So a few decades back, I started to participate in the local computer bulletin board (or BBS) scene. This is what we had before general qccess to the internet, and an alternative to larger commercial enterprises like Prodigy, Compuserve, and AOL. Hobbyists would set up BBS software on their own computers, and with a dedicated phone line or two allow users to dial in with their own computers and modems to participate in message boards, play games, download the “warez,” what have you.
It was a fun activity and a creative outlet, and on at least one of these BBSes I ran a dedicated section for comics discussion. This was very early in my comics retail career (or “career”) and several folks on these BBSes were, in fact, customers of mine. It was usually a fun, friendly endeavor and I’m still friends with a number of people from then to this day.
And I say “usually” because there was this one guy — isn’t there always — who was a real fly in the ointment. Going by the appropriate name of “Bozo” (appropriate not in the Larry Harmon way, but in the more derogatory sense), this person would rant and cajole and insult with misspelled screeds and usually unwarranted venom. Hostile and homophobic, it was a wonder to me why he spent his time doing this in paces where folks were just trying to have a little fun and relax. (It was also a wonder to me, in retrospect, why he wasn’t immediately kicked off these BBSes…perhaps he was from some, but he certainly seemed to be around a lot.) I tangled with him once or twice, and quickly realized both the futility of this and that this was exactly what he wanted, so I stopped.
This outsized toxic personality had me wondering…just who was this guy? And it wasn’t like today, where some jerk can pop up out of nowhere and he’s, like, on the other side of the world from you. This was probably someone at least relatively nearby, calling into the boards to wreak his havoc. I pictured some cranky dude in his 40s (I was in my 20s at the time) in his stained t-shirt banging at his keyboard surrounded by empty cans of whatever his poison of choice may have been, smoker’s-cough laughing at his latest bon mots.
One thing about these being local BBSes is that there would occasionally be in-person gatherings, at a park or bowling alley or places like that, where we meet face-to-face instead of just typing words at each other. And it was at one of these gatherings that “Bozo” turned up.
And what surprised me was that…he was about my age, possibly younger. A handsome guy, appeared to be completely congenial in person, even perhaps a little sheepish to stand revealed as “that guy.” Though I was a relative newcomer to the BBS scene compared to many of the others at these gathering, and they seemed to be familiar if not friendly with the fella. As if it were necessary to have a “troll” on the BBSes and this was they guy who happened to take up the job, and, y’know, no hard feelings.
I never did get any actual insight into what “Bozo” thought he was doing, whether this was some form of extended performance art or if he actually bought into all the madness he was spouting. Anyway, it didn’t matter because by the mid-late-ish ’90s the local BBS scene had largely collapse, as the internet began to expand access and lured users away. And “Bozo” because an artifact of the past, a weird memory from a mostly positive pastime.
But then I was on the internet, where there were plenty more “Bozos” to be had.
I was not a Usenet guy, the message exchange system that primarily dominated early internet usage before the advent of the World Wide Web, but yes, I know trolling was a problem there too. And of course there were all the dedicated message boards on the Web, with their own problematic trolls, but I mostly avoided those as well. But I didn’t really peronally encounter trolling again until blogs began to really be a thing. Especially after I started my own blog.
To be fair, I haven’t had to deal with many over the couple of decades of doing this site. There are the occasional drive-by commenters, who only turn up once to say something insulting to me because they disagreed with whatever. I had a couple of recurring trolls (one of which followed me over from the old Fanboy Rampage blog) who would shout nonsense in my comments sections ’til they tired of it, or I blocked them. I still have one dude who pops up whenever I suggest that maybe people who aren’t white and straight should be treated as humans, to tell me the error of my ways.
But “jerks is jerks,” I guess, and running a site that allows public commenting is alas opening a door for people to do this sort of thing, and that’s just the price paid.
And, hoo boy, there’s social media of course, which is just a madhouse filled with confirmed social deviants just itching to pile abuse onto someone who made the mistake of being, say, a woman. Little different from “Bozo,” they just cast out their hooks and see who they can catch.
A slight variation I’ve encountered more recently on the usual trolling is “the super fan,” someone who is extremely possessive of their specific obsession. So much so, that someone else discussing that obsession in a way they don’t personally approve of is to be attacked and diminished in favor of their superior perspective.
One example that continually amuses me is when blogging brother Andrew and I were on Xwitter discussing (WARNING: old people video game references incoming) Coleco’s game releases for the Atari 2600. We’d referenced the fact that many of these games were ports from the more advanced Colecovision, and by pure necessity had to be downgraded to be able to perform on the 2600’s older hardware.
We weren’t denigrating Coleco for this, we weren’t cast aspersions on the people who made these games…we were simply acknowledging the literally undeniable fact that the 2600 games had to less complex than their Colecovision counterparts. The hardware and memory differences demanded it.
Well, well, well, the world’s #1 Colecovision fan somehow found our discussion and injected himself right in there, outraged that we would call these games incompetent trash (we didn’t) and that we’d insult the programmers’ knowhow (we also didn’t). The point of object seemed to be the word “downgraded,” which we meant entirely dispassionately and he thought was an offense of the highest order.
Andrew just blocked the guy right away, which was the wise move, though I think it was my years in retail that made me attempt to reason with the guy and get him to see what we were saying. Because I’m talking about it here, you can probably guess that didn’t work out, even to the point where the guy actually tried to tattle on us to some old former Coleco programmer who also happened to be on Xwitter. (I never saw that programmer make a comment, presumably because he probably rolled his eyes and thought “ugh, this guy again.”)
Since I’ve abandoned Xwitter and moved to Bluesky, I haven’t had to deal with too many problem people, and those that turn up are very easily dismissed with Bluesky’s very solid blocking option. However, there was one case just the other week, one that inspired this very post.
On the occasion of President Jimmy Carter’s passing, I posted this MAD cover, dated March 1978:
Along with it, I included the caption “This was as defining an image of Jimmy Carter for me in my childhood as just about anything else. RIP.” You can see the post right here for yourself.
This wasn’t intended as an overtly political post (even if posting about a former President at all is inherently political). It was simply a comment on the fact that, as a child at the time, my primary interaction with politics on that scale was via entertainment aimed at me (or not necessarily at me, but seen by me anyway, such as Dan Aykroyd’s impression of Carter on Saturday Night Live). To this day, this drawing (by Jack Rickard) exists in my brain as the primary picture in my mind of the man. I mean, they don’t call these the “formative years” for nothing.
I figured, if I were to get any objection to this post at all, it’d be from someone who was annoying that I didn’t discuss Carter’s full legacy, good and/or ill, or that I reduced him to this goofy image. And I was ready to argue, if I had to, with, well, what I said in the previous paragraph.
What I got instead was this, a straight up objection to me even using MAD at all. You can see my immediate response, and his, um, whatever that is in the image, too:
Not shown is my second response, where I told him 1) I’ve discussed MAD plenty of times on my comics blog, with its own category, and 2) I carry MAD in my store, both new issues and old. And as you can see by his second response, he did see that post and it did nuttin’ a’tall to mollify the guy. So, to Blocktown he went.
Digging a little deeper into the fella, I discovered he was on several Bluesky “blocklists” (lists which, if you follow, block everyone on that list) which tells me this isn’t unusual behavior for him. And a fellow blogger has told me he’s turned up in their comments whenever he uses images from MAD for the same reasons “Alfred” gives above…not liking comic book guys who talk about his favorite magazine.
It’s…amazing that someone puts this much vitriol into complaining about something that, let’s face it, isn’t real. Or at least aimed at the wrong people, to give him the barest benefit of a doubt. As online pal ThisIsBrian said, “That sure is a lot of worrying for a guy who’s using the name of the most famous non-worrier there is.”
Compared to the abuse some folks get online, this is nothing. Some trolls out there can be real dangers, with threats and massive online pile-ons of their victims and showing intentions of (and following through with) real world crimes. The guys I’ve mentioned here are just minor annoyances, bemusing at best, and easily dealt with. They aren’t much different from the “Bozos” of yore, spitting out anger and insults, just more specific about their particular triggers. I’m betting that in person, they’re also just like “Bozo,” unassuming and bearing sheepish grins when outed for their behavior, their rage curtailed in fear of actual consequences.
Just in case you ever thought comments on old posts ever got past me…nope, they sure don’t! Here’s Reader Pete with a comment on my relatively recent video game post:
“I know I’m a few weeks late to comment on this post, but reading this reminded of the Questprobe game and tie-in comics from Marvel in the mid-80’s. I had the Hulk and Thing/Human Torch games for my Commodore 64 which I remember formatted like a ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ book. I bought the Hulk and Spider-Man comics as back issues later on, but could never find the Thing/Human Torch one. It seemed like comics & video games would have been a much more natural partnership but that didn’t seem to develop until years later.”
The Questprobe computer games were illustrated “interactive fiction,” where the player would read text and type in commands of the “GO NORTH” and “TAKE AXE” variety, accompanies with still digital drawings.
There were programmed by Scott Adams — no, not that one, but rather this gentleman. And I suggest looking at that Wikipedia page to see the pic of Mr. Adams from 1982, which is literally the greatest.
Now, despite my affinity for computer and video gaming and (surprise) comics in the mid-’80s, I didn’t acquire these games. I’m not even sure I ever saw them for sale in the wild, and I regularly haunted the game software shelves at any store that stocked this sort of thing.
I was aware of the games, absolutely, as I definitely bought at least the first issue of Marvel’s tie-in Questprobe comic book series. (And according to the Grand Comics Database entry linked there, the look of the antagonist in this series was designed after Adams himself — again, reference that photo from Adams’ Wikipedia page.
Adams worked with John Byrne to put together a plan for the overall series of games, and of course the related comics, for a run of about a dozen installments. Only three games came out, due to the game company shutting down, which also ended the related comic book series. However, a comic based on the unreleased fourth game was created, and eventually released in issue #33 of Marvel’s Island of Misfit Stories, Marvel Fanfare.
And because the late writer Mark Gruenwald forgot nothing, some of this Questprobe stuff would turn up in his run of Quasar.
A couple of additional points: despite missing the games during their initial release window, I did sample one or two of them via emulation decades later. Which, unfortunately, is probably not the way to try them out given how very dated they feel now. As I recall, even the text interface seemed relatively primitive compared to the more complex commands available in, say, the contemporary Infocom games.
The Questprobe games had the affectation of the user prompt being, like, “SPIDER-MAN I WANT YOU TO” after which you would type in the command, like you’re controlling the character from afar. Here’s a playthrough of the Spider-Man game to show you what I mean:
The other point I wanted to make is that reader Pete (remember Pete? This is a post about Pete) said he couldn’t find the third issue of the run, feaeturing the Thing and the Human Torch:
And this is an issue we fans probably shouldn’t miss, as it features the excellent artwork of noted Thing artist (from the self-titled series and from many Marvel Two-in-Ones) Ron Wilson. I just checked, and this issue is not included in the recent The Thing Omnibus, almost certainly due to licensing issues, so folks, keep your peepers peeled for that lost gem.EDIT: Ignore all that, it is in the Omnibus, somehow I missed it when scanning the covers on the book’s back cover.
In my more nostalgic moods I might say that superhero video games never got any better than the Atari 2600 Superman from 1979. The best games? Maybe the recent Spider-Man games…maybe the Batman Arkham series. Many would swear by, say, the X-Men arcade game, or the various LEGO games.
These Questprobe games were an interesting attempt at moving superheroes into the then-burgeoning home computer market, but producing them as essentially text adventures with some pictures seemed to miss the point a little. I mean, yes, comic books themselves are pictures with some text, but if you’re handed a game, when you think “superheroes” you probably don’t want to spend hours guessing what noun-verb combination is the correct one to get you to the next guessing of a noun-verb combination.
Superheroes imply action, and in a video game market that means directly moving characters onscreen as per your controller interface. And with the release of the recent Batman virtual reality game, the games are coming closer and closer to actually just straight up living out the world are presented in comic books, with fewer apparent steps of remove.
I’ll get back to your questions in short order, but I found myself poking through Blip #7 (August 1983), Marvel’s short-lived video game magazine, as you do.
I was fully immersed in this video game world…I mean, not like Tron-level immersion where I’m stuck in a program fighting the MCP, but playing games and reading the magazines and all that jazz. I loved this stuff. Still do.
Anyway, I reminded myself of Blip after mentioning it here on the site the other day, and poking not too far into this, the last issue, I found the “News Briefs” page, which had this to say:
Okay, first off, that’s a couple of weird picks for games to just throw in there. Defender at least was an extremely popular and well-known game, notorious for its relatively complex controls and difficulty of play.
Pengo, the cute penguin game where you…um, smash your enemies with sliding ice blocks, was a little more obscure but seemingly well received. There was a particularly sketchy arcade in my town that had it and I enjoyed playing it there, situated as it was next to the bootleg Mario Bros. machine in the underlit back area. This was also the place where my locked-up bike was stolen out of the racks out front while I played inside, but that’s neither here nor there.
Anyway, just thought Pengo was a weird game to namedrop. I mean, wither Bosconian?
Back to that excerpt…that Escape game, which is more commonly known as Journey Escape, inspired by their album of the same name.
Now, this game is…not great. Let me quote from the game manual, which I’ve “borrowed” from the above-linked Wikipedia article a description of this Atari 2600-exclusive release:
“You’re on the road with Journey, one of the world’s hottest rock groups. A spectacular performance has just ended. Now it’s up to you to guide each Journey Band Member past hordes of Love-Crazed Groupies, Sneaky Photographers, and Shifty-Eyed Promoters to the safety of the Journey Escape Vehicle in time to make the next concert. Your mighty manager and loyal roadies are there to help, but the escape is up to you!”
Now maybe that all sounds exciting, but keep in mind this vast cast of characters are all depicted mostly symbolically within the 2600’s graphical limits (the Love-Crazed Groupies” are blocky hearts with legs) and, as noted in the Wiki, the Manager is…the Kool-Aid Man? Perplexing.
Here’s a video of the playthrough, if you dare:
As you can see, it’s just a “dodge the obstacles” game as you try to reach the endpoint without contacting the various enemies and losing your points (AKA money). Not the most compelling rock-and-roll tie-in, even by the relatively primitive state of home gaming of the time. (There was also a Journey Escape game produced for arcades, which at least sounds a little more varied in the entertainment it provided.)
The Atari 2600 Game-by-Game Podcast was a detailed review of it here.
Well, he’s not wrong, given the rise of the iPod and Apple’s Music store and the fact that digital music sales are so prominent now. Plus there was that little kerfuffle between the Beatles’ Apple Corps and Apple Computers, so, yes, Apple definitely is mired in the music world.
Now I’m trying to picture video games based on Talking Heads and the Police. For the former, you could play a guy running around…I don’t know, burning down houses, I guess. For the latter, a game based on “Don’t Stand So Close to Me,” similar to the old “Daleks” computer game where you move your little guy around on the screen, trying to avoid contact with the Daleks who always move one step closer to you with each move you make. In The Police’s game, your little guy is a school teacher, and with every step you take, instead of Daleks following you, it’s…well, maybe I’ve gone too far.
So, yeah, that’s a lot of talk about video games that only marginally slips past the normally air-tight ProgRuin filter, simply because it was inspired by a comic-formatted Marvel magazine. Well…maybe I can justify its inclusion by throwing in this bit from the Al Milgrom-drawn Hulk story that’s also in this issue:
Okay, I’m back, barring any further shenanigans. Quick update on the eye…still a little cloudy, but it’s very close to being clear and I suspect I’ll be back to whatever passes for normal in short order. Then it’ll probably be time for the other eye to go south on me again. Sigh.
Next…I did my jury duty service Monday. Waited around all day, wasn’t called in as part of the three different groups of jiuror pools pulled into courtrooms. Free for another year, hopefully!
Before that…the previous Friday, a construction crew behind my shop, building an addition to the restaurant, somehow managed to cut through the shop’s internet and phone lines. THAT WAS DELIGHTFUL. And of course the repair crew showed up Monday while I was at jury duty, where they managed to fix one of the problems and not the other. Hopefully we’ll get that final problem fixed Tuesday. Here’s hoping. …I had workarounds for both services, so the shop was still able to function, but…bleah.
In addition, since my vision hadn’t been that great in my good readin’ eye, leaving it difficult to read any print comics, I availed myself of the DC Universe app and my iPad to read some of the digital comics they had available. And that’s how I, at long last, finally read Garth Ennis and John McCrea’s Hitman run. I actually read the first four or five issues when they were originally released, but for some reason didn’t keep with the series. It’s the usual combination of serious war stories, thoughts on what it means to be a good person, and outrageous/weird/grossout humor, mixed in with Mr. Ennis’ general and hilarious contempt for superheroing (the exception being Superman, natch…and maybe Catwoman). Interesting that the title caaracter has been left mostly untouched outside of the creators’ work (though I seem to recall there was a New 52/Rebirth/whatever namecheck).
Anyway, it’s a good series, even if I kinda had to cover the screen now and again whilst reading it in the juror waiting room.
And one last thing…at long last, my Blip collection is finally on its way to becoming a thing, with the acquisition of issue #5 in a recent purchase:
It has all the latest and hottest tips for playing Zaxxon, which is good because I’m terrible at it.
Blip was Marvel’s short-lived video game comic-sized magazine from the early 1980s, of which I owned one copy originally, but had since discarded and now of course I wish I had back. But as I recall, the series hadn’t been terribly popular at the time, and just kinda stunk up the back issue bins as unsellable stock. But it was also the first place a comic book version of Mario from Donkey Kong (and likely other video game characters) appeared, making those particular issues quite the pricey items. This issue just has a Tootsie cameo on the cover, which frankly should make it a collectors item all by itself.
Anyway, send me your spare Blips. I might even pay you a nickel or two for the more notable ones.
Well, I was busy working on something else Thursday evening and didn’t get a chance to write up a proper blog post…but, you know, I probably gave you enough to read this week. So, here, please enjoy this full-page illustration from the inexplicably-in-my-collection Pac-Man: An Activity Book from 1982:
Just announced: a few other minis or whatever, plus Swamp Thing, a mini-series written by Swampy’s cocreator Len Wein and illustrated by Kelley Jones. It’s the same creative team as the Convergence: Swamp Thing mini-series from a couple of months ago, which…uh, well, didn’t really do much for me, but that’s more the result, I think, of Wein writing to editorial edict, having to tie othe story into a half-baked crossover event. I’m looking forward to seeing the results of Wein and Jones on a standalone series.
Okay, I’m looking forward to Gerry Conway on Firestorm, too, and, as a longtime fan of Sugar & Spike, and also as a longtime fan of outright evil, this update of Sugar & Spike as grown-up detectives just seems downright amazing. Especially given that Keith Giffen is at the helm. Good thing this is a mini-series because as an ongoing it would have the stink of death all over it, but I honestly can’t wait to see what’s going on here.
You know, if feels like as if a couple of my ideas from this post from a while back are coming to fruition, or at least close enough for horseshoes. …C’MON SOLO ALFRED COMIC.
• • •
In other weird-ass news, Dynamite’s made a deal with Atari to not only create new works based on its properties, but to reprint old Atari-related comics as well. While I’m sure most of you are looking forward to the deluxe hardcover treatment of the Yar’s Revenge cartridge pack-in comic that is surely coming, I’m more intrigued by the possibility of a fancypants edition of the old AtariForce series. Yes, at long last, Tempest and his power-mullet on high grade paper with computer coloring. Oh, and also one of most fun and beautifully-illustrated newsstand comics of the ’80s, featuring the work of Gerry Conway, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, Mike Baron and Eduardo Barreto, although good luck convincing anyone of that because it was named Atari Force, after all.
Part of me wants Conway and Garcia-Lopez to return and continue the story, but, well, “you can’t go home again, probably,” says the guy who was looking forward to the Swamp Thing comic just a few paragraphs ago. But boy, I sure did look forward to a new issue of Atari Force every month. That was one of my all-time favorites. …Ah, heck, I do want to see them back on the book. I can’t help it. We’re all fanboys about something.
Oh, and if you’re doing new graphic novels based on Atari properties, I volunteer to write this one.
• • •
So, hoo boy, how ’bout that Airboy thing, huh? I discussed the new Image series briefly on my site a little while back, and it seemed like most folks were into it, and then #2 came out and boy, did people turn on a dime. Twitter pal Charlotte took on the task of explaining just what went wrong and it’s definitely worth a read. And it’s good to see that the writer, James Robinson, released a heartfelt and thoughtful apology. A few folks have commented on Charlotte’s article not getting what the big deal is, not understanding that here, in what would ordinarily be the very future-sounding year of 2015, there are still human beings begging other human beings for the right to be treated as human beings, and maybe portrayals like in Airboy #2 aren’t helping the cause. A couple of the more egregious comments have been deleted since I last looked, thankfully.
Anyway, it’s certainly an unfortunate incident, but at least it’s resulted in good discussion such as Charlotte’s article. Hopefully some folks who need to will learn a little something from it.
• • •
Grant Morrison is the new editor of Heavy Metal, and blogging brother Tim O’Neil has just a few words about that particular development.
A bunch of you told me this was coming, and here it is, now in my possession, the 1:10 ratio variant cover for Super Secret Crisis Wars #2, which was inspired by the cover for House of Secrets #92 (the first appearance of Swamp Thing, of course).
This cover is by Andy Suriano, who notes next to his signature that the image is “After (Bernie) Wrightson” and that it’s “For Weezie!!” — AKA Louise Simonson, the writer of Super Secret Crisis Wars, and, oh, by the way, was also the model for the woman on the cover of that original House of Secrets #92.
Suriano might as well have added “Buy This, Mike Sterling” next to his signature as well. This also makes the second Powerpuff Girls-related Swamp Thing parody that I own (the first being the first issue of their IDW series).
In other ridiculous comic news…well, I wasn’t going to buy Injustice: Gods Among Us for the Xbox 360 at $59.99 or whatever the price point was, but I noticed that it recently was available in the Xbox store as a $7.99 download, so, you know, what the heck, I can probably get eight bucks of entertainment out of it. And to be frank, I liked it a lot more playing the full game than I did when I played the demo way back when. Getting the actual “story,” such as it is, and the cut scenes setting up the battles actually does help quite a bit in fleshing this game out into more than just a punch-em-up. Not much more, granted, but I’m having some fun with it. Plus, I’m trying to actually use the special fighting moves each character has, rather than my usual “push every button on the controller in a panic” strategy in dealing with games like these. I’m mostly successful.
This last Wednesday was the rare Mike-less Wednesday at the shop, as I ended up being stuck at home all day waiting for a locksmith to come and repair the lock on my front door…well, not all day, but by the time everything was done, there wasn’t any point in making the drive to work. Hopefully I won’t return on Thursday to find smoking ruins and “MIKE MUST DIE” painted in blood on one of the remaining walls, because I wasn’t thrilled the last time that happened. Alas, the lock problems were a special morning surprise, and not anything I planned for, so I had precious little work to do at home whilst I waited for the Friendly Neighborhood Locksmith to make his way to me. A little eBaying, a little store website maintenance (i.e. getting the store website back up because someone screwed up somewhere…not saying it was me, but…um, it was me)…
…and a little catching up on reading this week’s new comics over lunch. My fifteen minutes are almost up here, so let me just throw out the fact that I really enjoyed the Red Lanterns Annual. In fact, the Red Lanterns title in general is a lot of fun. I was skeptical as anyone on the Tumbling-Twitter-Journals about this when it was announced, that the world surely didn’t need a comic about the Red Lanterns, of all things, and who are, well, kinda gross when you get right down to it. But there’s always something interesting going on in the title, and this recent annual was stuffed with all kinds of crazy events and twists and turns, and personality conflicts mixed with the occasional grudging friendships are entertaining to read. I certainly like this comic more than the Green Lantern titles, which aren’t bad as such…just seem a bit staid compared to their more crimson-hued cousin.
Sinestro is good, too. Must be something about Green Lantern villains/antagonists that make for compelling reading. …Where’s my Myrwhydden series?
So former employee Josh #1 pointed me to this survey, asking which characters you’d like to see available as downloadable content for the Injustice: Gods Among us video game.
Well, if I’m mentioning it here, you can probably guess 1) which character is among the possible choices, and 2) how I voted. …I have no idea how official it is, or whether the results would have any impact. I half-suspect any DLC available for the game was prepped ages ago, but my knowledge of how the video game business works is fairly minimal. It’s all wizardry and deals-with-the-devil as far as I know.
I did actually play the Injustice game, or at least the free demo they offer for cheap bastards like me who will settle for just the demo in place of dropping sixty bones on the full game. And…well, I’m not really much of a Mortal Kombat/Street Fighter-type fighting-game guy, as previously mentioned when I wrote about my previous interaction with this type of game. But it was a game with DC Comics characters, so at the very least I thought I’d give it a looksee and “dig” what all of you kids are “hep” to these days.
And…yeah, it was certainly a fighting game. I really do prefer the video games that allow you to explore environments and interact with characters and solve puzzles and such, so my attention was generally drawn to “I wish I can explore the background setting the characters are fighting in” versus “if I repeatedly hit this button, I’ll keep kicking Wonder Woman in the shins.” I do like that in the background of one scene you see Atom Smasher fighting it out with…Giganta, I guess? I kind of wanted to send my Batman avatar over there to check out what was going on, but no, I had to stay on the main screen there and fight Lobo.
It was an interesting diversion, but I think the demo slaked any desire I had to play this game…there’s just a sameness to it all that doesn’t keep my interest, he said with no ironic critical side-glance at the superhero genre whatsoever. And it’s sort of bland…the Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 game at least had some interesting visual flourishes and voicework. Injustice gives you a thin-sounding “stay down” from Batman when he vanquishes his opponent. Maybe there’s more in the main game, playing in the story mode or whatever, that provides a more enriching experience, but the novelty of a fighting game with DC characters wore out right quick.
That’s not to say I won’t buy it if Swamp Thing becomes available. But even in that case, I’ll wait ’til the game drops under $20. That’s about the right price for it.
Plus, Batman fighting and beating Doomsday? I call no way.
SPECIAL NOTE ABOUT THIS POST: it was going to be my Iron Man 3 review. No idea how I ended up writing about this.
So I was thinking about the Wisdom of Lobo blank funnybook we were talking about a couple of days ago. Mostly, I was wondering about its relative scarcity and its market value, and…checking in the price guide, it’s not even listed, as least as far as I can find. (I forgot to check the “promotional” section of the current guide at the shop, but it’s not in the promo section in this 5-year-old price guide I have immediately available to me here at home.)
I remember selling The Wisdom of Lobo on its own way back when, having busted open two or three of the slipcased sets to sell the books and slipcases separately. I don’t think we sold it for more than two or three bucks (and making sure any purchasers knew the pages inside were blank). I still do think it’s pretty weird that I haven’t seen any copies come our way in collections for so many years. …A quick check on Amazon shows that copies of the slipcased sets sell from about $12 to about $120, if that tells us anything, other than some sellers have high apple pie in the sky hopes.
Speaking of funnybook sales, while doing cycle sheets this week, it was pointed out that Kick Ass 2 #4 seemingly had a sales burst after having been on the shelf for a while. Generally, most comic books see the majority of their sales in the first week, with a strong drop-off in the second week, and some dribs and drabs in the last week or two. But our last few copies of Kick Ass 2 #4, which probably would have been pulled off the rack and put in the back issue bins (where, oddly enough, Kick Ass back issues sell out almost immediately, to people I know have been in the store while they were still sitting new on the shelf) were gone, baby, gone. And it took me a second to figure out why, until I recalled there was a bit of online outrage over the contents of that particular issue two or three weeks after its release. And, thus, we get our late in the sales cycle bump. “It’s an ill wind” and all that.
In completely unrelated news, the commenter formerly known as Professor Booty, Señor Editor, has this question for me:
“…I seem to recall you mentioning the game LA Noire here sometime ago (great game!), but did you play ‘Arkham City’ yet?”
I did enjoy L.A. Noire, though it could have used a multiplayer shoot-’em-up free roam thing so my friends and I could shoot each other in the face while speeding vintage cars around 1940s Los Angeles.
Arkham City I haven’t tried yet…in fact, I’ve only played the demo level for Arkham Asylum, though I keep meaning to get around to picking up a used copy or something, at some point. Arkham City does look fascinating as an immersive environment, and to be able to play Batman in it…well, that’s hard to resist. I’ll get around to it sometime, I’m sure. (Making it harder to resist are Señor Editor’s own thoughts on the game, as well as Chris “Señor Batman” Sims’ comprehensive overview.)
But if there was a Swamp Thing video game in this style, I’d be all over it immediately.
“What!? A comic book? The devil you say!” The devil I do say, and the comic I picked up was this one:
Even though I dropped Thunderbolts years ago after the Kurt Busiek/Fabian Nicieza storythreads pretty much petered out, I found myself intrigued when I saw that Jeff Parker introduced Man-Thing onto the team during his recent run. But, for whatever reason, I didn’t start reading the series again, though once this issue popped up in our weekly shipment, I had a hard time resisting that great Art Adams cover. Took me a couple of weeks, but I finally relented and picked the darned thing up.
The story inside is Man-Thing-focused, which was an added bonus (since in these modern days of funnybooks, the character featured on the cover may not necessarily be the character starring inside). For those of you who’ve been reading Thunderbolts this whole time…are there other issues of this series of late that are Man-Thing heavy?
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For my birthday, the girlfriend gifted me with a couple of Xbox games, one of which being the Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 fightin’ game all you kids are into. Now, I don’t know any of the Capcom characters, really…well, Chun-Li I recognize, I suppose, from Street Fighter covers and those splayed-leg PVC statues from the back of the Previews catalogue. And I’m not entirely sure I understand the game just yet, as it’s a bit more complicated than the last video fighting game I played and so far, my play strategy has been “mash the buttons in a panic” over “ah, I have my opponent at a disadvantage, so I shall use this two button and joystick special combo-move to defeat him.”
My initial three-player team was Thor, Wolverine, and She-Hulk, and I managed to direct them successfully through several matches (on the easy level, of course), until I reached the battle versus Galactus and promptly had all three virtual butts handed to me. But, it was fun, and I imagine I’ll catch on to the subtleties of the game in short order.
There is the nice touch of having situation-appropriate dialogue when certain characters oppose each other (such as She-Hulk mentioning something about a family reunion when encountering her cousin, the Hulk). And apparently there’s a (non-playable cutscene, darnit) cameo for Man-Thing at some point, just to bring it back to the original topic of this post.
The other video game I was given was Soulcalibur IV, another fighting game, but this one has, somewhat inexplicably (despite some awkwardly-written in-game backstory attempting to explain), Yoda from the Star Wars series. So, apparently, at some point Yoda will be fighting this one gal with the thong swimsuit and a whip, which is, um, a bit weird, I guess. “MmmMMMmmm, catch a cold from a draft, you will!”
e-mail me at
mikester @ this domain name
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THIS IS A LINK TO THE WEBSITE
FOR THE COMIC SHOP THAT I OWN
