Shared Universes, Shared Pain

Once upon a time, when life was sweet and hope sprang eternal, DC Comics used to put Annuals every summer, designed to take what little extra pocket money we could earn stealing from the swells in the gutters of London. Those days are gone. Now DC Comics puts out Secret Files and Origins instead.

I tend to avoid these books because a)if they're so secret, why can I buy it? Huh? Explain that! and b) they tend to be overpriced. But I forgot myself in my Hal Jordan hysteria and picked up--for seven dollars--Green Lantern Secret Files and Origins 2005.

Aside from a nice opening story that encapsulates the important people in Hal's life, there really wasn't much to justify the price. Another story shows just how fucked up Hal was before he came back to being Green Lantern--which was no real surprise to anyone who has, you know, read the books over the years. A few more pages are sacrificed to character descriptions, with the prose tending to repeat itself over subsequent pages. The art is nice--Howard Chaykin's Guy Gardner reminded me of his work on American Flagg, and the depiction of the Kyle Rayner Lantern was...evocative? Nice stuff, but not worth the outlay of hard Canadian coin.

Was thinking about sharecropper fiction today. You know, like Star Trek, Star Wars, Doctor Who, and the like. I have a fondness for it, but it so often is like buying a bottle of Coke. You enjoy the fun of the first swig, but then have trouble finishing it without feeling a little sick. I'm reading Star Wars: Battle Surgeons right now, and I'm trying to determine just what is wrong with it. It doesn't star any of the characters from the movies (yay!), which should be applauded. There are plenty of plotlines to keep things moving--but it all seems a bit expected. Perhaps that's the biggest problem with sharecropping: there can never really be any sort of surprise, since these are licensed characters. Will Luke Skywalker have his head blown off by that TIE fighter? Will Leia bitchslap Han? No--because they're action figures.

There is also a PG level to the prose that is bit limiting. In Surgeons, a doctor obviously has a strong physical attraction to the Jedi attached to his medical unit. (Errr, that sounded wrong.) So we have the authors simply have the doctor catch a look at the Jedi when the wind blows her robes around, showing her body shape a little more clearly. Upon this we infer he thinks she's hot. Wouldn't it have been read much better if the doctor had thought 'That Jedi has a great rack." I mean, it would have been more honest. And it would have given George Lucas a coronary.

Discussion point: can any sharecropper series surprise us? I'm thinking that the only series that have done that have been Doctor Who (both the Virgin and BBC lines) and Warhammer (with its unusually high quality Black Library series).

In other news, George R.R. Martin says A Feast of Crows is done. Kind of.

The Time Pit of Morrowind

Okay, so I'm starting to get hooked. I blew an hour and a half last night playing Morrowind, finally getting the feel of the game under my skin. I just walked from one town to another--and swam in a pond (found a skeleton, so I relieved it of its gold), found a giant lizard just eating grass, noticed a dungeon just off the path, went inside, and quickly ran like hell when a ghost came drifting around a tomb corner. Now I'm in a village, trying to get hooked up with the local thieves' guild.

The time just zoomed past.

Stayed up far too late last night watching the A New Hope for what must be...what? The two hundredth time? Imagine if I'd spent all that time actually doing something productive: I'd be living in a mansion collecting my urine in jars. Good times! So, Cher and I are watching the film, and we notice just how fucking terrible the stormtroopers are at actually hitting anything. How can the Empire go from having those crackshot clone troopers--who just owned the Separtists on Geonosis--to having these Rent-A-Thugs who can't shoot Han Solo in the ass when he's fifteen feet in front of them? I mean, is this what happens when you hire union labour?

So we decide it's because of Imperial cost cutting. Our theory states that once the Emperor seized control of the galaxy, he decided to put all the money he could to building statues of himself, burning Jedis on pyres, and keeping the galaxy shit scared of him. So there had to be budget cuts. Palpatine takes a boo over at Kamino, and decides he really doesn't need super duper clone troopers anymore, since most of the battles are won. He's so arrogant he doesn't even consider the potential for a Rebellion, the smug bastard. So he sends some troopers to Kamino and takes out the long necked Kaminoan cloners, installs some Imperial flunky scientists there, and tells them to just maintain SOP there.

But the Kaminoans knew the Emperor would fuck them up, given half the chance, so they take out some vital Jango-ness from the clones before Palpatine blows them all to Kessel. So as time goes by, the clones get worse and worse. Some are shorter than others, others are myopic, some wet their armour, and they can't hit the broadside of a Bantha to save their genetically engineered lives. The Emperor then puts even more money into the Death Star, since he knows his troopers are for shit now. Now, if he has a problem with a planet --like Alderaan--he's just going to blow it to space dust. Screw this hand to hand fighting stuff.

So that's why Ewoks can kill them by Return of the Jedi.

Imperial cost cutting is what killed the Empire, not some whiny Jedi and his teddy bear buddies.

Everything Old Is New To Me

When I used to play Baldur's Gate back on my ancient, steam driven Aptiva, I thought waiting for lands to load as your character stood there was part of the game mechanics. Imagine my joy at finally having a computer whose age cannot only be determined by carbon 14 tests.

So here I sit, playing the wonderful Neverwinter Nights. Down in some prison, where all the prisoners look the same: brown diapers and 1973 hair. And I'm thinking of the prevalent gamer attitude of abandoning games once they start to show their age, and whoring after the latest hard drive crunching, ADD glittering prize. I guess I'm feeling a tad cynical after the kinda-but-not-really-reveal of both the PS3 and Revolution at E3, and my financial horror at what the new XBox 360 will cost me. I can't afford the future. The past is within my budget, though. I still adore these old games, especially when I've just found them in the last few months.

I still play Ocarina of Time on the old N64. I still think it's fun to get all Eighties with Final Fantasy One on the GameBoy Advance. And I will be first in line when Dragon Warrior 8 hits Canadian shores--even though it's not really an old game, it reminds me of dear old Dragon Warrior 3, the first--sniff!--video game I ever finished.

I'm loving Neverwinter, even if when I put in Jade Empire, I can see just how far Bioware--and gaming--has come in oh such a short time.

But I'm still undecided on another older game: Morrowind. I feel I should love it. But we're just staring at each other, sizing each other up, wondering if we're both worth the effort. Perhaps the fact I won't be able to afford the sequel Oblivion for some time may make us settle our differences.

The Pile of Guilt

It sits beside my reading chair. The books and magazines I buy with my hard earned coin, meaning to read, but....don't. I used to just recycle them after a month or so, or put them on one of the many bookshelves here in the house. But no more. I made the Pile Of Guilt, so I have to read them, if only to know peace in my darkened little soul.

The pile currently contains:

The June 2005 issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly (with Link on the cover)

Several issues of Asimov's Science Fiction and Analog (I subscribe to these magazines, so more guilt please!) Most are still in their protective covers.

Several comics, including Conan, Birds of Prey, and Catwoman.

Wired Magazine (May 2005)

A trade paperback of Masamune Shirow's Ghost In The Shell

Eberron Campaign Handbook

Two months worth of Dungeon and Dragon magazines

About a year's worth of Knights of The Dinner Table

Doctor Who Magazine

Sigh.

But I am reading Star Wars: Battle Surgeons! Foxy Jedis and medical talk! What more could any geek really want?

Geektopia

One year I'll get a media pass to E3. This wasn't the year. But I did watch most of the coverage on G4. Everyone was wired, and I swear Morgan Webb was pissed at some Sony guy--and I realize Webb isn't someone you want pissed off at you. She's a bloody Amazon. As for the rest of E3, I'm fairly excited about the new Zelda game, and I like the look of the P3. But I'll just use the launch of the new systems as an opportunity to load up on the stuff for the old systems that will now drop in price. Like maybe finally getting a PS2. Like I need it.

Saw Revenge of the Sith. Lucas did well. I'll probably have my geek card revoked for saying that, but it was a good film. The dialogue could have been better, but the much vaunted darker tone was there--and it needed to be. Worth your money and putting up with morons text messaging on their cells beside you.

Started playing Morrowind, after hearing so much critical praise for the game. It is fairly intense and deep, and very frustrating at first. But after finally winning a fight (against smugglers in some oddly lit cave), I began to enjoy it a bit. This isn't a game you can rush through--in fact, one of the NPCs even tells you to take your time. There are piles and piles of guilds and politics to wade through, and you also have to keep in mind how people see you, because it can affect the game itself. The setting is also very alien--you have the touchstones of elves and drow, but there is a much harder edge to it than you find in most RPGs. It's daunting. I'm much more at home with Neverwinter Nights, which is a little more familiar to me, since it's dear old Bioware sleeping with my beloved Dungeons and Dragons.

Started reading Star Wars: Battle Surgeons because you have to support crazy ass shit like that.

Also read the latest Wonder Woman. A very good read, but again, I feel I have to cut down on comics. Too fucking expensive, and Twist isn't all that rich. Green Arrow #50 was a major disappointment: the art was terrible, and the big lead up in #49 just fizzled. Green Lantern: Rebirth #6 hit all the right buttons needed to reestablish Hal Jordan back in the DCU, but wasn't all that satisfying in the process. So he's back. I'm happy, because there is such an iconic power to seeing Hal Jordan's Lantern. But the following series had better be Must Read, or he'll just fade again like he did almost sixteen years ago. The only book that I thought really was magnificent this week was Conan #16. Kurt Busiek really caught the feeling of Robert Howard and those old Conans I remember reading back in the Seventies, the classic Roy Thomas series. That was the stand out book for me this week.

Now, a column awaits. I've procrastinated long enough.

XBox 360

So that's the XBox 360. Huh. Took Frodo to show me it. Well, the last shiny cool thing Frodo had ended up in a volcano and caused the deaths of thousands, so forgive me if I'm dubious.

I dube (is that a word? is it now?) because I'm broke. I think Microsoft called it the 360 because that's how much your head turns around on your neck when you see the price tag. What? $399 Canadian? Sheeit. And it's allegedly designed around the act of inhaling? You see, this is why I want geek code money. It turns you into the modern equivalent of British nobility: you can be as strange as fuck and they just respect you all the more.

Yeah, it looks nice. Yeah, I'll probably end up getting it, because I want to play Soul Calibur 3 and Halo 3 and all the other XBox games that own my soul. Just like I'll try and mortgage what belongings I have to get the Nintendo Revolution. And whatever broken pixelly challenged item Sony unleashes upon the world.

But still, glass half full and stuff. Maybe now Sony will drop the price on the PS2 even more, so I can finally afford one. I mean, I do have the Box and the Cube, but me needs the 'station so I can play Ratchet and Clank, Katamari Damarcy, and Final Fucking Fantasy Gazillion.

Ah well. Time to play Neverwinter Nights. See if I can get it on with the paladin. Life has meaning again.

How A Geek Avoids Sex On The Weekend

Beautiful weekend. Bright sun, warm temperatures. Makes us forget how fucking miserable the winter was and how it's going to be as humid as a Thai whorehouse within weeks. For now, we take the beauty and lie to ourselves twll ever be thus.

Yesterday was Free Comic Book Day continent wide. London's participation just gets better every year. I made the rounds of London's stores yesterday: LA Mood was packed, with the owner Gord looking like hell (he couldn't sleep the night before, thinking about today, he said). Heroes was also wall to wall. I headed out east to World's Away, which was relatively empty. The clerk--dressed as a Jedi, albeit a Jedi who wore a baseball cap--said they'd been hit early in the morning, and all their free comics were gone. He still stamped my passport, though. (If you hit all the stores, you get entered into a lottery! Wee! Geek gambling!) My final hit was the venerable Comic Book Collector, London's oldest store. They were having MechWarrior games outside on the sidewalk beneath a tent, while inside--yes, packed again. Everyone seemed just giddy and excited. Like today was an excuse to be in love with comics and gaming, while for the rest of the year we feel quietly ashamed, wondering if we're too old for this and thinking of how our money could be better spent. But yesterday, it was all about the four colour geek love.

Also rented Lego Star Wars, which is really just a reason to keep on living. If games like this can keep appearing, along with games like Katamari Damarcy, there is still hope. The game is everything the first two prequels weren't: fun.

Later this afternoon, Clone Wars is on at four. Teletoon is showing all of Season Two--which takes up one hour. So yay geek!

And last night we played Dungeons and Dragons. I was using my Rinoa Fell (chick fighter) with my rogue elf Shinzo. They didn't die, even with Shinzo running full pelt down a table being pursued by magical swords. The party also survived battling a legion of undead hands, which were reduced to dust by our halfling cleric's Turn Undead ability. The DM didn't think of using that, and nearly wept with frustration. Ha!

And that, dear class, is why I didn't get laid this weekend.