Men and Gentleladies of the House

Remember this? I bet you don't!

With things like Buzz, Twitter, and... uh other things, this might seem redundant, but correct me if I'm wrong; We love redundancy.

"Funnies" have gotten serious, and unlike some...

I like it.
I know that many people who might read this are pretty fully enmeshed in the digital lifestyle. I myself am, but still appreciate the stories from the "funnies," those little black and white comics in the newspapers (COLOR on Sundays!), and thus still read them online. However, if you haven't been following them, you might have missed the recent story arc of Funky Winkerbean, which came to its climax today. In it, Lisa Moore, wife of main character Les Moore, finally succumbed to her breast cancer.
Many have said that such seriousness does not belong in the 'comics,' in our 'family newspapers,'. However, I believe that they should, as it can teach us that life doesn't always turn out right in the end. Bad things happen to good people. And what it can teach us as well is that you pick yourself up, and keep on living your life, no matter what happens.
I don't know if this really belongs here, but I thought it belonged somewhere, and this is where I put it.
** If you haven't been following them, you can access the last month's worth of Funky Winkerbean at seattlepi.nwsource.com/fun/funky.asp

Movie of the Year?

I have to confess something: I can't wait for May 2nd.

That's right. "Iron Man" is released that day. The movie. (trailer link http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/ironman/large_trailer.html)

It looks awesome. From what I can tell, they're going to accurately depict the creation of Iron Man (or at least as close as you can come with a movie), his mission, morals, and above all, the man behind it. We all know Tony Stark is a megalomaniac who lives for money, power and, oddly enough, his fucking amazing alter-ego/creation/thing, Iron Man.

Oh. My. Fucking. God.

I haven't been this excited by a movie trailer since "300." Hell, I'm more excited by this trailer. It's fucking Iron Man, baby. Every comic nerd in the world is going to be waiting with baited breathe to see if it lives up to it's potential. And then we're going to be sitting around waiting anxiously for a second installment, maybe the creation of the Avengers... oh god, the pure, glorious potential of this movie. It's so great I keep having to remove exclamation marks because they make writing look stupid. Dammit.

I approve of the choice for Tony Stark. From what I can tell, the graphics are good. I mean, the shots of the original Iron Man suit are straight from the comics. STRAIGHT FROM THE COMICS! How often does that actually happen in comic book movies that Frank Miller isn't working on? Oh, right, never. I can't contain my excitement.

It's really looking like this upcoming year will be a good one for comic fans. "Dark Knight," starring Christian Bale and Heath Ledger as Joker, and done in the style of the comic, complete with the morbid, spooky, not-for-wussy-bitches plot-lines is just around the corner. "Iron Man" is going to rock my socks off. The second "Sin City" is due sometime next year.

It's good to be a geek.

Amy out.

Who is The Sentry?

Recently I came into the possession of a massive box of assorted comics, ranging from the complete House of M, to Toxin (orgasm!) to New Avengers and a large number of X-men. I am oh-so-satisfied with life right now. Imagine my increased delight when I discovered in my precious box 'o fun a dozen or so issues of "The Sentry." GLEE!

And then I realized no one knows who the Sentry is. Could it be that one of the old-school heroes has slipped into oblivion? The man who slipped into insanity after saving the world and pushing his power to the utmost limits, resurrected in the New Avengers series, and was remembered by none. How fitting that the man with the power of a thousand suns and forgotten by the Marvel Universe should also be forgotten in ours.

I confess, Robert Reynolds is one of my favorite superheros of all time. The mental strife he endures, the pain of the knowledge that he accidentally murdered his wife, the voluntary confinement, the return to power after the mass prison-breakout that occurred in the first issue of New Avengers, his honor, nobility, and most of all, the apparently limitlessness of his powers. The Sentry kicks ass, my friends. I love him.

So that was my random comic push/rant for the month. Have fun, and I hope somebody picks up an issue of "The Sentry" (very old school, think the early '80's) and becomes and engrossed in his adventures as I have been since I first read one of his comics.

Amy out

Eternals!!!

Unfortunately, superhero icons saturate our society. I can read the better comics and say, "that's a good line of dialogue," or "interesting plot twist," but that's about it and so I generally prefer the more complex graphic novels.

The problem is that I'll come across this lovely dilemma of a small group of mutants that has to keep the peace between their more violent associates and the fearful humans and, yeah, that's the X-men. So? I'll read about Spidey's crazy villains and, you know, that's Doc Ock. That's how he operates. I'm used to these things.

But The Eternals had a 20-odd issue run 40 years ago. Without any modern reissues, restarts or continuations. I've never seen an Eternals film or played an Eternals game or worn an Eternals Halloween costume. Most people our age know practically nothing about them. And finally I understand what it means to come into contact, for the first time, with ideas so far beyond what I experience in real life that it takes my breath away. I understand why, when people who got into comics as kids describe them, they always talk about that sense of wonder.

I know several people who are in love with the classic superhero comics. And if you can find X-men amazing despite the fact that you already know what everyone's powers are, The Eternals aren't really any better. But for those of you who feel a little cold after reading about Genosha because, hey, it's not like we were surprised- read Gaiman's 7-issue starting point, and hope Marvel gives it to an author worthy of the material.

Games for Wii and other things

I've been renting games recently. It's not something I've regularly done for quite some time. I usually knew which games I wanted and bought them outright. But new games are expensive, especially when I can nearly clear a game in a three-day rental. Also, we still don't have internet (or phone) at the cabin, a subject I'll get into in later.

So! Wii!

Zelda: Twilight Princess! I had my reservations about the Wiimote, but it turns out it doesn't feel totally tacked on most of the time! The wolf sections are a lot of fun and actually felt new and exciting, but everything else is standard Zelda fare. Beautiful game to look at, but for the most part, you've played this game before.

Elebits was awesome for the first 17 levels or so. After that, it gets boring fast. Each level builds and expands in scope in a very similar way to Katamari Damacy, but unlike the latter, Elebits doesn't really know when to call it a day.

Wiimote functionality was decently thought out, though some actions are a little tough to master, notably opening doors. Overall, solid, easy to grasp controls, should be familiar to anyone whose played a PC FPS before. The training levels are mostly unnecessary. Mostly. Multiplayer is a little strange, as only one player at a time controls the camera on a shared screen.

I liked Elebits, but I don't intend to buy it.

Excite Truck! Fun, intuitive controls, decent variety of vehicles, limited variety in tracks. Instead of winning races, the game is focused on earning points during a race, which come from getting crazy air on a jump, doing tricks, smashing other trucks, dodging trees, etc., giving the game a stunt focus. Mostly, it's one point here, 5 points there, then a bonus 50 for getting first or whatever. It gets pretty challenging on the unlockable higher difficulty, sometimes frustratingly so.

My only real gripe is the low number of tracks. Partly, this is because there are five or six map sets from which the tracks are built. Tracks from the same map set are fairly different, but sometimes it doesn't really feel like it. Even accounting for this, there still aren't really that many tracks. Tons of unlockable trucks, but I really only used three or four of them.

Which reminds me! The trucks do handle quite a bit differently, and certain tracks are definitely more suited to certain trucks. I kind of liked this.

Definitely worth buying, but I probably won't because I'm poor.

Cooking Mama! Tons of fun, but a steep learning curve (due mostly to really crappy explanations of what you're expected to do) keeps it from being the awesome party game it could've been. Once you've got the hang of most of the techniques, the game is full of face-paced fun, but expect to be frustrated and feel cheated on occasion. A couple of the mini-games feel really rough and unfinished which, coupled with decidedly finicky and unforgiving controls, really kills the fun on occasion.

Overall, good game, worth a rental, but the controls really hold it back. I can see this working extremely well on the DS, however!

PS2 game!

Just started playing Okami yesterday, which is like Zelda, but less frustrating and with decent pacing. Okami's wolf is totally more fun than Zelda:TP. I did get ridiculously stuck with a plot trigger that I couldn't figure out, making my lack of home interbutts all the more painful, but I have them now. My main issue with Zelda has always been the silly, frustrating, little things you have to do before you can go out and kick some ass, but Okami seems so far to try and streamline that a bit.

PSOne game!

Replaying Xenogears again. Man, that's some corny dialogue! Why do I love it so?

PC game!

Dungeon Crawl, aka Crawl! I've never enjoyed dying so often so much. Think nethack, but less intimidating, at least with the totally awesome graphic tile mod. I started off playing as a Minotaur Fighter, then Minotaur Chaos Knight in the service of Xom, one of the games many gods. Xom is hilarious. She's completely chaotic, so that sometimes she'll give you a giant hammer of destruction and sometimes she'll throw you into the abyss because it amuses her to see you suffer. I'm currently playing as a Troll Berserker. They're slow and dumb, but they can hit things really, really hard and eat anything. Also, regeneration rocks.

The game has a lot of "oh shit" moments. Here's two of my favorites:

It's official.

Watch this space.