Bargains!

Forbidden Planet are currently offering the trade of DC's One Million for £2.99. That's a monster of a bargain. If you're passing the Shaftsbury Avenue store it's worth picking up this Grant Morrison classic.

Orbital are selling cheap, cheap Heroclix and although their sale has officially ended you can still get your hands on several DC Showcases and a bunch of other cut price trades.

There's also a heap of fantastic new comics out this week. Sadly I am so exhausted tonight that I can't even summon the energy to read a stack which includes Captain America #34, Project Superpowers #0, Green Lantern #27, Black Summer #5 and Suburban Glamour #3.

Disgraceful.

A reader writes

Regular readers of this blog will know of my pal Dave French. A former body builder, cage fighter, antiques dealer and Hulk wanabee. A lover of women, toy dogs and harmonicas.

I've shared quite a few of his e-mails with you over the past year, but lately he's been very quiet. Thankfully he's prepared a new rant on the subject of superhero computer games. Here t'is...

"Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated. I refer of course to my absence from the real world, as well as LLC.

For Christmas, Santa left me a brand spanking, all-singing, all-dancing, terra-mega, 768graphics thing, top o’ the range, game playing oojamaflip….. or desktop computer to you laymen.

Since that day I have slowly sunk into a virtual world, as my game playing experiences have become more and more immersive to the point where I am now a Computer Gollum… ‘My Preciousssss…’ Bent and huddled over my monitor in the dark hours, its stark, iridescent, gamma glow dancing of my pale fevered brow, I have trodden paths I will not tell, roamed alien landscapes, emerged triumphant and victorious from a thousand battles, and had the powers of the Gods themselves bestowed on me….. well virtually.

I must admit in one of my more alcohol induced multiplayer killing sprees, after winning a battle with no less than 94 kills (other real people I might add, sitting in rooms similar to my own) I typed to the captive audience I had:

‘BOW DOWN AND WORSHIP ME LIKE A GOD!’ (reminiscent of General Zod: Superman 2)

Checking myself, but breathless and exhausted I quickly typed: ‘Please?..... No pressure…’

Crapulent with power and alcohol and fatigue, I now put digit to keypad to speak to you from a dimension beyond that of what you understand as real. My virtual bondage.

Okay look, this is LLC right?…. And I am Big D right? So I'm gonna turn this prose in a direction more fitting. Hulk? Comics? D&D?

Well computer gaming has spelt death for the good ‘ol fashioned RPG: pencil, paper and dice. It is also responsible for blasting a fist sized hole in the board games industry; they killed much that I knew and loved. But I was oh so willing to be seduced by this new cyber-mistress that I had already flirted with throughout my youth.

I think it must have been Gauntlet...

...a 4 player co-operative game, that was my first D&Desque experience in an amusement arcade. (Anyone remember: Red Elf is about to die…?) The fact you could play with 4 of your friends simultaneously was a stroke of genius, and added to that warm, communal, roleplay feeling that you only usually got sat round a table with a character sheet in front of you, d20 cocked and ready in your sweaty palm, safe in the company of other nerds.

I soon found myself with a computer in the house. What good parent would not want to keep their young child abreast of the latest innovations in this new technological dawn? And what a fine standard bearer Sir Clive was…

What followed was my puppy-love affair with the Spectrum 48k and its multifarious games…It was here I discovered text adventures. Poor, soulless recreations of the roleplay genre, but still a substitute for a die hard fan who didn’t have any friends with big enough tables. Scott Adams- curse his oily hide, and the oily hides of everyone of his descendants, was responsible for stealing a large part of my young life with titles such as: Questprobe Hulk...

Questprobe Spiderman...

and of course, Questprobe Human Torch & Thing....

I still vividly remember Dom's voice saying: ‘Buy Scott Adams hint books!’ In his best Liberace impersonation. It was all satirical back then you see.

Text adventures were usually crafted by uninspired nerds with no story telling skill whatsoever and a modicum of computer savvy. Most of them had utterly ridiculous puzzles, unsolvable to all but the clinically insane, a frustratingly limited vocabulary, and were totally devoid of logic or wit. Scott Adams Questprobe Adventures were no exception… but they were superhero titles…. And I loved superheroes, so I wasted my life on them. CURSE YOU ADAMSSSSSSSSS! Here is a picture of the nerdy-youth-stealing-bastard...

Adams (left) and a half clit half turd alien

Things got better... Games got better. Loading times got shorter. Graphics got better. Playing a computer game actually started to become enjoyable, rather than hair tearingly infuriating.

X-Men in the arcades…WOW!

It was a pretty fantastic, side-scrolling, beat ‘em up, remembered fondly by all who played it, and choc-full of marvel-tastic characters and locales.

Oh! The pounds I wasted in the amusement arcades as a kid!

One of the best but lesser known superhero titles was Marvel vs. Capcom...

It was Street Fighter format and it did include many Street Fighter Characters but had a veritable plethora of Mighty Marvel creations including relatively obscure characters such as Cable and War Machine. It also had big bad Baddies like Doc Doom, Thanos and even Omega Red. The colourful cartoonesque graphics seemed to capture the movement and energy of the Marvel characters fantastically....

Who would win out of Venom and Iceman? Lets find out! WICKED!

Things could only get better for the Marvel/ Computer Game tie in…. or could they.

For me, what spoilt (and will continue to spoil) every piece of commercial Marvel merchandise, was when Hollywood got their filthy, insidious paws on the Marvel license.

I wanted Green Goblin (and with a face like Willem Dafoe’s it was altogether possible)

They gave me a green Power Ranger.

I wanted Magneto. A veritable god among men. Noble Homo-Superior.

They gave me a geriatric waif of a man in a silly hat.

I wanted the Hulk.

They gave me a 2 hour plus movie about Nick Nolte turning into some sort of Absorbing fucking man and only a lousy 10 fucking minutes of the Hulk smashing tanks. BOLLOCKS! (Her from Labyrinth was nice though!)

I wanted Daredevil….. I wont even go into that!

Most Marvel computer games are now Movie tie-ins and as such feature the same insipid plots and characterisations and reek of the noisome funk of Hollywood. It’s a sad, sad day when you play a game like Crysis and realise what Marvel could (nay SHOULD) be doing hand in hand with the computer game industry."

Tales from the nerd sack

I can't tell you if the latest issue of Marvel Zombies is worth reading because I haven't had the chance to look at it yet, but I do know that Arthur Suydam's zombie Nick Fury looks like Michael Heseltine...

Heseltine

Zombie Fury

Well I thought so anyway.

Elsewhere this week, I enjoyed Amazing Spider-Man # 548. Like I said before, there's nothing ground-breaking here, just good, clean throwaway fun. The kind of stuff I used to buy in my newsagent when I was too young to know that comic shops existed.

I still find it amusing that people are pissing their knickers over the reboot. I mean, I have some sympathy for the ones who are unhappy about the fact that things have changed, but the folk who are screaming that Spidey should just have got a divorce rather than done a deal with Mephisto because that would have been more believable need a good slap.

Wise up fanboys, this is Spider-Man for fuck's sake! It's a comic about a man who got bitten by a radioactive insect, climbs walls and fights villains who dress up as rhinos and goblins. If you want believability and realism you're in the wrong place.

Personally I like my comics silly. Occasionally they are so stupid that they rise above the disposable to become things of absurd beauty. Case in point: Wonder Woman. What a fucking great funny book this is. A book where a scantily clad Amazon leads a troop of apes into battle against a bunch of 21st century Nazis. Truly this is great literature. In the words of Wonder-Woman...

Not 'arf princess! Pass me the tissues.

Other genuinely excellent comics this week include Dan Dare #3 where Garth Ennis gives us his homage to Zulu. Also included is a sneak preview of Glenn Fabry's Gilbert & George inspired cover to issue 4...


Dan Dare also gets bonus points for continuing to carry ads for for REAL space travel on the back.

Also worth a look: Comics Now #1. I could've done without the five pages of recaps on Marvel and DC's current titles, but there are some interesting articles here, not least the exhaustive (and arguably exhausting) 20 page scholarly spectacular on DC's various Crisis events.

As a magazine that seems to be setting itself up as a conscious competitor to the appalling Wizard though, I have to say I was disappointed to see an editorial which disavows "negative reviews" and tells us that "Inside the pages of this magazine you will find positive stories that reinforce your love of comics".

They are correct to tell us that: "If you want negative reviews...you can find that in a myriad of places online", but by being too happy smiley about comics they run the risk of turning into another Wizard.

I don't want a magazine which would have me believe every comic on the stands is AMAZING and that there is no such thing as a waste of money at the comic book shop. I'm all for positive reviews and commentary where merited, but I also want to read bad reviews. After all there's a lot of crap out there.

Hopefully Comics Now will see fit to include some honest reviews further down the line, because it's a promising project. I'll certainly be back for issue #2.

Crap acronyms

London teenagers are slicing each other up with alarming regularity at the moment. Soon they'll all be dead, which is good news for those of us who have to sit on London buses and listen to the appalling music they play on their mobile phones, but bad news for teenagers.

Anyway clearly the madness has to stop, so burberry baseball caps off to the smart fella who came up with this hard hitting campaign...


Yes! Solve This Ongoing Problem!

Genius, I particularly like the use of a corkscrew for the letter T.

Buy your STOP! T-shirt here

I'm sure your money will be ploughed back into the battle against knife crime. The guy selling the T-shirts probably just forgot to mention that on his auction page.

PS Apologies to anyone who thought this post was going to be about AIM, RAID, MODOK or SHIELD.

Things not to call your sketchbook

On my travels through the backwaters of e-bay I happened upon this oddity...


Now look, I know Ethan van Sciver based his Sinestro on Adolf Hitler, but does he really need to be naming his sketchbooks "Mein Kampf"?

Seems like an odd choice to me. Then again I've got a giant Nazi robot for a blog banner so who am I to criticise?

Shopping list

I'm somewhat disheartened by the fact that I've run out of room for comics, but I've never let reality interfere with my need to clog up my life with more junk and so plan to make my way to the Orbital sale tomorrow. Hu-fucking-zahhh!

Along with the piles of half priced yellowing tat that will no doubt find their way into my nerd sack, I'll also be picking up some brightly coloured, sweet smelling new comics. Here's my shopping list...

Comics Now #1

A new magazine produced by the folk behind the Comic Geek Speak podcast. Written by fans for fans. It has a huge article on Crisis on Infinite Earths, so I'm sold.

Wonder Woman #16

Nazis v Apes! FUCK YEAH!

Amazing Spider-Man #548

Throwaway pop culture at it's brightest and best. Now if only I could force myself to throw it away instead of carefully sealing it in plastic and storing it in an overflowing long box.

Astonishing X-Men #24

That nice man Mr Whedon is back with issue #24 of his enjoyable X book. It's the only X-Men title I can be bothered with these days.

Marvel Zombies 2 #4 (of 5)

BRAINSSSSSSS! Yeah it's a bit tired, but this still has it's moments.

Order #7

Sigh. Only three more issues to go after this one. What a swizz. A savvy team book that deserved more of a chance than Marvel are giving it.

Dan Dare #3 (of 7)
Mad Dan Dare: Man of the Future obsessed with the past. An excellent take on a British icon by a twisted Irishman. Plus every issue comes with a real advert for space travel on the back. Top stuff

The Ultimates. Vol 3. Number 2
Just kidding.

Ledger

WTF???!!!...


Comic fans are crazy.

Full explanation and inappropriate wallpaper sized version HERE