Give Me Liberty...

I love Frank Cho. While he is known for drawing beautiful women, which he does very well, I think he is one of the soundest storytellers in comics today. With my new mindset of trying to find Indy work of guys I enjoy, in the main stream I went out and got Liberty Meadows Vol. 1.

Now I have to say, I found this hard to read at first. Reading a comic strip, which was originally published once a day in newspaper as one long story, is kind of hard. Every four panels you have a quick recap. It takes a different mindset to get into it and that was something I hadn’t thought of when I got the book. So that’s just a little warning.

At first I have to admit I wasn't blown away. It was cute and amusing, nothing amazing but somewhere along the line I got emotionally hooked to the characters. There is a storyline where one of the animals leaves the sanctuary and I just felt sorry for his friend. Getting someone attached to characters in 4 panel stories a very hard thing to do.

I still need to check out the other volumes but I think it’s got me hooked; I want to see these characters lives move on and see their little, cute jokes. It’s not an amazing piece of literature; it’s just a good piece of escapism that is accessible to pretty much anyone. It’s not just for the comic fan, although I’d imagine the people buying it are hardcore fans as those are who buy Indy comics regularly. Give it a shot.

I Am So Scared...

If you have ever heard Bendis in an interview, chances are you'll of heard him talk about people who claim to be his biggest fans and yet have never read his independent work like Powers, Jinx or Torso. I fall in that list. I have probably read everything he's done at Marvel except Alias, which I need to pick up, but never really got around to his older work. After hearing him joke about these fans for about the hundredth time I decided that if I saw his Indy work for a good price, I had to make the leap. It’s not that I didn’t want to read it, its just there is so much stuff out there that you can’t just pick up anything you want.

As luck would have it, on Wednesday I saw the collection of Fortune and Glory for £3.50 so I went ahead and bought it. It was a great price and I’ve heard so much praise for this book so I quickly ran home and cracked it open. The writing was funny and the art was unique. You get a wide-eyed newbie to the Hollywood world making snarky comments. It’s an Internet fanboys dream. We do it everyday on the net.

So why am I scared after having bought an excellent piece of literature? One of the few comics you could hand to anyone who isn’t a comic fans and chances are they’d enjoy it despite of any prejudice they have against the medium? Well I’m currently spending nine grand and devoting 3 years of my life to try and enter the industry that this book explores and shows just how shallow and empty it is.

Thanks Bendis. I’m having a mid-life crisis at 19.

It's A Review, Little Buddy

I completed Sam and Max: Season One a few days ago but I didn’t have time to review it until now. Things are getting busy with family and getting ready for the next year of university so if it takes a day or two for me to post, you know why.

First I have to say, I can’t compare this to the original game. The original game has so many happy memories for me as a kid that to compare the two would automatically bury this game. This game doesn't deserved to be buried, o I am looking at this game as completely separate entity.

The first thing that springs out to you when playing this game is the look. There have been a few 3D Adventure Games but too be honest I’ve found the majority of these games annoying. The graphics are ugly and blocky and the 3D world in turn introduced controls, which were clunky and vastly more complex then they needed to be. Sam and Max is both pretty to look at and easy to navigate. The game takes the adventure game back to using only one button, which is really all you need in this type of game.

The format of the game with it being separated into six different chapters leaves something to be desired. You do get 6 good little stories that create one big arc but at the end of each episode you are left thinking “Oh, is that it?”. They introduce the characters into some marvellous situations like them staring in a number of TV shows or Max becoming President but these only last only a few hours and it’s kind of sad that they didn’t make the most out these great ideas. Of course that just goes to show how well these have been writing that I’m actually sad when we leave these storylines behind. If they had been bad or even mediocre I would have been happy to move on to the next thing.

Another minor complaint I have is that parts of the episodes do become very formulaic. With an introduction of a strong supporting cast, by the second episode you know 3 puzzles you know you have to solve straight of the bat. You know Sybil Pandemik will have a new job that will help you out, you know you need to buy something from Bosco and chances are Jimmy Two Teeth will be up to some crime that will help you move on.

One thing that annoyed me was at times you knew you had a puzzle only because someone was obstructing you. If someone is stood in front of something you have to move him or her. Why? Well… it’s an adventure game and that’s the point. Sadly that’s not enough. This is the problem of a non-linear game where you can branch off to do several tasks at once but I’m sure with careful scripting it could be done.

The voice acting is superb. The actors of Sam and Max aren’t the same from the original game but they manage to sound similar but at the same time add something different to it. Not necessarily better but just as good. I was also impressed to see a different voice actor for every character, instead of taking the much cheaper option of paying one person to do a few voices. This gave every character a very unique voice and helped them come alive.

The characters were also well written and designed. They all had unique chrematistics and funny quirks, which this type of humour game works. While his supporting casts tasks became very formulaic as mentioned above, I still enjoyed them and look forward to seeing them again. There was only one character who annoyed me but seeing as he annoyed Sam and Max just as much, I’ll take it he was designed to be.

The puzzles had various levels of difficulty and were fun to try and figure out. The game suffered from the episodic releases due to items being restricted to only 2 or 3 areas, making the puzzles perhaps not as complex as older, larger games but over all it didn’t bother me to much.

I was happy to see the addition of a hint system in the sixth episode, something I felt the game was missing. I might suggest that a notepad for Sam might be an important feature. As freelance police you’d expect them to take notes, which you can look back on and perhaps pick out key points that may help you to figure a puzzle out. Sometimes you forget a key detail a character said at the start of the game.

While it may seem the episodic format annoyed me I have to say if that means yearly releases and a cheaper price sticker that I’ll take the trade off. The game lasted me a week or so, so perhaps it should have been longer. However at the same time I paid £24 for it, compared to the £40 to £50 I normally pay for games that last not that much longer. I can also expect the second season later this year/early next year instead of years of wait like we had come to expect from the Adventure Game.

Honestly, the worst part of this game was that we are lacking this type of thing in two mediums I love. We should have more adventure games out there. I don’t think every game needs to be more action orientated, and I hope there is a market out there for this game so we can have more. I also think the comic industry is severely lacking a good humour book. Not a knock on Telltale’s online webcomic but I really wish Steve Purcell (Sam and Max’s creator) would spend time getting new material in print or reprint all of his older work. I can’t imagine a publisher like IDW or Image wouldn’t want to publish a new Sam and Max comic.

So overall this game was good. It has a few little problems but the majority of them were fixed by the time the sixth episode hit. I can only think that now they have all player feedback in that season two will be even better. I know I can’t wait. All I have to do now is try and fill my time in between the releases.

For now I have the hope of Sam and Max Surfin’ The Highway coming out, which I’m sure you’ll hear me discuss more in-depth in the future. There are also the other TellTale games out in stores. Sigh… I need more money!

My First Time

There is a question that is asked on comic message boards every few months, that being “How did you get into comics?”. These questions always get me thinking because growing up I had no idea that so much of the stuff I enjoyed as a kid was influenced by the world of comic books. Hell, I had no idea there were actually comic books, my local store only carried crappy UK magazines that were filled with dot-to-dots and crosswords. The only comic books I knew of were the Beano and Dan Dare and they are only a source of nostalgia for parents these days.

When I talk about these influenced products such as television shows, movies, games etc. I don’t mean the obvious ones like Batman, Superman or Spider-Man because as a kid I had no interest in them what so ever. I knew they existed but I didn’t get the appeal.

The obvious early influence to me was the Teenage Mutant Turtles. I had all the videos, all the toys and could sing the theme tune with the best of them. For a while I even wanted to grow up to be a turtle. But I was too young to remember any of this stuff, so I can only go by home movies and embarrassing stories as told by drunken relatives.

What I would list as the comic book that had a biggest impact on me without having read the comic book was Sam and Max. Since I was very small I always had a fascination with computers and there are numerous pictures of me sat on the potty with a game controller in hand. In the early 90’s we got our first PC and my brother and me got hooked on the world of adventure gaming. Monkey Island, Broken Sword, Day of The Tentacle, we’ve played them all. We ran up bills of hundreds of pounds for phoning the game help lines, which we inevitably got in a lot of trouble for.

When 1993 hit we got the best of them all, Sam and Max Hit the Road! It was laugh out loud game that required you to think to complete the game. The two characters that were far beyond my scope of the world and their humour was adult and that has changed my viewing changes forever. Since I was 8 I’ve been watching adult sitcoms and cartoons soon became no existent to me. They were somewhat violent and never talked down to the gamer just because they were a cartoon dog and rabbit. It was so unique to me and I don’t think I’ve ever found a game with characters I’ve fallen in love since.

But the adventure game died out and was replaced. I’m still a fairly big gamer but it was sad to see my favourite genre die out because it wasn’t interesting enough as shoot em’ ups and today’s audience just don’t have the attention span to try and figure out puzzles which can take hours.

Then in 2002 Lucasart’s announced a return to their gaming roots and announced the sequel to the original Sam and Max Game and my heart jumped for joy… then they cancelled it. I, along with many other people campaigned for it’s return but Lucasart’s didn’t listen and instead continued to work on their 6 or 7 Star War’s titles a year quota.

Luckily I was instore for good news again as bunch of former Lucasart’s employees set up their own company called Telltale Games and announced they were bringing Sam and Max back!

It was about this time I found out that it was based on a comic book, a hobby I’d had for a while by this time. Sadly the back issues are out of my price range, although they are re-releasing an old trade soon. I find it so interesting to see stuff that was so important to my childhood were based on a hobby I had no idea existed but now have fallen in love with.

So, why did I bring this up now? I just bought Sam and Max Season One from my local game store. If you don’t see me for a month, you know where I am!

I'll review the game when I've completed it, my 360 is going to take a month to repair so that Superman Returns review might never happen.

So good I wish I'd thought of it

I love good comic books. That’s a given. I don’t aim to find comic books that annoy me and waste my money on. So me having read many great stories isn’t anything new or indeed special. I’d like to think all the comics I own in some way or another are good in their own way… well except for Get Kraven, I just had to see how terrible that was.

However every now and then I pick up a comic book and once I put it down all I can think of is that it was so good, I wish I had thought of it. It hasn’t happened a lot and it’s perhaps the greatest compliment I can give to a piece of fiction.

The first one I want to discuss is Bone. Fantasy stories like this have a special place in my heart as I’ve been crafting a story I’ve had for years that I hope one day to self-publish and sell one copy to Mam.

I will attempt to be as vague as possible, simply to try and not reveal any major plot points and spoilers in the book as I really want you to buy the book.

I would argue that Bone isn’t terribly original. There are lots of basic storytelling archetypes such as the anti-hero; the everyman and the funny man are all there in the core cast. Other characters share apparent influence from Lord of The Rings and other corners of pop culture. The idea of an evil army trying to take over a peaceful kingdom is a very basic idea.

Where Jeff Smith excels with this book is in the execution. You can tell he loves the characters and the world he has created and the fun for the reader is being allowed in that world for an issue. The fun of being there just seeps throw the panels. It is a real labour of love and you can tell that before reading any interviews with Jeff where he says it is.

What makes this book so clever is that it all moves on because of the characters. You don’t get from point A to point B because the story has to do that, it gets there because the characters and their little quirks demands that the writer take them to that point.

If the money crazed Phoney Bone is in a city, he’s going to look for gold. If he looks for the city’s gold, it’s going to cause trouble. Trouble is going to bring unwanted attention the group and this unwanted attention is going to bring the evil and mystery Hooded One closer to them. It all works and feels natural, it feels life like.

The book starts out with a fairly light-hearted tone with many comical moments. Over time, to fit the story, the characters begin to joke around less and less. These moments are still there and are the highlight of the book to me but they aren’t as frequent and only appear when appropriate.

The art, also done by Jeff Smith is just as superb as the writing. Every character has a unique design and you can instantly tell who is who, despite three of the main characters all having the same basic design. The character design I particularly like is The Hooded One once unmasked. At first I thought it was quiet a basic design but the more you see the character’s eyes the more they seem to torment you and dig under your skin. I don’t think I’ll ever forget those eyes and that is an amazing thing to accomplish.

I would recommend Bone: One Volume Edition, containing all 55 issues in a 1300+ page package, to anyone who is a comic book fan. It would also be excellent for people who are interested in or are open to fantasy based stories. It is not for children but it is excellent from teenagers and up, even if the package of a very cartoony character might turn those people away.

This is very easily the best independent work I have ever read and that makes it all the more sad that Jeff Smith really hasn’t produced anything of note since. He’s done two prequels to the Bone story and a Shazam mini for DC. I really hope that it is because it takes him so long to draw and write his work, and not that he was only good at his own creation. Because if Jeff Smith can produce work of this calibre on any other book, and I mean any, then he has to do it. To not do it would be a crime against humanity.

Oh and to answer how terrible Get Karven was. Very, very terrible.