Review: eGames Expo and Digital Lifestyle Show 2008

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!

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

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!

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!

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!

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

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

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!

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!

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!

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

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

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

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

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!”