It's Thursday, I'm In Love!

Melbourne - the new Boneville!?

2009-09-01T22:13:00.002+10:00

Went to the Docklands in Melbourne earlier this year to watch the Cirque du Soleil - Dralion. While we were walking down the Docklands pier, we chanced upon some strangely and yet familiar sculptures.

They looked like the characters from Jeff Smith's all-ages award winning Bone comic book series!

Have Fone Bone, Smiley Bone and Phoncible P. Bone moved over from Boneville and now call Melbourne "home"? You be the judge!

Could this be one of the Bone cousins (sans arms and legs)?

A photo op with one of the Bones!

The structure looks like Fone Bone in particular, as the picture below shows:

Pretty cool, eh? An eerie resemblence!

I love Jeff Smith's Bone. Aeris got me the phonebook-size softcover omnibus that had all 60 issues of the series, but I fell in love with the story and the characters so much that I went and got the hardcover colour editions as well! In fact, I just recently got the ninth and final colour HC volume to finish off my collection! It's a brilliant series and well worth collecting.

I highly recommend Bone, which can be enjoyed be people of all ages!

Review: Pokemon Platinum for Nintendo DS

2009-07-13T00:56:00.006+10:00

It's finally time for me to review a game that has already taken Japan and the US by storm, and more recently, Australia, since its release about a month to six weeks back: Pokemon Platinum!

Now, before I get into the guts of the actual review itself, allow me to wax lyrical and take a trip down memory lane and share with everyone my Pokemon experience and journey thus far.

Pokemon hit me like a yawn; it came out of nowhere but it was highly contagious (and addictive). I remember my first exposure to the 151 Pokemon creatures (yes, there were only 151 of the little critters over a decade ago) when I saw some interesting and odd animal figurines being sold in some hobby shops in Singapore.

Those turned out to be Pokemon, which I discovered a few short months later. I had read about this "fad" that had taken Japan by storm and was becoming increasingly popular in the US as well as a result of the cartoon. So I just had to find out for myself what was so popular about this fad which many people would say would only last for a short while (over a decade on and it's going stronger than ever, so take that, naysayers!).

It was around this time I was "experimenting" with other types of gaming that wasn't on the PC; console gaming in short. I had been playing games all my life but my only real exposure to any console games was playing Super Mario Bros and the original Legend of Zelda on my friends' NES when I was a kid, playing Streets of Rage and Ice Hockey (or was it NHL?) '93 on my cousin's Sega Megadrive when I was in my teens, and also borrowing and playing that same cousin's Game Boy...the really old one "greenscreen" LCD.

So I didn't have much console gaming experience. Sure, I knew some of the more popular games because I had seen or heard of them, but I certainly never tried any out and I was more keen on playing either video games from the arcade or PC-centric stuff like Starcraft, Unreal Tournament and Quake 2.

But I was about the enter the Army and wouldn't really get a chance to play any of these PC games, so it occured to me, it might be a good idea to get a portable console. The only ones around at the time were the Game Boy systems and Sega's Game Gear, which wasn't very popular and didn't have as many games as the Game Boy had, so it was an easy choice for me to go down to Sim Lim Square and purchase my very first console, a purple Game Boy Color.

Of course, I couldn't just get the Game Boy without a game, so the very first game I purchased was Pokemon Red:

I can't remember whether it was a conscious or spontaneous decision to purchase Pokemon. I could have purchased Pokemon Red because subliminally, I had been exposed to it or heard about it so often that something "convinced" me to give it a try. But I just could have as easily decided on my own that I WANTED to give Pokemon a try, without needing that extra push. I can't remember anymore.

I played the game through without needing to refer to any walkthrus, without any cheats or hints or referring to guidebooks. To say that I was hooked to the game is a MASSIVE understatement. I must have clocked up in excess of 60 to 70 hours during the first run of the game!

Something about the game just drew me into it. I certainly enjoyed the RPG elements and training your Pokemon so they'd grow bigger and stronger...I equated Pokemon to virtual pets back in those days (since we were not too far off from the cessation of the Tamagotchi fad). Those little Pokemon had certainly grown on me!

What was amazing was that for such a simple concept where you "grew" your Pokemon for the purposes of battle, it was so thoroughly engrossing! There was this whole huge backstory as well and I just absorbed as much of it as I possibly could. Or so I thought back in those days during that first run.

So I played the game a second time around, this time checking the walkthrus online and I found out there was so much I had missed. I tried my best to collect all 151 Pokemon (gotta catch 'em all!) and it was a pretty futile attempt, considering that I didn't have Pokemon Blue in which it had the other half-set of creatures in the game. Needless to say, I clocked up even MORE game time the second time around.

But while I didn't get Pokemon Blue, I certainly did get Pokemon Yellow when it was released:

Pokemon Yellow wasn't that much different from Pokemon Red/Blue! In fact, it was pretty much the SAME GAME, with a few different tweaks. Instead of choosing between Bulbasaur, Charmander and Squirtle, you were given Pikachu right at the start in Pokemon Yellow and he'd follow you around for the whole game. Guess it made marketing sense for a Pokemon game to be released where you started off with Pikachu, given Pikachu's popularity in the cartoon.

I watched the cartoon too in the first season and even though it was fairly juvenile, I'd still watch it because I was addicted to Pokemon! I even played the Pokemon Trading Card game released by Wizards of the Coast (in place of Magic: the Gathering as I had quit the game by then) and I still have many of the original cards from the first base set and the following two expansions, all of which are now worth nothing since all cards printed by WoTC are now defunct and unplayable outside of a casual environment.

I was so into Pokemon that I got myself a SECOND Game Boy Color, in Pikachu Yellow (though I think the officially named colour was "Dandelion") and I also got myself a yellow Pokemon Game Boy pouch to hold that Game Boy Color and my games:

Yes, I certainly was addicted to this "fad". But I was also convinced that it would end after only a few years. Who knew how strong the appeal for Pokemon would be that it's still going strong over all these years?

Pokemon Yellow started the trend with Pokemon games that have been released over the years; there would be a simultaneous release of two Pokemon games that were essentially the same game except with different available Pokemon in the game. And then an updated version of the game would be released about two years later, which had all the available Pokemon from the first two games, contained pretty much the same storyline, but with some additional tweaks to the story and gameplay.

This was the case with Pokemon Red/Blue which had Yellow as the "updated" version of either game. Gold/Silver had the Crystal "update", Ruby/Sapphire had the Emerald "update" and now Pokemon Platinum is the updated version of Pokemon Pearl/Diamond.

So let's get this warning out of the way: if you already HAVE played Pokemon Pearl/Diamond and are pretty satisfied not shelling out money for essentially the same game (albeit with nifty new functions and updates), then DON'T purchase Platinum. From what I've heard though, even those who have already completed Pearl/Diamond, went right out and purchased Platinum anyway. Such is the marketing and appeal of the Pokemon games that Nintendo doesn't really need to twist one's arm to get you to go out to purchase a second copy of essentially the same game you already have or played before!

Of course, having never played Pokemon Pearl/Diamond before (but hearing so much positive stuff about it), I felt it was finally time to dip my toe back into the Pokemon waters, after a decade since I originally purchased the first game. It helped that the cartoon is still going strong (though I never watched more than a few random episodes of the later series) and that I had played Pokemon Red all over again from scratch about 2.5 to 3 years back when still living in Geelong!

So my love affair with Pokemon started again. And boy, the changes between the fairly blase LCD graphics from the Game Boy Color (with minimal colours) to the bright and colourful graphics of the Nintendo DS was staggering! The music was greatly improved too, but the general gameplay is pretty much the same.

There were quite a lot of new options I hadn't been exposed to before which took some time for me to get used to. With the Game Boy Color, there was only one screen and two action buttons. But with the Nintendo DS, there were the dual screens AND four action buttons, not to mention the shoulder buttons (which I don't think are used anyway)...and of course, the touchscreen and stylus.

I'd only been used to one-on-one battles but got my first exposure of two-on-two battles with Platinum. And there were only a handful of Pokemon creature types in the original Red/Blue games whereas there seems to be a multitude of creature types now...thankfully it's fairly straightforward to use one's common sense to work out which creature types are stronger/weaker to specific opposing types.

The gameplay is more fluid with the DS dualscreens, since you can have the action one the top screen and anything else on the bottom one. There's this nifty Poketch watch which you are given during the game which has heaps of different applications you can obtain from talking to people in the game and it's nice to have that level of customisation to determine what you want to appear on the touchscreen; the time, the current Pokemon in your party, a Pokemon "screensaver", a pedometer, etc etc. Intuitive and fun!

The game also takes into account which day it is and what time of the day it is. When it's night time, the game becomes "dark" as it simulates night. Only certain Pokemon come out at night which means you can only catch them within a specific period; same works for Pokemon that only come out during the day. There are weather patterns during the game itself, which will hinder or aid you during Pokemon battles.

From what I've read, Platinum is the "ultimate" update of Pearl/Diamond and having read what differences there are in Platinum to Pearl/Diamond, I can understand why people who already have Pearl/Diamond go out to purchase Platinum anyway.

Platinum introduces Giratina, a legendary Pokemon that was featured in its own movie (and there are 12, yes 12! Pokemon movies to date) and a new area called the "Distortion World" where natural physical laws don't apply. There are also more Wi-Fi connectivity features and facilities like a Wi-Fi plaza and an arcade area where players can play minigames against each other online.

But probably the best part about the new features is the Vs. Recorder which allows players to record their greatest (or worst) battles between Pokemon and then share the battles with friends and other people via Wi-Fi. Sort of like YouTube but specifically for Pokemon battles!

I've probably played only 1/4 or 1/3 of the game but have already clocked up in excess of 20 hours (which is the reason why I haven't been blogging of late, other than being extremely busy at work). But there is still so much of the game to explore, so many more battles to be fought and so many more secrets to discover.

I'm glad I've rediscovered Pokemon and am reliving the (new) experience all over again!

Review: A more detailed comparison of Perth CBD's comic shops

2009-06-16T15:48:00.001+10:00

So I had a lot more free time today as it is my last day in Perth and I didn't have anything concrete planned for the day. So I decided to revisit all the comic and pop culture shops in Perth again, except Tokyo Underground.

Spent more time at Empire Toys, browsing through the racks of graphic novels and manga in greater detail. Afterwhich I went to Quality Comics quickly, then visited Fantastic Planet for the first time. My last stop, later in the afternoon, was at Comiczone, before coming back to the hotel to rest and relax before heading off to the airport to catch the flight back to Melbourne.

Now that I've visted the four shops that sell graphic novels, here are my opinions and comparisons between the shops.

Please note, before anyone gets heated up arguing for or against one shop, this is entirely MY opinion based on the products that were available in each shop, shop space, variety of products, etc. Even though I returned to most shops for a second day, I've really only spent perhaps half an hour tops in each shop. Also, apart from the "hi/bye" greetings, I've only really interacted with the person working at Quality Comics, chatting about comics.

Quality Comics has easily the largest shop space. It had a huge variety of graphic novels and single issues, and also sold a number of different manga and DVDs. Not enough manga that I'd go back to purchase specific titles I'd be after because there wasn't enough variety. The shop assistant who engaged me in conversation was extremely helpful, friendly and knowledgeable, which is always a plus!

Quality Comics seemed to have best and lowest prices. There were heaps of back issues and I really liked the fact that the displayed single issues and graphic novels were all coverface-up, that is, you could see the front covers displayed as opposed to having to tilt your head to one side to check out what graphic novel it was from the book's spine. This makes it really easy to see if there was something that one is particuarly after; perhaps the comics can be displayed this way because of the huge amount of space in the shop.

Comiczone, while having a smaller space size, certainly used it very well. The majority of the shelved graphic novels couldn't be displayed coverface-up and you had to identify graphic novels by the book spine, but the latest and most popular graphic novels were all displayed so that you can see the front cover. It works well this way too because not only does it save space, but it's not always very often that someone would be looking for an old graphic novel...and if they were, they could always ask the people working in the shop, who appeared extremely friendly just like I remembered the last time!

The single issues were also displayed coverface-up. The difference between Comiczone and the rest, and this is a really good thing that I like, was the fact that they didn't put barcode pricetags on the graphic novel/single issue (or protective sleeve); the pricetag is actually on the shelf itself, keeping the comic free from blemishes! As you can imagine, this would mean that they would need a very organised and tidy shelving system, which they had. The other shops also had a very good shelving system, but I think Comiczone's stands out.

They also had quite a number of single back issues, though not as many as Quality Comics. And they were still giving out free button-badges! I didn't grab any this time around though. And Comiczone certainly seems to also support local comics and local comic creators; from memory I believe Ben Templesmith is an avid supporter of Comiczone (he buys his comics here too, perhaps, if Mr Templesmith DOES indeed purchase comics?) and I saw the business card of a Paul Spencer, who I believe is a local comics letterer.

Empire Toys had about the same shop space as Comiczone but a lot more product. Everything was organised neatly into product type; there was an aisle specifically for toys and action figures, another for graphic novels and one more for manga. They even had a specific section for anime/Japanese merchandise and products and one for DVDs!

Empire Toys had the most variety of manga titles and I know if I were to look for a specific manga title or back issue, that would be the first place I would start as it would be more likely that I'd find it at Empire Toys. They also sold a variety of animated/comic-related/pop culture-related DVDs, the most of all the shops that I'm comparing.

They didn't have a lot of single issues though; those that were available were of titles by "mainstream" creators like My Chemical Romance's Gerard Way's Umbrella Academy, Stephen King's Dark Tower and Joe Hill's Locke and Key. It also seemed that the graphic novels here were the most expensive of the shops compared.

Fantastic Planet specialises in selling science fiction novels, so as you can imagine, it had the smallest shop space and most of the product were novels. They did have a small graphic novel section though, and there was a table in the middle of the shop space with some of the more famous graphic novels displayed on the table.

Most of the graphic novels they had were by acclaimed comic authors like Alan Moore; Watchmen, Swamp Thing, V for Vendetta, Top 10; Frank Miller; Daredevil, Sin City; and Neil Gaiman; Sandman. They also sold acclaimed series like Preacher. So not a lot of variety if you're after graphic novels, but it certainly catered to those sci-fi lovers who wanted to dabble in the graphic novel medium.

So which is the best shop? Well, that's the beauty of it...there IS no best shop. Each shop had its own key strengths and would appeal to different demographics. Variety, as they say, is the spice of life.

If I were after manga or toys/action figures, I'd go to Empire Toys.

If I were after science fiction novels, I'd go to Fantastic Planet.

And I'd be happy to go to either Quality Comics or Comiczone for my single issues and graphic novels; probably Quality Comics if I'm looking for old back issues/graphic novels, and Comiczone for comic-related products such as busts.

If you're living in Perth and are a comic book fan, you're certainly spoilt for choice! It's good being a comic book fan in Perth.

The return of Captain America is imminent!

2009-06-16T14:52:00.002+10:00

Start counting down, ladies and gents, because after more than two years, Steve Rogers is set to return to the Marvel 616 Universe (that's the regular Marvel Universe for those who aren't in the know)!

The American icon returns in issue #600...how can the numbering system jump from the #40s to #600 you wonder? Well, Marvel are going back to the original numbering system and the return issue would be Cap's 600th issue, if you add up all the issues from the various series.

Ed Brubaker's run on the current Captain America series has been hailed as one of the greatest ever and even though I don't buy the single issues of the regular series (I'm awaiting for the Omnibus instead...already have Volume One which reprints the first 25 issues of Brubaker's run on the title), I'll be sure to run out to grab Captain America #600!

The article about Steve Rogers' return is featured here on the Marvel.com website:

Reborn Revealed
http://marvel.com/news/comicstories.8368.Reborn_Revealed

Perth Comic Shops! Part Deux

2009-06-15T14:16:00.003+10:00

So here I am in Perth again...six weeks short of having first come here two years ago! Of course, without it needing to be said, I absolutely had to check out the Perth comic shops, despite spending about half a day less here, compared to the last trip.

I certainly remember a couple of comic shops from my last visi, both located along Hay Street in the Perth CBD: Comicszone and Quality Comics.

I also remember there were quite some heated arguments regarding which was the better Perth comic shop in the nearly two years since I posted up the original blog entry, Perth Comic Shops! .

I didn't realise my innocent blog entry would open up such a huge can of worms, but everyone's entitled to their opinions and there didn't seem to be anything deragatory or too inflammatory so there was no need to cull any comments. Those comments are still there for anyone who wants to join in the debate:

Comments from visitors after the original blog entry

Thankfully, there was no unwanted negative exposure of my little blog...and I still maintain it's a VERY little blog that hardly anyone ever visits...I have this blog because I love my comics and video games and pop culture and whenever I want to post something up for posterity's sake, this is the best place for me to express my opinions.

Anyway! Enough of that. By the time anyone reads this new blog entry, I'd probably have been back in Melbourne for a couple of weeks (or more likely, months), happily continuing my comic-shopping-patronage with Classic Comics.

Of course, Classic Comics doesn't have everything I'm looking for and when I can't get something from there or Comics R Us or Minotaur, when in a different country or state, since I'm already compelled to go visit the other comic book shops in that country/state/city, might as well go hunting for those comics that I can't get to add to my collection, hey?

I knew exactly where Comicszone (I seem to remember it being known as The Comic Zone back in 2007...a name change prehaps?) and Quality Comics was along Hay Street, but I wanted to see if I could find any other comics and pop culture shops in the Perth CBD. So I did some research via the trusty yellow pages AND just taking a walk along Hay Street on Sunday evening.

There were five such shops in the Perth CBD, four along Hay Street itself and one along Shafto Lane:

Comiczone - 572 Hay Street
Quality Comics - 872 Hay Street
Empire Toys - 856 Hay Street
Tokyo Underground - The Basement, 816 Hay Street
Fantastic Planet - Shop 8, Shafto Lane

I also saw a sign for Infinite Planet, with Boba Fett on the sign itself, but I believe this shop has been replaced by Tokyo Underground/Freaks + Geeks, since they share the exact same address. Or maybe it's the exact same shop that has just had a name change! Not quite sure there.

Anyway, Comiczone and Quality Comics focused on selling comics and graphic novels. Comiczone seemed to also sell quite a number of pop culture/movie related toys; there were movie Watchmen action figures/toys as well as some busts in the shop display window. Quality Comics a bigger store space and seemingly more comics/graphic novels on display!

The one thing that was a change from two years ago, which surprised me, was that the Quality Comics single issues and graphic novels (in both the tradepaperback and hardcover variety) were on the whole cheaper than Comiczone, which certainly didn't seem to be the case two years ago when I was here.

I just did some very quick price comparisons and the new single issues and graphic novels were a bit cheaper at Quality Comics. Not quite sure whether this was due to the large "under new management" sign that was on the wall as I was walking down the steps into Quality Comics...perhaps in the two years I was away, Ben Templesmith was right in his comment in suggesting that having more than one comic shop in Perth would be good, competition-wise! Hey, with freedom of choice, the people that would win out would be the patrons.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find what I was looking for; to be honest, I doubt I'd be able to find it anywhere else, so this is certainly not a knock on either shops' stocks. The stuff I'm after is pretty much impossible to find nowadays, which is WHY I cannot find them in the Melbourne shops (or online) and why I actually have to go elsewhere in an attempt to find them:

The Absolute League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol.1 Hardcover
The Absolute Authority Vol.1 Hardcover
New X-Men Omnibus Hardcover
Absolute Planetary Hardcover
Absolute Danger Girl Hardcover
Alias Omnibus Hardcover
Stardust Hardcover
Young Avengers Hardcover

Heck, these aren't even available on Amazon and some of the more famous American comic book shops (unless one's willing to pay exorbitant prices for them), so I wasn't really expecting a miracle that any of the Perth comic shops would be stocking them.

I did pick up the following books from Quality Comics: new Batman and Robin #1 by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely (since I had read that it was just selling out everywhere...this wouldn't even be someting I'd consider as part of my grab list normally!), The Sentry TPB that had its price slashed by about half, School Rumble Volume 9 (manga), which I haven't been able to find in Melbourne, and Boys Be Volume 16 (manga) which was cheap at $5!

The one thing that really impressed me was the the guy serving me at Quality Comics engaged me in a conversation regarding the Morrison and Quitely team, which I quite enjoyed. Don't get enough opportunities to talk about comics to my other friends, so I always welcome a comics or pop culture related chat!

So I've had two extremely positive experiences, one each at Comiczone and Quality Comics. As someone who's travelled all the way here from Melbourne, let me just say it's really impressive and you guys are doing a fantastic job!

I didn't expect to find anything but toys, action figures and the like at Empire Toys, but was pleasantly surprised when I saw a huge collection of graphic novels on the shelves! Couldn't find stuff from the list of comics I was after above (once again, not a knock against the shop!) and the prices were a bit more expensive than the same items sold at Quality Comics.

Tokyo Underground reminded me a lot of Tamarket back in Melbourne in that it sold anime and Japanese-related products...lots of Nintendo products there! They also sold quite a bit of costumes for the budding cosplayers out there! Got myself a blue mushroom (from Super Mario Bros) keychain for myself and a Totoro tote bag and a Totoro foldable-fan for Aeris.

Haven't gone to Fantastic Planet yet, and I don't think I'll make a trip there unless I have some free time. I certainly saw that they sold graphic novels but it seems like a shop that focuses more on selling sci-fi novels.

The variety of comic and pop culture shops in the Perth CBD itself is certainly extremely impressive! Perth comic book geeks: you guys are so lucky and I'm so envious of you! Variety is the spice of life and you can have your pick of shops...once again, the patrons are the winners!

Review: Rhythm Heaven for Nintendo DS

2009-06-08T21:01:00.001+10:00

When I was at Forest Hill last Thursday, purchased a new game by Nintendo for the DS: Rhythm Heaven (also known as Rhythm Tengoku in Japan):

I read a bit about this game from the previews in both Ultimate Nintendo Magazine and Official Nintendo Magazine, but while the premise seemed pretty keen and kooky, I didn't think it was something that I'd be spending my money on.

As one might already guess from the title "Rhythm Heaven", this game is a rhythm/music-type game where one had to coordinate one's actions with the stylus to the beat prompts on the screen. Think games like any of the Dance Dance Revolution games in arcades, the Guitar Hero line of games, Samba de Amigo on the Wii and one of my personal favourites, Elite Beat Agents on the DS.

I've been a huge fan of Elite Beat Agents ever since Dean introduced me to the game not long after I first purchased my DS Lite in 2007. There was something so unbelievable "attractive" about three Men-In-Black-esque secret agents using dance to solve mundane problems and eventually, save the world. The premise of the game might have been kooky, but the game played brilliantly!

After all, what other game would you be able to use your stylus to tap in time with the rhythmic beats of such classics like The Rolling Stones' "Jumpin' Jack Flash", Earth, Wind and Fire's "September" and perhaps the most overplayed track of all in the game (at least by Aeris), The Village People's "YMCA"?

Ok, sure those tracks weren't the originals by the original groups/singers, and were just covers, but they were covers that were done pretty well! And who cares if the music wasn't original...it's the gameplay that matters! And Elite Beat Agents worked just brilliantly; to this day, I'm still aching to play the Japanese equivalent (and precursor to the English version of Elite Beat Agents): Ouendan!

So, a game like Rhythm Heaven, which was similar to Elite Beat Agents in so many ways...surely I would be purchasing this game right? Nah.

For one, I thought it would be just another run-of-the-mill rhythm game and wouldn't have anywhere close to the charm of Elite Beat Agents. Sure, it had more than just tap-tap-tapping, including flicking the stylus and "reverse-tapping", where you keep the stylus on the screen and pull it upwards to "hit" a beat, but surely that wouldn't be enough variation for me!

So I wasn't going to get the game. That is, until, I saw the TV advertisements for the game.

In fact, see for yourself!

This was the ad that convinced me the game would be fun enough to purchase! Add to the fact that someone from Ecogamer had found a pretty cheap release price of $34.95 at Target (most places had the game for sale at $44 which is a pretty good price already), so I was sold on the game!

So what's so good about the game? Well, it's fun. Really fun. I mean REALLY REALLY fun. It would seem like filling up robots with oil or returning ping pong balls and even being a "groupie" at a Japanese concert would be too weird for a game, but somehow, Nintendo have made Rhythm Heaven one of the hottest selling games ever with its simple but addictive mini-rhythm games!

Just the first game alone, while simple, hooked me onto the game. Called "Built to Scale", it involved you flicking the stylus when it reached the "So" portion of Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So. The next game, "Glee Club" is easily my favourite game so far. You're the third singer in a trio of singers and your mouth remains open...until the stylus touches the screen, which closes your singer's mouth. Cue a jazz song and you need to "sing" in time to the beat! If you don't, the two other singers in the trio give you the stink-eye.

I'm a bit iffy on the third game, "Fillbots", where you fill up a couple of robots on an assembly line with oil/fuel, but I really like "Fan Club", the fourth game, where you're a monkey groupie that needs to gee up the crowd by clapping your hands (by tapping the stylus) and basically making a monkey of yourself...which is quite appropriate because the groupies are all monkeys!

And then there's the 1st remix, which is a combination of the first four games, mixed up with a nice beat. I've only played the first six games, but already I'm having heaps of fun, and I think I'll be bringing this game with me when I go for a short holiday in Perth!

Incidentally, while on the topic, that means I'll probably get to visit the two fantastic Perth comic shops too. Just a quick aside and back to the review.

This game is too fun not to have. And at the cheap introductory price of $34.95 at Target (or $44 which is still pretty good, if the Target offer expires), you can find out why it's selling so well and why there's so much hype in Japan about this game! And you might as well get a nice 150 Club Nintendo points when you register this game with your Club Nintendo account.

So to leave you, just another Rhythm Heaven ad featuring Beyonce playing my favourite mini-game so far: Glee Club!

Built to Scale

Fillbots
Glee Club

Review: World of Goo

2009-05-15T15:30:00.001+10:00

Just downloaded one of the simplest and yet immensely enjoyable games from the Nintendo WiiWare site this week: World of Goo.

I have read quite a number of rave reviews about this little game by independent games developer 2D Boy from the two Nintendo magazines I subscribe to, Official Nintendo Magazine and Ultimate Nintendo Magazine. And since I finally got my Wii hooked up to the internet in the past week, and I had some Nintendo Points that were won in an eBay auction, I decided to download this title to see what the fuss was all about.

Now at 1500 Nintendo Points, World of Goo is most expensive game one can download from the Nintendo Shop online, from both the Virtual Console and WiiWare line of games. With 1000 Wii Points costing AUD$15, the World of Goo game costs a hefty $22.50, perhaps a piddling in price compared to the latest Wii games released in shops, but well higher priced than classic goodness like the Super Mario Bros line of games or some of the Zelda games available on the Virtual Console.

Let me just say that World of Goo is well worth the high price tag.

I haven't even cleared the first chapter yet but have already spent quite a number of hours on this game. It is fun, simple, addictive and immensely replayable. It has all the hallmarks of a classic game and even though I hadn't read the rules to the game, it took me about a few seconds to work out how to play the game and what the objective was!

In a nutshell, the game involves you controlling a whole bunch of globular "goo" balls in order to build structures, horizontally or vertically. Each chapter has various stages but the main objective is always the same: there is a "vent" or an "exit point" and you need to build your structures with the goo balls so that the tip of the structure is close enough to the exit point and your goo balls can then escape the level and you can move onto the next one.

That's really it. It's that simple. It's not an easy game to play though as a lot of strategy is involved. Your goo balls are alive: think those little black "ball" creatures in Hayao Miyazaki's "Spirited Away", where they are malleable, constantly moving and have those big little eyes for comedic effect. That's what the goo balls look like.

In some instances, once a goo ball has been used to form part of a structure, it becomes an inanimate "joint". This is where one has to be careful: you have a limited number of goo balls in each level and you have a set number of goo balls you need to help "escape" from that level. So you can't just use up all your goo balls because if you do and you can't reach the set minimum number of goo balls escaping that level, you need to start the level again.

There ARE some levels where the goo balls remain animate even after using them as structure "joints" though. In those levels you can just "break" a goo ball off your structure and reposition it. So in those sorts of levels, if your structure falls apart, just like Lego blocks, you can take apart your goo balls and start all over again.

The physics of the game are pretty amazing and realistic. All too often I built a structure as high as I possibly could, only for it to come crashing down because it was just unstable at the bottom and couldn't sustain an even distribution of weight.

Found out that this game is also available on the PC, which makes sense: if you can use a Wiimote to point-and-click and build structures, of course you should be able to do the same with a mouse since a mouse offers greater accuracy and precision!

Which brings me to the little "mouse cursor" from the WiiWare version of the game. The "cursor" is a little black blob that is "malleable" in nature; it stretches, it bends and it forms shapes when you move the Wiimote quickly. Highly entertaining to watch the little cursor blob when you've got nothing better to do!

The graphics are top notch too, are is the music, which is a touch eerie. In fact, the game is very Tim Burton-esque: if Tim decided to stop making movies such as Edward Scissorhands and The Nightmare Before Christmas and started his own game company, World of Goo would be the game that has all the traditional Burton hallmarks: dark, quirky and hauntingly beautiful.

World of Goo has also won multiple gaming awards as indicated in its Wikipedia entry here:

World of Goo Wikipedia entry

Simply put, this is a MUST GET if you own a Nintendo Wii and can get online to download the game. Heck, if you can't get it, because you can't get your Wii online (and I certainly sympathise with you if that is the case. It only took me about 2.75 years after first getting the Wii before I got it online!) or for whatever reason, get a friend to download the game into your console for you!

One of the most absorbing games you will ever play. It is well worth ANY price you pay for it. Heck, get it on PC if you have to!

Old handheld LCD games: a distant memory of my youth

2009-05-08T22:11:00.001+10:00

Went to the post office yesterday and I signed for a package that contained the following Nintendo DS game:

No, this wasn't another game I purchased. On the contrary, this was a game that was SENT to me, free of charge, by Nintendo Australia, because I redeemed the Club Nintendo points that I had accumulated from the purchase of games like Mario Kart Wii, Super Smash Bros, Wii Fit and the like!

The Game & Watch Collection was the most expensive item in the small list of redeemable goodies and the best of the lot...who needs a Mario towel or a Wii remote stand or even a DS game pouch? At least this was a game that you could play!

Nintendo made its name in the 90s with those tiny handheld LCD games that you could fit in the palm of your hand like Donkey Kong, Octopus and Parachute. In some of the games, you could control Mr Game & Watch, this black silhouetted character that ran around saving babies that were flung out of burning buildings, among other wacky things!

Mr Game & Watch made a return to Super Smash Bros Brawl where you can unlock and use him as a character and he's pretty fun to use too!I certainly remember those LCD games that were all the rage in the 80s when I was a kid. While I did have some of the Nintendo ones, though I can't remember exactly which ones now, the ones that were really popular during my youth were the Casio series of LCD games.

I certainly remember owning Submarine Battle and I played my friends' Western Bar and Kung Fu; these three were the most popular games in the Casio series, especially Western Bar!

Compared to today's modern games, these three games (and all other LCD games for that matter) are extremely dated, but back in the day, these games were AWESOME. The hours I spent on Submarine Battle, trying to beat my high score! Wow. A nice trip down memory lane for me.

Review: X-Men Origins: Wolverine

2009-04-30T01:12:00.002+10:00

Another comic book movie has been released on the big screen, so it’s time for another review!

This time around, it’s the first of at least two planned prequels to the X-Men movie franchise: X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

Ever since Hugh Jackman graced the screens with his first major movie role as Wolverine in 1999’s X-Men, his star has kept on rising in Hollywood. Could it only have been a mere ten years since he made his big screen debut as arguably the most popular character in comic books today?

What a performance Hugh delivered. Not only did Jackman look exactly like what most fanboys thought Wolverine would look like (albeit an extremely taller version) in a movie version of the X-Men, he pulled off Wolverine’s angst, berserker rage and had a certain gravitas and gruff style about him: Jackman didn’t PLAY the role of Wolverine, he WAS Wolverine!

There was no doubting that Jackman was the star of X-Men the movie. Which is something considering the company he was in: Halle Berry, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellan...but this unknown Aussie actor was THE breakout star of the movie?

X-Men Origins: Wolverine was certainly hyped up worldwide; with Jackman being the obvious star attraction from what were essentially three ensemble movies, surely he could do no wrong in a standalone movie!

The movie was hyped up more in Australia, what with Jackman being the hometown hero and most of the movie being shot in New South Wales; in fact, some of the actors appearing in the movie were Aussies who most people would find familiar, because they were recently on our TV screens in one of the most-watched productions of all time. But more on that later.

And there was even that whole thing where the movie was leaked onto the internet where people could download copies illegally and watch the movie weeks before it made its theatrical debut in cinemas. Yes, that certainly “stole” profits away from the creators of the movie, but more press, even the bad stuff, is good press, hey?

We’ve been treated to two other X movies since the first X-Men movie, with X2 being the best of the bunch and X3, while having heaps of cameos and some great battle scenes, best left forgotten from the X-franchise. X-Men Origins: Magneto will be out in the next year or so and who knows what other spin-off movies will emerge from the X-franchise. But first, the Wolverine standalone movie.

So, was the movie any good? Did it live up to all the hype? Let’s just say that, given the chance, I would have watched the version that was circulating on the internet, simply because I wouldn’t have needed to pay to watch this movie.

Once again, the obligatory spoiler warning.

I'll be revealing some plot points from the movie so if you haven't watched the movie or don't want to find out what happened, stop reading from here onwards!

It’s not that the movie was bad. It just wasn’t very good.

The script was not strong at all. Even if I could look at the movie from a non-fanboy’s perspective, the script was still pretty weak in places. There was quite a lot of action and some good action sequences, and quite a bit of dialogue that fleshed out the character and his supporting cast. But it seemed like the action and drama bits were just jammed together in a random mishmash and out came a script.

No doubting that this movie will do well at the box office regardless; it’s Wolverine, played by Hugh Jackman after all! But surely it will also be one of those forgettable comic book movies. Certainly not a classic like X2, Spider-man 2 or Batman Begins; more in the vein of The Punisher and Daredevil and, dare I say it, Ang Lee’s Hulk. Ok, not quite as bad as Ang Lee’s Hulk.

As usual, I’ll review the good and the bad parts of the movie, in my opinion. First, the good.

Casting
The casting of characters was exactly like the recent Watchmen movie: spot on!

In recent comic book movies, they have fantastic eclectic casts where the actors chosen seem to embody the very best of the character, from looks, to portrayal of that character to all the little fine nuances that one would come to expect of that character.

We’ve seen that in Watchmen, the two latest Batman movies, Iron Man, and now X-Men Origins: Wolverine. A lot of thought was put into choosing the perfect actors to play the characters. A pat on the back for the casting crew!

Which leads directly to:

Deadpool
My favourite part of the movie is seeing Ryan Reynolds bring my favourite Marvel character to life on the big screen. What an inspired choice in choosing Reynolds, who has a knack for playing smart-alecky characters in his movies, to play the merc-with-a-mouth!

Sure, we see Wade Wilson BEFORE he’s hideously scarred due to his cancer, but in the short five minutes where he’s running off his mouth, he steals the show. It’s unfortunate that Deadpool doesn’t break the fourth wall as he so usually does in his comics, but hey...this IS his first big screen outing after all.

Deadpool seems even more of a badass than Wolverine is in this movie. Reynolds shows there are two sides to this character: the lippy merc who lives a carefree life and shows no fear, and the stone-cold psychotic killer. Bravo!

The major disappointment is that Deadpool is pretty much a bit player in the movie...well, the Deadpool at the start of the movie anyway, more on that later. I would have loved to see more of my favourite Marvel character in action on the big screen. Hell, just having him chat up a storm for half an hour without any other sort of action sequences and I would have been happy!

Gambit
Finally we see Gambit in a movie! Where was he in the other three movies? Ok, sure, it wouldn’t make sense for him to be in the first movie. Perhaps it would have been premature for him to be in X2. But in X3 where there are so many cameos, they couldn’t squeeze Gambit in?

The wait for Gambit to finally appear on the big screen pays handsome dividends though. Taylor Kitsch is the perfect choice to play the raging Cajun. He certainly looks very much the part; suave, charming, but physically nimble and agile and ready to rumble at the drop of a hat.

Perhaps Kitsch’s southern Cajun drawl isn’t great, but he does try and he more than makes up for it by oozing “cool”. As expected, we first see Gambit at a poker table, showing off his card skills and tricks to the ladies (and other gamblers).

We see Gambit’s famed agility and fighting skills with his quarterstaff in a brief fight scene with Wolverine. And we also see his kinetic-charge powers in action, though his cards don’t explode like they do in the comics, but it makes perfect sense in the movie...the powers are kinetic based, not explosions anyway!

The one disappointment here, like Deadpool, is that Gambit doesn’t have a lot of screen time and you could just about get any other mutant-of-the-week and throw him in the plot in place of Gambit’s character. We also don’t see enough of Gambit’s kinetic-charge powers; the only things he throws during the movie are his playing cards, albeit a very cool sequence when we see him do that.

Sabretooth
Liev Schreiber is great in anything he’s in, movie or TV program, and there’s no exception here. Just like Jackman is Wolverine, Schreiber IS Sabretooth! Though we never hear him being called that at all in the entire movie: he’s just known simply as Victor.

Schreiber bulked up for this role and he is an imposing and fearful figure. His Victor Creed has a fearsome snarl and he fights dirty. Victor has no compassion for human life at all and his relationship with his brother, Wolverine, is tenuous at best. Wolverine has to keep restraining Victor from giving into his blood lust and becoming the efficient killing machine that he is.

Thank goodness for Schreiber’s performance as he made me forget the atrocity that was Sabretooth in the first movie, played by the very stiff former pro wrestler Tyler Mane!

Great cameos
Such as the one from Professor Charles Xavier at the end of the movie, though he looks very feminine and looks like he’s wearing tons of make-up!

Professor X travels in his helicopter and he rescues the mutants captured by William Stryker at the end of the movie, thus heralding the birth of his X-Men with his first encounter with Cyclops. And what’s really awesome is that THIS Professor X still has the use of his legs and isn’t confined to a wheelchair!

Scott Summers and Emma Frost also make nice cameos in the movie. Scott has a “larger” role when he’s captured by Sabretooth and Stryker and we see him use his destructive optic blasts for the first time. We then see his qualities as the future X-Men leader when he guides his fellow captive mutants out of the Weapon Plus facility, though with a lot of help from Charles Xavier talking to him telepathically.

Emma Frost aka the White Queen also has a nice cameo where we see her changing her skin to diamond when the captive mutants are trying to escape. Wish they had chosen a more bimbo-blondish character to portray Emma Frost though as this one doesn’t look like her at all...perhaps my only gripe with the casting of the characters in this movie.

It was a really nice touch having Scott and Emma interact with each other as they try to escape. After all, these two form a relationship in the comics after Jean Grey dies for the umpteenth time. The two future leaders of the next generation of the X-Men, interacting with each other and then coming into contact with the X-Men’s founder, Professor X! Fanboy geekgasm all around.

Fred Dukes as the Blob...all I can say is HAHAHAHAHAHAHHA!

A nod to Wolverine’s comic book origins
In this case, I’m referring to the 2001 Origin mini-series by Paul Jenkins and Andy Kubert, and the Weapon X saga by Barry Windsor-Smith that was featured in Marvel Comics Presents back in 1991.

We get to see Wolvie pop his bone claws for the very first time! And we also see the adamantium bonding process that made Wolvie pretty much indestructible.

We also see Team X in action for the very first time, which is a nice nod to the comics once again. The comic version only consisted of Wolverine, Sabretooth and Maverick (who is actually Agent Zero in the movie), but it makes sense for more characters to be part of the movie team.

William Stryker is a badass!

While I would have loved seeing Brian Cox reprise his role from X2, Danny Huston does a great job portraying a younger Stryker. This Stryker is a master manipulator, playing both sides and also playing his former Team X members against each other.

His evil machinations nearly come to fruition and it's revealed why he hates the mutant population so much, but is not above actually using them for his own sinister purposes. Not many people would come face to face with Wolvie and Sabretooth and just stare them down without blinking.

The opening sequence
After the origin, we see Victor and Logan fight together in the major American wars: the Civil War, World Wars I and II and the Vietnam war. These two have built a bond since they escaped from the Howlett household together in the 19th century and we see how their camaraderie changes oh-so-slightly, with Sabretooth slowly giving into his bloodlust and Wolvie trying to pull his brother away from the dark side.

Australian actor “cameos”
Two that I noticed: Asher Keddie, who plays a doctor assisting William Stryker with his Weapon Plus experiments, and Peter O’Brien who plays John Howlett, Wolverine’s supposed father.

Both actors were familiar to me because they are both in the Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities TV series that is currently showing on Australian free-to-air TV. Keddie plays the role of Victorian police officer Liz Cruickshank while O’Brien plays Sydney underworld figure, George Freeman.

I’m sure there were more Aussie actors in the movie since the movie was filmed in NSW!

Unfortunately, there was also a whole heap of bad. As mentioned earlier in this review, the script wasn't very strong and it wasn't a good mix of action sequences and character-building sequences at all. But I won't critique the plot too much, except for when it really gets my goat.

The main villain, Weapon XI

The "X" for Weapon X is the roman numeral for the number ten, as William Stryker so eloquently puts (a nice nod to Grant Morrison's "Weapon Plus" storyline from the New X-Men comics in the 00s) and so Weapon XI is actually Weapon 11.

Since the adamantium bonding experiment on Wolverine was a success, Stryker decides to experiment once more with the next incarnation of the Weapon Plus program and creates Weapon XI, who has a fusion of powers from some of the mutants that was captured by Stryker. Paper thin plot here!

Anyway, what really annoys me is the fact that Deadpool is Weapon XI! What the?!

There's a really nice scene where Stryker explains how Deadpool got his name, but it goes downhill from there. Basically Weapon XI/Deadpool has the teleporting powers of Wraith, the optic blasts of Cyclops, the healing powers of Sabretooth, and his twin katanas, now coated with adamantium, have been embedded into his arms a la Wolverine's claws. Weapon XI is a monster who has his lips sewn shut so we don't get the traditional Deadpool banter.

I don't like this final protagonist at all. Surely we didn't need a villain like this Frankenstein creature! Plus, it sort of kills off any hope of a Deadpool standalone movie. Now that Deadpool has all these extra powers and is seemingly killed at the end of the movie, even if he's brought back, how does one "remove" these powers? Boooooo...what were you thinking, scriptwriters!

Sabretooth wussing out

I think Sabretooth should have been Wolvie's final adversary. But he acts too much like a big brother for the entire movie; he's looking out for Logan, then he has this intense hatred for him (sibling rivalry perhaps!), then he wusses out and refuses to deliver the killing blow. And right at the end, he walks away (or rather, jumps away) without engaging Wolvie in a final fight!

These two are eternal enemies. While I don't like the fact that they are blood brothers in the movie (I think they are half brothers in the comics), it's certainly something that works for the movie. But this Sabretooth is a wuss when it comes to fighting Wolvie! Sure, he gets in a few good licks, but then becomes all chummy and acts like a proper big brother should; protecting his little brother. Yuck.

Maverick/Agent Zero

The David North character in the movie, Agent Zero, is nothing like the character in the comics. Which is alright...but surely you would have thought that they would at the very least pay some homage to the original character, who was a hero, not a villain.

Agent Zero is a sharpshooting mercernary in the movie and his powers seem to be deadeye-dick accuracy a la Bullseye from the Daredevil comics and movie and increased speed and agility. So not like the Maverick from the comics who has the power to absorb kinetic energy generated by impact without any harm to himself.
Sure, this is a power that's kinda hard to "show off" in the movie without it coming off as him being some sort of invulnerable mutant. But really, if they wanted a character to be an evil protagonist who's loyal to Styker, surely they could have chosen other mutants from Marvel's pantheon of characters.

Wolverine's more "human" moments

Ugh. I wanted to see Wolvie unleashing his berserker rage (which we don't really get to see at all in the movie), not his tender, touching side!

I understand that they needed to build up between Logan and Silver Fox so that when she is "killed", he will seek his revenge on Sabretooth. But there was no necessity for that whole "moon" story in that intimate scene between the two. Lynn Collins as Silver Fox though...roooowr! What a hottie.

And who really wants to see Wolvie working as a lumberjack? Yeah, that builds up the backstory, but the lumberjack job scenes took too long. I don't really want to see or know about Wolvie interacting with his job buddies making fun of him for kissing Silver Fox in full view of them!

There's also a nice tender "Ma and Pa Kent" moment when Wolvie, freshly escaped from the Weapon Plus facility, comes across this elderly couple who helps him get back on his feet. Yeah, if I wanted to watch Wolvie being mollycoddled by two old folks, I'd go watch old episodes of Smallville. Thankfully, "Ma and Pa Kent" are killed after taking up about 15 minutes of screen time.

While the boxing match between Logan and the Blob was extremely funny, it made no sense whatsoever. Why would Logan even willingly take part in a boxing match against the Blob so that he can win and extract information from Fred Dukes? Wouldn't he just pop his claws and threaten the hell out of the Blob until he reveals that secret information?

So so out of character. Speaking of which...

Wolverine acting out of character

Logan goes to fight Stryker and Sabretooth and after a simple conversation where they discuss Silver Fox's staged death and how everything was just meant to get Wolvie to volunteer for the adamantium process, Wolvie decides to walk away without a fight?

What the?! Sure, he comes back after he hears Silver Fox's screams where Sabretooth is about to gut her, but the fact that he walks away in the first place just left a really bad taste in my mouth.

The fact that they would just stand around to have a conversation is just plain silly as well. Oh, I've come here to kill you for ruining my life but I'll just stand here and listen to you reveal your evil master plan first and then decide not to kill you anyway because I've changed my mind. Ugh.

No Magneto!

Just a small nitpick, but I think they've missed out on a great opportunity to introduce the next X-Men Origins flick based on Magneto.

It would have been so apt and perfect if there was a Magneto cameo, notable in the scene where Professor X shows up to rescue the other mutants. Magneto and Professor X were friends after all, and since Professor X still has the use of his legs in this movie, that means that they haven't had their falling out yet and Magnus hasn't yet crippled Charles intentionally.

Ah well.

The two extra scenes during and after the end credits

I wish they had done more with these extra scenes. I remembering watching an interview with Hugh Jackman where he urges the audience to stay until the credits have ended because fans would be treated to more footage. So here I thought it was going to be GOOD footage.

Not long after the credits have started rolling, we see the Army picking up William Stryker, wanted for murder. Pfah, how boring. Why didn't you show perhaps the first generation of mutants taught by Professor X instead? Or what happens to Gambit or Sabretooth after the movie? Or even Wolvie making the trek up to Canada up to the point where we first see him in the first X-Men movie fighting in a cage match?

The last scene showed Wolvie in Japan, drinking to try and remember his life as his memories were scrambled after being shot in the head twice with adamantium bullets by Stryker.

I would certainly have preferred to see that same scene in a bar where Wolvie is drinking, but not in Japan, rather, when he's in the Canadian bar and Rogue approaches him for the first time. It would have been a perfect lead-in to the X-Men movie.

But they showed this instead. Wolvie has a huge backstory in the comics based in Japan...maybe this is a lead-in to a possible Origins sequel for him? Here's hoping!

All in all, a good movie, but not great. Certainly not one of my favourites, though I'd be happy to keep watching footage of Deadpool!

Not quite sure if they'll do a Deadpool movie now, with the events of this movie transpiring the way it has. I'll be happy if they still do it though, and I'll settle for a Gambit standalone movie as well.

And a Liev Schreiber standalone Sabretooth movie would be the icing on the cake.

Watchmen Easter Eggs

2009-03-27T20:02:00.001+11:00

I spent quite a bit of time trying to find the Easter eggs crammed into the Watchmen movie...heck, I try and do that for all the comic book movies I watched!

While I got some of the more obvious ones like references to The Black Freighter comic book that is an integral part of the graphic novel, the Village People appearing at the front of Studio 54, just behind Ozymandias, and the Comedian being responsible for Kennedy's assassination, there was quite a lot of stuff that I missed.

Here are two sites that highlight some of the Easter eggs from the Watchmen movie that you might have missed.

The first one is absolutely brilliant, with stills from the movie and picture comparisons!

Easter Eggs (And Missing Parts) In Watchmen's Titles

The second one is more of just a regular article, but it's still pretty good:

'Watchmen' Easter Eggs: Our Favorite Blink-And-You'll-Miss-'Em Moments

Enjoy!

Review: Watchmen: The Movie

2009-03-08T22:47:00.002+11:00

So we ended up watching the big screen adaptation of Watchmen yesterday at the cinema. As stated in the previous blog entry, I was extremely excited to see Alan Moore’s seminal and memorable characters make the jump from the four-colour medium of comics to the big screen.

Expectations, not just from me, but from the comic book community, were undoubtedly huge. Alan Moore once called Watchmen “unfilmable”. Could Zack Snyder, the director who made Frank Miller’s “300” a critical and commercial success, defy the odds once again by making Watchmen THE most acclaimed comic book movie of all-time, just like the graphic novel was heralded as the “Citizen Kane” of comic books?

Spoiler warning: From this point on, I will be reviewing the movie and will be examining major plot points, discussing minute details of the comic and the movie as well as revealing the twists. If you haven’t yet read the Watchmen graphic novel or watched the movie and don’t want it spoiled for you, STOP READING THIS BLOG ENTRY NOW.

Still reading? Good. Let’s talk about the Watchmen movie then.

I came out of the cinema feeling pretty shallow and empty. Watchmen was a good 160 minutes including the credits, making it probably the longest comic book movie, in terms of movie screening length, ever made.

Of course, it is naïve to begin to think that Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ magnum opus could be squeezed into a 2 hour movie, the average length of modern comic book movies. But the Watchmen movie seemed to go on an extra 30 minutes too long, even though I acknowledge that any shorter and you’d lose major plot points from the graphic novel.

It’s not that I didn’t like the movie. I did, for most parts. But the last third of the movie was a let-down, and it seemed to be dragging on needlessly. Was this because the end of the movie was poorly scripted? Was it because they had rushed the big reveal, the big ending, which was significantly changed from the graphic novel?

Or was it because the build-up towards the climax of the movie was extremely fantastic that when it was revealed that Adrian Veidt was the villain, the way the reveals came about just utterly destroyed what had come before?

I’m not quite sure. As I said, I was excited for most of the movie, especially the first half, but the final third of the movie just spoiled it for me, and since the last part of the movie is usually the one that you remember a movie for, it kind of soured the entire movie for me.

Maybe my expectations were too high, but as I said, by and large, my expectations were met for most of the movie. I think it was very true to the graphic novel for most parts, up until perhaps the scene where Rorschach was freed from Sing Sing and then it all went downhill from there.

But I’m being too general. Let’s examine parts of the movie that I liked and parts that I didn’t like.

The opening sequence was breathtaking. This was where it was obvious that a movie could do so much to portray the Comedian’s death than the graphic novel could. The graphic novel starts with the Comedian having already been killed by being beaten up and thrown out of his room of a very very tall building.

In the movie, we see the Comedian settling down to watch a TV program, which describes the escalation of potential nuclear war between America and the USSR. All of a sudden, someone breaks into his room and for the next three minutes, we see the vicious one-sided fight between the Comedian, an aging 67 year old man, and his assailant who not only brutally assaults the Comedian, but makes it look oh so easy.

While the Comedian is being beaten to a pulp, we’re being treated to Nat King Cole’s “Unforgettable” playing on the TV in the background, from the advertisement of Adrian Veidt’s Nostalgia perfume. A sign of foreshadowing perhaps? Of course, the Nostalgia ad being part of Veidt Enterprises is never really mentioned, though that’s a neat Easter egg for those who had read the novel. Perhaps a bit camp, fighting to that background music but I’m sure it was deliberately filmed that way.

This fight sequence is never shown in great detail in the graphic novel, being just a simple flashback sequence of the Comedian getting his butt kicked, so it’s refreshing to see the fight in all its gory detail. The Comedian gets thrown through the plate glass windows of his apartment and plunges to his death…cue the opening title credits sequence!

This opening credits sequence was also brilliant, with a fantastic song playing in the background. We are introduced to the Minutemen of the 30s/40s, showing how they got together as a superteam and nearly each members’ fall from grace. Alan Moore fleshes out almost all of the Minutemen’s backstory in the graphic novel via “extra features” outside the main story, such as Hollis Mason’s (the original Nite Owl) biography, Under the Hood, and of course, it’s impossible to go through each individual character’s backstory in the movie, so the opening sequence does a great job of quickly showing, in 10 second segments, what happened to each character.

After the introduction of the original Nite Owl beating up a bank robber, we see the Silk Spectre being introduced to the press, with the policemen standing on either side of her trying to glance down to catch a glimpse of her boobs. We then see the formation of the Minutemen and the reveal that Silhouette is a lesbian by snogging a nurse after Japan surrenders at the close of World War 2.

We then see the death of Dollar Bill when he gets shot after getting his cape caught in a revolving door. We also see Mothman being committed to an asylum. Silhouette and her lover have been murdered in a hotel room with the words “Lesbian whores” scrawled on the wall. The Minutemen’s fall from grace lead to the formation of the second generation of heroes including the main protagonists in the movie. In the graphic novel, this second generation of heroes was known as the Crimebusters, though we learn later on during the movie that they called themselves “Watchmen”.

The next few segments in the opening credits sequence show how each Watchman is ensconced in real life events happening in America in the 60s and 70s. John F Kennedy shakes hands with Dr Manhattan on the lawn for the White House. In the next segment, we see John F Kennedy’s head snap back and then forwards in that famous assassination. The camera pans to the right where we see the Comedian was the assassin! Neil Armstrong lands on the moon and turns around, only for us to see the reflection of the Dr Manhattan already standing on the moon.

Andy Warhol is in an art gallery, unveiling his latest art of Nite Owl II, while Ozymandias is posing for photographs outside Studio 54; just standing behind Ozymandias is the Village People! We are also introduced to Rorschach who doesn’t appear on-screen, but has left behind his calling card after tying two criminals to a lightpost.

The 70s sequence shows the hippie movement where a hippie girl puts a flower in the barrel of a gun that’s pointed directly at her; soon, all of the hippies get shot. President Nixon gets re-elected for a third term, changing the course of history in the Watchmen world, and we also see the amassing of nuclear arsenals by Fidel Castro and his Russian counterpart.

It is a superb credit sequence that sets the tone for what has passed before in the Watchmen world. It does a great job considering there is so much happening in the graphic novel and to be able to distil the main plot points and cram it into a brilliant and stunning visual opening sequence is just magnificent.

The main story starts off exactly the same way the comic book does, focusing in on the smiley face pin that the Comedian wears. The camera pulls back upwards towards the window of the Comedian’s apartment where Detective Fine and his partner wonder who would want to kill a 67 year old man.

What I really love about the first half of the movie is that scenes are filmed and duplicated almost exactly the way they were illustrated in the comics. From Rorschach’s breaking into Nite Owl’s apartment and then storming out; to the flashback sequences showing each individual character’s involvement with the Comedian; to the retelling of Dr Manhattan’s past; to Rorschach’s capture and his subsequent rescue by Nite Owl and Silk Spectre II…the scenes from the graphic novel are lovingly and carefully reproduced in the movie. Way too many scenes to go through individually.

Which leads directly into the dialogue. While it’s impossible to expect all the dialogue from the graphic novel to be replicated in the movie, the script does take the most memorable lines from the graphic novel and either transposes them directly, or are largely intact, just changing a few words here and there. The most memorable quotes are:

“Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire thread on burst stomach. This city is afraid of me, I have seen its true face. The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their wasists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout ‘Save us!’, and I’ll look down and whisper ‘No’.” – Rorschach’s first line of dialogue from both the movie and graphic novel

“Hurm.” – Rorschach

“You were a better Nite Owl than I ever was.”
“Hollis, we both know that’s bullshit.”
“Hey, watch with the language! This is the left hook that floored Captain Axis, remember?”
- exchange between the original Nite Owl, Hollis Mason, and his successor, Daniel Dreiberg

“An ordinary burglar? Kill the Comedian? Ridiculous.” – Rorschach

“Um. Don’t you think that’s maybe a little paranoid?”
“That’s what they’re saying about me now? That I’m paranoid”
- exchange between Nite Owl and Rorschach

“Yes. I remember. Used to come here often. Back when we were partners.”
“Yeah, those were great times, Rorschach. Whatever happened to them?”
“You quit.”
- exchange between Rorschach and Nite Owl

“Meeting with Dreiberg left bad taste in mouth. A flabby failure who sits whimpering in his basement. Why are so few of us left active, health, and without personality disorders? Only two names remaining on my list. Both share private quarters at Rockefeller Military Research Centre. I shall go to them. I shall go and tell the indestructible man that someone plans to murder him.” – Rorschach

And all that is just from the first issue! Rorschach does have all the best and most quotable lines. I can just see the entire movie having heaps of quotable lines, just like in Army of Darkness.

There are too many memorable lines of dialogue in the movie that are taken straight out from the graphic novel, but others include the Pagliacci joke (which no one seemed to get in the movie, I was the only one laughing!), Rorschach’s exchange with Big Figure in Sing Sing prison, Rorschach’s memorable “I’m not locked up in here with you, you’re locked up in here with me!” line, the “The superman exists, and he’s American” line, Dr Manhattan’s the miracle of turning oxygen into gold line, and Rorschach’s “Never compromise, not even in the face or Armageddon” line.

There are plenty of Easter eggs throughout the movie that probably get lost on all those who haven’t read the novel before. When meeting Adrian Veidt for the first time, we see the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in the background, leaving no doubt that while this is an alternate reality from the one we know, the characters are all in New York. We see Mason’s auto repair shop, the Gunga Diner, the offices of the New Frontiersman, a right wing publication that Rorschach picks up daily.

Part of the fun of the movie, for me at least, was trying to spot as many Easter eggs as possible, things that were strictly in the background of the movie, but made up the big picture in the graphic novel. Graffiti of “Who Watches the Watchmen?” on walls, cameos of the newsvendor, the kid who sits at the newsstand reading the comic book, “The Black Freighter”, the lesbian taxi driver Joey, and a poster of “The Black Freighter” on the newsstand. They even reproduce the “War?” headline on the front page of a newspaper! I think I’m going to have to get a copy of the DVD when it’s released and play each scene back slowly to see if I can catch all the Easter eggs!

We even hear Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries”, which is referenced in Hollis Mason’s Under the Hood, when there is this flashback sequence of Dr Manhattan intervening in the Vietnam War. When you hear “Ride of the Valkyries” blaring over the speakers and see the imposing 40 foot tall half naked body of Dr Manhattan walking over the fields of Saigon, incinerating the Viet Cong soldiers, one gets a chill of excitement running through one’s body.

Which leads directly to the music; it is an absolutely brilliant and breathtaking soundtrack. The licensed songs fit the scenes perfectly: when Dan Dreiberg and Laurie Juspeczyk meet for dinner, Nena’s “99 Luftballoons” play in the background. When the Comedian gets buried in the cemetery, we hear Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence”. We even hear the extremely cheesy “Hallelujah” when Nite Owl and Silk Spectre II make love for the first time in Nite Owl’s ship, Archie (short for “Archimedes”, Merlin’s pet owl, as Nite Owl tells us himself in a later scene).

I can’t wait for the soundtrack to get released because I’m sure I’ll be getting it!

There’s quite a bit of deliberate campy humour in the movie as well, which fits with the deliberate humour from the graphic novel. When Nite Owl and Rorschach ask when Ozymandias plans to execute his evil “mad scientist” plans, Ozymandias remarks that he’s not some “comic book villain” and he did it 35 minutes ago (in the novel Ozzy remarks that he’s not a “republic serial villain” instead). When Nite Owl and Silk Spectre II spring Rorschach from prison, Rorschach remarks that he needs to first use the men’s bathroom before they can leave (though of course, Rorschach is trying to get his hands on Little Figure).

We also see the awkwardness when Dan and Laurie try having sex for the first time, with Dan not being able to…uhm…perform. Actually, that is probably a negative of the movie because Dan and Laurie have this really weird relationship in the graphic novel where it’s a balance between Dan’s impotence and Laurie’s fetishes. It’s never really dealt with in the movie at all, making very scant reference to Dan’s impotence.

When Dan and Laurie finally do have sex in Archie, when close to…uh…finishing…Laurie accidentally hits the flamethrower button and a large burst of flames shoot out from Archie’s…uh…mouth. A sexual innuendo if there ever was one! These moments of campness make it a bit hard to interpret the movie. From the graphic novel, we know that it’s deliberate, but it doesn’t really translate well onto screen. For such a dark movie, there sure must have been a few movie-goers thinking to themselves, “What the hell? Why is there an attempt of humour here?”

There are many cameos in the movie from famous figures in history to show the era which the movie takes place in. The aforementioned cameos in the opening credits title sequence of John F Kennedy, Neil Armstrong (though one doesn’t see his face behind his spacesuit helmet), Andy Warhol, the Village People, Fidel Castro, and I believe even Mick Jagger, who I didn’t catch but who’s name is in the final credits!

There are also cameos in the movie itself to show that it’s 1985, with people such as Lee Iacocca and Ted Koppel making an appearance. Of course, Richard Nixon plays an important role in the movie as the President of the United States. “Tricky Dick” as Rorschach calls him, has the unenviable task of deciding whether to empty out America’s nuclear arsenal in a pre-emptive strike against the Russians. While the actor playing Richard Nixon in the movie does look and sound like the real Nixon, it’s just a shame that they couldn’t get Frank Langella, who played the disgraced President in the Oscar nominated “Frost/Nixon” to reprise his role! That would have been icing on the cake.

I’ve been avoiding this topic for a while, but let’s get to the casting of the actors. While there are no real big-name or A-level celebrities among the actors chosen to play the roles of the various Watchmen, the casting was absolutely spot on…whoever did the casting needs a huge pay rise for choosing the best actors to reprise their respective roles in the movie!

Billy Crudup is probably the most well known actor out of the main cast of actors and he does a fine job of playing the emotionless Dr Manhattan. One does wonder whether it is Crudup’s “member” we see in those scenes where Dr Manhattan is completely nude. Crudup’s Dr Manhattan is unnervingly devoid of any sentiment and plays the part perfectly…you will believe that a god can walk this earth!

The casting of Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach is a masterpiece. It will be an utter shock to me if I ever hear that anyone who’s watched the movie isn’t convinced or blown away by Haley’s performance. Rorschach is a misfit, an outcast and a sociopath and Haley delivers Rorschach’s psychotic lines as if he believes every single word that he says.

While Haley is brilliant with the mask on, his performance is out of this world when the mask comes off. From the little changes of facial expression to his snarling voice when he threatens his fellow inmates, this is one character you never EVER want to get on the wrong side of.

While on the topic of psychopaths, I was a bit disappointed when I found out Bruce Campbell wasn’t chosen as the Comedian (even though he was never in the running! I’m just a big Bruce Campbell fan), Jeffrey Dean Morgan played the part with all guns a-blazing. Morgan is utterly believable as a grade A asshole who has no sympathy for his fellow man and takes great pleasure in causing as much wanton destruction as humanly possible. He shows a disdain for women and loves the fact that he can cause as much carnage as he wants…and no one can lift a finger to do anything about it because he’s being paid by the government to do so! It’s just a shame that the Comedian has limited screen time, just like in the graphic novel.

Patrick Wilson, when wearing those goofy plastic spectacles, is a dead ringer for Dan Dreiberg. He is every bit as insecure as the character he plays and always second guesses himself, not knowing whether what he’s doing is the right thing to do. All of Wilson’s best scenes are when he’s playing Dreiberg and out of the costume; when he’s playing the part of this bumbling fool who doesn’t know how to reveal his feelings for Laurie Juspeczyk.

Matthew Goode is sparkling as villain Ozymandias, who is cocky, self assured is completely convinced that everything he does, all his acts of evil, is for the good of mankind. There is an evilness lurking behind the façade of his good looks and you truly believe that the smartest man on the earth could kill you with little effort if he put his mind to it.

Not quite sure what to think of Malin Akerman, who does a great job of playing Silk Spectre II, but seems to be relegated to a minor role behind all the testosterone-laden male protagonists. While she does play a major role in the graphic novel, she seems to play a bit part in the movie, with her greatest contribution (other than the gratuitous sex scenes with Dan and Dr Manhattan) convincing Dr Manhattan to save the world…by simply crying. She fits her spandex/latex costume really well though; it must be hard to move around in that costume, let alone do all those fighting scenes in it!

My favourite characters in the movie are, in this order, Rorschach, Dan Dreiberg (not Nite Owl, but his alter ego) and the Comedian. Pretty much exactly like the graphic novel!

Those are the good bits out of the way, unfortunately, like I said at the start of this review, a long long time ago, the good bits aren’t enough to save the movie, just the last third of the movie made it such that this movie will NOT be the most acclaimed comic book movie of all time.

The worst part of the movie in my opinion is the different ending from the graphic novel. In Watchmen, Ozymandias engineers the death of millions of people to save billions from nuclear holocaust. While this is the same in the movie, there is one single, major difference.

In the comic book, Ozymandias gets a team of people to DNA-engineer a lifeform, designed to look like an alien, which is teleported to the heart of New York City. The alien self destructs and kills millions, with the psychic resonations killing millions more, forcing the Americans and Russians, already on the brink of engaging in nuclear war, to declare an alliance against the would-be alien invaders, resulting in world peace.

In the movie, Ozymandias and Dr Manhattan work on solving the world’s energy crisis where Dr Manhattan inadvertently creates energy “modules” that are based on his own powers and sends them to Ozymandias’ Antartica base, Karnak, so that Ozzy’s scientists can research and explore these modules in greater detail.

Ozymandias teleports these modules to major cities across the world like Los Angeles, London, Beijing and of course, New York City, and triggers a self-destruct mechanism which kills millions caught up in the blast. As these modules were based on Dr Manhattan’s powers, it is made to look that Dr Manhattan has declared war on the world.

If you take the movie ending and dissect it, it is a sound and plausible alternative from the graphic novel ending. After all, it achieves the same ends where something catastrophic happens that forces the Americans and Russians to call for a ceasefire resulting in world peace. I’m not convinced though.

To have pretty much the entire movie follow the events in the graphic novel and then change the ending completely is just…sacrilege. Perhaps I’m just an ornery comic book fan who wants stuff to be EXACTLY the way it is in the graphic novel.

I acknowledge that Alan Moore’s original idea of having that alien lifeform ending is a bit kitsch and would be really difficult to incorporate into the movie. After all, there was this whole backstory in the graphic novel of a whole team of people (psychics, artists, writers, etc) being relocated to a deserted island who had a hand in the creation of the alien lifeform. This involved writer Max Shea’s pirate comic “The Black Freighter” and there were many panels in the comic devoted to that…of course, that had to be abandoned from the movie, so it made more sense to have a completely different ending since one couldn’t explore that same backstory in the movie without adding minutes to the movie.

But I would still have loved to see it so that it remained true to the graphic novel. Why stay 90% true to the graphic novel but have 10% completely different? I wonder what Alan Moore would say when he finds out that his most seminal work has been altered. He already hates Hollywood but this would cause him to hate it even more I’m sure.

That last third of the movie was a real let down as well, after the first part was so true and faithful and built everything up. But like a house of cards, all it takes is for one badly placed card and everything falls apart.

The movie sort of went downhill after Rorschach was freed from Sing Sing. The next few scenes all went by very quickly and it seemed as if the movie was “forced” to end quickly. Laurie’s time with Dr Manhattan on Mars was fairly short, though I suppose I don’t think the audience could have sat around for TOO long while Dr Manhattan marvelled at Olympus Mons or Valles Marineris. Even the big reveal by Ozymandias seemed…campy.

The reveal of Ozymandias’ plot just went on too quickly…I only know what was going on because I had read the graphic novel! I can just imagine how head-spinning it would be for anyone who hadn’t read the source material, because it just went very quickly from Ozzy’s killing of the Comedian, to his plot to remove Dr Manhattan from the playing field, to the framing of Rorschach and to the attack on his persona which was faked to throw Rorschach off his real scheme.

There’s nothing really specific, other than the changed ending, that I would attest to the last third of the movie spoiling it for me. I just can’t put a finger on what went wrong…it’s just a combination of different things that happened that sort of soured the movie for me. I will fondly remember the movie for the first two-thirds, but not the last.

Though I’m sure a lot of people, especially those who had never read the source material, would disagree with me, I found there was too many unnecessary things that were “highlighted” in the movie. There was too much unnecessary violence, too much unnecessary nudity and the sex scenes went on too long!

I full expected to see nudity in the movie, especially full frontal nudity of Dr Manhattan since it was certainly brought to the forefront in the graphic novel. In fact, when we first see Dr Manhattan’s “member” in the movie, there was a loud gasp among viewers in the audience. For shock value, that was unbelievable. But then they showed it over and over and over again to the point where there was no real reason why they were exposing Dr Manhattan’s member, it just seemed extremely unnecessary and gratuitous.

Speaking of gratuitous, did we really need to see an extended sex scene between Dan and Laurie with “Hallelujah” playing in the background? Sure, Malin Akerman has a nice body and I suppose they wanted that whole sexual innuendo thing of Archie spewing out fire, but I personally feel like there was no necessity to drag it out that long.

These guys are superheroes, yes, but apart from Rorschach, who is a sociopath who breaks people’s fingers and throw them down elevator shafts, and the Comedian, who kills for fun, none of the other characters in the graphic novel I would classify as vigilantes who go around hurting people unnecessarily.

And yet we see Dr Manhattan disintegrate a whole bunch of crooks in a bar (we sort of see that same scene in the graphic novel, but nowhere close to being as violent or gruesome!) and their entrails hang off from off the ceiling. We also see Dr Manhattan obliterating the Viet Cong with “Ride of the Valkyries” playing in the background, but I guess that’s war…plus it added some campy humour to that scene!

In the very first scene we see Dan and Laurie take on a bunch of muggers, Dan breaks a mugger’s arm…with the bone piercing the skin and blood spurting forth. Laurie then kicks a mugger in the shin, breaking it too with his lower leg sticking out the wrong way! Really, is there any necessity to show this at all? Yes, some people find it cool, but what is the purpose of showing those ultra violent scenes? Dan and Laurie aren’t vigilantes! They aren’t sociopaths!

We also see Rorschach use a chopper to cleave a child murderer’s head in half…you could sense that the audience was cringing every time Rorschach pulled the chopper from out of the murderer’s head and “threw” it back in again. And the scene where Larry is blocking the entrance to Rorschach’s cell; Big Figure orders his other goon, Michael, to cut off Larry’s arms. Michael does so…and we literally see Larry’s arms being cut off with an electric saw. Campy and funny, yes, but once again, unnecessary violence we don’t really need to see.

The reveal of the Comedian as Laurie’s father was an almost non-entity as well! In the comic, the reveal is built up slowly and gradually with all the clues being there for us to put everything together on our own. When it came to the final reveal, readers were left to work it out themselves and they would know exactly that the Comedian sired Laurie even before it was actually put in print. But in the movie, this was relegated to perhaps two or three scenes where Laurie’s mother, the original Silk Spectre, was arguing with her husband, Laurence Schexnayder, about the Comedian.

The audience doesn’t get a chance to put the clues together as there is a mention of the Comedian raping Silk Spectre I and about them having sex just the one time…and then Dr Manhattan reveals that the Comedian is Laurie’s real father. But the reveal has no impact whatsoever…it’s as if they’ve just decided to lampoon the reveal of Darth Vader’s fatherhood of Luke Skywalker in the Empire Strikes Back!

Of course, in the graphic novel, this reveal has much more significance. We’re shown very early on that Laurie hates the Comedian for his attempted rape on her mother. There is mention of this on one occasion in the movie but it was never brought up again. While the graphic novel showed how much Laurie hated pretty much everything in the superhero community, movie Laurie didn’t have that anger or pathos. So when it’s revealed that the Comedian is Laurie’s father, it just feels flat. I’m sure there would be audience members going: “Really? Who cares? What’s this got to do with the movie?”

Hollis Mason doesn’t die in the movie…in fact, he’s not featured at all apart from the first act of the movie when he’s catching up with Dan for drinks. He dies in the graphic novel, adding that extra level of angst in Dan, going into the final few chapters. Once again, I understand that to cram all this extra detail in the movie would just make it drag on for an extra few hours, so it’s probably good that they didn’t add this in.

I really disliked the fact that the movie script made Janey Slater out to be a villain. She confronts Dr Manhattan at the TV studio in the movie, pulling off a wig to show that she has acquired cancer from him. No sign of her doing this in the graphic novel though. It is also revealed in the movie that it was Janey Slater who hired Victor Chess, the man who made the attempt on the life of Adrian Veidt. Even though Adrian was the ultimate orchestrator, it painted Janey in the light of a villain, when she is anything but. Yes, Janey Slater was bitter in the graphic novel, but not to the point where she wanted to take revenge on Dr Manhattan, as portrayed in the movie.

There are some issues in the graphic novel that either don’t feature in the movie or just can’t be replicated on the big screen…remember Alan Moore saying that the comic was inherently “unfilmable”? There were some scenes of the “Fearful Symmetry” chapter where we see the neon lights of a seedy motel reflected in a puddle, but that’s about all we got in the movie, referencing the aforementioned famous chapter in Watchmen.

There are political nuances in the graphic novel as well as the examination of the super hero genre that wasn’t featured in the movie. The examination/commentary about homosexuality doesn’t make it to the movie either. What was most disappointing though, is there was scant reference to Dan Dreiberg’s impotence and Laurie Juspeczyk’s fetishes and trying to live up to her mother’s expectations.

Ozymandias’ costume is terrible. It looks as if it were taken out of one of Joel Schumacher’s Batman movies! His genetically altered sabertooth tiger, Bubastis, makes a brief appearance in the movie as well, though probably just to appease fans, but it had absolutely no bearing or consequence in the movie at all…they might as well have done without Bubastis!

No Max Shea’s “The Black Freighter” and we because there was only a cameo for the newsvendor, we don’t get to see the funny exchange between him and Rorschach’s doomsayer-with-a-the-world-is-ending picket sign; in the comics, Rorschach tells the newsvendor that the world would definitely be ending that day but also asks the newsvendor to make sure he keeps his regular copy of The New Frontiersman tomorrow.

Speaking of the doomsayer picket sign character, we see him in certain sequences during the movie, but it’s just not obvious that it’s Rorschach at all. Plus, we never really get to see a proper close-up of doomsayer-guy’s face, so when Rorschach’s mask is pulled off in the movie, if you haven’t read the graphic novel, it’s unlikely you’d recognise who that was. We see doomsayer guy’s face often in the graphic novel so when the mask finally comes off Rorschach’s face, we instantly go: “I can’t believe Rorschach is that hobo going around proclaiming that Armageddon is at hand!”

Just a nitpick: when Ozymandias, the Comedian, Dr Manhattan, Nite Owl and Rorschach come together to form their supergroup in the movie (no Captain Metropolis either!), they actually call their group “Watchmen”. The group was never formed in the graphic novel and even when they were discussing the formation of the group, Captain Metropolis suggested that they be called “Crimebusters”.

I guess the movie script went with the group being called “Watchmen” so as to add some continuity in why the movie was called “Watchmen”.

Of course, that isn’t the reason why Alan Moore named the series “Watchmen”.

But I’ll stop here as this has been one unbelievably lengthy review of the movie compared to the source material. It has taken me over three hours to craft this review and if you’ve read the entire review and got to the end, I congratulate you.

I do like the Watchmen movie. I think it has gravitas; it’s not as good as it could have been, but it is faithful to the graphic novel, up to a certain point at least.

I just can’t take away the glaring differences between the graphic novel and the movie’s ending and the omission of some of the material from the graphic novel and plot points that added to the overall story. The movie is good, but it’s not great.

Watchmen is truly the most acclaimed graphic novel in the history of comics and still remains one of my favourite comics of all time. The number of times I’ve read the series from cover to cover! The movie though? Not quite the most acclaimed comic book movie of all time.

However, it did take a few readings of the graphic novel to get most of the nuances and appreciate what a masterpiece it was. Perhaps it’s the same with the movie where you need repeated viewings? Only time will tell on that one.

Watchmen: The greatest graphic novel of all time!

2009-03-07T00:50:00.001+11:00

I re-read the Absolute Watchmen HC graphic novel on Wednesday evening in two sittings; wanted to make sure I remembered even the most minute detail before actually catching the Watchmen movie on the big screen, which was released in cinemas Australia-wide on Thursday.

There's a reason why Watchmen has been called, and is by and large recognised as the greatest and most acclaimed graphic novel in the history of comics: it is just absolutely brilliant. It was a tale certainly way ahead of its time...every single time I read it, I keep discovering something new!

To be honest, the first time I read Watchmen, probably some time in the early 00s, I wasn't that impressed. Sure, it was a good read and it had some fascinating characters and character interactions and a wonderful twist ending (which was already spoiled for me since I'm an avid reader of Wizard magazine and they've referenced Watchmen so many times in the past), but I didn't think it was THAT special.

It took a second read for me to grasp how special and truly brilliant it was. And then a third read. And a fourth...this graphic novel wasn't just exceptional, it wasn't just brilliant; it was simple out of this world and nothing could come close to a story of this magnitude, nothing was even COMPARABLE to this!

All the little nuances and the stuff that Alan Moore crammed into the story...it all somehow added extra layers to the overall story but at the same time contributed to the overall story. You could read each individual chapter and it would mean something. You could take different parts of the story like Max Shea's pirate tale and read it on its own as well and still get something out of it.

And Dave Gibbons' wonderful art. Each panel, so meticulously and beautifully constructed. And all those little hidden Easter eggs in the background, just teasing readers to see if they can catch everything that's happening in the scene, things that would add up to a larger Easter egg that's part of the overall story!

Most stories are straightforward and you get everything in the one read. Not Watchmen. Watchmen was special; it takes multiple reads to grasp and understand the majority of the concepts that Moore has included in this 12 issue maxi-series. The political commentary, the black humour, the sexual innuendos, the environmental commentary; it was all there in those pages, one just needed to see if one could, to coin a Pokemon phrase, "catch 'em all"!

Alas, many have also called Watchmen as the comic that is inherently unfilmable. I certainly can understand that; how can one possibly reproduce a chapter like "Fearful Symmetry" on the big screen? How do you do that without losing the story's essence? A chapter like "Fearful Symmetry" just can't be reproduced on the big screen! Other scenes transferred from the comic medium to the big screen would also lose its meaning...so what would the movie look like then?

From the few trailers I've watched on TV so far, the Watchmen movie looks like it's "glamourising" the action parts of the graphic novel. The characters are larger than life and they all look fantastic on the big screen; I couldn't imagine how stupid the Minutemen would look on screen with their campy costumes, but they don't look half bad at all from the movie stills!

I definitely cannot wait to watch the movie. Expectations are unbelievably high, as one might expect, which could lead to a lot of disappointment if Zack Snyder hasn't done the right thing by the graphic novel. But hey, then again, I guess he could be forgiven; fans expectations are unreasonably high for the movie adaption of the greatest and most acclaimed graphic novel of all-time, the one that they've all said is unfilmable.

Review: Grand Theft Auto IV

2009-01-17T20:33:00.018+11:00

It's about high time I write this review, since I've clocked up so many hours playing the game since just before Christmas! In fact, GTAIV is still the ONLY game I've played on my less-than-one-month-old Xbox360! I'm literally two missions away from completing the game, and I know I really SHOULD complete the game so I can move on to another game...but I don't WANT to complete the game because it is so much fun to play!

Let's get some of the obvious stuff out of the way first. The graphics for GTAIV are far superior to those of previous GTA games...that one's an obvious one, simply because GTAIV was made for the next gen consoles and therefore if the graphics hadn't improved, something was very very wrong somewhere!

And how beautiful the graphics are. This time around, Rockstar created a breathing and living city...Liberty City is based on the real-life New York and it shows. Even though the names of the famous NYC landmarks are changed, there's no way you're not going to recognise the State of Liberty...erm...Happiness, and you'll marvel at the Empire State Building, or whatever it's called in GTAIV.

The city is magnificent to explore and I've found myself often catching a cab during the game and not just jumping straight to the endpoint, but looking around, catching a glimpse of the skyscrapers and buildings in Algonquin, looking at someone getting mugged on the Liberty City streets...everything is so realistic and you really feel as if you're fully immersed in the GTA world!

You play the role of Niko Bellic, fresh off the boat from Eastern Europe, where you saw and experienced some bad things in the war and want a fresh start in the US of A. Niko has heard some amazing things about America from his cousin, Roman, who has boasted that he lives a life of luxury, has a swanky place and has women hanging off each arm.

Of course, Roman is anything BUT the ladykiller he makes himself out to be. He lives in a roach-infested apartment with sleazy posters falling off the wall. Roman runs a taxi service and, just like every other GTA game in existence, you start off doing really small missions like driving people around, doing chores and favours for others while you heathily build up relationships and respect and then move on to the bigger missions.

The one fundamental change in the way GTAIV is played compared to other GTAs before it is that Niko has a cellphone. This cellphone is his portal to his life in Liberty City...he can call up a buddy to go out to eat, drink, catch a show, play pool or some assorted activity. This builds up relationships with his friends and while he only starts off with Roman as a contact, as Niko meets more people, he adds more contacts to his cellphone.

Although it may seem like a waste of time doing mundane stuff like going bowling or playing darts with a non-playable character (NPC), as the saying goes, it's "friends with benefits". Build up a relationship with Roman and instead of driving anywhere, you can call him to send a taxi to ferry you to wherever you want to go instead. Build up strong friendships with other buddies in the game and you can get a car bomb, buy weapons at a much cheaper price than from a gun store and even get a posse to join you on a mission where they will shoot, kill, steal, etc for you.

You also get to arrange dates with various women throughout the game via the cellphone! Once again, it may seem mundane going out on dates, but if you build up a strong relationship, it's "friends with benefits" again...and I'm not referring to THOSE sort of benefits in the bedroom (though that certainly applies too). You can buy clothes cheaper (big whoop dee doo), get an instant health boost or get your wanted level reduced big-time. And yes, if you manage to impress your date when you take her out, you can go up to her apartment for a bit of rumpy pumpy that restores your health to the max too.

Consequently, you will get people calling up your cellphone to organise the next mission. Your cellphone can sometimes be more of a bane than a boon...you could be in the middle of a really important mission when a buddy calls you out to visit a strip club. Do you endanger the completion of your mission or do you shun your friend? Once a friend has been shunned, it's difficult to repair the relationship and you have to work twice as hard to get them to like you as much as before.

There are a staggering number of missions in the game...even if you don't do any of the side quests and choose to ignore your buddies and going out on dates, it could still take you a long while to finish the main storyline! If you totally immerse yourself in the game, you could be playing the game for a long long while. I've spent so much time on the game building relationships and doing most of the side missions...and this is without looking for the unique jumps and hidden packages! I don't need 100% completion to enjoy the game after all!

Speaking of hidden packages, GTAIV's version of hidden packages is an absolute hoot. Hidden packages in previous GTA games in the past have included 99 red balloons (yes, it was seriously meant as a joke) but this one really takes the cake!

You can do absolutely whatever you want to in GTAIV. Feel like stealing a cop car and catching some perps? Go for it. Wanna stir up trouble by randomly beating up gang members on the street and have them all attack you en masse so you can practise your shooting accuracy? If you wanna. Grab a worker of the night and after she's "restored your health", attack her and get back the money you paid her? Errr...that was an option already available in all previous GTAs, wasn't it?

GTAIV is a worthy game in the series. As much as I've loved GTA: Vice City, I feel that GTAIV is definitely the best game in the series I have ever played. Just the scope of the game itself is mind-shattering! I've spent many hours just grabbing an RPG and blowing myself up, just to see how far Niko can fly and how realistic his limp body can crash into buildings and cars. The physics of the game is just unbelievably realistic.

GTAIV has been such an awesome gaming experience. The next GTA game, Chinatown Wars, will be released on the Nintendo DS and of course, I'm going to get it. But what I'm REALLY looking forward to is for Rockstar to start working on GTAV or GTA: Vice City 2 or whatever the hell they want to call it.

A real life Vice City full of the pastel colours and a brilliant 80s soundtrack? Hurry up and finish it and release it already, Rockstar!

A New Year...and a new console!

2009-01-14T22:16:00.001+11:00

Hey all! Happy New Year to everyone!

Even though it's a new year, still don't quite have the time to update this blog regularly. I was in shock when I realised that I had three people following this blog. Wow. Even though this blog is hardly ever updated, it's still pretty flattering that there are people who are following it!

Anyway, I've never actually mentioned it here, probably because I've been too busy playing video games just prior to Christmas (and in my 10 day holiday period), but Aeris got me an Xbox360 for Christmas!

The new Xbox360. Spankin'!

My first Xbox360 games: GTAIV, Fable II and the Lego Indiana Jones and Kung Fu Panda two-pack that came with the Xbox360 Pro console pack.

The three consoles all hooked up to the TV. All that's missing is the PSP and DS! All I lack now is a PS3...

I was just ecstatic that I received that. I had been talking to Aeris about Xbox360 games and stuff but never did I imagine that she would get me one! And she didn't just get me the console, she got me the two extra games too.

I've only played ONE game on the Xbox360 so far, and it's a game that has taken up the majority of my holidays: GTAIV. Remember just a few blog entries down I was complaining about how I wouldn't get a chance to play this fabulous game on account of the PC version not being compatible to my computer and me not owning a 360 or PS3? You can just imagine how rabid I was in wanting to play the game.

And play it I did. I wonder how many hours I've already clocked up on the game...must be a fair bit! A proper review one of these days, but I don't think I'll ever grow tired of playing it, even when I complete it, I'd be dying to play it a couple more times from scratch!

Review: Boom Blox

2008-12-23T17:18:00.001+11:00

Over the last few days, since I first purchased the game last Friday at Knox City SC, I have been playing a simple yet highly addictive and extremely fun game: Boom Blox.

Boom Blox hasn’t been around for too long, having been released a mere seven months ago be Electronic Arts, the same company that produces all those fabulous sports games like Fifa, NHL and NBA games.

I first played Boom Blox when we went to Dean and Emily’s housewarming party earlier in the year and they were playing the portion of this game that required players to remove oblong blocks from a structure carefully so that you don’t topple the entire structure over...basically, a glorified but improved version of the much loved Jenga game.

That was fun enough as it was, but then Dean and Emily tried out the other game modes which included tossing baseballs to knock down point blocks, throwing bowling balls at your opponent’s gem blocks atop a castle (last one standing wins!) and knocking point blocks into various multiplier walls to see who could get the highest score.

As more and more people arrived, we were all still hooked on Boom Blox and must have spent at least three to four hours playing it. It was such a simple game in terms of design, but the fun factor was just enormous...and it was highly addictive since none of us wanted to stop playing it!

I found out much later that the acclaimed Steven Spielberg (director of Schindler’s List, Jaws, E.T. and many many other blockbuster movies) was a director/producer of the Boom Blox game! So it had a big name producer attached to the game, but strangely enough, despite the game’s acclaim, most of friends I knew had never heard of the game prior to trying it at Dean’s place. I know I certainly didn’t know that such a game existed!

Anyway, I remembered how fun the game was so when I saw it on sale, I purchased it. Found out that Target (where I purchased Boom Blox from last Friday) is having a mega sale the three days before Christmas and the same game is only selling for $14.95, a good $25 cheaper than what we paid for it. Grrrr. Even still, it’s such a great game that it’s worth the money.

As I said before, it’s uber addictive and very very difficult to put down once you’ve started. There are over 300+ levels and even though I spent over four hours on the single-player mode alone, I was only 29% through the game!

The single-player mode had an “Explore” feature which allowed players to work their ways through puzzles. There were point blocks on structures that needed to be toppled over in as few throws as possible, the “Jenga” like structures where you had to remove as many point blocks as you could in a set time, and other such puzzles.

There is also an adventure mode in single-player where you have cutesy animal blocks called the Bahhhs (based on sheep) being invaded by the Grrrs (based on bears). The Bahhhs had a castle and you were required to throw bomb balls at the invading Grrrs and prevent them from infiltrating your castle and stealing away the Bahhhs’ precious gems!

In Episode 2 of the adventure mode, the Oooks (based on monkeys) had stolen the Bahhhs’ gems while the Bahhhs were distracted in the fight against the Grrrs, and you were required to invade the Oooks’ castle to retrieve the gems. Cue more throwing of bomb balls at the Oooks’ castle.

It is fantastic storytelling and heaps of fun. What’s really neat is that it’s also a game for kids...apart from needing to use one’s noggin to figure out some of the puzzles, there really isn’t much you need to know...after all, it’s just a matter of tossing baseballs/bowling balls/bomb balls at blocks!

While the single-player mode shines, it’s the multi-player mode that will really get most people going. It’s so much more fun competing against friends and laughing when someone accidentally topples a block structure down. It’s can get competitive, but at the end of the day, Boom Blox is really a superb party game.

The one thing that I must warn those who are interested in the game is that if you do not regularly exercise your throwing arm, it could lead to a great deal of pain and distress after a few hours of playing Boom Blox.

The very next day after playing Boom Blox for a few hours, my right arm was extremely sore and I couldn’t really lift anything heavy at all. I felt as if I were a baseball pitcher who had gone through nine agonising innings of trying to pitch the ball as fast as I could!

I just couldn’t get any strength in my throws, so when playing the multi-player mode against Aeris, I decided to try using my left arm instead. And despite playing for a good one or two hours less, the very next day, my left arm was out of action...and it still hurts like hell!

Boom Blox is a game you cannot afford NOT to get if you own a Nintendo Wii. It is one of the simplest yet most addictive games I have ever played and it utilises the Wiimote so innovatively and efficiently. Even if you are not a hardcore gamer, Boom Blox would most likely appeal to you!

Review: The Simpsons Hit and Run

2008-12-20T11:59:00.002+11:00

A couple of blog entries below, I expressed my love for the Grand Theft Auto series of games by Rockstar Games. It was free-form entertainment and one could choose a non-linear path of the game and do side tasks, explore the city...and basically do whatever the hell you wanted to!

But what if there was a game in the vein of GTA but based on another favourite city of mine, with characters that are already part of pop culture and Americana? What if there was a game that could make you fall in love even MORE with said characters and give you a chance to live and breathe in that city?

Of course I'm going to have to buy it and play it. Cue: The Simpsons Hit and Run!

Now, this game has actually been out for several years now. It was originally released on the Nintendo GameCube in 2003, and then on PC later that year. The PS2 released it in 2004 and even the Xbox (original, not the new Xbox360) had it in 2006, so popular was the game!

I had a choice between the GameCube and PC versions a couple of weeks ago when trawling through the collection of games at the Cash Converters in Forest Hill and I decided to get the GameCube version, since I knew that GameCube games could be played on the Nintendo Wii. On hindsight, I probably should have gotten the PS2 version, but ah well.

The problem with the GameCube version, which I learned firsthand only a few days ago when I tried playing the game on my Wii, is not only did you need an original GameCube controller (the Wiimote and even the Wii classic controller doesn't work with the game), but you needed a GameCube memory card to save the game. What a bummer...additional costs I never factored in!

So I had to get a GameCube controller off eBay because it seemed impossible to find in a Cash Converters! EB Games and Game and other gaming stores did have non-official controllers, but I was a bit wary of those, not knowing whether they could actually be used or recognised by the Wii as a GameCube controller.

It was even harder finding a GameCube memory card! But as luck would have it, the Cash Converters at Knox City had the single memory card and I quickly purchased it...none of the game shops I went to had any at all!

So I could now play The Simpsons Hit and Run and boy, it was well worth the wait! It's not as free-roaming as GTA...you could decide to just drive around Springfield knocking things down and crashing into people and getting the cops to chase you if you had too high a "wanted" rating. And there are side missions where you could do favours and tasks for other Springfield-ians to get rewards and even participate in a race to unlock bonus cars. But those numbers pale in comparison to the non-linear side missions that is available in the GTA universe.

Nevertheless, you get to explore Springfield! Be it the Kwik-E-Mart or the Nuclear Power Plant, Springfield is brought to life in vivid detail. While you can't interact with every single person or every single location in the game, just seeing Springfield in 3D is a Simpsons fanatic's dream.

What's really awesome about the game is that when you CAN interact with other Springfield-ians, you get witty quips and memorable one-liners from the show. Once again, a Simpsons fanatics' wet dream. I spent much time just driving around familiarising myself with Springfield...and running down as many pedestrians as I could. Absolutely loved it when you knock someone down and Homer starts singing: "I am evil Homer! I am evil Homer!"

The Simpsons Hit and Run is simply awesome. If you're a fan of The Simpsons, there really shouldn't be any reason why this game isn't part of your collection.

The holiday season and new books to buy and expect!

2008-12-20T11:38:00.001+11:00

There are going to be quite a lot of new comics coming up over the next few weeks...which coincides with the Christmas shopping season, meaning that I've got to learn how to save and budget and prioritise like never before!

Brian Michael Bendis' Secret Invasion just finished...and what a series it was! The anticipation of what would happen in the next issue was just like Mark Millar's Civil War a couple of years ago and boy, was that a fantastic series and Secret Invasion certainly ended with more questions than resolutions.

Yes, the Skrull invasion was halted...was there really any doubt? But the fallout is just about to happen, and it leads nicely into Marvel's event of 2009: Dark Reign. I won't list any spoilers for those who haven't yet read Secret Invasion (and if you haven't, hurry up and go read it already!), but the gist of it is, the Marvel Universe has just become a much darker place with even MORE conspiracies than ever before at the conclusion of the failed Skrull invasion.

While Tony Stark was heralded as the Marvel Universe's saviour only a mere two years ago, with the Superhero Registration Act implemented as a result of the Civil War, he now finds himself discarded by his own government. All his plans post-Civil War failed to yield any fruition and he's failed to deliver on his promise of protecting America with the 50-State Initiative program.

So the government has sacked Tony from being the big kahuna of S.H.I.E.L.D. Wait until you see who they've chosen to be the new big boss...it's the shock ending of Secret Invasion that will resonate and create a ripple effect in all of Marvel Comics' books for years to come!

Anyway, I'll give Secret Invasion a proper review sometime down the line. Back on topic, another new title I'll be adding to my standing list is Dark Avengers, which spins off from the ending of Secret Invasion. There have been quite a number of huge releases in the TPB and HC format such as The Boys: Definitive Edition HC which collects the first 13 issues of Dynamite Entertainment's superb series.

The Boys is a guilty pleasure and the world it's set in is as realistic as it comes in posing the question: What would it be like if there really were superheroes in the real world? Garth Ennis (of Preacher and Punisher: Max infamy, and one of my favourite writers) crafts such a splendid tale of absolute power corrupting absolutely. He certainly doesn't hold back and while there are some moments in the series which are just flat out gross, it IS classic Ennis, which means fans will be treated with over-the-top humour in the vein of Preacher.

Hmm...methinks I should review The Boys sometime down the line too! It's just too good not to have a review!

The Rising Stars Compendium HC also gets released after the new year, which collects the entire series of Rising Stars, from the original 24 issue mini-series by J. Michael Stracyznski, to the three related mini-series. Rising Stars was absolutely brilliant, especially in the first third of the series where it established the world in which 113 special humans with powers lived and how they interacted with society at large.

It's a great time to be a comic book fan...not good for our wallets though!

Francis is also helping me to get the entire series of the Slam Dunk manga in English, published by Chuang Yi Comics in Singapore. 31 volumes means that it'll be a while before I can actually pay him for the order...yipes. Good reading times ahead!

GTAIV didn't work. :(

2008-12-10T18:20:00.001+11:00

Tried installing Grand Theft Auto IV on my computer late last week...there were so many things to install and so many accounts I needed to create just to play the game!

I needed an account with the Rockstar Social Club, so had to register online. I then needed a Windows Live ID but thankfully, that was linked with my hotmail account, so there was no issue there. Was reading the manual and found out that because the Xbox360 was a Microsoft console, quite a lot of PC games (GTAIV at the very least) could actually be played with an Xbox360 controller!

Hmm...I've always been against the Xbox360, but that makes it a VERY attractive console to get now, not that I really play that many PC games nowadays. But there ARE some games that are only available on Xbox360 like Fable II, plus the Xbox360 games are cheaper than PS3 games! PS3 does have blu-ray but it is so expensive still and the new PS3 consoles do not support old Playstation and PS2 games, something I absolutely hate.

The one thing that is really in the Xbox360's favour is how cheap it is nowadays. Provided one isn't going for the expensive pack with the higher storage space, the Xbox360 is even CHEAPER than a Nintendo Wii nowadays! Dang it...I want one now, but I won't/can't get one!

Anyway, after the installation of GTAIV was complete, I tried the game out. First off, there are so many controls and I had to remap everything because whenever I play PC games, I use the mouse in my left hand...this is especially for first person shooters (Unreal, Quake II etc) and real time strategy games (Starcraft, etc). It took me a really long time to remap the controls. Once I was done with that, I started the game.

Or at least, I tried to. The graphics just were not coming up well at all and the game was extremely laggy...just what one wants, very laggy graphics that were glorified pixels! I went back to the main menu to change the graphic settings, but nothing was working...the graphics were just getting worse, or the game was getting laggier.

I checked the specs on the back of the GTAIV box and to my horror, the minimum required graphics card was so much more advanced than the one we had! Now, I'm sure I checked the video requirements before pre-ordering the game and our graphics card were adequate! So now I was stuck with a game that I couldn't play, and EB Games' refund policy (and probably those of most other places) did not allow refunds for PC games, presumably because there were so many types of software out there that allowed people to copy PC games!

Nevertheless, I didn't want to be stuck with a game I couldn't play, so I brought back the game to EB Games at Forest Hill on Monday evening. I explained the situation to Elizabeth, since she was the salesperson who called me when the game arrived in store and she was also the same person who put through the transaction when I went to pick it up.

I was happy for a trade-in or even an exchange for a lesser game, but to my delight and surprise, Liz said that while it wasn't customary policy, she knew me from having served me on previous occasions and gave me the full refund, logging in the GTAIV game as defective merchandise! Wow, what great customer service, I was certain I was going to be stuck with a game it couldn't use! She didn't have to do that at all since the onus was on me to make sure that my PC system requirements matched that of the game!

I'm sure I'll be going back to the Forest Hill EB games in the future to purchase my games!

The release of GTA IV on PC!

2008-12-02T22:12:00.001+11:00

Got myself a special treat today: my pre-order for Grand Theft Auto IV finally came in so I went to pick it up at the EB Games at Forest Hill!

Now anyone who knows me knows I'm a HUGE Grand Theft Auto (or GTA for short) fan. I played the top-down original Grand Theft Auto years ago on the PC. And then I got the expansion where the setting was in the UK. I missed out on GTA 2 and that was the last of my GTA experience for a while since I came to Australia.

While I was over here, I discovered GTA III, albeit a year or more after its initial release. GTA III is the game that changed free-roaming games forever and spawned so many clones since its inception. Some of its clones were good, some were god-awful but not many reached the same heights as the GTA series. I spent so many long long hours playing GTA III...and I didn't even try to achieve 100% completion in the game!

And then my favourite GTA game of all time was released in 2003: GTA Vice City. It was set in the 80s in Vice City, which was a lampoon of Miami. It had a killer soundtrack of some of my favourite 80s tunes and even the more obscure ones that I had heard little of but grew to love. It had the bright lights, snazzy "disco" colours and stereotypes of American characters that one saw in movies and tv dramas. And it had the classic GTA gameplay...what was there not to love?

After that came GTA San Andreas, which I own a copy of but have never EVER played, believe it or not. Just never had my PS2 with me when I purchased San Andreas and even now, don't really have the time to play it. Then I deliberately purchased a PSP so that I could play GTA Liberty City Stories, which was pretty awesome as well. And then my second favourite GTA game, GTA Vice City Stories was released on PSP and it had an even MORE killer soundtrack than Vice City!

GTA Chinatown Wars will be released on the Nintendo DS sometime in 2009, but that's a whole other story.

In May this year, Rockstar Games released the sequel to GTA III (well, not quite, but at least in sequential order of numbering, I guess it IS a sequel) on both the Sony PS3 and Microsoft Xbox360: GTA IV. I was shattered...only because I didn't own either console and short of actually going out there to buy one of those next gen consoles, there'd be absolutely no chance I'd get to play this game!

So when I found out a couple of months ago that GTA IV was coming to PC, I knew I had to pre-order it. There was no way I'd be getting a PS3 or Xbox360 anytime soon (if ever!) so here was my chance to get in on the GTA IV experience, the game that so many people were talking about, just as if it were the days after the release of GTA III all over again!

So now that I have it, I can't wait to try it...I'm sure I'll have ample time over the Christmas period to immerse myself in the world of Liberty City once again. Reviews once I've played the game or have completed it!

Review: eGames Expo and Digital Lifestyle Show 2008

2008-11-19T08:31:00.001+11:00

Reached the Expo just after 10.30am and already there were quite a lot of people there. Saw quite a lot of people cosplaying…in fact, I recognised a number of cosplayers from when we first saw them at Armageddon Expo two weeks ago…wearing EXACTLY the same costumes and having the EXACT same group of friends who were dressed EXACTLY the same as well! Sheesh…what happened to creativity?

Forgot to bring my camera with me or else I would have had pictures to share of the Expo! It was a pretty huge expo but we didn’t get an opportunity to try out too many games because of the number of people at each games booth, all waiting for an opportunity to try the games out themselves.

I really liked the Little Big Planet booth where they gave us quite a number of freebies like a lanyard, pens and stickers. It’s not the freebies though, it was the fact they had a pretty cool “gimmick” at the booth itself. Just have a look at the stickers below!

There was this huge blue ball in the middle of the booth that represented the globe (or the little BIG planet, haha!) and everyone was invited to take the stickers they were given and create their own personalised Little Big Planet characters and stick them all over the globe. It was a pretty awesome concept and it allowed everyone to be as creative as they wanted to be (as much as they could with the stickers they had anyway)! Unfortunately, we didn’t get a chance to see the actual Little Big Planet game in action.

They had a futsal set where the Fifa 09 booth was and there were two guys showing off their football juggling tricks. They even had two foosball tables there and I wanted to have a game against Marcelo but they were quickly occupied by other players who were waiting for a chance to test out the Fifa 09 game. Marcelo and I played the PS3 version of the game for a couple of minutes then decided to move on.

Went to the Wii area and tried out Celebrity Sports Showdown…I’d read reviews that it was pretty ordinary, but Kim and I had quite a bit of fun with the Gladiator-style “whacky-mace-sticks” and badminton. Marcelo and I then lost to the computer AIs at dodgeball. It was a pretty fun game, though I suppose if I had it I would lose interest in the games pretty quickly.

Tried out Wii Music as well and unfortunately, only had the one go with Kim playing “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go”. It didn’t help that I had no idea what song was being played (thought we’d choose the song AFTER the instruments) so I chose the vibraphone while Kim had the classic drums. Of course, the vibraphone was so completely out of tune for the song and it sounded as if we just weren’t musically inclined at all!

Seems like Wii Music has quite a big song list though and I still haven’t yet made up my mind as to whether to get the game or not. It’s one of those games that seems really fun an innovative at first, but whether I’ll lose interest in it after a while (like Wii Fit, Link’s Crossbow Training, Big Brain Academy among others) is another matter altogether.

While we were walking past some anime booth manned by the Animemavericks, some guy came up to me and handed me a copy of the Animemavericks magazine. He literally pushed the copy into my hand and then started giving a used-car-salesman-type sales pitch about how awesome the magazine was because it covered anime and games.

I started flipping through the magazine while he was talking just to see whether the magazine interested me. It was pretty interesting, so I quickly flipped back to the front cover to see if there was a price printed on the magazine. There wasn’t! The guy just kept blabbing on and on and on though so I quickly interrupted him and asked if I could take the magazine to have a browse at my own leisure.

And his response? Something along the lines of, “Ah, yes, you can have the magazine. It only costs $10.”

WHAT! It ONLY costs $10? Yes, the magazine was printed on good quality glossy stock and the content appealed to me. But hang on, didn’t he put the magazine in my hands in the first place? I didn’t pick up the magazine from the booth. I didn’t ask to see the magazine. He just came over while I was walking past the booth and shoved the magazine into my hands!

I told him I’d think about it and he added, “If you get the magazine today, I’ll give you a free poster”. As if a poster of some random gaming or anime characters would be a huge enough incentive for me to purchase the magazine! I told him that I didn’t have the need for any posters in an attempt to see what else he might throw in, but all I got for a response was: “Oh sorry, but I can only give you a poster.”

I quickly put the magazine on the table of his booth and told him that I’d consider purchasing it later and briskly walked away to watch Marcelo try out the PS3 version of the latest Tomb Raider game. Thanks but no thanks…I’d like to go through a convention without having to deal with a pushy car-salesman-type person!

Saw the Singstar booth being unoccupied and I asked Marcelo and Kim whether they wanted to give it a try, but they were quite hesitant to do it. They asked me to go give it a go, but I didn’t quite want to on my own!

We didn’t want to walk past the same booths of the convention again and wait around to try out some games, so decided to leave. But before we did, I headed back to one of the merchandise booths and purchased myself a Yoshi plush. They only had one remaining green one (but lots of red, black and blue ones)…so quickly snapped that up before anyone else could!

It was quite a good convention even though we were there for barely two hours. Would definitely love to go to another gaming expo sometime soon…pity they didn’t really have the new games for sale, only just the display booths for people to try them out.

Going to a video games expo tomorrow!

2008-11-14T19:02:00.002+11:00

Marcelo and I will be going to the eGames Expo tomorrow, which is part of the International Digital Entertainment Festival 2008. A ticket will also allow us into the Digital Lifestyle Show, also held at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre. It would be exactly two weeks tomorrow since we both were last there, so I need to get out of my head the fact that Jim Lee isn't going to be there tomorrow!

Anyway, I'm excited at the prospect of previewing and perhaps playing some of the new games that will be on display. Here's the full list of games that will be featured in the booths:

eGames 2008 Featured Games

What I would really love to try out of the games featured is:

Fifa 09
Fifa 09 All-Play
Little Big Planet (even though I don't own a PS3)
Pro Evolution Soccer 2009
Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party
Singstar Abba
Wii Music

Wii Music seems to be the next "specialised" (and highly overpromoted) Wii game after WiiFit. I've seen some of the ads on the TV and they are pretty good, choosing to recreate Wham!'s "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" with the musical instruments one can use in the game.

The concept sounds like an awesome one, but I don't think I'd want to spend nearly $80 buying the game trying to create music on my own (though I suppose it might be a good creative outlet for me to put some music to lyrics I had written for songs in the past). So the jury is out on this one...I'd like to give it a try before making a decision on whether to get it.

I'm sure Marcelo and I will be interested in different games since he owns a PS3, Xbox360 and PSP while I own a Wii, DS, PSP and PS2. It'd still be awesome checking out the games though!

Review: Armageddon Multimedia Expo Melbourne 2008

2008-11-01T16:45:00.002+11:00

Back from Armageddon 2008 and it was a little disappointing compared to last year's event. Sure, I was heaps more excited than last year, even though 'Geddon 07 was my very first comics/pop culture Expo that I've ever gone to, and that's simply because I was going to get an opportunity to meet one of my favourite artists and perhaps even get a sketch and photo of him: Jim Lee!

But it didn't work out that way. Here's what happened during the day.

Reached the Expo at around 10am and there were already a LOT of people inside. Marcelo and I first went and checked out the area where they'd have the comic book celebrity signings and there was quite a long queue there already. Checked the guide timetable and the signings were only supposed to start at 10.30am. Decided to explore the rest of the Expo first before deciding or not later whether to queue up for Jim Lee's signatures and sketches.

We found out from the guide brochure that David Anders (from Heroes) and Michael Shanks (from Stargate SG1) were not able to make it to 'Geddon 08 due to work commitments and Marcelo noted that it was a blessing that Kim didn't go after all, because she would have been extremely disappointed since those were the two celebrities she wanted to see and take photos with!

There didn't seem to be as many things at 'Geddon 08 as compared to last year. A lot of the shops seemed a bit smaller too, though that could have been because there were a lot more people there and therefore, less space and standing room.

The usual comic shops were represented there, including Classic Comics, Alternate Worlds and even Evil Empire Comics, the shop that I purchased X-Men #1-30 from last week! But I didn't spend a lot of time at the comics booths since I didn't have much to buy. Spent some time browsing through the anime and manga wares at Madman Entertainment and Alternate Worlds, but once again, nothing to purchase either. Looked at the anime/manga products at the Tamarket booth and there was a Kon (from Bleach) and Pen-Pen (from Neon Genesis Evangelion) plush that I thought about purchasing but eventually decided against it.

Since I wasn't waiting in line for Jim Lee's signature and there didn't seem to be any TV celebrities for us to catch a glimpse of or take a photo of, we decided to go up to the Madman Entertainment panel room to watch the Madman anime screenings. They were showing episode one of the Code Geass anime, by the all-women illustration team of CLAMP, and then they showed episode two, even though it was 11am and it was supposed to be the Vexille anime movie.

Once Code Geass finished, they tried to show Vexille, but for some reason, they were getting a "region code error" message, which was really strange as I overheard that they had the Region 4 version of Vexille! Marcelo and I were wondering why they didn't actually test the animes in the morning at the very least, so that they wouldn't have these problems!

We decided to stay for a while in the hope that the problem would be resolved, but then another guy came in to "fix" the problem, only for the region code error to still be displayed. He told the other guys there that it'd take him another 15 minutes to find a laptop so that the movie could be shown, but then realised that he also needed the correct jacks and other input AV equipment, at which point Marcelo and I decided to leave since it could possibly take up to 30 minutes, maybe even longer for them to set up everything before showing Vexille! Such a waste...Marcelo was looking forward to watching it because it was a sci-fi anime by the visual effects director of the Appleseed anime, which he had the DVD of.

The one thing that 'Geddon 08 had that last year's Expo didn't was there were a LOT of cosplayers around. And this isn't even including all those dressed up in Stormtroopers and other various Star Wars uniforms! There were a lot of people dressed up from the Naruto and Bleach animes, and then there were various Batman rogues gallery cosplayers.

Didn't take any pictures, but we saw people dressed up as:

Naruto
Sasuke (from Naruto)
Indiana Jones
The Joker (two of them and both the Heath Ledger version from The Dark Knight)
Harley Quinn
Poison Ivy
Izuru Kira (the 3rd Division lieutenant from Bleach)
Madame Mirage (comic book character/series by Paul Dini)
Various Akatsuki ninjas (from Naruto: Shippuden)

There were a number of games booths too, showcasing games such as Tenchu 4, WWE: Smackdown vs Raw 2009, TNA Impact, the new Naruto game on Xbox360 and Gears of War 2. Marcelo had a go on the Naruto game as well as Gears of War 2 while I had a go on SvR2009 and had my butt handed to me...haven't played a SvR game on the PS2 (or in this case, PS3) since the original SvR, which was years ago! We also went to the Red Ant booth and tried out the TNA Impact game and it was funny playing that because we both had no idea what we were doing!

It was at the Red Ant booth that we saw TNA (Total Non-stop Action) women wrestlers Christy Hemme and Traci Brooks as well as ex-WWE/ECW star The Sandman.

Christy Hemme and Traci Brooks from Total Non-stop Action Wrestling

Marcelo made a funny comment about how it was possible for them to wrestle because of what was in front of them (work that one out by yourselves)! Told him that Christy Hemme had posed for Playboy which further cemented his curiousity about how they could actually wrestle.

I was actually considering purchasing the Nintendo Wii TNA Impact game since it was pretty cheap at $50 (compared to the regular sale price of $79.95) and getting both Christy Hemme and Traci Brooks to sign the cover for me....until I realised that autographs were $25 each!!!!!

Needless to say, I changed my mind immediately. I suppose that $25 would have entitled me to take a photograph with them as well...but hey, that wasn't a real necessity anyway!

The Sandman

Watched the Sandman wrestle some other Australian wrestler...of course you knew he was always going to win! He got out his Singapore cane and even butted heads with the referee...all probably scripted of course.

We then walked to Crown Casino and had lunch at KFC before coming back to the Expo.

Went back to the booths where Jim Lee and the other Wildstorm artists were signing comics and doing sketches only to find that the queue was still pretty long...and one of the ladies that had been waiting in queue since we got there was almost to the front of the line...but hadn't reached there yet! It had been nearly three hours since she had been waiting in line...and she still wasn't at the front of the line yet!

Was pretty disappointed and decided that it was probably a better idea not to wait in line anymore. Jim was doing a Q&A panel later which meant an even longer wait...if I had been in queue, who knows how long it would take before I would actually get to the front of the queue! So I decided it probably would be better to leave the Expo, but first, took a few photos of Jim sketching:

As Marcelo and I were leaving, I suggested that we go up to the Madman Entertainment panel room one more time to see what they were showing, just so we could make the most of our time (and money) at 'Geddon 08. They had an interview/Q&A panel with someone and weren't showing any anime, so we turned around and proceeded to leave.

Just as we were reaching the staircase though, all of a sudden, I saw Jim Lee come up the stairs and walk into the room where the Main Stage was, presumably for his own Q&A panel. Dragged Marcelo in with me...and what a relief that we did attend that panel!

That was the absolutely best part of 'Geddon 08 for both Marcelo and me. And to think that we nearly missed attending this panel too! Jim was running late since the panel started at nearly 1.30pm and he started off by apologising to everyone who had been waiting there, explaining that he was signing and doing sketches downstairs which led to the delay. What a nice man!

Jim fielded questions from the floor, some of which were very ordinary while some were really good questions. The very first question Jim was asked was: what his favourite character to draw was. Jim's answer had everyone laughing: he said that it was hard to think of a character off the top of his head after just spending the last few hours doing about 40 sketches, including about 10 Batman sketches in a row.

One could tell that Jim Lee was cool, calm and collected, but also was very genuine and warm. You could tell that he cared about the fans and he was just a down-to-earth person who loved the comic book business, despite initially wanting to be a doctor. Jim talked about his very first comic book work, Alpha Flight #51 and his time at Marvel Comics, including launching X-Men #1 in 1991 which was a dream because Uncanny X-Men was his favourite comic book.

He also discussed things like working with Frank Miller and what an experience that was for him. It was pretty funny, because Jim said that in interviews that was conducted before he started on his All-Star Batman and Robin duties, he actually said how great it would be to pencil a Batman title that was accessible to people of all ages, which brought out laughter from all those there who were comic fans who had actually READ the title...not many laughs mind you!

Jim was sheepish that All Star Batman was...controversial to say the least. He had no problems joking about Batman swearing and setting villains on fire, shooting villains and then having sex with Black Canary on the wharf. Throughout the interview, Jim was polite, friendly, and definitely not above poking fun at himself.

He also talked about his hyper-realistic pencilling style and said how he felt personally that he needed to cram in as much detail into a panel as possible, whereas a simpler more in-your-face style would have more of an impact. He was certainly willing to criticise his own technique and skills and went so far as to say that he's thinking of drawing in a less detailed, simpler and sleeker style...but that would just not be him.

Jim recalled his Image days and recalled how back in the days, the six Image founders thought nothing could stop them and sheepishly admitted how young and immature they were back then. He also recounted how "unprofessional" they were at one of the Comic Cons, when they were meeting with one of their publishers, Rob Liefeld was jumping up and down on a bed and Todd McFarlane was walking around shirtless while Jim had his two-month old baby there.

He also recalled how he feared for his life at a comic book store signings when fans mobbed him in person and he thought he was going to get squished to death...and in Jim's own words: "squished to death with love". At another comic book store signing in New York, when fans realised he was in a car, they literally went up to the car and started rocking it back and forth! Jim also joked about how he met Demi Moore back in the days before she was dating Ashton Kutcher and said that maybe he had a chance with her back then. He then jokes that it probably wouldn't have worked out anyway because Demi was still married to Bruce Willis then!

Jim said that he'd love to work with Neil Gaiman, Geoff Johns and also Jeph Loeb again, even though Jeph was now with Marvel. He said among his influences were Frank Miller, George Perez and Art Adams. Someone even asked if Jim would love to go back to Marvel to draw the Avengers, to which Jim said that he would love to if he had the opportunity, even though going back to Marvel was not something he had plans to do.

He then said that it was strange that Earth's Mightiest Heroes were now outselling the X-men comics and joked that perhaps he should go back to X-Men to change that scenario!

I even got to ask him a question and I was stoked that I had the opportunity to do so. I asked:

"Is there a character or series you have never drawn before that you'd like to draw on a regular basis?"

Jim then laughed and said that he had a number of books he'd love to work on, but that in order to do so, all the books would be ship late, which drew more laughter from the audience. Jim did seriously note that he would love to work on (in order of his response) Legion of Superheroes, Wonder Woman, Justice League of America and Suicide Squad. Hmmm...all DC titles.

The Q&A panel with Jim Lee lasted about 40 minutes and Jim noted that it was unlikely that he would be doing any more sketches for the rest of the day and if anyone was waiting for sketches, to come back on Sunday morning. Thank goodness we attend that panel then, because if Marcelo and I had been waiting in line, I would only have had my comics signed and wouldn't have been able to get a Jim Lee sketch!

I was considering perhaps returning on Sunday morning to get Jim Lee to sign my comics and do a few sketches for me, but eventually decided against it. It was likely, because Jim wasn't going to do any more sketches for the rest of the day, those people who had missed out would be queuing up very early on Sunday morning...which meant I had to do the same and the signings only started at 10.30am! So it would have been an extremely long wait and who knows...could have ended up like that lady who had been waiting in line for a long long time.

Although I did not get a Jim Lee sketch or any comics or anime/manga related merchandise, I did get myself a pretty cute Captain America plush toy from the Popcultcha booth:

It did start out a bit disappointing, especially the crazy queues where Jim Lee and the other comic creators were, but it ended up being a pretty good experience with the Jim Lee panel being the highlight of 'Geddon 08 for me. Just wish I had an opportunity to get some signatures and sketches! Maybe next time...

Armageddon 2008: One day more!

2008-10-31T15:17:00.001+11:00

Of course, Jim Lee isn't going to be the ONLY one who'll be there on the comic creators panel/desk/whateverit'scalled. Here's the list of the other comic book artists who are going to be there, mostly from Lee's Wildstorm Studios:

Carlos D'Anda (Brass, Wildcats, The Outsiders)
Joel Gomez (Wetworks, The Lost Boys)
JJ Kirby (DV8, Gen 13, The New Dynamix)
Beth Sotelo (colourist for Soulfire)
Sandra Hope (Gen 13, Crimson, JLA)
Eddie Nunez (Wildstorm concept/artist)
Livio Ramondelli (Wildstorm concept/artist)

Since I'm there already, even though I don't have any comics that were illustrated by any of the above (though I've got some Gen 13 comics back home drawn by JJ Kirby...his art rocks!), I'm going to see if I can get some sketches from the above people. Thanks once again Stephen for the suggestion!

Other celebrities who will be there:

Ernie Hudson (Ghostbusters 1 & 2, Miss Congeniality 1 & 2)

Doug Jones (Hellboy 1 & 2, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer)

Sandman (WCW, WWE)

David Anders from Heroes (no idea who he is since I haven't watched anything beyond Episode 7 of the first season!) is also going to be there. I'll probably go catch a glimpse of the stars, but I won't really line up for signatures or pictures or anything. Reserving my time for Jim Lee, browsing through products and perhaps purchasing things!

Other things that I'd like to do, but probably won't get a chance to is to watch "Heart of an Empire", which seems to be a Star Wars spoof or related to the Star Wars franchise. Screenings are at 3.30pm Saturday and I don't think I'll still be there then. And the Evangelion movie or series shows on Sunday and I definitely won't be there then.

There's a Domino's pizza eating contest too...I wonder if I can participate just to get a free lunch and just drop out? Haha!

Soooooo exicted!

Two more days until I get to meet the legendary Mr Lee!

2008-10-30T16:24:00.001+11:00

Only two more days until Armageddon 2008...very very excited as one can imagine. I've already planned what I want to do when I reach there: get in line where the comic creators (ok ok...just Jim Lee) are and hope that anyone who's standing in front of me doesn't ask for heaps and heaps of comics to be signed or for many sketches to be commissioned.

I know what I definitely want...I'm bringing quite a number of comics for Jim Lee to sign, both single issues (the X-men ones I purchased at the Camberwell Fair this past Sunday) as well as HCs and TPBs. The comics I am bringing are:

X-Men #1-11
Absolute Batman: Hush HC
All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder Vol.1 HC
Fantastic Four: Heroes Reborn TPB

And I also want to commission at least two sketches from Jim (more if possible): one of Psylocke and one of Catwoman for Stephen. If it's only one sketch per person in queue then I'm going to have to rely on Marcelo queueing up with me...which may be a problem because Kim is also going and she wants to line up where the sci-fi actors are going to be...think there's going to be some actors from Heroes as well as Battlestar Galactica there.

It also didn't occur to me, but I'd also like to take a picture with Jim! Thanks to Stephen for reminding me of that. Duh...it's so obvious, why didn't I even think about it! After all, I'm bringing my camera again this year to take photos! I think I'll try to take some photos of the cosplayers too, because there were some awesome cosplay costumes last year.

Not sure if we'll get a chance to watch any of the wrestling events or the movie/cartoon previews. I know they're showing the new series (at least the first episode) of Neon Genesis Evangelion on Sunday evening, but we're not going on Sunday. Last year we watched the Superman: Doomsday animated movie, but I don't think there's anything showing on the Saturday...nothing that I want to see anyway. Gotta make sure I check the program properly before going. In terms of wrestling, Sabu and Rob Van Dam were there last year and it's a drop in "quality" this year with Sandman and Playboy covergirl/wrestler Christy Hemme being there.

It should be a pretty excellent event regardless of what happens. I know I'm going to strenously watch my budget this time around. Not like I spent a whole lot last year but I'd rather be careful and not purchase stuff I don't really need or want.

The anticipation is killing me! Can't wait for Saturday!

More of Jim Lee's comics...for Jim Lee to sign!

2008-10-27T14:05:00.002+11:00

Went to the Camberwell Fair at the Camberwell Civic Centre yesterday morning...and there were quite a number of sellers there with comic book stock! Old issues, really really old issues from the Silver Age and new issues as well...I'm sure if I spent more time there and hunted around, I probably could have picked up single issue comic book gold like Amazing Spider-man #129 (1st appearance of the Punisher) and The Incredible Hulk #181 (1st appearance of Wolverine)...not that I could afford it.

I was there with two friends, Marcelo and Kim, so that was a good thing because I'm sure I could have spent AGES there browsing through all the wares. I went to each seller's booth though, just to quickly check out the wares and have a feel for where I thought I could get the best bargain or where I would find something I would purchase. Eventually stopped at the corner booth where they seemed to have the most variety (and the most number of) comics.

The seller was very informative and from chatting to him, he was a true comics fan...who actually read his comics! There are a lot of collectors who simply purchase comics because of the perceived (real or otherwise) increase in value after a period of time and they are more in the business to make money than true comic book fans. This guy certainly was not like that.

I wish I caught his name, but he worked in Evil Empire Comics in Coburg. He definitely knew his stuff though, because when I picked up some X-Men comics, he engaged me in a conversation about going to Armageddon 2008 because Jim Lee was there and we started chatting about the storylines in X-Men. In the particular bundle of comics I was browsing through, he was telling me that it had some valuable issues like issues #1 (still the best selling single comic of all-time with five variant covers...though there was only the gatefold cover),#25 (part of the Fatal Attractions storyline where Wolverine had the adamantium yanked out of his body) and #30 (wedding of Scott Summers and Jean Grey).

I mean, I knew all that information already, but it was nice chatting to someone who actually knew his stuff! So we talked about Jim Lee being at Armageddon and how, in that bundle, there were only 11 issues or so actually illustrated by him. It was nice that he actually warned me about that in case I thought all the comics in the bundle was illustrated by Jim...as I said, I already knew that, but it was information that was much appreciated.

So how could one not purchase something from his store? I bought the bundle of the first 30 issues of X-Men, which I used to own many many years ago but didn't anymore. There was another bundle for the first 80 issues, but not only was it more expensive (obviously), but I actually owned a lot of those issues already back in Singapore. I couldn't remember which issue I started from exactly so I thought it was probably better just to get the smaller and more inexpensive bundle of single issues...if I were missing out on certain issues from my collection I'm sure I could always obtain them from elsewhere!

So now I've got 30 issues of X-Men to read finish before this Saturday...or at least those issues drawn by Jim Lee, since I want to bring them all for him to sign at Armageddon 2008! I've already got Absolute Batman: Hush, All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder Vol.1 HC and Fantastic Four: Heroes Reborn TPB for Jim to sign.

Only five more days to go. To coin an Australian phrase: How excitement!

Whose Line is it Anyway: Sound Effects: Star Wars

2008-10-24T19:43:00.002+11:00

More insanity from my favourite two performers from Whose Line Is It Anyway? in Colin Mochrie and Ryan Stiles:

Whose Line is it Anyway: Sound Effects: Batman

2008-10-24T19:36:00.001+11:00

This is probably one of the funniest things I have seen from Whose Line Is It Anyway?

Man, I love this show. How I miss watching is so.

Jim Lee is coming to Armageddon 2008!

2008-10-13T14:18:00.002+11:00

Armageddon Multimedia Expo Australia 2008 is almost upon us!

But first, the link to the official website:

Armageddon 2008

I remember really enjoying last year's Expo even though Marcelo and I were there for perhaps 3/4 of the day. Even though we just walked around and visited the same booth a couple of times, it was still an enjoyable experience!

The comic book writers/artists that were there last year were Jimmy Palmiotti, Amanda Connor, Gail Simone and Nicola Scott. While I'm a fan of Palmiotti and Simone, I didn't really have anything for them to sign, nor was I inspired enough to actually go up to the booths to have a chat with them.

This year, that all changes.

When I saw the brochure for Armageddon 2008, the first thing I noticed was Jim Lee's Batman art from his Hush run. The first thing I thought to myself was "I can't believe they actually took Jim Lee's art to promote Armageddon. How shameless." And then I actually flipped through the brochure and found that they weren't shameless using Lee's art for no good reason: they were actually using his art BECAUSE JIM LEE WAS GOING TO BE A GUEST AT ARMAGEDDON 2008.

One of my favourite artists of all-time, coming to the city I live in? Hot damn. I couldn't believe it. Jim's X-Men #1 was the reason I got into collecting comics. I had read comics before fleetingly, but it was never really a hobby...reading comics was just something a kid my age would just gravitate towards.

It was only after I purchased my copy (and it was one of those shoddy copies available from our local newsstand, with the price sticker attached to the cover) of X-Men #1 did I seriously give collecting comics any thought. I actually started purchasing comics regularly for a few months, albeit those shoddy copies from the newsstand, but after a while, I just stopped because the quality of those comics in terms of cover damage, spinal damage etc etc (and not the actual interior art or writing) was so poor, having changed hands from one reader to another before being sold.

I started collecting comics seriously a few months later (or a year later, can't remember which) when I went to a proper comics shop, Comics Mart, which is still located in Serene Centre at Farrer Road. And then I discovered Comic Art Gallery at Bras Basah Complex, which was the place I went to regularly until their shipment schedule became erratic. Thankfully, at that point of time, a new shop, G&B Comics opened up a level above Comic Art Gallery at Bras Basah, and that's been where I've purchased my comics for the last nine years or so, even while I've been here in Australia since they still keep my list of standing orders!

But this post isn't about my comic collecting history. I'll get to that some other time. X-Men #1 was the first real comic that I actually "collected", even though I wasn't really collecting back then. It was a combination of Chris Claremont's fantastic writing and Jim Lee's spectacular art that got me hooked...moreso the art than the writing! I've always been one who prefers a great story and shoddy art than fantastic art and a bland story.

But X-Men #1 perhaps was one of the exceptions to the rule, in those early days at least when I favoured the story over the art. Not that the story was bad...it was just that the artwork was in a league of its own! Beautiful beautiful beautiful.

So my love affair with Jim Lee began and he became one of my favourite artists. He still is...I know I've blogged about my favourite writers before, but I've never actually blogged about my favourite artists. Will have to do that one of these days.

Anyway, with Jim Lee going to be at Armageddon 2008, I might go for TWO days instead of just the one. I want Jim to sign my Absolute Batman: Hush HC and All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder Vol.1 HC books, along with any other Jim Lee books I actually have or can purchase. Plus, if Jim's actually going to do sketches, I might ask if I could commission him to do a few sketches for me.

I've already asked Stephen and he's asked if he could get a Catwoman sketch. I know I'd like a Psylocke sketch and perhaps a Rogue sketch too. Basically, when it comes to Jim Lee, you need to ask him to draw women! Though I wouldn't mind a Gambit/Wolverine sketch either.

But since each person probably can only request or purchase one sketch, I going to get Marcelo to stand in line with me so that he can get sketches too...well for me anyway!

Another three more weekends to Jim Lee being here in Melbourne! How awesome is that?

More classic games!

2008-09-23T14:05:00.002+10:00

Downloaded more games from Abandonia today. So many classic games I remembered playing...and I just downloaded those I knew and remembered! It's a HUGE list!

Aaargh
Archon Ultra
Battle Chess
Boulder Dash
Bubble Bobble
California Games
California Games II
Caveman Ugh-lympics
Clue - Master Detective
Defender of the Crown
Dig Dug
Donald Duck's Playground
Double Dragon 2 - The Revenge
Double Dragon 3 - The Rosetta Stone
Double Dribble
Dream Team, The - 3 on 3 Challenge
Dyna Blaster (or also known as Bomberman)
Empire Soccer
European Championship 1992
F-19 Stealth Fighter
Ghostbusters 2
Gold Rush
Golden Axe
Grand Monster Slam
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Karateka
King's Quest I - Quest for the Crown
Life and Death
Lode Runner
M.U.D.S. - Mean Ugly Dirty Sport
Manhunter - New York
Manhunter 2 - San Francisco
Monopoly Deluxe
Montezuma's Revenge
Rampage
Risk
Romance of the Three Kingdoms
Romance of the Three Kingdoms III - Dragon of Destiny
Scrabble - Deluxe Edition
Speedball 2 - Brutal Deluxe
Stratego
Summer Games II
Trivial Pursuit Deluxe
Ultimate Cards
Unchartered Waters (yes...finally!)
Unchartered Waters 2 - New Horizons
Where in America's Past is Carmen Sandiego
Where in Europe is Carmen Sandiego
Where in Space is Carmen Sandiego
Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego
Wing Commander
Winter Games
World Games
WWF Wrestlemania

Phew! There were a lot more than I wanted to download such as the Sierra games (King's Quest, Police Quest), Maniac Mansion and some others I can't remember, but they had either been sold already or were protected. I'm guessing by "sold" they meant that these titles had been re-licensed or something. *shrug* Ah well.

Will never really have the time to play them all but hey...they're classic! They're games I used to love! I can't wait to play some of these classics again!

Games games games games games! GAMES!

2008-09-20T23:57:00.000+10:00

Been a while since I last blogged...but this blog entry isn't going to be about comics at all. It is about something that I still love though: games!

In particular, OLD computer games. Yesterday, I was searching for old computer games on the internet. Not just any old computer games, but those that I enjoyed playing back when I was a teenager in Singapore.

Aeris and I had just finished watching "Three Kingdoms" last Sunday, which was based on the story of Zhao Yue from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms era and I was reminded of one of my favourite games that I played constantly in 1992: Romance of the Three Kingdoms 2 or just "RTK2" from KOEI.

I'm not sure whether it was the first strategy/RPG computer game I had ever played but it certainly was the first game based on historical events that I loved. I told myself after watching "Three Kingdoms" that I'd go online to look for the game but I never got the chance to because I promptly forgot about it.

Not sure what triggered my memory but I just decided to google for a free download of RTK2. It took a while but I managed to find a download of the game. And then all of a sudden, I saw the name of another game that I loved playing all those years ago: Deathtrack. So I downloaded that too. And then I found ANOTHER game: Crime Wave.

So I tried my best to remember all those games I loved playing and I downloaded those I could find. There are two Abandonware sites where I downloaded those games from: Abandonia and Best Old Games. And these were the games I downloaded free:

Budokan
Commander Keen 2
Crime Wave
Deathtrack
Gods
Grand Theft Auto
Kings of the Beach
Leisure Suit Larry
Lost Vikings
Mortal Kombat
Mortal Kombat 2
Lakers Vs Celtics
Pipe Mania
Police Quest
Police Quest 2
Romance of the Three Kingdoms 2
Sensible Soccer

There are heaps more that I couldn't find like Gold Rush and pretty much every other Sierra game like Leisure Suit Larry, Space Quest, King's Quest and the like. And then there were those games produced by KOEI like Uncharted Waters. And there are some who's names I can't remember anymore...I played a LOT of games back in those days!

Nostalgia...the reminiscing of those brilliant games I played oh so very long ago. Not sure if I'll get a chance to play all these games I've downloaded, especially since I have so many other games on my Wii to play. But no matter how many new games I've played or am dying to play, nothing beats reliving those memories of years ago playing classics like RTK2 and Battle Chess (ah, that's another one I've just remembered!) and Sensible Soccer. Long live gaming!

Review: Mouse Guard: Fall 1152

2008-08-28T09:16:00.001+10:00

It has been a while since I last posted a review so I thought I'd do one for a book that I've read before but re-read just recently...yesterday night as a matter of fact: Mouse Guard: Fall 1152.

As I've been too lazy to use my scanner, this will be a fairly short review with not many images. If you don't like words...well, bear with me.

The Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 series came to prominence in 2006 when Wizard magazine chose it as the best indie book of the year. Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 heralds the story of three mice of the Mouse Guard elite, Lieam, Kenzie and Saxon, and their adventures as they fight predators much bigger than them as well as a mutiny.

The Mouse Guard are the defenders, guards, escorts, scouts and bodyguards of the various mice villages in David Petersen's mice world. They keep the borders of their villages safe and they are considered the very best...assign any of the Mouse Guard a task and it gets completed even if it means their death.

Lieam, Kenzie and Saxon discover a betrayal plot to assassinate their queen, Gwendolyn and decide to investigate. They uncover a militia uprising led by former Guard member Midnight who has stolen the legendary Black Axe, a weapon that was used years ago to slay various predators to protect the mice village.

Lieam finds Celenawe, who was the legendary wielder of the Black Axe all those years ago and they return to their village to rescue Kenzie and Saxon, who had been captured by Midnight, just in time to stop the militia that had broken through the barricades and attacked Gwendolyn's protectors directly.

As can be expected, the assassination is stopped but instead of killing Midnight, Gwendolyn decides to set him free beyond the mice village's safe borders where Midnight can fend for himself against the many dangerous predators beyond the borders. Which leads in nicely to Winter 1152, a whole different series.

The six-issue mini-series reads pretty quickly. Apart from issue 5, there isn't a lot of text with Petersen allowing the images to tell the story. And what beautifully crafted images!

Each single issue has a wraparound cover as can be seen in the pictures below. The hardcover has a nice wraparound cover too. What is really unique about this series is that it isn't regular comic book size. It is closer to the squarish picture book size that you get in children's books...which is pretty appropriate since at times it really reads like a picture book though with more mature content!

Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 HC cover

Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 #1 cover

Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 #2 cover

Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 #3 cover

Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 #4 cover

Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 #5 cover

Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 #6 cover

Petersen's story is one for all-ages and it's like you're reading a story that's right out of any fantasy setting; Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, the Chronicles of Narnia...it has pretty similar identifiable themes to all of them! But this is the story of MICE and because they are mice and not men, there are some obvious differences.

From the first issue, Lieam, Kenzie and Saxon have to fight one of the mices' scariest and fiercest predators, a full-sized snake. To us humans, a snake can be pretty scary, but at least it's so much smaller than us. Imagine how huge and terrifying a snake would be from a mouse's perspective! It's kind of morbid seeing Kenzie and Saxon destroying the snake's eggs (and little snakes emanating from them!) when they find them. Lieam kills the snake by himself eventually. We also get to see Sadie, another member of the Mouse Guard, fight against crabs in the second issue.

Terrific art and a terrific read. Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 is highly recommended. Even though it's a bit on the expensive side to purchase, especially since one can finish reading the series so quickly, the beautiful art and expansive story is more than worth it.

Review: Wanted movie

2008-08-17T19:41:00.002+10:00

Went to watch the Wanted movie today. I knew going in it was going to be significantly different from the Wanted six-issue mini-series by Mark Millar and J.G Jones (which I had reviewed two blog entries down...talk about continuity, wahey!) so I expected to see less big screen supervillain action and more "realistic" movie action.

Before you read on, here's the obligatory spoiler warning.

If you don't want to find out what happened in the movie, stop reading HERE as there may be some plot points revealed!

The movie starts off almost exactly the same way the comic does. Wesley Gibson (played brilliantly by James McAvoy) is delivering a soliloquy about how shit his life is. His best friend Bobby (who also happens to be his colleague and shares the same cubicle at his workplace) is constantly having sex with Wesley's girlfriend behind Wesley's back. Wesley keeps taking shit from his bully boss...a little more politically correct in the movie being portrayed as a rather obese white female who is, get this, ANOREXIC! Haha!

Wesley then meets Fox (played by Angelina Jolie), who apparently saves him from an assassin, Cross, who had gone rogue from The Fraternity, a league of assassins that had been in existence for over 1000 years. Wesley is asked to shoot off the wings off flies, mirroring the comic book, and then he freaks out, going back to his old life.

But he finds, having had a taste of the adrenaline rush and power that came with wielding a gun in his hand, he could not just walk back into his own life. But instead of yelling a huge "FUCK YOU!" in the comics, he actually pays out his boss in front of all his other colleagues before storming out of the office. Wesley also takes his keyboard with him and to be honest, I was perplexed. Why take the keyboard with him? Was it his? If it wasn't, why not take something else?

As Wesley approaches the exit, Bobby blocks his path and tells Wesley that he did what no one else had the balls to do...tell off the boss that they all hated. Bobby starts telling Wesley that he's "the man", only to get smashed in the face with the aforementioned keyboard...cue one of the funniest and most awesome scenes in the movie.

We see Bobby's face turn towards the camera in slow motion, with blood flying from the mouth. But that's not the only things that are flying. Some characters fly off the keyboard and they careen beautifully in the air in this order, from left to right: F, U, C, K, Y, O. But there aren't TWO "u"s on a keyboard! So we also see a tooth fly out of Bobby's mouth, complete with the roots and with that tooth looks like...is it...yes it is! A "u". Hilarious!

Some of the dialogue in the movie I recognised immediately since it was verbatim from the comic book. I laughed when Wesley tells us that Bobby is "shtupping" his unfaithful girlfriend on "an Ikea table I picked up for a really good price". As Wesley complains about his pathetic life and the fact that his father abandoned him when he was seven, he suggests that his father perhaps realised "that he'd just fathered one of the most insignificant assholes of the 21st century". In fact, when that line was being delivered, I actually mouthed it out in the cinema, word for word, since it's one of those lines that I just remember from the comic!

There are some major differences in the plot points between the comic and the movie. In the comics, The Fraternity is the league of supervillains that have taken over the world. In the movie, it's a league of assassins that had been in existence for 1000 years. As there are no supervillains in the movie, we don't see Mr Rictus, Solomon Seltzer or any of the other villains that we've read about and loved. In fact, the only two main characters that have made the transition from the comics to the movie are Wesley and Fox.

The Fraternity in the movie is headed by Sloan (played by Morgan Freeman...who swears twice during the movie! Absolutely awesome! Can you just imagine the regal driver from "Driving Miss Daisy" saying "motherfucker"? No? Then you've got to see this to believe it!) and gets his team of assassins to train Wesley to become the cold-blooded killer they know he will eventually become. Because of the lack of supervillains in the movie, they've got able-bodied replacements assassins to conduct Wesley's training.

We find out that Wesley's Dad in the comics is The Killer, who faked his own death so that Wesley can step into his shoes and stop being the pussy that he is in life. In the movie, we find out that the assassin who gets killed at the start of the movie isn't The Killer, who I'm sure most people think is, but is instead just another assassin, Mr X. In fact, Cross, the guy who's out to kill all the rest of the assassins in The Fratenity, is actually Wesley's father!

Cross found out that Sloan had actually been manipulating The Fraternity into doing his dirty work to for power and political reasons and wants to kill Sloan and anyone loyal to him. Slowly but surely, Cross is whittling down The Fraternity's numbers so Sloan concocts this story to dupe Wesley into pursuing Cross, knowing that Wesley, Cross' son, is the only person Cross will not kill.

Of course, Wesley finds out that he has been betrayed and wants vengeance against Sloan and the rest of The Fraternity. I'll leave it at that...you'll need to catch the rest of the movie to find out what happened!

One of the most controversial things from the Wanted series was the ending which some readers thought was Mark Millar taking a pot-shot at them and saying they had no lives or mind of their own. What that ending did was challenge the reader to get out there and do something with their life.

While the movie doesn't have an ending that was as strongly worded as "this is my face while I'm fucking you in the ass", like the comics, there's a message at the end that's directed straight to the movie goer. Wesley starts delivering a soliloquy again, saying how his life has changed and he's made the most of it, and asks the viewer:

"What have you done in your life lately?"

Review: Bully: Scholarship Edition

2008-08-08T08:22:00.001+10:00

Over the last two days, I've been playing the story mode of Bully: Scholarship Edition on the Nintendo Wii.

I've always been a fan or Rockstar games (though their Rockstar Ping Pong was pretty crap...and I played it only once! And State of Emergency was the pits too) so I get excited whenever a new Rockstar game gets released! Bully was actually by Rockstar Vancouver, but hey, it's still under the Rockstar banner.

I had played the original Grand Theft Auto all those years ago and while I never progressed past the third or fourth mission (hated the stupid bird's eye view from the sky), I found it just so fun having the freedom of choice in a world which was populated with gangsters, gunmen and people with violent tendencies!

So when I read about how groundbreaking GTA3 was on the PS2, I just had to try it out for myself. And I was absolutely blown away...I actually just completed the main story all on its own without doing any of the exploration of Liberty City and the side missions. And it was such a rivetting experience living in a full fleshed out 3D world where you had so much freedom just doing whatever you want outside of the main storyline missions, I went back and did it all again but this time, with the side missions!

And then GTA: Vice City came out and that is still my favourite game of all-time. The music was just to die for...combine that with the gameplay and you have a surefire winner for this child of the 80s! I purchased GTA: San Andreas when that came out but believe it or not, it still remains in its packaging to date and I haven't even played it yet!

When I heard that GTA: Liberty City Stories would be released on the PSP, I actually got a PSP just so I could play it and relive being in the world of GTA3 all over again. And then GTA: Vice City Stories was released...with even BETTER music than in Vice City! In fact, the only GTA game that I don't actually own is GTA4, and that's because I don't have either a PS3 or Xbox.

But enough about the Grand Theft Auto series. After all, this is supposed to be a review of Bully! I actually played the PS2 version a couple of months ago, despite the game having been released some time back, so I knew what I was in for. In Australia, there was this huge uproar about the game title so they actually renamed it as "Canis Canem Edit" which translates loosely to "Dog eats dog" or something like that.

In fact, if you want to read about the controversy Bully has generated, check out the Wikipedia entry:

Bully/Canis Canem Edit video game

Bully isn't anywhere close to as violent as the other games from the GTA series. What it does offer though is that same free-roaming expansive world that's now a trademark for most Rockstar games.

You play the title role of Jimmy Hopkins, who has been expelled from numerous schools and gets sent to Bullworth Academy, the strictest and worst school this side of America. Jimmy has a bad rep and sending him to Bullworth is the last resort for his mother and stepfather to "educate" him.

Strangely enough, with all the bad press that the game has received worldwide, one would think that Jimmy just goes around beating up other kids and bullying them into submission. On the contrary...Jimmy actually gets picked on and bullied by the other kids once he steps into Bullworth Academy! Jimmy doesn't take to bullying kindly though and thus kickstarts his adventure...fighting back, playing pranks on the other students and trying to romance the schoolgirls.

In the PS2 version, gameplay was fairly straightfoward especially when it came to the fighting, since you'd just mash a couple of buttons and you'd be beating up the other kids trying to bully you. The Wii version is much more elegant...in order to throw kicks and punches, you actually thrust the Wiimote and the nunchuk forward! And there are combo moves, all of which are executed superbly with the Wii contollers. It makes sense that if you want to throw a punch, you should be doing it properly and not mashing a button!

And with the Wiimote innovation, you get to do other things that seemed unnatural in the PS2 version. The Wiimote is used as a targetting device when it comes to using the slingshot. When you use the camera, you can also use the Wiimote. Those who are used to the PS2 version and have moved onto the Wii version will find the changes a bit unnerving initially, but with an hour or so navigating the Bully world with the Wiimote and nunchuk, you'll feel it's as natural as it can possibly get!

The best thing about the Wii version? There are four extra classes: Biology, Music, Geography and Math. And there are extra missions too! With the four extra classes, I've found that everything is spaced out more evenly. In the PS2 version, I found that I had completed ALL the classes and I wasn't even halfway into the game. In the Wii version, I'm just about at the halfway mark but I've only graduated from two classes: Biology and Music, and still have at least one or two more classes for the rest before I'm done with them!

And the new classes are pretty fun too! Biology involves you to dissect various animals with the Wii controller...something that I can't imagine being done with an Xbox360 or PS2 controller! So you get that whole "Trauma Centre" feeling and gameplay. In Music, you get to play percussion instruments and try to shake the Wiimote and nunchuk in time with the music. Very Dance Dance Revolution with the Wii controllers!

Math is just like playing Brain Training or More Brain Training where you select the correct answers as quickly as possible. Geography is probably the toughest of the four classes as you need to have some working knowledge of world locations or you'll find yourself failing the class! You are given flags of countries or states and a map and you need to assign the flags to the correct country/state. Thankfully, when you point the cursor over the flag, the name of the country/state will actually appear at the bottom. I can't imagine how much more difficult it would be if you were running blind and had to try and identify the flag as well!

I did extremely poorly in the second Geography class where you needed to assign American state flags to the appropriate region they were located. What do I know about American geography? That's the one thing I didn't like...I knew where California, New York, Texas and Florida were, but the rest were pretty much a crap shoot. Either I could go grab a map of America and cheat or I could just randomly assign the flags to a state and try and remember what it was! Everytime you got something wrong, 5 seconds would be taken off the countdown clock. Took me four or five tries before I passed the class!

I really loved the Music class. It's just so fun trying to keep in time with the music! In fact, there's a new mission called "Nutcracker" during the Christmas period where you'd perform one long medley of Christmas songs. And that was absolutely awesome...I was laughing away in the background while playing the xylophone and humming to the Christmas songs I recognised!

Speaking of new missions, there are quite a number of new missions in the game as well. There are at least four new missions during Christmas including the aforementioned "Nutcracker". The other missions I played involve helping out a drunken hobo who believes he's Santa Claus! I really enjoyed the mission where he asks Jimmy to take out "the competition" and I went around causing mayhem, destroying Christmas props, Santa's sleigh, candy canes, presents, etc. And beating up midget "elves" was pretty funny too!

Still have quite a long way to go before I finish the game. But it's an extremely gratifying experience playing it. I thought the PS2 version was fantastic...but the Wii version just blows it out of the water and is an A-grade game. If you haven't tried out Bully before and want to just have some fun in a free-roaming world, get it today!

Here are just some screenshots of the game...I've got some of my own screenshots which I've saved and maybe I'll share them one of these days.

Review: Wanted

2008-07-31T08:15:00.052+10:00

The movie “Wanted” is released in Australian cinemas today and it is based on the comic book series of the same name, published by Image Comics in 2003, so I thought it’d be appropriate to write up a review about the six-issue series since I fell in love with it when I first read it.

The comic book medium is, by and large, populated by superhero titles. Yes, there are the odd comic books that don’t feature superheroes and may have different themes: romance, Westerns, sci-fi, horror, thrillers, etc etc. But superhero comic books make up the vast majority of the comics scene.

We all know Superman, Batman, Spider-man. And the one common theme in most superhero comics are that the good guys will always come out on top. No matter how desperate a situation, no matter how bad it gets, the superheroes always find a way to win. Mostly anyway.

So what happens when the supervillains win? We’ve been treated to supervillain-centric comics such as Barry Kitson’s Empire before. And both Marvel and DC comics have released limited series focused solely on supervillains like Dr Doom, Darkseid and the like.

Wanted is a different kettle of fish, however. Writer Mark Millar, one of my favourites, takes the concept to a whole new level. In the world of Wanted, not only do the supervillains triumph over the heroes, but their victory is so absolute that no one is the wiser that superheroes ever existed in the first place!

The supervillains rule the world of Wanted. In this world, the villains decided a long time ago that they should get together and fight the superheroes as a team. Such a simple concept…why didn’t anyone before Mark Millar think of such a concept before?

So superheroes were eradicated and the villains formed “The Fraternity”, a worldwide organisation consisting of all the remaining supervillains who ruled the world and could get away with anything. They could steal, kill, plunder, rape, destroy and pretty much do anything…and get away with it!

It’s a massive world, but like in all good stories, us readers would need to look at that world through someone’s eyes. Enter Wesley Gibson, the main character of Wanted. We first find out that Wesley is a complete loser. He works in a dead-end job and has the same sandwich for lunch everyday: a sesame-crusted salmon over sourdough with mustard greens and wasabi mayonnaise. As Wesley explains, he chooses that particular “unique” sandwich just to prove that he’s different from everyone else. What. A. LOSER!

From the very first panel of the series, an immaculate splash page of Wesley’s best friend about to have his way with Wesley’s girlfriend, you can already tell that Wesley is a bonafide loser.

Doesn’t Wesley’s girlfriend look like Roxanne “Freefall” Spaulding from Image Comics’ Gen 13 series? Why, the resemblance is uncanny!

In fact, the whole world seems to be populated by characters that look disturbingly similar, or even ALIKE some of the other comic book characters we know! But more on that later in the review.

Wesley is a hypochondriac and puts up with his female boss who calls him an “asshole” at least thrice a day. But he has absolutely no backbone and as much as he hates his boss, he puts up with her snide comments such as this one:

But the fun doesn’t stop there for Wesley. Oh no. When he goes home from work, the same bunch of Hispanic gang members follow him, taunting him all the way until he gets home. And he gets home to a cheating girlfriend…just how much of a loser is this guy?

Even though Wesley is portrayed as the ultimate hard-luck wanker in just the very first issue of the series, we actually emphatise with him and have sympathy for him. That’s just how strong Mark Millar’s writing is.

How many of us work under shitty bosses or colleagues but have to put up with them because we’re afraid to lose our jobs? How many of us have been the victims of pack-bullying, or have found out that our girlfriends or boyfriends are cheating behind our backs…with our best friends or worse, a family member? (JERRY! JERRY! JERRY!)

And how many of us just try to convince ourselves that despite all this that’s happening right under our noses, that the world may still turn out to be a better place tomorrow?

Millar’s writing is also infused with a lot of dark but hilariously laugh-out-loud humour. Take the panels above for instance. A website for small white dicks? Wesley being hounded by what it seems like every extra who was in Spike Lee’s movies? Wesley wishing that that his best friend’s penis disintegrates after fucking his girlfriend? The hits and one-liners keep coming!

But let’s leave Wesley behind for just one moment and explore the world of supervillains. Unknown to Wesley, his father, who Wesley believes was an airline pilot, turns out to be the greatest super assassin the world had ever seen: The Killer.

Imagine having the superpower of just being able to stop someone from breathing. No fancy X-ray vision, no heat vision, no super strength, no flight…if you just want someone dead, you pull out a gun or knife or whatever and bang…they’re dead! Not a great superpower if you’re living in a civilised world (unless you’re a serial killer of course), but in this world of supervillains, what an awesome power to have.

The Killer was one of the most feared individuals in The Fraternity and just as he’s about to copulate with some prostitutes, a couple of gunshots ring out and they’re dead. Realising that someone was making a play for his life, the Killer jumps out the window and chases after his would-be assassins.

Wait, hang on a minute, he JUMPS out the window and gives chase? But this is a man without any sort of real superpowers! He can’t fly, he doesn’t have superstrength…how does he give chase by jumping out the window?

Ah, he runs across the outside walls of the building towards the direction of his assassins. Just check out these boots that the Killer is wearing:

Do they remind you of a certain friendly neighbourhood hero? At least the movie version of the costume, and in Venom-black too. As good as the series is on its own in terms of art and storyline, little “cameos” like these allow readers to keep going back and reading the story again, seeing if they can spot something new that’s a shout-out to rest of the comic book medium!

The Killer finally catches up to the would-be assassins, only to find out that they’re actually decoys.

And just like that, the Killer is snuffed out.

But it wouldn’t be the same world without the Killer, so one of the head members of The Fraternity, Professor Solomon Seltzer, sends The Fox to recruit Wesley Gibson into the Fraternity to fill his father’s shoes.

It is revealed that Wesley has his father’s DNA and “superpower” of killing but Wesley needs some convincing. The Fox gives Wesley a gun and asks Wesley for a demonstration of his abilities. Wesley refuses initially as he had never fired a gun before, but with another gun pointed to his head, he has no choice but to comply.

The Professor and the Fox give Wesley 24 hours to choose between returning to his pathetic old life or join them and live it up. It’s not a really hard choice to make…if you could get away with anything and everything without fear of reprimand, punishment or consequences, wouldn’t you take that option too?

Don’t we all wish we could just drop everything and give a big “Fuck you” to anyone who’s ever given us grief, just like Wesley has done above?

Thus begins Wesley Gibson’s training to be the new Killer. More of Millar’s trademark dark humour in the training sequences and you can see from the panels below:

I won’t spoil too much of the rest of the plot for readers…go pick up Wanted and start reading it today! It’s well worth the price of comic book admission!

So far, I’ve just raved on and on about how wonderful Millar’s writing is. Let’s not forget that part of the reason why Wanted was as brilliant as it is was because of the artist, JG Jones.

Jones mainly does covers and his covers are absolutely beautiful…check out some of the covers from the 52 series from DC comics! He has only done interior art for three series thus far: Marvel Boy, Wanted and most recently, Final Crisis. Why Jones doesn’t do more interior art is beyond me…maybe he just doesn’t have the time for it!

Jones’ art is extremely detailed and photo-realistic. Whether it’s drawing a massive technological death trap or that sex scene splash page in the very first page of the series, or even exploding heads with brains flying all over the place, he makes it seem as if you’re seeing a movie freeze frame instead of just comic book art.

His art is so photorealistic that when you look at the main characters in Wanted, they seem really familiar. Perchance you’ve seen them before somewhere? Like on the cover of a magazine or on TV or in a movie theatre somewhere perhaps?

Why, wouldn’t it have been fab if Marshall Mathers the third, Halle Berry and Tommy Lee Jones had played those characters in the movie? Unfortunately, we’re stuck with va-va-voom Angelina Jolie and Academy-Award winning Morgan Freeman who doesn’t even play The Killer. Bah!

Remember somewhere at the start of this review I said that Wanted was populated by characters that resembled comic book characters we knew? Not sure if Jones deliberately added them into the backgrounds on his own or was told to do so by Millar. Regardless, it’s just enjoyable spotting some familiar characters in the world of Wanted! Here are just some of the characters I spotted.

Why, isn’t that Magneto, with an albeit different colour scheme, in the left side of the top panel? And he’s got the Shocker joining him in the same panel! And in the panel below, we see the Abomination and Tarantula. Four Marvel supervillains in the space of two panels!

But it doesn’t stop there! We see the decrepit Vulture in the panel above. And who’s that on the far right? Is that…Japanese mutant hero Sunfire? But isn’t he a hero? Ah well.

See if you can spot the following characters in the panel above: Poison Ivy, Grendel, Hatemonger, Ghost Rider, Mr Freeze. And more of that irreverent Millar humour…Wesley’s induction ceremony involves the burning of a Marvel comic? Haha!

The Vulture makes another appearance in the panel above.

And isn’t that Whirlwind in the top left, accompanying Wesley and other members of the Fraternity in one of their raids in an alternate world?

We’ve got Iron Man (in one of his old armours) and Scarlet Witch hiding in the background of this panel. So this explains Tony Stark’s actions in the last 18 months in the comic book world: he’s actually a villain! :p We also see the Wasp in her mutated form in the comic books.

And isn’t that Scott Steiner (formerly from WCW and WWE) on the right? Who knew that the Big Bad Booty Daddy was a supervillain? Holla if you hear me!

We also see the Jabba the Hutt-esque Shit-head in the panel above, with a nice little character description. Shit-head is like Clayface, except that he’s made of poop. I love the Shit-head character…he’s involved in some of the funniest moments in the series which I’ll elaborate on later.

We see Bulldozer from the Wrecking Crew in the top panel and the Shocker makes another appearance. And why does that look like Elektra in the passenger-side seat of the truck?

More villains than you can shake a hat at! Here we see Gorilla Grodd, Terrax, Reverse Flash, the Scarlet Witch, the Green Goblin, someone who looks very much like Darkhawk, Kang the Conqueror and Hatemonger. And check out that guy who’s been split in half by the panel on the extreme right. Is that a Predator? He must have been sick of hunting Aliens and decided to join The Fraternity!

As I was saying above, Shit-head is involved with some of the funniest moments in Wanted…two in particular. Shit-head is sent by his boss to kill the Professor in order to upset the status quo of the ruling heads of The Fraternity. Shit-head disguises himself, a la Clayface, as the Professor’s driver, and then attacks him.

Once Shit-head has smothered The Professor with what must be tons of poop, he reports in to his boss and delivers possibly the funniest line in the series…and certainly my favourite line:

Sheer brilliance! Shit-head and his cronies then make a play on the lives of Wesley and The Fox, but when your superpower is killing, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that if you don’t ambush The Killer properly, you’ll just wind up dead. Bullets seem to have no effect on Shit-head though, so Wesley needs to resort to other means to kill Shit-head…

And the end result?

You can even make out the shape of Shithead’s head in the bowl! Ewwwwww.

The one thing that is really pleasing about this series is how many comic book in-jokes that Millar drops in the series. He actually references DC Comics’ Justice League of America so many times that one wonders whether he was actually getting royalties (or subpoenas) from DC for parodying their characters!

Take Fuckwit for example. Fuckwit is EXACTLY like Bizarro. But Millar has a simpler explanation of who Fuckwit is, without having to explain why Bizarro speaks the way he does:

The Justice League references don’t stop there however. As the Professor tells Wesley how The Fraternity beat the world’s superheroes, he regales him of stories of what happened to some JLA-esque characters after the supervillain triumph:

No prizes for guessing who the “camp podgy joke” is…think Adam West’s character in the TV series! And the menopausal warrior princess can only be one other character. And check out The Professor’s arch-foe, with the distinctive S-curl in his hair. Who could that character, who needs help in the shitter, be I wonder?

The above panel is a nice tribute to those famous five words from the TV series, movies and comics. With a nice little swear word in the same panel.

So we’ve seen Superman in a wheelchair needing assistance to defecate. What about Batman though? Millar certainly hasn’t forgotten about him, paying homage to Batman’s origins with this neat little twist in the panel below:

And Batman is referenced multiple times in the series:

Haha! If one could just picture “Tubby” as Adam West, it’d make this scene that much funnier! And isn’t that Phoenix and Reverse Flash we see in the background?

If one was in any doubt as to the identity of “Tubby”, let’s have The Emperor call him “The Detective” and spell it out to those of us who haven’t yet been convinced. And let’s have Mr Rictus refer to the other guy in the death trap as “Tubby’s” old “teen sidekick” and refer to The Emperor as his “chum”!

Corny jokes and silly nylon tights. Cmon, sure you MUST believe now that that IS the Batman?! By the way, the answer to the question delivered in the top left panel is “Puzzler”. As in the name of the villain who’s got his mitts on the death trap lever. Yes, they couldn’t get The Riddler, so had to make do with The Puzzler instead.

Can’t get campier than that comment by Mr Rictus!

A reference to Green Lantern in the panel above. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Lantern make ten foot dildos though…that would have been funny to see! I wonder how the ladies in the DC Universe would have reacted if they saw that the Green Lantern was able to make oversized sex toys with his power ring?

There are many other jokes in the series that references comic books and readers, not just JLA characters. Take the following panel for example:

Talk about breaking the fourth wall! Of course no one reads the funnies anymore. Why are we picking up this books still then? :D

Millar really scored a home run in the way he ended the series though. With the bad guys dispatched (hang on…they’re ALL bad guys. Ok, the really REALLY bad guys then), Millar could have gone with the Hollywood-esque happy ending. He could have written the ending in such a way that it would be open to a sequel being published.

But Millar chose to end the series in his own unique fashion. He broke the fourth wall again and made a comment about comic book readers. Now, I know that Millar has taken a lot of flak for his comments and readers said that his last couple of panels in Wanted insulted them.

But all Mark was trying to do was to be ironic. If you can’t laugh at yourself, well, then you’re taking life too seriously.

Here are the last couple of panels of Wanted. Judge for yourself what Millar’s intent was.

If only we could just drop everything and yell out at the top of our lungs:

“FUCK EVERYBODY!”

Readers' comments on It's Thursday, I'm In Love!

2008-07-30T22:33:00.000+10:00

Just a quick entry. I was doing some house-cleaning on this blog when I found out that there were quite a lot of comments left from readers!

I always thought this was too small of a blog that was really only read by my other friends in real life who loved comics and pop culture as much as I did...making it just the one friend. :p

Over the next couple of days or so, I'll start replying to the comments that have been left in the past entries. I probably need to find a way to ensure that when someone actually leaves a comment, I get an email sent to me so that I know I have something to respond to.

Review: New X-Men (E is for Extinction storyarc)

2008-07-29T08:19:00.002+10:00

Time for another review! And this time I’m going to be reviewing the first story arc of one of the most groundbreaking and popular arcs in recent X-Men history: the one that put the team of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely on the radars of mainstream comic book fans, the one the revitalised the X-Men after years of stagnation, the E is for Extinction storyarc in the pages of New X-Men #114-116.

The X-Men comic books had been going nowhere quickly for the last decade or so. The X-books were the best-selling comic books for years before that and had seen creators such as Chris Claremont, John Byrne, Marc Silvestri, Jim Lee, Whilce Portacio, Andy Kubert and Joe Madureira cement their fame on the various X-titles.

However, the X-Men were victims of their own popularity, with seemingly spin-off title after spin-off title flooding the market only to succumb to cancellation after low sales numbers. While there were the two main X-books in Uncanny X-Men and X-Men, there were also a bevy of titles, some of which were a modicum more popular than the others: X-Force, X-Factor, Excalibur, X-Treme X-Men, X-Men Unlimited, Generation X, not to mention the many one-shots and mini-series of the X-characters.

The last big storyline that was successful in the X-Universe was the much loved “Age of Apocalypse”. The “Onslaught” storyline, for all the hype, fell short and was the last big X-story before 2006’s House of M put Marvel’s merry mutants on the map again.

But before House of M, two Scotsman named Morrison and Quitely revitalised the X-Men, bringing with them pathos, dark humour, adult-oriented themes and sweeping changes to the status quo. It was time for the X-books to step to the top of the sales charts again. The X-relaunch was so huge that they even changed X-Men to New X-Men.

Morrison and Quitely’s first arc, “E is for Extinction”, set the tone for what was to come in their 41-issue run.

They introduced a new uber-powerful villain, Cassandra Nova. She was as evil as evil gets and was the polar opposite of Magneto in terms of ideology. While Magneto wanted mutants to rule the world, Cassandra Nova wanted to kill all mutants!

She was evil and Quitely’s art made look extremely creepy. Sticking her fingers through one’s neck and having her fingers poke out through the orifices in one’s face…ouch! And why did she look so much like a female version of Charles Xavier? But more on that in another review…or you can always read the many TPBs and HCs that reprinted the legendary Morrison and Quitely run to find out for yourself.

Cassandra Nova didn’t just talk the talk, she walked the walk too. Her threats to kill mutantkind weren’t just idle threats. First she assimilates Donald Trask, heir to the Trask legacy of building the mutant-hunting Sentinels, then gets the Mastermold to build millions of sentinels to wipe out the mutant inhabitants of Genosha. Just look at how quickly the numbers fall in the mass-genocide from the panels below!

New, terrifying villain? Check. One ingredient of a successful run fulfilled. But Morrison doesn’t stop there. Oh no. He also radically changes everyone’s favourite X-Men by introducing a femme fatale to the team, the uber sexy Emma Frost.

How does Quitely draw her like that? It’s absolutely gravity-defying! Does she use double-sided tape to hold up those pieces of cloth to her boobs and sides of her body? And what a case of camel toe!

And once again, invisible gum-tape must be Emma Frost’s best friend. Emma Frost became one of the most popular X-Men as a result of Morrison and Quitely’s run. Yes, they gave her a British accent, which was completely unnecessary, but not did she know she was beautiful and her beauty to her advantage, she was also a A-grade 100% badass ultimate bitch.

In fact, she even ACKNOWLEDGES she’s a bitch in this little exchange with Jean Grey:

Another notion that Morrison introduces to the mutant-verse is that of secondary mutations. Mutants, which as a species, were far evolved from normal homo sapiens, could further evolve and develop new powers! As can be seen from the two panels above, Emma Frost, as drippingly sexy as she is, was obviously never a shiny-happy-people person. While she was still one of the world’s most powerful telepaths, Morrison gave her the secondary mutation (and power) of being able to harden her skin so that she became diamond-hard.

One of the more memorable (and perhaps controversial) secondary mutations was evolving Dr Henry McCoy from the ever-loving bouncing Beast to something you’d see out of a Disney cartoon…or horror movie, take your pick.

Beauty and the Beast? How apt. But no, really. It really WAS Beauty and the Beast.

Doesn’t Mrs McCoy’s bouncing baby boy look like he’s about to take Esmerelda out onto the ballroom floor, complete with clocks and candlesticks and dishes and cutlery all dancing and singing in tune?

Thankfully, despite Beast being subjected to a somewhat “hideous” cat-like transformation, he still retained his sense of humour.

In fact, one of the hallmarks of Morrison and Quitely’s run is the dark humour in the series, which was evident in the first storyarc. “Your dating days are over” indeed. Absolutely hilarious…it’d have been even more perfect if Beast had somehow quoted the bard, Shakespeare, with the classic line “Alas, poor Yorick” somewhere in the above panel.

And what happens when you ask a mutant who’s only power is to be hideously ugly if he was any good in a fight? You get the following panel:

But for all the humour in “E for Extinction”, we’re quickly reminded that the X-Men’s world has been given a healthy dose of adult-oriented reality and violence when Cassandra Nova “possesses” Charles Xavier. Charles surprises everyone by grabbing a gun he keeps close to him, pointing it to his temple and uttering:

Yeesh! Why does Charles even keep a gun there in the first place? He later explains that he knows he’s the most powerful telepath on the planet and needed to take precautions in case there were ever situations like what had happened, when his mind or body had been controlled by external sources.

Cassandra Nova almost wins the day though, when she infiltrates the X-mansion and wears the Cerebra (the telepathic-magnifying Cerebro’s more powerful sister) helmet and is about to snuff out all mutant life on the planet. In comes Emma to save the day in brutal fashion.

Omigod! An X-Men snapping someone’s neck in the comic books? What is this, R-Rated XXX-Men? Surely the X-Men’s boy scout, Scott Summers aka Cyclops, would NOT stand for this!

Well, uhm ok. If Scott’s ok with this. Must be another one of those Morrison-modifications. The old Scott Summers would never stand for this.

But that neck snap doesn’t kill Cassandra Nova! She still struggles on, despite having a couple of vertebrae snap into pieces. Just when the X-Men thought they had lost the day, in comes an unlikely “saviour”…

The gun that Charles used to earlier point at his own temple ends up being the gun that kills Cassandra Nova. So Scott Summers is okay with someone’s neck being snapped and now we’ve got Charles brandishing a gun and going all Punisher-like on an enemy mutant. Which brings me to my favourite panel and one-liner of the arc:

Hardcore indeed.

That would have been a fantastic end to the first story arc, but no, Morrison saves the best for last. He throws one more spanner into the works that brings down the axe on Xavier and his merry X-Men…Xavier, the world’s foremost expert in mutants and the champion for human-mutant relations, reveals why he has always been for the mutant cause:

And the house of cards all come crashing down.

Marvel’s merry mutants are back!

"Why do you wanna kill me?"

2008-07-28T17:44:00.002+10:00

Got this from Theo's blog, which he got off YouTube.

Absolutely brilliant...more of Batman's growling, which I really hated in the movie!

Reviews: Batman: The Dark Knight

2008-07-20T17:34:00.002+10:00

Went to watch "The Dark Knight" today at Forest Hill. As one might imagine, there is more than a healthy interest in this movie here in Australia as it was Heath Ledger's final movie before he died. And at least a third of the audience (maybe two fifths) who were watching the same session of "The Dark Knight" as me were people who I think normally wouldn't go to watch a movie like that. There were old aunties watching the movie, for crying out loud. Old aunties! And there was even this older gentleman, who's dressing (he wore a beret that he kept on the entire movie!) screamed out: "I'm a sophisticated gentleman, so who knows what the hell I'm actually doing in this grungy cinema watching this!"

But anyway, yes, there were quite a number of people watching The Dark Knight. But was it any good?

Before you read on, here's the obligatory spoiler warning.

If you don't want to find out what happened in the movie, stop reading HERE as there may be some plot points revealed!

I suppose in order to put this movie in context, one would undoubtedly have to compare it to a few of the Batman movies before this: the successful reboot of the Batman franchise in the 2005 "Batman Begins" movie, as well as the original "Batman" movie which featured Jack Nicholson's classic take on the Joker. I was tempted to compare it to "Batman Forever" which has the first appearance of Two Face on the big screen, but that would be pointless...comparing a movie to a bad movie doesn't make much sense, unless one was trying to decide which movie was crappier.

I preferred "Batman Begins" to "The Dark Knight". I suppose I've always been a fan of the Batman: Year One era when Frank Miller showed, for the very first time, that Batman was human and he always wasn't this all-menacing, no-mistakes vigilante that we all know he is. "Batman Begins" didn't just humanise Batman, it also showed us the flip side of his persona, how he actually managed to work Bruce Wayne nicely as his alter ego. "Batman Begins" was really about Batman and Bruce Wayne.

"The Dark Knight", however, is a tale of Heath Ledger's Joker and Aaron Eckhart's Harvey Dent. While Batman is still the title character of the movie, he takes a backseat to Joker and Harvey Dent in the movie. Heck, if it wasn't for Heath Ledger's chilling portrayal of Joker, I'd argue that the movie should be titled: Harvey Dent: The Golden Years since Harvey seems to be the shining light of the movie and the focus seems to be always on him as the hero!

The opening scene of a bank robbery sets the tone of the movie, telling audiences that this is going to be a much darker movie than the previous one (which was pretty dark in itself at times). There's a nice "cameo" of William Fichtner ("The Longest Yard", "Black Hawk Down") as the bank manager of the bank that holds money for Gotham's mobs, grabbing out of a shotgun and taking no crap from the bank robbers, who don clown masks to hide their identity.

He shoots two of the bank robbers and tries shooting another one only to find out that he's run out of shells. That bank robber than gets up and unloads with a submachine gun into Fichtner's body. We then see that the hired goons robbing the bank all start shooting each other on the back, thanks to Joker's instructions to shoot the other guy after he's done his part to assist with the bank heist. With one clown remaining, he pulls off his mask to reveal an extremely creepy version of the Joker.

This Joker is nowhere close to the one Jack Nicholson portrays in "Batman". While Nicholson's Joker is cunning and ruthless, he's also actually bwa-ha-ha laugh-out-loud funny. Everything is a joke to him and he trades humourous quips with not just Batman, but with his perceived audience. Ledger's Joker, while also seeing everything as a joke, is much darker and is, for the lack of a better description, an agent of chaos. He sees the funny side of things in a twisted way, acting on his violent impulses and having no qualms or hesitations about killing anyone. Ledger's Joker is a master strategist, as we find out as the movie plods on.

Ledger is brilliant as Joker and quite a number of the Hollywood heavyweights have called for him to be awarded a post-humours Oscar for his role. That might just happen this year! His body language and mannerisms are brilliant, one minute portraying the Joker as this scrawny fiend who is not a physical match for Batman, and the next as a cool and calculated tactical genius who can match Batman in the brains department.

The one thing that I thought was really great about this movie was the fact that they didn't reveal Joker's origins. Who really needs to know why he has the insane mind that he is anyway? It would have added a bit to the plot, but it certainly wasn't necessary. It seemed that they DID reveal Joker's origin during the movie, when Joker tells a mob boss that his father used a knife to cut the grin-scars on his face. But that was a lie as revealed later on when he tells Rachel Dawes (played by Maggie Gyllenhal, who looks very much like Katie Holmes) that he inflicted those wounds on himself.

Ledger's Joker is very simplistic in the sense that he's not motivated by money or revenge or anything like that. He's motivated by anarchy, by spreading chaos to the world around him. He's just insane and he likes the simplistic notion of just blowing things up. And although Joker explains during the movie that he likes the "cheap" stuff like gunpowder, oil and plastic explosives, he also prefers using knives to gut a victim because he can see their emotions close up, slowly. What a loon!

Harvey Dent is the other major part of the movie. The entire movie keeps comparing Batman to Harvey: one's an illegal vigilante who takes down thugs the hard way while the other is a white knight who takes down criminals legally using the justice system. Batman sees Harvey as the hero Gotham City needs as he takes no bull but at the same time, gets results by removing the criminal element off the streets without having to resort to violence or the nifty technology that Batman possesses.

Dent is also dating Rachel, and there's a love triangle that is briefly explored but doesn't deter from the main plot of the movie. If anything, it explains Harvey's quick turn to Two Face later in the movie when he loses Rachel and finds out that, while Joker is ultimately responsible for organising the kill, it was crooked cops that was part of Detective Jim Gordon's (played by Gary Oldman) task force that took her away to a location where she died when a bomb went off. Dent loses everything, including, it seems, his mind.

When the Two Face character first appears on screen, it's like seeing the Two Face character from "Batman: The Animated Series" or from Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale's Batman: The Long Halloween series...very similar and a hell of a lot better looking than the Two Face from "Batman Forever". Dent is a broken man and when approached by Joker, he actually buys into Joker's hoopla and actually goes after his former friends, Jim Gordon and Batman, instead of killing the man who was responsible for killing Rachel!

As I said, Batman seems relegated to be the supporting character in this movie. Bruce Wayne seems to have more presence than the caped crusader himself! The one thing that I absolutely hated was Batman's snarl. I know he has to disguise his voice so that people can't tell the difference between Bruce Wayne and Batman, but really...it really was that, a snarl. I'm not sure whether it was Christian Bale's fault or not, but everytime Batman talked, he sounded as if he needed a box of lozenges for that really sore throat that he had! It's great for scaring off crooks and criminals, but when he's talking to Gordon and Dent, it's a bit hard understanding what the hell he's saying.

The movie goes on for 2 hours and 25 minutes (not including the credits), which felt like it was 25 minutes a bit too long. There were some scenes which really could have been cut as they didn't move the movie forward at all. That's my take on it anyway.

Nice to see some other "cameos" from the world of Batman actually making it into the movie. We see Cillian Murphy's Scarecrow again early in the movie when he gets caught by Batman during a drug deal gone wrong. Then there's Salvatore Maroni (played by Eric Roberts) from the Batman: Year One and Batman: The Long Halloween series who's appearance in the movie really gives it some continuity, since he's the "replacement" mob boss after Carmine "The Roman" Falcone (played by Tom Wilkinson) went loony in "Batman Begins".

We even get to see the appearance of Tony "Tiny" Lister (the president from "The Fifth Element" and Zeus from the WWF in the late 80s) as a con in the latter part of the movie! Even a Singaporean actor, Ng Chan Han, was in "The Dark Knight" as Lau, the Hong Kong businessman who "steals" the Gotham City mobs' pooled money!

Best line of the movie:

"This city needs a better class of criminal."

All in all, I think while "The Dark Knight" is a good movie, it's not as good as the previous one. Ledger and Eckhart are standouts in this movie. Alfred (played by Michael Caine) and Lucius Fox (played by Morgan Freeman) get to develop their characters further and you emphatise with them. Batman, though being the title character of the movie, takes a HUGE back seat and in some of the scenes he's in, I personally thought to myself: "Ok, I'm sick of seeing him. Bring back Joker and Harvey Dent already." And Rachel Dawes brought nothing to the movie except for the plot point of getting killed and "turning" Dent into Two Face.

An Oscar for Heath Ledger? Guess we'll find out in about nine months' time!

Review: All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder Vol.1 HC

2008-07-10T16:43:00.001+10:00

Well, since I’m trying to keep this blog somewhat active, I thought I’d start doing some reviews on comics I’ve recently read. Some reviews will be very brief, some will be extremely lengthy, like this first one I’m doing. Some will have lots of pictures (when I can be bothered to scan them in) and some will just be Bendis-like wordy.

I thought I’d start on perhaps one of the most popular and talked about regular series in the last three years or so…and it so coincides that DC Comics released the first nine issues in a handy hardcover collection. I’m talking about Frank Miller and Jim Lee’s All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder.

Sure, there are other comics I love more and I’m primarily a Marvel Comics man. But I just read the new All-Star Batman and Robin HC from cover to cover and it’s fresh in my mind, plus I DO have a lot of things to say about it. It’s controversial, if nothing else.

No one writes Batman like Frank Miller. And while that can be taken as a compliment, I’m afraid, in the case of All-Star Batman and Robin, it’s not. Miller has written perhaps the two most important important stories in Batman lore: The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One. If you were a comics fan, you’d know these two storylines, along with Batman: The Killing Joke are THE classic Batman stories in his 60 plus year history.

You can relate to Miller’s Batman in both Dark Knight and Year One. In Dark Knight, he’s a crazy old coot that’s forced out of retirement but still wants to prove to the world that he’s the ultimate badass. In Year One, Batman is still a rookie, learning the ropes and the reader gets to see a Batman before he starts becoming infallible, before he starts becoming the world’s greatest detective.

In All-Star Batman and Robin though? Miller’s Batman is an utter nutjob, a loon, a psychopath. I would like to present Exhibit A, perhaps the most controversial and certainly most talked about AND parodied panel in the series so far:

Yes, Miller’s Batman not only goes on to insult the Boy Wonder by calling him dense and retarded, but he also refers to himself in the third person. But he doesn’t refer to himself as “The Dark Knight Detective”. He doesn’t call himself “the caped crusader”. He doesn’t even call himself the “I can kick your ass any day of the week and make you pee your pants in fear” Batman. No, he refers to himself as the “goddamn Batman”.

If you think calling Batman “goddamn-ed” once in this series was bad enough, well, somehow, it transcends to the supporting characters in the series too. Other characters have referred to Batman as “goddamn-ed”. Case in point:

Though in that last panel, I suppose Robin had a reason to refer to Batman that way, since that’s how he was introduced to Bats in the first place.

For the other panels though, it’s as if Batman has telepathically influenced Commissioner Gordon and Black Canary so that they start referring to him as “goddamn-ed”. They seem to be able to “read” Batman’s thought and speech balloons and steal his thoughts and make them their own!

Hell, they call him the “goddamn Batman” so much that this series really should be renamed as The Goddamn Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder.

Miller’s Batman, as I said before, is certifiably nuts. One thinks that he probably belongs in Arkham Asylum, along with all the other crazies he’s put in there. What other Batman will laugh insanely, a la the Joker, while terrorising the criminal element in Gotham City?

While that panel is just above, I’ll address something else. The dialogue in All-Star Batman and Robin is…entertaining to read, but you’d have to REALLY suspend your belief to imagine Batman ever saying stuff like: “You don’t know from screwed, you losers.”

It’s as if one has put the book down and started watching Army of Darkness on DVD! What’s Batman going to say next: “Listen up your effeminate screwheads! This is my BATARANG!?!” Though the way this series has gone so far, I wouldn’t be in the least surprised if Ra’s Al Ghul is some sort of ancient sorcerer and turns up with the Necronomicon in hand.

There are quite a number of other one-liners in the series that one would never expect Batman to utter, like “Eat glass, lawman!” and “I’ll break your goddamn neck” and even “You poor little bastard”.

What is this, Sin City’s version of Batman? I’ve got a whole bunch of memorable and controversial one-liners in the first nine issues that will be at the end of the post. Will just round up the one-liners with this panel:

I swear to you, when I read that panel, I automatically thought of former WCW and WWE wrestler Booker T and imagined Batman doing the spinneroonie. Hell I know what 2 + 2 is! Thomas Jefferson sucka! (Just a bit of The Rock humour there, folks.)

Miller’s Batman is brutal and unforgiving. He takes sadistic pleasure in inflicting pain, even torture!

You will believe this Batman will kill if he needs to…something that the regular DC Universe Batman abhors. In one scene, All-Star Batman even tells Green Lantern that superheroes’ are criminals and always have been criminals!

So how different is this Batman from the one we all know in the regular DC Universe? I present to you a collection of Robin’s thoughts about the All-Star version:

And the coup de grace:

Robin thinks Batman is a tool! That is simply hilarious!

All-Star Batman and Robin is published on a bimonthly schedule, or at least when Jim Lee manages to crank out new issues in time for release anyway. While it doesn’t have a history of lateness like some titles such as Ultimates, Ultimate Hulk Vs Wolverine and even Battle Chasers way back in the day, it DOES suffer from “late issue” syndrome.

Having said that though, just like Ultimates and Battle Chasers before it, when new issues do hit the stands it usually is well worth the wait. Jim Lee has been an influential penciller in the comics industry for nearly 20 years…but believe it or not, like a fine wine, his pencilling seems to mature with age.

It was his art alone that got me hooked on X-Men way back in 1991. I still remember buying multiple copies of X-Men #1 just so I could cut out the pretty pictures! I’d argue that his art now far surpasses his seminal work in the early 90s in the pages of X-Men and his creator-owned WildC.A.T.S.

Just check out this beautiful six-page spread of the Batcave (apologies in advance that the scans aren’t that great):

Look closely and you can see many different versions of the Batmobile in the Batcave, including the 60s Adam West and Burt Ward TV series Batmobile, the Batmobile from the Animated Series and even the Batmobile from the big screen movies! There’s also Spartan war gear…a nod to Frank Miller’s 300?

And while Jim Lee doesn’t draw the most babelicious women in comics (that honour would go to Frank Cho in my opinion, with perhaps J. Scott Campbell and Terry Dodson not far away!), the women he draws are still smoking hot!

Who else but Jim Lee would dare to draw shots of Wonder Woman with the camera angle focusing down on her…assets?

Another exceptional thing about All-Star Batman and Robin is the fantastic supporting cast. Batman may be the main man, but if you’ve read the series, you’ll instantly care about Robin and Alfred.

Alfred is loyal, he’s reliable and he knows his place. But at the same time, he takes crap from no one, not even if the crap is being dished out by his employer, the goddamn Batman:

Not sure whether it was the script calling for it or Jim Lee over-exaggerating the poses, but there was a scene where Alfred, sans top, is trying to help Vicki Vale to her feet after she gets injured in a car crash. But the scene looks so…morbid, as if Alfred had some evil intentions for Ms Vale! Case in point:

Miller’s Robin is like an extremely young Spider-man. He’s witty and dishes out the snappy banter. He doesn’t keep still, not for a second, always constantly in motion like the graceful acrobat that he is. And Robin is not afraid to pay Batman out for his choice in equipment and gear:

Oh, but it doesn’t stop there. Calling Batman queer must be contagious because Black Canary does the same thing!

I must admit, calling one’s high tech souped-up top-of-the-line vehicle the “Batmobile” does sound pretty fruity.

Not all funny moments revolve around Robin though. Miller’s Batman can be funny too when he wants to. He goes so far to call Green Lantern a moron with “the imagination of a potato”…oops, sorry, I meant a “goddamn potato”. (Yes, we all love it when Batman swears!) And what are Batman’s thoughts about Green Lantern’s weakness to the colour yellow?

In fact, Batman dislikes Green Lantern so much, he meets GL in one of his safehouses…with the interior already painted completely yellow! And then he taunts GL with a glass of lemonade.

Oh, but it doesn’t stop there! Robin picks up on Batman’s taunts and soon follows suit!

What a rube indeed.

Miller doesn’t just stop with Batman’s immediate supporting cast though. He also introduces the Justice League in the series, portraying them more like the Squadron Supreme, willing to get things done just on principle alone, than the Justice League we all know and love.

Heck, he portrays Wonder Woman as a man-hating dyke, even going so far as to get Batman to call her “the wicked witch of Lesbos Island”! This Wonder Woman is unnecessarily aggressive and she’s willing to kill anyone who stands in her way.

But, as the very next panel shows, she also enjoys some tough love and being submissive. Yes, Supes. She really is “a very nice girl”. What is this, the 60s? Whatta putz.

This series has everything! An aggro, mental Batman, swearing his head off by referring to himself as the “goddamn Batman”. The Justice League being portrayed as a bunch of maniacs who can’t get along. And there’s even a sex scene in the book!

Most controversial series for quite some time? You betcha.

For all the controversy, I do enjoy reading All-Star Batman and Robin. It is one of the most refreshing reads I’ve had in a while. I know I can expect the unexpected in the series and for all of Miller’s butchering of the Dark Knight, he keeps us interested long enough to purchase the next issue, just to see what else is in store.

If only this series were released more frequently than six times a year…and that’s if we’re lucky!

Quotable quotes from All-Star Batman and Robin

“So we’ve got a man of steel in Metropolis…and why exactly is it we call him a man of steel? That does bring certain thoughts to mind.” – Vicki Vale, on Superman

“On your feet, soldier. You’ve just been drafted. Into a war.” – Batman, sounding suspiciously like Captain America

“You poor boy. You poor little bastard. Welcome to hell.” – Batman, with a Sin City-influenced tinge to his dialogue.

“What, are you dense? Are you retarded or something? Who the hell do you think I am? I’m the goddamn Batman.” – The goddamn Batman speaketh!

“Shut up.” – Batman to Robin, Robin to Batman, Batman to Black Canary, Everyone to Plastic Man…the most overused two words in the series

“I touched my mother’s breast.” – Quote from Batman taken horribly out of context

“Sir, I am your butler. I am your aide. I am your medic. I am not, however, your slave. Unhand me.” – Badass Alfred to Batman

“Out of my way, sperm bank.” – A pissed off feminist version of Wonder Woman to some random man

“I’m ready for my punishment, Princess Pea. Shower it on.” – Plastic Man to Wonder Woman

“Never have a detective for a Dad. Not unless you’re really good at bullshitting him. And always throw in a smile when you’re bullshitting your Dad.” – Barbara Gordon, on Commissioner James Gordon

“Eat glass, lawman!” – Batman, as he kicks through a windscreen into a corrupt cop’s face

“You don’t know from screwed, you losers!” – Batman to a bunch of thugs

“We keep our masks on. It’s better that way.” – Batman, with Black Canary on the pier doing…questionable things

“This is love. In my own special way.” – Joker, as he brutally beats up attorney Donna Gugina after having had his way with her

“We can’t print Jocko-Boy’s response, due to standards of decency. The response demands an anatomical impossibility.” – Editor’s note after Batman throws Jocko-Boy into the sea

“I’ve got a retarded demigod to take care of. Demigod, my foot. He’s just a clown with more power than he knows what to do with.” – Batman, on Green Lantern

“I’ve seen more intelligent hockey pucks.” – Batman, on Green Lantern’s smarts

“The clown makes oversized eggbeaters and mouse traps and vacuum cleaners…when he could set the whole world straight with that ring. What a damn idiot.” – Batman, on Green Lantern

“Whoa. Here comes a big flashlight. Very inventive, Emerald Crusader.” – Batman’s thoughts, as Green Lantern creates…a big green flashlight.

“Here he’s got a power ring that can do anything he can imagine…but that’s his whole problem. He’s got the imagination of a goddamn potato.” – Batman, on Green Lantern

“He can’t even make himself a green dandelion with that ring of his if what he’s up against is yellow. Dumbest weakness I ever heard of…” – Batman, on Green Lantern’s weakness to the colour yellow

“There’s child labour laws about this sort of thing. This is exploitation of a minor. How’d you like me to sic some fat bureaucrat on your ass, big guy? Don’t think I won’t!” – Robin complaining about being asked to paint the interior of one of Batman’s safehouses completely yellow in anticipation of a showdown against Green Lantern

“Then there’s you and that little joy luck club you’re putting together.” – Batman on the Justice League

“The wicked witch of Lesbos Island, the last candy-pants of a blown-up planet, a shape-changer who’s nuttier than a fruitcake, and you, master of the giant green egg-beater when you’re not plagued by a primary colour.” – Batman, on Wonder Woman, Superman, Plastic Man and Green Lantern

“Care for a glass of lemonade? You really should try the lemonade. On a hot day like this, it’s a godsend.” – Batman taunting Green Lantern with a glass of lemonade

“Guess the man wants a fight after all, huh, boss? Here’s some more fresh-squeezed lemonade!” Robin, taunting Green Lantern

“What a rube.” Robin, on Green Lantern

“You stupid little snot.” Batman to Robin, after Robin accidentally injures Green Lantern

“And if you puke, I’ll break your goddamn neck.” Batman to Robin, after a grisly scene when Batman patches up an injured Green Lantern

Super Smash Bros. Brawl: First thoughts.

2008-07-06T23:08:00.002+10:00

Got a pretty nice haul of comics on Saturday from Classic Comics. There were actually much fewer comics than I thought I had to pick up. I was expecting perhaps six of the seven Bone HCs I had ordered but none of them were there, which was a bit of a relief I guess, because it would have eaten a LOT into my finances.

I did pick up The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Absolute Edition Vol.2 HC though, which I'm really looking forward to reading. The only thing though, is that I still have a huge stack of comics (both single issues and trades) and manga that I haven't started on yet. And that doesn't even count all the comics I've borrowed from the Knox City Library that I've got to read finish in exactly two weeks' time!

I also picked up another Nintendo Wii game in Super Smash Bros. Brawl from JB Hi-Fi. It's one of the most talked about games for the Wii and while reviews have been mixed (just check out the Amazon website...the game has been given reviews from the lowest one star to the highest of five!), the majority of people have just said how much of an awesome game it is. And how could one own a Nintendo system and NOT own a Smash Bros game?

I tried this out today when Marcelo and Kim were over and I got my ass handed to me by Marcelo in the Brawl portion of the game. To be fair though, I walked into the game having read about the controls ONCE before, and that was a good week and a half ago. Marcelo wanted the classic controller and I only had one, so I first tried out the Wiimote by itself, then the Wiimote + nunchuk combo. And I just couldn't really string together any combination of attacks. Had to break out the manual to have a look at the controls.

After reading figuring out what the controls were, it was a bit better and I think I prefer using the Wiimote to the Wiimote + nunchuk combo, but I think obviously, classic controller was made for this type of game. It was pretty fun even though I was confused trying to figure out the controls to play the game but this is the type of game where you'd need a lot of practice. I can't wait to start unlocking all the other characters though...there are a LOT of things that a player can unlock in this game! It's such a massive massive game...and I think it's the first Nintendo Wii game that actually uses dual-layered DVD discs!

It's also the first game in the Super Smash Bros series that actually uses third party (read: non-Nintendo exclusive) characters. Apart from old Nintendo favourites such as Mario, Link, Yoshi and Pikachu, there are also characters like Solid Snake from the Metal Gear Solid series and Sonic the Hedgehog. The lineup is pretty massive and it'll be awesome trying all of the characters out.

Marcelo and I also played the single player mode called "The Subspace Emissary". It was pretty awesome as it allowed two players to play through the mode, which is a welcome change and brought me back to the days when I played Streets of Rage 2 with my cousin on the Sega Megadrive!

The one thing we didn't like about the single player mode is there wasn't any dialogue. It was kind of like watching a mute version of a game from the Final Fantasy series, except it had your favourite Nintendo characters. The single player mode is really good for practising the movesets of the various characters you get to use during the game though. And while it IS side scrolling it's still pretty fun...I'm slowly discovering how to use all the various item that get dropped onto the ground! Really like the bazooka at the moment, though it seems that if I pick it up facing a certain way, I have to face that way until I drop the bazooka and pick it up again.

More reviews and my thoughts about the game when I play it more!

Wii Championships at Federation Square

2008-07-02T23:10:00.002+10:00

Received this nice little thing in the mail today which I had purchased from eBay:

Played it for about half an hour and I've completed the first three stages of Episode I: The Phantom Menace. This game is awesome! It's not quite a 3D platformer and it's not a side scroller...it's somewhere in between. But the Lego characters are so cute! They don't talk at all and humour is delivered via facial expressions. And the music is just superb. I wonder what the Wii version is like...not that I'm going to get that!

In fact, we were talking about the Nintendo DS as well as other games consoles at work today. K-Mart and Big W were having massive toy sales this coming week (starting tomorrow!) and we were looking at the brochures that someone brought, as well as online, to see what was available. There were some awesome package deals on the DS and Wii...the console plus free games at the normal console price!

We were discussing which ones were better and more worth it, which invariably led to me talking to my colleagues about my experiences with Big W, namely how I could be the first customer there but something would be sold out, or how they would say the stock hadn't arrived yet. The Big W prices were cheaper, but I prefer K-Mart in terms of quality and probably Customer Service. Plus, there are K-Marts that are open 24 hours while we all concluded there were no Big Ws like that.

In fact, in about an hour's time, I'm going to drive down to the K-Mart at Burwood SC to have a look at their games there. Cooking Mama on the Wii is selling for $34.95, the cheapest I have seen and we've been looking at that for quite some time now. Good time to buy it...I'll probably laugh madly when Aeris tries it out!
Most of my colleagues have children or grandchilden who have a NDS and I think I'm probably the only one out of my colleagues that owns one. That may change soon though...I had another colleague really interested in purchasing one since it came with one or two free games! The offer with two free games was at Big W and while that may seem more worth it, the other offer at K-mart for one free game may be the one with better value since the choice and quality of games offered were much better.

Hmmm...Wifi NDS action at the call centre? Hey you never know! While we're still on the subject of gaming, received an email today about the Wii Championships taking place at Federation Square this weekend. They were having competitions for Wii Sports and the public have been invited to compete against each other! I don't think we'll go to participate OR watch, but if we were, I'd love to take part in the tennis comp, which is on Saturday! First 500 entrants get a Wii backpack and each day a Wii and five games are up for grabs for the daily champion!
Which doesn't make quite much sense...because the champion would surely have put in many hours of playing Wii Sports...which means they would probably own a Wii already? How bizarre!

Further information about the Wii Championships:

Get down to the Wii Championships this weekend - Saturday 5 and Sunday 6 July - at Federation Square Melbourne to put your Wii Sports skills to the test and win great Nintendo prizes!

You’ll also have the chance to compete in Wii Sports tennis and Wii Sports bowling against Channel Nine personalities Kelly Landry (Getaway), Shura Taft and Georgia Sinclair (KidsWB).

Each day a Wii, and five Wii games will be up for grabs for the daily champion, plus the first 500 entrants per day will receive a Wii back pack!

The Wii Championships celebrate Nintendo’s sponsorship of the Game On exhibition, located at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI). The Game On exhibition which is open daily, will close Sunday 13 July.

EVENT DETAILS
What: Wii Championships
When: Saturday 5 (Wii Sports tennis) and Sunday 6 (Wii Sports bowling) July 2008
Time: 10:00am – 5:00pm Saturday and Sunday
Where: Federation Square Melbourne, Corner Swanston and Flinders Streets, Melbourne, Victoria

Bone: In colour!

2008-07-01T20:41:00.001+10:00

Now that I no longer play Magic: the Gathering, (in fact, I've sold off my entire collection...the only Magic cards I still have left are basic lands and some uncommons here and there...and less than 10 rares), my disposable income sort of gets centred on comics and games. Of course, most of my salary goes to the rent and joint savings/savings for my parents. But anything else I have, I can spend the way I want it!

And I have purchased quite a number of TPBs and HCs, my comic reading of choice now, since they're so much more awesome than single issues, though single issues are the ones that are worth more, in terms of collectibility. But I don't really need single issues (and it's impossible to store around here) and I prefer to read story arcs in the one go rather than having to wait month by month what's happened. In fact, whenever I read a single issue as part of a story arc, by the time the final issue of the arc is released, I find myself having to read everything from the start again anyway.

One of the series that I'm really looking forward to get (AND have placed an order for!) is the Bone hardcover series in colour. Aeris got me the phonebook-like black-and-white TPB as a Christmas present two years ago and that is absolutely awesome. But Bone...in glorious colour! Hardcover editions as well! I can't wait to read this awesome series from cover to cover again in full colour.

The only HC that isn't available to order from Classic Comics is Volume 6: Old Man's Cave. It's certainly available to purchase online...found it fairly cheaply on Amazon and even on famous US comic shops like Midtown Comics. The only thing is that it's kind of hard to purchase without actually possessing a credit card. And I can't seem to find it on eBay at all! (Not that eBay would be the best place to purchase comics anyway).

Plus, it'd be much easier just going into a local comics shop and picking up the HC, even if it may work out to be more expensive. So I guess I'll have to start looking around in other comic shops to see if it's available. Luckily, I'm no longer in Geelong and it'd be easier to get into town and shop for comics. There's Minotaur and Comics R Us in the CBD. And there's also Alternate Worlds in Windsor. Spoilt for choice!

Enough is enough and it's time for a change!

2008-06-29T22:58:00.002+10:00

Just a little tribute to Owen Hart up there via the title of this entry. Bless you Owen.

Okay...a long overdue post on this site which hasn't been updated in over six months. Since it's coming to the end of June and we're entering the second half of the year, let's see if we can invigorate this site again!

I used to keep this site to my comics musings and ramblings. Initially anyway, then it turned into a site where I posted the latest comics information that interested me...by pretty much copying and pasting stuff verbatim from the Wizard Universe website. Who really wants to read stuff that they get regularly from a more established website anywho!?

So, it's time for a revamp, in terms of the content at least. I'm still pretty happy with the layout of this site. What sort of content, you ask? Well...I'm still trying to figure that one out myself.

I still don't have time to write out fully fleshed comic scripts. I also don't think I have the creativity to continue churning out those little comic strip scripts that I used to on 28 Geeks Later.

I was inspired for a while to post my own critiques about the latest comics...but I'm much too lazy to do that and I don't quite keep up to date with what's happening weekly in the comics biz...perhaps monthly or every two months, since I read TPBs mostly and usually read Wizard perhaps a month or two AFTER the original issue has been released!

I might just post my own opinions on the latest books I've read, or games I've played, or comics-related movies I've watched, or manga I've read. In more detail.

Still trying to figure that one out. The one thing I do know though? There's no quashing my passion and love for the comic book medium. It is, after all, my number one hobby and that isn't going to be replaced anytime soon, even though I HAVE been spending quite a bit of time and money on my Nintendo DS and Wii of late.

But Mario and Yoshi can never EVER compare to Captain America and Spider-man. I'd rather get lost in a tale of the final man on earth, rather than get lost in some dungeon searching for the Phantom Hourglass. And I'd rather be thrilled by revelations such as Black Bolt being a Skrull than tricking out on some go-kart around a track.

Comics. My love for ye knows no bounds. Entertain me! Preferably now.