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§ September 13th, 2004 § Filed under merchandise, swamp thing Comments Off on "SWAMP THING, defender of all good"
“DR. ANTON ARCANE, the twisted scientist, is preparing to drain the bayou in order to gain access to the vegetation and sediments at the bottom of the swamp. He believes that a series of experiments will reveal the secret of the origin of SWAMP THING and that once he possesses that secret, he can rule the world.
“Your mission is to protect the bayou against the evil DR. ANTON ARCANE and his mutant partners the UN-MEN!
“In order to save the bayou, you must travel through the swamp and confront ARCANE. Your journey will be perilous. Along the way you will have to overcome the dreaded UN-MEN – SKIN MAN, WEED KILLER, and DR. DEEMO. At the journey’s end you must battle and defeat DR. ANTON ARCANE!”
“Never fear! Help is at hand. SWAMP THING, defender of all good, is joined by TOMAHAWK, a Native American game warden, and Bayou Jack, a former Medal of Honor combat soldier. Together, these heroes help you foil DR. ANTON ARCANE’s wicked plans.”
And so begins the instructions for this game from Rose Art Industries (1991), for 2 to 4 players, even though the game comes with 6 player pieces:
Sadly, the pieces are not in the shape of Swamp Thing, as one would have hoped.
This boardgame was part of the massive marketing onslaught* that accompanied the very short-run Swamp Thing cartoon series, but unlike the cartoon, this game is actually somewhat enjoyable.
The board itself is fairly attractive:
Here’s a little closer look at a segment of the board:
Movement in the game is determined by cards:
Each player starts the game with three of the “Swamp Thing”-backed cards, which you can play one per turn. The cards are either just pure movement cards (the Swamp Thing card, where you can move your piece – in either direction – the number of spaces indicated); the Anton Arcane cards, which allow you to move other player’s pieces, hopefully onto a space detrimental to them; and the Escape Cards, which allow you to bypass the spaces on the board where you do battle with one of the Un-Men.
Doing battle with the Un-Men requires using the die (AKA the “Battle Die,” according to the instructions), and you must roll a number higher than the one indicated in the space in order to continue movement.
The Hero Cards, which you get to draw if you land on one of the spaces that tell you to do so, allow you to do one of three things: you can play one of your opponent’s Swamp Thing cards in place of your own; you can add to the number of spaces a Swamp Thing card tells you to move (a typo on the cards says that you add the number to the Hero card); or you can increase your die roll by one during battles.
Swamp Thing’s ability to enter “the Green” and regrow his body in other locations is duplicated by the “Green Spaces.” By landing on the space by exact count, you can move your piece directly to another location on the board. There are also red spaces on the board (marked with things like “Oil Slick causes you to return to Start!”) that, well, return you to the starting square. These aren’t as tragic as they seem, as there’s only three of them, and they’re all no more than about a dozen spaces from the start square…the game’s designers probably anticipated problems with younger players getting too frustrated at having to start over from a point much later in the game.
The game ends when you get to the final square, where Arcane is waiting…you have to roll a 6 (or a 5 and play one of your Hero cards) in order to defeat the big purple-headed guy and get him outta your bayou.
Anyway, it’s not a bad little game, and it’s fun for kids or drunk adults. It does sorta make one wonder what a game based on the comic book version of Swamp Thing would be like (“Eat hallucinogenic tuber – wander around the board for a couple hours;” “Send Arcane to Hell – take another turn”).
* Perhaps I exaggerate slightly.
[updated 9/20]
§ September 13th, 2004 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on For sale: one brain (factory-defective)
So during one of the lulls at the store today Kid Chris and I were just working at the counter (he on processing back issues, me on mail order), shooting the breeze about increasingly bizarre topics, when the following sentence was actually uttered by me:
“Are you saying that Tony Danza is the Bionic Pope?”
There is no possible explanation that can satisfactorily describe how our conversation reached that nadir.
I think there must be something in the air here at the store, as just last week pal Corey and I pondered the idea of E.T. being a member of the A-Team.
I’m normally a rational human being, I swear.
§ September 12th, 2004 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on
Last night’s episode of Justice League Unlimited was so-so…it featured Booster Gold, who was never a favorite of mine (though I did buy his first issue, and even got the free “Go for The Gold – BOOSTER GOLD” pin that came with it). The premise of the episode revolves around Booster’s quest for recognition from his peers and the public, which, in a nice touch, reflects the character’s lack of recognition from the majority of the cartoon’s non-comic reading viewing audience. The voice acting seemed a little off to me, and the writing was not nearly as amusing as it thought it was, though Booster’s robot companion Skeets did get the funniest line of the episode (“I got nuthin'”). What did work for me was how the threat the rest of the Justice League was dealing with (while Booster was stuck on crowd control duty) actually felt like something really dangerous and world-threatening. More so, in fact, than in other Justice League episodes where the danger is the main focus of the show, rather than relegated to the background as in this installment.
There were more nice cameos, mostly of characters we’ve seen before. Elongated Man gets a speaking role in this episode, though his stretching power is accompanied by an unfortunately-annoying sound effect. Plastic Man gets name-checked, but not shown. And, if I may nitpick for a moment, I think the producers of the show may have confused EM’s abilities with PM’s…a reference is made to EM being on a stakeout disguised as a vase – aren’t EM’s powers more limited to just stretching, while Plastic Man is the fella what can change his body into various objects? Yeah, I know, the things I worry about.
EDIT: Chris is right…Elongated Man claims he disguised himself as a vase for three days, Booster calls him on it, and EM says, “okay, maybe not.” So anyway, ignore what I said, and go look at the screenshots Chris posted of this episode.
§ September 11th, 2004 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on There’s high concept, and then there’s high concept
Blackhawk #189 (October 1963) – cover by Dick Dillin & Chuck Cuidera
§ September 10th, 2004 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on
So after all the brouhaha regarding Fallen Angel, guess which comic I forgot to buy this week? Don’t worry, I remembered today. Sheesh.
Speaking of which, the pencils for the autographed bookplate (original offer here) are posted on Peter David’s website.
§ September 10th, 2004 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on
Jog has a nice review of In The Shadow of No Towers, and a lot more informative than my “well, I’m not sure about the quality of the spine” review.
§ September 10th, 2004 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on
Would you hate me if I said that the stills from the Sin City movie haven’t exactly reassured me about the film?
§ September 10th, 2004 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on
Remember that Bush vs. Jesus ad from Mad Magazine I mentioned this morning? Well, apparently it’s taken the internet by storm…I’ve seen it referenced, or outright scanned-and-posted, in about a dozen places so far (like here). If you haven’t got your copy of Mad yet, go take a look.
§ September 10th, 2004 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on
I find myself with very little to say about this week’s comics. Well, Fables gave us a werewolf fighting Frankenstein’s monster, we got some time-travel shenanigans (and another appearance by my favorite Golden Age villain) in JSA, and the relationship between Lana and Superman goes in a direction I really wasn’t expecting in Action.
The highlight of the new issue of Mad Magazine, #446, aside from the excellent-as-usual contribution by Sergio Aragones (“A Mad Look at Paparazzi”) is “The Bush Campaign’s TV Commercial If He Was Running Against Jesus.” Obvious, yes, but still amusing. Also good is “Your Candidate and My Candidate” (“Your candidate waffles on the issues. / My candidate sees the merits of both sides of the argument.”) All in all, another fine issue of this American institution. Some of the jokes have a little dust on them, but hey, so do I.
There was also a new volume of the Fantastic Four Marvel Masterworks series, which I can’t afford at the moment, but will buy eventually since this is the only Masterworks series I’m following. It reprints issues 61 to 71 (and Annual 5) — a little past the peak of the Lee/Kirby collaboration on the series, but still great stuff. It’ll be nice to have on good paper. I don’t get the “variant” covers on these…there’s the new trade dress, and then there’s the variant “classic” look of the dustjackets, hearkening back to the original appearance of the Masterworks line all those years ago. Well, I do get why they’re doing it…for those fans who want their new volumes to match up with the old volumes, but why are they five bucks more? Are the print runs on the variant covers that much smaller that they have to bump up the price to cover costs? They’re already fifty bones as it is. (We ordered equal numbers of each cover, by the way.)
Newest self-contradicting title: Essential Super-Villain Team-Up. Gives me an excuse to link to this old post of mine, though. I jokingly suggested at work yesterday that Marvel should do an Essential Marvel’s Greatest Comics, just to screw with people.
Additional linkage:
Chris Karath has one of my favorite comics/media weblogs, but since it’s not on the Comics Weblog Update-A-Tron 3000, I’m afraid some comics weblog fans may be missing it. So go take a look, won’t you?
Also, I finally added The Sock Drawer to the weblogroll.
§ September 9th, 2004 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on
Long day at work (what with it being comic book day and all), and I haven’t even had time to read any of my new comics yet. I’m writing this weblog entry instead…see what I do for you people? Anyway, I’ll probably have some kind of comics overview tomorrow.
We did get in Art Spiegelman’s new book In The Shadow of No Towers, and I can say it’s a very nice-looking package. The first half of the book, which relates Spiegelman’s reaction to the 9/11 attacks and the country’s response, is visually very compelling, looking for all the world like one of his old RAW magazines. The second half is classic comic strips from the beginning of the last century, thematically linked to Spiegelman’s observations in the first half. I haven’t had a chance to read and see for myself if it deserves the mixed critical reaction it appears to be receiving, but at the very least it’s visually appealing. My one concern is that the book’s spine may not be up to the job of repeated readings…it feels awfully darn fragile.
In other news:
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