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?

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.

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.

• 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!

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.

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…