comics
Mostly Geek has a new home
Due to issues with hosting I’ve decided to go cheap and just use the freely hosted version of WordPress over at wordpress.com.
Therefore this blog now lives at: http://mostlygeeknz.wordpress.com/
Please update your links.
Joss and The Avengers?
So a little under a month ago shock waves of glee hit the geek community. Our demi-god, Joss Whedon, would direct The Avengers movie!
Now unlike many geeks I’ve never been that into comics, and those comics I have been into haven’t been the Marvel/DC variety. However Joss Whedon directing and no doubt being involved in the script of a superhero movie had to be a good thing, right?
Unfortunately though, during a conversation with a friend, doubt started to creep in. Joss was going to make the most amazing Wonder Woman movie ever as well… but due to “creative differences” with the studio it got shelved.
And as we all know he often has ‘creative differences’ with the studio, and there are only so many times this can happen before you really have to ask. Is it Joss or the studio that’s being difficult?
I think anyone who has read this blog will know I’m a huge fan of what Joss creates. Buffy, (most of) Angel, Firefly, Serenity and Dollhouse are all fantastic. Hell I even liked Alien: Resurrection. But I can’t help but feel that there is a measure of diva in what drives him and that diva means that he has a habit of throwing his toys.
I hope I’m wrong and that The Avengers is a fantastic movie that hits our screens in 2012. But I’m keeping a certain level of healthy cynicism till then.
What do you think? Am I being too harsh on The Whedon? Or is there merit in what I say?
Yet another THURSDAY LINK DAY!!!
- More DMing advice from Penny Arcade
- The movie Gattaca is being made into a sci-fi, police procedural TV show. Sound pretty cool!
- How we’ll cope (or not) with the Dollhouse cancellation – the 5 Stages of Grief. But, maybe we’ll get more Buffy?
- Setting up your Mac to play PC games.
- Michael Chabon on breaking out of genre and the role of fan-fiction in popular culture.
- What Stormtroopers do on their day off.
- Some guy at the Guardian reads George R. R. Martin for the first time.
- Robin D. Laws does a great real world RPG inspiration. Maybe we should change the way we do ours?
- i09′s take on what SFF books you might like if you liked some recent movies. It’s a cool idea, done well and the recommend some great books!
- Finally, The Onion A.V. Club gives us more geek fun with their New Cult Canon write up on Army of Darkness, a movie I have never seen but now really want to!
Free comics!
This has been going for a while, but I only discovered it last week. Dark Horse comics have moved their old Dark Horse Presents series onto Myspace. I’m pretty sceptical of reading ‘normal’ comics (as opposed to strip style webcomics) on a screen, but the short 3-4 page format actually suits it pretty well.
All the Dark Horse favourites are there if you search through the back issues, including a Firefly comic, a few Buffy ones (some by Joss Whedon, some by Jane Espenson) and I think I saw a Dr. Horrible one too. There’s also some Hellboy ones and the very cool Mike Mignola comic ‘Witchfinder: Murderous Intent’ which is what got me here in the first place. Over all it’s well worth an explore and a good way to get some experience with a few different comics without having to shell out money for a trade paperback.
Running your game outside of the session
Gabe from the webcomic Penny Arcade blogged the other day about how his D&D 4e game runs outside of the weekly gaming session. The basic idea is that they continue small situations outside of the game, including skill challenges through a custom online dice roller.
Here’s the example of their emails. It’s pretty GM led, but there’s no reason why it has to be, and seems like a good way to keep the interest in the game high.
I’ve tried to do a few things simialr to this in the past and it’s dependent on player engagement (and, to be fair, player spare time). In my experience there are players who rock at this and people who won’t even bother to respond. Gabe’s lucky he’s got a good group who want to keep going. And of course, the GM is hugely responsible for the level of engagement they players have with the game. But I think it’s a dream of every GM to get players who just want to keep the game going, even between sessions.
Links? Me?
I’m still trying to get a game together over here so I don’t have any RPG writing to do, but in the meantime – here’s some links!
- The RZA talks about being a geek – comics, technology and letting his kids play videogames for 4 hours a day.
- The webcomic XKCD gets animated.
In other nerdy news, I now have an HD TV and boy does my 360 look good!
Also in comic form
As has been mentioned here before Bioware’s new fantasy RPG, Dragon Age is coming out on PC and Xbox 360 in November. Also with the help of Green Ronin it will be a table top RPG. And now, through Penny Arcade it’s an online comic!
Check out the first 4 pages here, and check back every Friday (North American time) for a new page. It’s pretty cool and looks to be doing a bit on the back story before the game starts.
Holy Crap! Disney buys Marvel
Read all about it here. I’d potentially be very afraid if I was still reading X-Men comics.
Comics and the movie biz
On a plane yesterday I watched the really, really terrible Wolverine movie. I mean the worst comic movie I’ve seen in years – like comic movies used to be. That said it reminded me how there are some pretty cool things about Wolverine as a character.
But what to buy if I wanted to get into Wolverine? This link is all about how the comics business interacts and fails to win from successful movie tie-ins. And a key reason is a lack of obvious starting points for characters – especially characters that have been going since before I was even born. This is similar to the complaints that are made about the lack of a good introductory RPG – attempts Chris Pramas and Green Ronin are trying to solve with their Dragon Age RPG.
I don’t have the time or inclination to get seriously into superhero comics, especially big name ones from the big two publishers, so I’m glad the films like Iron Man, the first 2 X-Men and Spiderman movies and the recent Batman movies are getting made – they allow me to get my big super hero fix without spending wads of cash on comics of variable-quality comics. I just hope that they re better than Wolverine…
Bone is coming back
According to the AV Club. Excellent!