Even when the New Avengers were founded, it was because of a breakout at The Raft, Marvel's maximum security prison, and an endless number of super villains escaped.

During the next six years, the world was completely changed to an alternate version where mutants are the dominant species, only to be changed back to its previous state, but with less than 1% of the mutant population retaining their X-Gene.

Due to a super villain attack on a school, the heroes were divided on whether or not the new government-mandated registration-if-you-have-super-powers was a good or bad idea, and found themselves in the midst of a superhuman civil war, which ultimately led to the death of Steve Rogers, aka Captain America.

While Cap was gone, it turned out that there was an invasion from the alien shape-shifting race known as the Skrulls. And when they proved too much for Earth's Mightiest Heroes, it was the Green Goblin himself, Norman Osborn, who saved the day and publicly killed the Skrulls' queen, putting him in the role of #1 security guy. So what's he do? Hires a bunch of other villains to be his version of the Avengers.

But, this time around? Everything is optimistic. Things are being fixed. Norman Osborn's Dark Reign of terror is over, and the good guys are in charge, again.

Steve Rogers has founded a new team of Avengers, and the first mission's roster includes Steve, Bucky Barnes as Captain America, Spider-Man, Wolverine, Thor, Iron Man, Hawkeye, and Spider-Woman... up against Kang the conqueror?

Steve's also founded a team of black-ops Secret Avengers, consisting of his girlfriend Sharon Carton, The Beast, Valkyrie, Moon Knight, the irredeemable Ant-Man (Eric O'Grady), Nova, and War Machine.

And coming later this month, there'll be yet a THIRD team of New Avengers, consisting of Ms. Marvel, Wolverine, Spider-Man, The Thing, and Jessica Jones, being led by Luke Cage.

With three Avengers teams actually consisting of Avengers, the world has got to be a safer place, right?

...Right?

I guess time will tell.

Update - 01 June 2010

2010-06-01T17:34:00.001-07:00

It's been a week, but I've had a very busy week - My store, Comic Zone, was participating in our very first experience as a vendor at a comic book convention, specifically the Phoenix Comicon. It was a very positive experience for us, but it was a TON of hard work, and left me without free time for such frivolities as updating my geek culture blog.

There will be more fun later this week, possibly as early as tomorrow, and definitely by Friday. I'm still kind of recovering from everything (I ended up falling asleep and taking an unscheduled two-hour nap in the middle of today), and need a few days to get back in the swing of things.

Just figured I'd give everybody an update on what's going on. Take care...uh... readers... who need a catchy nickname.

PARTY by Tom Leveen

2010-05-24T08:46:00.000-07:00

It’s saturday night in Santa Barbara and school is done for the year. Everyone is headed to the same party. Or at least it seems that way. The place is packed. The beer is flowing. Simple, right? But for 11 different people the motives are way more complicated. As each character takes a turn and tells his or her story – one character per chapter – the eleven individuals intersect, and reconnect, collide, and combine in ways that none of them ever saw coming.

Examining friendship, dating, racism, sex, loss, and parents who truly don’t get it, PARTY invites you to join in the fun and drama of the biggest event of the year. Everyone’s invited. See you there!

PARTY is a young adult fiction novel, and the first published book from author Tom Leveen. While I'll read comic books all day long (and have, many days in the past), I'm not the most voracious reader of "real" books. However, I've been friends with Tom for at least half a decade (and I've known him for longer... at exactly which point we became "friends" is up for debate). I've been to nearly every play he was involved in at Chyro Arts Venue, and even acted in one, last summer. And since I'm all for supporting my friends, I had to pick up a copy of his first book.

Though I've owned the book for a couple of weeks, it's been sitting in my pile of things to read since the night I brought it home. Unlike comics, which I can get through in 10 minutes or so, actual books require slightly more free time to devour. So, yesterday morning, I decided to hack away at the first couple of chapters of PARTY, just to have gotten started on my buddy's book. Except things didn't exactly go according to plan.

I picked up the book, and started in on the first chapter.

The basic premise of PARTY is that there's an end-of-the-year party in Santa Barbara, and each chapter of the book is a piece of that night, as told from the perspective of a different character. The first chapter is told by Beckett, a lonely girl whose mother's health issues have been haunting her and all but completely destroyed Beckett's social life; Beckett is unsure if going to the party is a good idea or not. The second is from Morrigan, who is now best friends with Ashley, Beckett's former best friend; "Morry" is GOING to the party, whether her neglectful parents like it or not. The third chapter is told by Tommy, who is best friends with straight-edger Josh, whom Morrigan had dumped just a week earlier because he wouldn't sleep with her; Tommy and the guys want to bring Josh to the party so he can have a good time after being depressed all week. The other eight chapters all bring together the other major players in the book, each with their own reasons for being at the party.

As the events of the party unfold, the characters and their stories all interact and intertwine with each other in a way that is completely natural, and nothing about the book felt forced at all.

And it was because of Tom's amazing way to not only entangle these characters together, but to also give them each their own unique voice, that I was unable to stop reading. What began as a mission to only read a couple of chapters turned into, "Okay, well I'll just read half the book," into, "Shit, what happens next?!" into, "Well, there's only one chapter left." Other than the break for lunch, I got through the entire book in one sitting.

I would absolutely recommend this book to anybody who loves complex, intertwining stories - Anybody who follows the overarching stories of the Marvel or DC Universes would enjoy this book. I'd also recommend it to people who are fans of high school TV shows and movies - Saved by the Bell, Daria, The Breakfast Club, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, etc. Each of these characters feels like they could've been dropped right into any of those shows and had a memorable episode that centered on them.

There's a trailer for the book, as well as more information about it, available on Tom's website: www.tomleveen.com

Because the book was published by Random House, it's available at pretty much every major book store. We also have a handful of copies at Comic Zone, so if you're in the Phoenix/Scottsdale area, come on in and pick up a pre-signed copy from us!

ZOMBIES!!!

2010-05-22T00:23:00.001-07:00

Tonight, I played Zombies!!!, a board game that has become sort of a regular activity between myself and a handful of friends.

The point of the game is to either be the first to get to to the Helicopter, or to kill 25 zombies.

I did not win.

The interesting thing about Zombies!!! is that the game is never the same, twice - You start on the Town Square tile, and each turn, players draw and add new tiles to the board, expanding it and shaping it in a unique map of the city that has become overrun with the undead.

Players each get a hand of three cards to either help themselves or to screw over other players. Some of the effects aren't that bad early on, but will become game-changing, as players, say, get close to the helicopter, or have 24 killed zombies.

This is not our board, but it could be

Zombies!!! is pretty fantastic. It takes a few hours to complete a game, but I highly recommend the game to anybody with a penchant for board games.

Next time, we're adding the mall expansion. That should create some interesting twists.

Hank Pym's Mighty Avengers

2010-05-19T10:53:00.001-07:00

Today is Avengers Day, the day that Marvel's "Heroic Age" officially begins, and the brand-new Avengers #1, written by Brian Michael Bendis and drawn by John Romita, Jr. is released (not to be confused with the brand-new New Avengers #1 that comes out next month, written by Bendis and drawn by Stuart Immonen). I thought that would be a good reason to make a post about the Avengers.

Starting with New Avengers #1 (vol 1; Jan 2005), the Avengers family quickly rose to prominence as Marvels #1 franchise. The New Avengers saw the Superhero Civil War, the Skrulls' Secret Invasion, and the Dark Reign, before just now ending Norman Osborn's Siege of Asgard.

But I'm not here to talk about them.

Because, as much as I love the big, sprawling, shared Marvel, where characters interact with the larger goings-on, sometimes that can just be overwhelming. It's nice to take a break from every one having the same common goal, and read stories that take place on the fringes of the shared universes.

One such comic was Marvel's Mighty Avengers, beginning with issue #21. Written by Dan Slott and mostly drawn by Khoi Pham, the group followed the real Hank Pym (who had been replaced by a shape-shifting alien from a race known as the Skrulls for the previous couple of years) and his rag-tag group of Avengers: Jocasta, Pym's android with the memories and personality of his late wife, Janet Van Dyne (the original Wasp); Stature (aka Cassie Lang), the daughter of the third Ant-Man with the ability to grow and shrink; Vision, the sentient android; Hercules, the demi-god son of Zeus; Amadeus Cho, the smartest tech-wiz kid in the world; The USAgent, former replacement Captain America and blind patriot; and Quicksilver, the speedy mutant who can run at superhuman speeds.

The first several issues revolved around the Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver's sister, appearing to the team and sending them off on missions to save the world. However, we quickly learned that not all was as it seemed, and Scarlet Witch was actually Thor's brother, Loki, the Norse God of mischief.

During the series, a lot of very interesting ideas and concepts came up - The Infinite Avengers Mansion, which, using a variety of pseudo-scientific ideas, was a house that warped around reality and lasted forever; Hank Pym being the Earth's Scientist Supreme - The scientific equivalent to Dr Strange's Sorcerer Supreme - as dubbed by Eternity itself; and USAgent's incredulous patriotism causing him to salute "national hero" Norman Osborn, the former Green Goblin, and Hercules immediately accusing the USAgent of being a tool.

Even though we only got about a 15 issues worth of Hank Pym's version of the Mighty Avengers, I really enjoyed the series.

RIP Ronnie James Dio

2010-05-17T10:59:00.000-07:00

Apparently, Ronnie James Dio has lost his battle to stomach cancer at the age of 67.

I'm not going to get all sappy and lie and say that Dio was one of my favorite musicians, because he wasn't. But I did like his music quite a bit. I've got the Holy Diver album and Sabbath's Heaven & Hell, as well as the Black Sabbath: The Dio Years best-of compilation record. And they're damn good.

I was even fortunate enough to see Dio (in Black Sabbath, as Heaven & Hell) a couple of summers ago, and it was damn awesome.

Dio's the man who gave us the "bullhorns" (or "devil horns") hand gesture, which has penetrated American society so much that people don't even know he's credited as having created the hand sign.

So, regardless of how you feel about heavy metal, every time you hold up 'the horns,' remember that without Ronnie James Dio, you wouldn't have that hand sign to use.

Rest in peace, Dio. May the Devil worship you for all of eternity. Or at least until Ozzy shows up in Hell. Then you guys can have a drunken piss-fight about who gets to rule.

Limp Bizkit returns

2010-05-15T21:17:00.002-07:00

Two days ago, I said this:

Here's to hoping that Fred Durst and Limp Bizkit don't make a comeback as well, eh?

Guess what I just heard advertised on the radio? That's right - The five original members of Limp Bizkit are back together and touring. And will soon be coming to Phoenix, with Ice Cube.

Dammit.

Amazing Friends DVD insert design

2010-05-15T11:44:00.001-07:00

Click to enlarge.

This morning, as a goof, I created an insert for a DVD set that, as far as I know, does not have an official release planned.

Spider-man and his Amazing Friends was very likely my introduction to the wall-crawler as a youngster, as the show debuted the same year that I was born. I've been a fan of the show for my entire life, and try to catch episodes whenever I can.

I think the thing that appeals to me about the show most, is that it's drawn in the 70s Marvel house style; The characters look like they jumped right out of the 70s Marvel comics, unlike later iterations of Spider-Man and/or X-Men cartoons, where the shows have a lead artist who uses his own style, rather than tries to match that of another particular artist.

Firestar is particularly of note, as she was created specifically for this show; Initially, the plan was to use the Fantastic Four's Human Torch, but he was apparently tied up in other licensing deals at the time. After appearing on the show, Firestar made her comics debut in Uncanny X-Men #193, and almost immediately got her own eponymous four-issue miniseries detailing her origin story.

Anyways, enjoy the DVD cover. Ideally, were this an actual project, I would've obtained a better-quality logo and artwork from my clients. But since this is just a fan work, had to work with what I could find on the Internet.

90s comeback

2010-05-14T07:55:00.000-07:00

As I posted yesterday, Saban has bought back the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers from Disney. Nickelodeon bought the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from Mirage Studios, and has announced they will run new episodes of both TMNT and MMPR.

MTV's Daria also came out on DVD, this week. I bought that, as well as the complete The Maxx animated series, which is available exclusively through Amazon.com.

Ed Boon has announced Mortal Kombat 9, and rumors are speculating that it will be a reboot of the franchise, and/or a remake of the original 1992 game.

Bands like Stone Temple Pilots, Alice in Chains, and Guns 'n' Roses have all come out with new albums in the last couple of years.

There's definitely a 90s resurgence on the way, much as there was the 80s nostalgia run at the dawn of the 21st century.

Here's to hoping that Fred Durst and Limp Bizkit don't make a comeback as well, eh?

Saban has bought back Power Rangers

2010-05-13T08:39:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, the LA Times reported that Haim Saban bought back the Power Rangers from Disney, for about $100 million. For those of you unfamiliar, the American version of Power Rangers is essentially the brainchild of Haim Saban. During a trip to Japan, he saw a show called Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger, and realized that if he bought the rights to the footage for the show, spliced in scenes with American teenage actors, and re-aired the battle scenes with the heroes in full-body costumes (so you can't see who the actor is), he could make a show that would sell a lot of toys.

The show was extremely low-budget. Saban hired non-SAG actors for the show, pay them less than scale, and would replace the actors' characters when they requested pay raises. It was an absolutely terrible show, but, for whatever reason, kids (myself included) ate it up. Something about the show, which, even as a kid, I recognized was terribly poorly made, was just very charming.

It may have been the predictability of every episode's plot - teens have a problem, Rita/Lord Zedd makes an evil monsters, Power Rangers almost defeat monster, monster gets huge, Rangers call on their giant robots, defeat monster, learn a lesson about the problem brought up in the first act, roll credits. Kids love repetition, and with a new problem for the teens and a new monster every day, it wasn't 100% obvious that every episode was identical.

It may have been the bright colors. The rainbow-colored-spandex-clad heroes were certainly brighter and shinier than anything else that was being offered for children's programming at the time (even the last couple seasons of Ninja Turtles, which were airing during the first couple years of Power Rangers, had gotten darker and more serious).

Maybe it was the fact that the show was so low-budget; With almost nothing to work with, Saban Entertainment had to cut costs as much as possible, and work within the limitations of their super-low finances. Sometimes, having access to everything doesn't necessarily make things better - Otherwise, why would 2008's Mega Man 9 have been infinitely better than 1997's Mega Man 8? MM9 was build within the confines of 8-bit NES hardware, while MM8 was build for the Sega Saturn and Sony Playstation's 32-bit hardware. Oftentimes, limitations breed more ingenuity, and for people who clearly care about their product, this passion shows through in their work.

In 2001, Disney bought the Fox Family Channel (turning it into "ABC Family", and, with it, got the license to the Power Rangers. But with Disney's vast resources, Power Rangers didn't have the charm that it once contained. The actors were seemingly getting paid to phone in performances, and while the quality of the shows were better on a technical level, it just wasn't as much fun to watch.

Or maybe the masses had just grown sick of Power Rangers. After all, by the time Disney had gotten a hold of the franchise, it had been running for 7 years. Very few kids' fads last for more than 3 years (with the unexplainable exception of Ninja Turtles, which lasted for 5), and Power Rangers had already been on for twice that length. I know I'd see little kids in the most recent Power Rangers t-shirts and sneakers every year, but otherwise, nobody ever talked about the franchise.

Saban has reportedly also signed a deal with Nickelodeon, in which the first children's television network will air 20 new episodes as well as re-broadcast any of the 700+ episodes of Power Rangers already in existence.

Combined with Nick's recent announcement that they're going to be producing a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, Mortal Kombat 9, Image United, and over-complicated X-Men comic book crossovers, it looks like the 80s revivals have come to a close, and we're now in the early stages of a 90s revival (and given that 80% of teenagers are covering their eyes with their hair again, it's not terribly surprising).

I wonder if we'll get new versions of other 90s classics, like Beavis & Butt-Head, Daria, The Maxx, or Doug?

Captain Fantastic Faster Than Superman Spiderman Batman Wolverine Hulk and The Flash Combined.

2010-05-12T10:28:00.000-07:00

A British 19-year-old boy, originally named George Garratt, legally had his name changed to "Captain Fantastic Faster Than Superman Spiderman Batman Wolverine Hulk And The Flash Combined."

Little does he realize that his name has a typo, as the proper spelling for "Spider-Man" includes a hyphen.

Also, reportedly, his grandmother is so upset by the change, she is no longer speaking to him.

http://gfestblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/british-teen-changes-name-to-captain.html

This was too amazing to NOT share.

The Transformers

2010-05-10T16:36:00.002-07:00

It's no secret that I'm a big fan of the original Transformers (often referred to as "Generation One" by fans), and that I have been for basically my entire life. And this year, Hasbro is opening up the Transformers Hall of Fame. Optimus Prime, Megatron, Bumblebee, and Starscream are all being inducted, and by heading over to www.Transformers.com, you can vote for the fifth entrant (between Soundwave, Grimlock, Jazz, Shockwave, and... Beast Wars' Dinobot?) I thought this would be a good enough time to share some highlights of my personal Transfandom.

The Transformers debuted in September 1984, just a few months after I had turned 2 years old. I often like to explain to people that "Transformers was my favorite pop culture thing that wasn't Sesame Street or Mr. Rogers Neighborhood."

And, as a young child, what's not to like? Imagine yourself as a pre-preschool kid, watching a show where seemingly normal cars and trucks can turn into gigantic robots and protect you from the forces of evil. That's just an awesome thought.

I remember watching the first two seasons in two of my several childhood homes, and I had a few of the toys; I had Optimus Prime, of course, as well as the Autobots' boombox, Blaster. I had Bumblebee and Cliffjumper, Brawn, Hoist, and Prowl (except that I couldn't pronounce "Prowl," so I pretended it was Bluestreak, since they both turned into Nissan Datsun Fairlady Zs, anyways).

In 1986, a friend of mine from school had the Transformers movie on tape, and when I spent the night at his house, one weekend, we watched it at least twice. It was sad that Optimus Prime died, but I was excited to see what the Autobots' new leader, Rodimus Prime, was going to do! Unlike most of today's fans, I have nothing but fond memories of the post-movie Season 3 episodes, and thoroughly enjoyed my time spent with Rodimus, Ultra Magnus, Kup, Springer, and Arcee fighting against Galvatron, Cyclonus, Scourge, and the Quintessons. I recall getting the toys for Rodimus, Magnus, Kup, Blur, Wheelie, Wreck-Gar, and a few of the Mini-Vehicles. I never had too many of the Decepticons, but I did manage to score Trypticon, the Decepticons' motorized city that transformed into a giant T-Rex.

But, alas, as with all fads, the Transformers cartoon came to an end in 1987. I bought some of the toys that looked cool afterwards, but without a show to tell me who and what the characters were, I mostly didn't care, anymore. And just a few months later, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles made its television debut. I was all over that like a fat kid on cake.

When Hasbro tried to revitalize the franchise in 1992 with Generation 2, I watched it for a few weeks, but was disappointed that the cartoons were just re-airings of the old cartoon with CGI transitions replacing the original ones. I got some of the G2 toys, including Decepticon leader Megatron (who was inexplicably a green-and-purple tank), but it just wasn't the same.

In the spring of 1996, I was fascinated with "Japanimation" (what we called anime before it had a proper name), and watched Sailor Moon in the mornings before going to Jr. High, as it was the only anime that I could find on television at the time. But for two days, Sailor Moon was replaced with a show called "Beast Wars: Transformers" - It was a new take on the Transformers. The show was completely done in CGI, and the characters all turned into different animals. After the two-part opener, we were back to Sailor Moon on Wednesday. Curious.

I recalled that I'd picked up the Optimus Prime vs Megatron 2-pack (Where they were a bat and an alligator, respectively, instead of the gorilla and tyrannosaurus that they were in the cartoon) with my Christmas money in 1995, and suddenly had a reason to play with these bizarre Transformers.

But without the show to watch, I again quickly lost interest. However, later in 1996, Beast Wars appeared on television as the last show I could watch before having to leave for school in the mornings. Its complex and intricate storylines kicked the ass of everything else I was watching, and with enough references to the original Transformers, I was hooked.

In 1997, we got our first Internet-capable computer, and by Christmas 1998, I was researching as much as I could about the Transformers. When I started working for Blockbuster in August of 2000, I used my first paycheck to buy a copy of Kid Rhino's re-release of the 1986 movie. By the end of the year, I'd bought the entirety of the G1 cartoon from eBay, along with the 35 or so episodes of the StarTV dub of the Japanese-only "Headmasters" season.

In 2001, I bought the "Special Collector's Edition" of the movie, which re-instated Spike's "Oh, SHIT, what're we gonna do now!" as well as the original, theatrical credits opening (as opposed to the Star Wars-like scrolling text that accompanied the previous home video releases).

Over the last 10 years, I've purchased nearly every G1-inspired Transformers comic, and several of the newer G1-themed toys, as well as the 20th Anniversary Edition DVD. I played the Heavy Metal War game on Seibertron.com for months, creating a number of my own Transformers with their own backstories and abilities.

The live-action movies and more recent interpretations of the franchise (Armada, Energon, Cybertron, Animated, etc.) haven't done much for me. But I'm all for their existence, as they help to fund the G1 stuff that I want to continue being produced.

My Transfandom has taken a bit of a backseat over the last couple of years, but I'll never not be a fan. Even if I recognize that the cartoon I fell in love with as a child isn't actually very good.

'Til all are one.

Iron Man 2

2010-05-08T00:00:00.000-07:00

Just got home. First impression? Fantastic. Not quite as good as the first movie, but far better than most sequels. It's too bad IM2 came out three weeks AFTER Kick-Ass, because while it definitely carries Kick-Ass's momentum, it doesn't necessarily build upon it. Had the two movies been reversed, I think IM2 would've felt a lot more special than it does, now.

Below are random notes as I think of them:

Changes a-plenty to many characters' origins and backgrounds, but nothing that Bendis, Millar, or Warren Ellis wouldn't have done in the Ultimate Marvel Universe. A much bigger role from Sam Jackson as Nick Fury, this time around. Scarlet Johansson as the Black Widow (Natalie Rushman/Natasha Romanov) was kind of superfluous, and her fantastic fight scenes are unfortunately severely overshadowed by Hit-Girl's, but she was a welcome addition to the cast, at least for the eye candy. Don Cheadle replacing Terrance Howard as Lt. Col. James "Rhodey" Rhodes (War Machine) was 100% unnecessary from my perspective. Unless there was something going on behind the scenes that we don't know about, I don't think the change was a wise decision.

Mickey Rourke as Ivan Vanko (or Whiplash, if you must) was awesome. It was the first time I ever felt as though Whiplash/Blacklash was a threat to Iron Man, but he was QUITE a threat. Sam Rockwell's role as Justin Hammer was very entertaining. I don't know much about Hammer's character in the comics, but I completely buy the film's version being a solid interpretation.

Robert Downey, Jr. owns the Tony Stark role. It will be a shame when he can no longer play the Golden Avenger due to real life getting in the way. Gwyneth Paltrow is also a solid return to form as Pepper Potts. She's got a smaller role this time around, but is just as essential to Tony Stark's life. And the after-credits bit will pump up audiences for Marvel's next movie offering.

I feel that Iron Man 2 is a worthy successor to the first movie, despite what the critics may have been saying. I'll see this at least once more in theatres, and it is definitely going to end up on my DVD shelf.

Arrested Development

2010-05-07T11:01:00.001-07:00

I just finished watching season 3 of Arrested Development.

Yes, yes. I'm like six years late or whatever. If it's not comics or toys, I tend to be a little bit late in getting into things. This is a habit that's been going on since I was in high school.

Anyways. I very much enjoyed this show, but I think I can see part of the reason it failed: The show became far too self-referential for it's own good.

While *I* greatly appreciate things that play with their format and lampoon the standards tropes of genre fiction, the average television viewing audience does not. Quite frankly, many people don't think beyond what is presented to them on the screen, and Arrested Development required a lot of memory retention from its viewers.

And it's great when you're able to watch the entire thing in sequence, but I can't imagine trying to watch the show on a weekly basis and remembering events from six episodes ago. I like to think that I'm a fairly intelligent individual (I, after all, was wearing glasses years before it became trendy to do so), but even I was having trouble remembering season 3's references to events from season 1, which I only watched a month or so ago. I can't imagine trying to recall things from episodes that had aired three years ago, unless I'd watched the DVDs over and over again.

Arrested Development seems to me like a show that would work a lot better as a web series (à la The Guild) where every episode is available to viewers all at once. Jumping in part way through would leave a viewer completely lost in the continuity of the show, and that's dangerous ground to tread for a prime time sitcom. Perhaps Arrested Development is one of those poor pieces of history that will always be remembered as being "ahead of its time."

But, alas, I did very much enjoy the entirety of the show, and I think it's a shame that Michael Cera is the only one to have come out of it with any semblance of a career. Everybody played their roles perfectly, and I wouldn't mind seeing any of the actors start to pop up more prominently.

Also, can I get Ron Howard to narrate some of the stranger parts of my life? I think that would be fantastic.