Sam and Max Season 2

Just a quick one today.

In case you've missed me talking about my somewhat obsessive love for Sam and Max I just want to draw your attention over to their website:

www.telltalegames.com

The guys are updating pretty much every week with new information, screenshots and videos of the next season of the game so I urge you to go over and look.

Who knows, you may want to take the risk and buy the first season! It really is worth it.

Oh and so you know, I don't get paid for this. These posts are fueled by nothing but my love.

Upskirt

I don’t know how many of you are reading X-Men Die By The Sword. Seeing as the readership for both Exiles and New Excalibur is fairly low and tends to be the same people, I doubt it's a whole lot of you.

Half of the people seem to like it as it’s a Claremont book, while the other half seem to read it too bash it. I don’t want to do either. I do feel Claremont hasn’t hit one out of the park with me since X-Treme X-Men but he is one of my favourite all time writers so I won’t sit around pulling him apart.

What I do want to talk about is this art. I respect artists so much because they can do something I could never even dream of doing, I find art so hard. I can see what I want to in my head but getting on paper is impossible.

So the guy doing it, Juan Santacruz, is far more talented than I can dream of. With that being said there are some brutal panels in this book. It’s not they lack talent it’s just they make me embarrassed to me a comic reader.

From the looks of things the letterer has had to do anything he can to cover up this “upskirt” shots. While he’s done the best this just seems to add more attention to this immature cheesecake shots.

What are these shots meant to add? I’d argue nothing. This guy can draw superheroes. He can draw a fight and he can pay stuff out just fine. These three panels take so much away from his work. It’s a shame he feels the need to draw these.

It’s really pathetic. I expect more.

DC's Outsiders

Eek! A week come and gone… if you can’t tell, I’ve been very busy. Lot’s of work, I’ve been away from home and family commitments catching up on me.

I just wanted to make a quick mention to a rumour I heard a few weeks ago. The rumour was that DC was so unhappy with the work Tony Bedard, Sean McKeever and co. were doing on Countdown that any work they had been promised was just quietly being forgotten. So quietly that the writers themselves don’t even know the work isn’t coming.

My summary of Countdown is that it is a bad series. Well it’s a mediocre series, following an amazing series. I complain about this books lack of focus as much as anyone else but I would never lay the blame at the writer’s feet.

As much as I can tell from various interviews these guys are just putting words to the editors and Paul Dini’s stories. I love Paul Dini but I feel that the bad timing of the series and uninteresting stories are mostly his fault.

I didn’t believe this rumour was true when I heard it. Surely DC could see this was a team effort book and wouldn’t pull the rug from under these guy’s feet, effectively screwing over their careers and making it seem the series was all their fault. That would be, for the lack of a better term, a dickish move. DC wouldn’t do that! Could they really blame these guys for writing nothing more than dialogue?

This week say the news that Tony Bedard won’t be taking over the Outsiders as planned for months and has been replaced.

Three Month Wait

It's that time again. This month it’s all Marvel with one appearance from DC. While I have some Indy books I can't wait to read like Buffy, Angel and The Circle they don't excite me as much as the stuff I've included.

5. Fantastic Four #553

Dwayne’s take on the Fantastic Four is off and on. He wrote a really badass Sue Richards in one issue that I loved. This issue promises the reveal of Reed’s Civil War plans. It’s got me interested.

4. Booster Gold #6

This series really has been fantastic so far. This issue sees the end to the first arc and apparently the return of the original Blue Beetle. From the sound of things it ends the status quo of the series as it is now, so it’ll be very interesting to see where it goes next. I hope this doesn’t end the Sliders/Exiles feel the book has to it.

3. Avengers: The Initiative #9

Secrets revealed! Taskmaster! Antman! Death! I love this book, I can’t imagine thee Marvel Universe without it.

2. Hulk #1

A brand new Hulk series. I have to be honest; this shocks me… it’s not like Incredible Hulk sets the charts on fire. The death interests me; I’m thinking Rick Jones sadly. The seller however has to be Ed McGuinness’ art. I’m still holding out for Loeb to write a good Marvel story. I hope this is the one, I’m sick of wasting money on mediocre comics from him.

Captain America #34

We’ve all seen the concept designs by Alex Ross. We all know what is coming. A brand new Captain America. I can’t wait for this.

guggenheim

In a past blog I spoke about how much I loved guggenheim’s work on Wolverine, so much so that his name deserved to be written up in all capitals. If you haven’t already guessed his return to the book is less then stellar and he has now been demoted from all capitals.

Not only is the story full of inaccuracies such as Tank’s and Nazi’s in World War One but it’s just another attempt at making Wolverine much more complex then he needs to be.

The character isn’t that deep. He’s had a crap life and he kicks ass because it’s the right thing to do and he partly enjoys a scrap… at the same time he’s always running the risk of crossing that line between good and evil. It’s worked for years now and it’s what has made the character popular.

Now Marvel have always seemed to want to tamper around with his history and such, which I understand as when you have a character who doesn’t know their past in fiction it is going to bite them in ass at some point.

Here they just seem to want to give him crappy shock value twists to his power set. In the past year we’ve found out he’s an evolved mutant wolverine. This idea was rejected years ago and it should have stayed that way.

Now we find out every time he dies his spirit has to fight the devil in order to rejoin his healing body.

Really… Why? Does this add anything to the character? I have to say no, it just makes him far more confusing then he needs to be. It also brings up many questions of just how his healing factor works.

If he comes out of this with a reduced healing factor so the fear of him dying is there, even if we know it won’t happen, I’m all up for it. For now all we have is a really mediocre comic.

I hope this is just a misstep on guggenheim’s part. This is entirely possible as he is still fairly new to the game. I hope his work on Amazing Spider-Man is better. I have my caps lock waiting.

Note: I did love how Wolverine still manages to cup his "member" which both hands, while dead.

Infinity Eck

As most of you know, I’m mostly a Marvel fan. Always have been and chances are, I always will be. That being said I can dish out the compliments to DC when they deserve them. One series they have put out that I don’t think I could ever compliment enough was 52.

52 is easily one of the best series in the last 10 years and is one of those series I can see fans talking about for years. Not only was it a fun concept, it also had the creative team to back up the hype. These types of series can so easily fail but this way beyond anyone's expectations.

The only complaints I tend to hear about this series is that is started out very slow. I disagree with that on a personal level as I enjoyed it from start to beginning. Even so, starting out slow is a fairly tame complaint. If you haven’t had the chance to read it, make sure you get round to it. It’s fairly accessible to anyone and is a good introduction to the DC universe if you need one.

As I enjoyed that series I’ve also picked up a number of the spin offs. Due to a budget I’ve picked up Black Adam, Booster Gold and Infinity Inc. At some point I will also get around to Countdown to Adventure, Metal Man and Four Horsemen.

Booster Gold has been amazing and Black Adam has been pretty good too. The one that really disappoints me is Infinity Inc.

The way I saw Steel’s personal story in 52 was one of the classic hero. He has a deep sense of responsibility that is what makes a hero, rather then any power set. His story was pretty much a modern day look at the classic genre.

If you were looking to spring board an ongoing series off of the success of his story in 52 surely it would make sense to stick to the themes you showed people in the series. I’ll admit those more classic based series tend not to sell well these days (Take a look at Marvel’s Thing for example) but the series they have come out with is a complete 180.

It’s Peter Milligan, a guy known for not doing the classic superhero genre, doing a very dark tale about a group of hero’s who are mentally screwed up. It’s everything but what hundreds of thousands of people read about for a year.

It’s quite and odd move to make. Two issues in and I can't help but think it doesn't work. I’ll give it one or two more issues but I can see me dropping this one and not looking back.

I love Judd

News just in, Judd Winick is amazing!

I spoke a few weeks ago about how much I enjoyed the Black Canary and Green Arrow Wedding Special. On the strength of this one shot I asked my comic shop to pull their new ongoing.

Of course, I’ve done this a few times. I get a taste of a character or a writer and when I follow them to their next project it turns out it was a fluke. I am happy to say this wasn’t the case at all.

I loved this issue and first thing Monday I’m getting an ongoing subscription for this book.

It could just be Judd Winick has a great handle on this character but reading these two issues I’ve fallen in love with the character. I said that before but it’s an incredible skill he has. I can’t think of any other writer currently working who can make me love a character so fast. I might like them and grow to like them, but to be hooked in a matter of pages is amazing.

The pace of the book is also incredibly fast too. If you are one of those comic readers who complains about decompression then get this. The cliff-hanger from the Wedding Special (Black Canary stabbing Green Arrow, who had just tried to kill her, through the neck) is answered straight away. That takes guts, that cliff-hanger launched the series and really could have been stretched out for months.

I googled Judd’s bio just to see his background and previous work and it’s safe to say that he is by far the most talented person to come out of any reality show, in any country… ever. Although let’s face it the competition isn’t that fierce.