Virtual Adept

Ok, we saw Ghost Rider this weekend. I liked it. Apparently Nick Cage worked out for 5 hours a day for a year to get “buff” for this even though I don’t think it was all that important to the plot. But Kim liked the scene with his shirt off, so I guess it was worth something. Eva Mendes looked fantastic, didn’t really pay too much attention to what she said for a couple of reasons. The villains were cool. Fonda made a wicked looking Mephisto. It was awesome having Sam Elliott in it. The special effects were top notch. There were a few hokey scenes but overall it was pretty entertaining if you didn’t try to take it too seriously. Worth a look even if you don’t know who Ghost Rider is, no previous knowledge is required and probably that would just tend to annoy you when they don’t go by the books. 7/10

Ok, well I spent a chunk at my local comic shop today, and sadly most of what I got was new releases off my pull list. A few back fills but not many. So then I decided to try the local Half Price Books store, and I got lucky! I found about 12 or 15 Ultimate Spider-Man that I don’t have, a few Star Wars that looked cool, and some X-Men Universe which were kind of like jumbo sized combo books of various X-Men stories. Most of the books were less than $1 each. Didn’t really do a whole lot today tho, apart from read comics. Maybe I’ll post some more reviews tomorrow or Monday!

A few more mini-reviews of the books I’ve read recently:

Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1 - Hope - This trade covers Uncanny X-Men #410-415. The book starts off with a young boy mutant named Sammy who has a fish head, and the trauma he is experiencing in life due to the prejudice of his fellow class mates and kids in the neighborhood. Sammy is on the edge, he’s about to pull a Columbine or something, but Xavier happens to be flying by and senses Sammy’s plight, and stops to help. His mother was reluctant at first to place Sammy in Xavier’s care, but eventually she agrees and so Sammy gets into the X-jet. Meanwhile Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Archangel, Monet, Stacy X, and Iceman are answering a distress call in Scotland, but their plane crashes and then they get into a whole heap of trouble involving Juggernaut. There is a lot of ground covered in this trade. While at times it seemed a bit too soap-opera-ish, it was a good read and the writer Chuck Austen has given each of the characters a lot of depth. They aren’t just superheroes, they’re real people with real problems, dreams, and desires. It was a little confusing as a “first” X-men book (I’d read X-men stuff before and knew the major players but this was the first relatively recent book I’d read), because there are a bunch of characters coming in and out of the story. Overall, though, this is a book I could recommend to anyone. It certainly kept me hooked until the end, and I enjoyed reading it. The art for this book was very good — there were only a few scenes where I thought “that don’t look right,” but it wasn’t mind blowing, either. 7/10

Uncanny X-Men Vol. 2 - Dominant Species - This trade collects Uncanny X-Men #416-420. I really liked this book. Mainly, I liked it because I was familiar with most of the characters who were carried over from “Hope”, and their stories were really getting interesting, but I also really liked it because I loved Husk and her interaction with Archangel. The main baddies were pretty good also, and this book definitely had a “grim” side to it. With a bit more explicit artwork this book could easily have been Mature rated for violence, gore, and nudity. But even without that, this is a serious book with a grown-up story, and that made it a great read. This book has a lot of characters in it, too many to list, but I would say that Paige Guthrie aka Husk and Archangel are the two main characters of this arc. There are still a lot of side stories going on too, so it’s not a strictly linear book. Artwork was very good in this book also, I think I liked it better than Hope. Well worth picking this one up if you have any interest in the X-men at all. 9/10

The books I’ve been reading lately in Marvel-verse have been the Decimation series of books. These are crossover books mostly in the X-men related titles and some new mini series which deal with the aftermath of the events in the House of M event. The stories in this series are pretty grim.

Decimation: Generation M - This was probably the best so far of the Decimation line of books. It involves a reporter who is an alchoholic and in serious emotional distress, but you don’t know why at first. The reveal at the end is pretty shocking and makes the rest of the series make a lot more sense. The story of the main character is the meat of the series but it also talks about various mutants and how their lives are changed after M-Day. Meanwhile there is a serial killer on the loose… All in all, a fantastic comic series, well worth reading. Pretty much you need to read House of M before reading this book. 9/10

Decimation: Son of M - Quicksilver, Son of Magneto, is the star of this book. It is impossible for me to mention much about the story without giving away a big spoiler for House of M, so we’ll just say this story involves Quicksilver and his attempts to make amends and also achieve some personal power after the results of House of M. This series also stars the Inhumans. You learn quite a bit about Quicksilver, and his personality. It is a pretty good read if a little esoteric, but it’s important because it is the backstory for important events that occur a bit later in the Marvel universe. 8/10

Sentinel Squad O*N*E - If you are the kind of person who enjoys scifi military style stories, like say the movie Aliens, you will probably enjoy this book. It involves a new special forces unit of the US military which uses giant robots, technology developed by Tony Stark and using Sentinel technology. These new Sentinels are man-driven giant robots. The story involves the new recruits in training and learning to work together as a team. I feel like this mini didn’t have a very satisfying conclusion. It almost felt like this was going to be an ongoing series but then it got canned after 5 issues. However, it is a good read, although it has little to do with the Decimation story arc, in fact, it pre-dates House of M until the last issue. Reading this book would be helpful to understand a small facet of the next book I’m going to talk about. 8/10

X-Men: The 198 - This story involves the X-Men and their attempts to help mutants after the results of the House of M event. It also features the Sentinel Squad O*N*E team from the above series. There are a lot of cool mutant things going on in this book and you get to see some interesting characters. The main problem I had with this book is that the X-Men themselves were portrayed as stupid idiots, except for Kitty Pryde. This book has some pretty dark undertones and is fairly anti-establishment, anti-government. Considering this book was written in the wake of 9/11 and the resulting systematic erosion of freedoms in the United States, this book is all the more potent and chilling. While this book had a kind of “meh” ending that didn’t really resolve anything, it was a good read and worthwhile. You really need to read House of M before you read this and I would also read Generation M before this one as well but that is not essential. 8/10

That’s all the mini-reviews for today!

Google has put out some pretty incredible free software tools lately. The one I want to talk about today is Google Reader. Reader is a web based RSS reader, much like my old reader of choice, Bloglines. Reader has a bit slicker interface, however, and most importantly it has some very nice article sharing features. While reading my feeds, I can click a button to “share” that article, and that article will then appear on my shared news items page. Even better, Google has a little javascript thingy I can add to my blog which will put the articles from my shared news item page directly onto my blog page — see the “News Bits” over there in the right column. Google even creates an RSS feed just for my shared items, so if you want to subscribe to a feed that shows the articles I think are worth reading, then subscribe to this feed here.

If all of this RSS mumbo-jumbo is confusing to you, do yourself a favor and go try Google Reader right now. The web will never be the same for you. It’s frickin’ awesome. And be sure and add my blog to your feeds. Check the RSS feeds links to the right. And hey, if you do start using Google Reader, like you should, then once you get some feeds and read some interesting stuff, be sure and use the sharing feature and come back to tell me the link to it so I can find out the articles you think are worth reading.

What the hell is wrong with Nintendo? Go Nintendo Has just published a list of features in the upcoming Wii game Mario Party 8. And… where the hell is internet play?! WTF Nintendo?! This is a game screaming out for internet play. You guys just suck. Seriously. Why does Nintendo make the same damn mistakes over and over again? Oh, well, guess I’ll have to go with Fuzion Frenzy 2 for my online party-game needs.

Okay, as I mentioned in Back in Black, I am now pretty much heavily into comic books. I casually collected comics in the 80’s, but it was too expensive for me then so I quit. Now the hobby is even more expensive, but I have much more disposable income and I’m more interested in the comics since IMHO they have jumped to the “next level” in terms of quality. I mean, you pick up a book from 1986, and compare it to a book from 2006, and there is no comparison. The artwork is much better, the writing is more “adult”, and overall comic books today are just a heck of a lot more entertaining to me. I imagine that a big reason why comics aren’t more popular is the people (meaning, adults with money) still have this image of the comics from the 80’s and earlier in their minds, while the artform has evolved way past that point.

Lately I’ve been reading Decimation stories from Marvel regarding the fallout of the House of M. In DC I’ve been reading preludes to the Infinite Crisis and will start in with the actual event next. I’m also reading back issues of the X-Men books in trade paperbacks. Here are some mini-reviews:

Countdown to Infinite Crisis - this is a large one-shot (like 80 pages I think) which gives a background story leading up to Infinite Crisis, the big 2005 crossover event for DC. This book actually preludes The OMAC Project, which was a fantastic little mini-series. Fortunately DC reprinted this story including it in the trade paperback for The OMAC Project, which makes sense since they are directly related. This story starts off a little slow and strange, with some “flashbacks” and stuff that was a bit confusing, but the ending was a total shocker. 9/10

The OMAC Project (2005) - Clandestine organization Checkmate has fallen into the wrong hands and promises to do Really Bad Things with Big Brother, an invention of Batman to monitor metahuman activity. This was a great read, with some very memorable scenes. There was also a mini-crossover called “Sacrifice” that involved issues of various Superman books and Wonder Woman, which was a great subplot to this story. 9/10

House of M - This is an 8 issue mini-series with tons of additional crossover books from various series. I’m only talking about the core mini here. Issue 1 was pretty cool, with the Avengers and the X-Men discussing what to do about Wanda Blake aka the Scarlet Witch in the aftermath of events from Avengers Disassembled. I had read Avengers Disassembled first, which I consider to be required reading if you want to understand House of M, plus I’d also read X-Caliber 1 through 14, which is somewhat important too because a subplot in that run is related to House of M. Issue 2 of House of M was excellent, and starts the real meat of the story, then 3-7 were just decent, but issue 8 was great. So, starts off great, ends great, but the filling in the middle wasn’t completely fulfilling. This series is pretty much required reading for Marvel fans since the repercussions of this story are felt in almost every comic title that Marvel has. 7.5/10

House of M - Incredible Hulk - This Incredible Hulk story involves the Hulk in Australia living with the aborigines while a mutant regime is on the verge of pulling another holocaust against the humans, and Hulk is, of course, a complete bad ass. While not absolutely essential to the House of M storyline, this story is a very worthwhile read, except for the ending which kind of just stopped. 8/10

House of M - Fantastic Four/Iron Man - This is two 3-issue stories in one trade paperback. The Fantastic Four story surprisingly has very little to do with FF, it’s all about Doctor Doom and his rivalry with Magneto. It’s a good story, especially if you like Doom. It’s not really essential to the main plot of the series, however. The Iron Man story is a better tie-in to House of M because it shows how the changes made in Issue 2 of House of M impact certain aspects of society. Plus it shows that Tony Stark is going to excel pretty much no matter what happens, and Iron Man is as cool as ever here. 8/10

House of M - Spider-Man - This starts off pretty good where Spider-Man is loved by the media and has a loving family with Gwen Stacy and Jamison is Peter’s lap dog. And I did like how Peter’s one weakness in this incarnation was going to be his downfall. But then the ending of this kind of ruined it for me. I won’t spoil it. This is worth reading but did not live up to its potential. This book is not required reading to get the whole House of M, it is a fairly unimportant subplot. 6/10

More mini-reviews to come later…

So, anyway, my collection is now over 1000 books. I have all my issues listed in an online database, so if you want to see what I’ve been getting then take a look at my ComicBookDB page and then click to view my collection. If you want to read more about my opinions about the current state of the comic biz, check out my page on ComicSpace, which is quickly becoming a hot online hang-out for comic fans.

You probably know who J. Allard is if you know anything about video gaming today. He’s the man who made “Xbox” a household item, and pretty much is one of the men responsible for Microsoft being considered by many to be the number 2 video game console maker after Sony. Now he is going to be taking over the Zune project, since Bryan Lee is retiring. So will this move mean that Allard won’t be focusing as much of his talent to the Xbox line? Will the Xbox suffer?

Read more about it over on on Digital Trends.

But more importantly, is J Allard really Lex Luthor?

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You be the judge.

Haven’t posted since Nov 30. Ok, well the reason I didn’t is that during December I was really busy with family stuff and holday preparations, and then I just kind of lost interest in video gaming apart from playing World of Warcraft so I really had nothing to write about. Also I have picked up a new hobby, actually an old one rekindled, which is comic book collecting and reading. And a lot of my free time is going into that. So I may start making more non-gaming posts rather than not post at all. Hopefully those of you reading will be interested in reading about my other hobbies.