Category: Nerdiness

Last night Norm, Joe, Graeme, Mike Jackson, and David Bradley came over to make up characters for my Mutants & Masterminds mini-campaign. Kodos was running around the apartment like a wildcat, as he does sometimes. He likes to bolt from one side of the apartment to the other…the end of the hall to the black chair or the couch, usually, and when he is in the hall he will crouch into whatever shoes happen to be in there. Well, I guess he got overexcited last night. I had to periodically check to see he wasn’t raking my guest’s shoes, as he is wont to do with shoes that have new and vivacious smells. At last I heard him making an unusual amount of noise and when I peeked around the corner he was crouched in Graeme’s jacket which was crumpled on the floor–a crouch I know all too well. The sound I heard was obviously him padding at the jacket prepping his spot to soil. I grabbed him before he fully relieved himself but not before he started. BAD CAT! Luckily I had almost a full bottle of that “miracle” pet odor remover that is enzyme based and works like a charm, so I cleaned up after the BAD CAT and Graeme was none the wiser! No, that’s not true, I told Graeme about it and that if the miracle stuff didn’t work I’d buy him a new jacket. But I am confident the stuff will work as I have used it on my bed and clothes probably a half dozen times or more over the years. BAD CAT! My only worry is that I missed a spot.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanyhoo…the kids made up some interesting characters–the most interesting being Graeme’s shapeshifting plant character and Mike’s nanobot gadgeteer–and we may play the ‘training scenario’ next Monday. Thank Gord for Joe’s compu-notebook and the M&M spreadsheet program that does the math for character creation.

And then Kodos got “The Sink” treatment.

Well Marlo is in a heavy comics phase right now PLUS she’s always asking me about favourites so Marmar, this ones for YOU!

Just a note – when I collected comic books in the 80’s and 90’s, my buying criteria was 90% art, 10% story.

Captain Carrot & His Amazing Zoo Crew. This is the series that got me into comics. The art was sometimes good, sometimes bad, usually okay. The writing was typical, but the puns and the whole anthropomorphic animal world was entertaining. Animal parodies from the JLA (Just’a Lotta Animals) falls into the so-bad-it’s-good category (Super Squirrel, Batmouse, Martian Anteater, – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justa_Lotta_Animals

Marshal Law. Drawn by Kevin O’Neill. O’Neill’s art (later seen in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) is flat and chunky, but it grew on me. However, the concept of a world in which the time of superheroes has past (the genetic engineering that created them for government soldiers eventually drives them mad), and they’re generally considered rogue and that the protagonist is a self-loathing ex-hero whose job it is to take down rogue supers and…aw just read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshal_Law . Very twisted, filled with machismo and violence, and not for everyone. But it has a place in my heart.

Hellboy. I started getting into Mignola about the time he did Cosmic Odyssey. Maybe even before that with Rocket Raccoon (my Captain Carrot days). His style became more refined and ‘his own’ over the years until he became what fans now recognize him as the quintessential Mignola. Even though the stories are generally good, mixing Lovecraftian with traditional folklore, I was mostly interested in the art, and the way Mignola’s presentation was more film-like than comic book-like.

Excalibur (original one-shot and series). Nothing really terribly new, this is one of many X-titles. However, the writing was consistently good, the characters were a good mix, and art by Alan Davis was the icing on the cake.

The Last American. Mike McMahon’s art is amazing and completely unique. The story was generally interesting. Not phenomenal but good enough.

Big Guy & Rusty the Boy Robot, and Hard Boiled. Frank Miller wrote, but that wasn’t the point. Geoff Darrow does the art and there’s not much to say about that beyond ‘wow.’

Madman. I’m kind of bored of Madman now but there was some really fresh, fun writing in the series and Mike Allred’s art was clean, which was unusual at the time, and refreshing.

Flex Mentallo – introduced in Grant Morrison’s run of Doom Patrol, he later got his own 4-issue series that I adore. I learned from Wikipedia that they won’t reprint the series into TPB because the Charles Atlas company sued DC due to the likeness of Flex to those old “the insult that made a man out of Mac” ads in comics.

Justice League. The only run of JL that I ever collected was the late 80’s early 90’s run with Adam Hughes predominately drawing (Keith Giffen, DeMatteis writing). This era really brought out the personalities of the characters in a new way. It wasn’t the heroes just fighting villains – it was the heroes trying to get along with one another and keep the organization from collapsing under modern day pressures (like finances and public relations). The expressive art (especially Hughes) mirrored the extremes of playfulness and seriousness of the writing. The heroes made non-heroic faces quite often. This incarnation put the character back in the characters.

Marvels – it’s like a retelling of classic Marvel stories and characters with Alex Ross art. What’s not to like?

Astro City. Always disliked the art, except of course the Alex Ross covers. Kurt

Busiek’s writing was generally good to great, and played on old comic book stereotypes in a fresh way.

Kingdom Come – fully illustrated by Alex Ross, the story was also very well done and interesting.

Earth X – Marvel’s answer to Kingdom Come and also an Alex Ross design concept, though he didn’t do the interior art. Had some neat ideas and played with the Marvel mythology in interesting ways.

Powers. Excellent writing – two cops, one an ex-hero, investigating superhero homicides. Art was a different style and well executed.

Alias. Don’t care for the art but the writing makes up for it. One storyline in particular had me weeping. Takes the Marvel universe tropes and gives you a sort of behind-the-scenes. Again, an ex-hero uses her smarts and abilities in a real-world approach.

Comics for Toren to check out:
We3 (Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely)
The Authority illustrated by Frank Quitely
Invisibles illustrated by Frank Quitely
JLA: Earth 2 graphic novel
Formerly Known as the Justice League/Super Buddies (Giffen & DeMatteis)
1997 JLA by Morrison
2004 JLA/Avengers crossover – anybody read this? Is it any good? We need an imdb for comics.
JLA Classified (Morrison, etc) – again…any good?
House of M – any good?

Also taking suggestions.

I recently bought the 2-disc “Predator” DVD – the movie with the best action/suspense soundtrack in the whollllllle world according to Garp. Even though it’s a machismo gun-fest, it will always have a place in my heart. On a related note, my favourite animal in the whole wild world does what the Predator does, only better. Check it: http://www.break.com/index/octopus1.html
No sound required.

On the topic of D&D, I’ve been playing Icewind Dale II on my computer, which is fun and addictive. I should be working on my one art job instead but I’ll start that this weekend if things go as planned. I made up versions of the characters from my regular D&D group (as noted earlier, the now-defunct one) and that’s fun and also educational. I get to play my players’ characters and I can see tactical angles they haven’t used (for example, the monk/rogue can use her stunning fist and then get sneak attacks in on the stunned target). Last night, after getting all the characters up to about ninth level, I decided to swap out the wizard. My original wizard specialized in summoning. My tactic in most of these games (Baldur’s Gate etc) is to send the rogue scouting ahead invisibly (maxing out her sneak skills) and then summon a line of creatures/undead in between the rest of the party and the enemies. I typically stand behind the line of summoned fodder and unleash with ranged attacks and spells. There are two down sides to this. 1. In Icewind Dale the monsters are very focused – once they see one character they will generally attack just that one guy, moving around everyone else even if it means taking a long way around. 2. If a wizard specializes in summoning spells, they can’t cast evocation spells, which are old favourites like fireball and magic missile. So that was getting me down and I realized that since my bard and my cleric can both cast lots of summoning spells, I figured it was time to get rid of the wizard and get another one – one that specializes in evocation! The bad news is, the new guy starts at 1st level while the others are 9th. So I just have to keep him in the back and see how that works out for now. Wish me luck!

I learned some things about running a D&D campaign. If you run a game for too long, people get tired and cranky about it. My regular gaming group broke up last night. We’ve been having trouble for a couple months. Originally I expected the game to last about a year but it’s been over two years now. Some of the chapters were received well by some and others were not (by some). Some went way longer than I had planned. Plus some of the players have conflicting styles (some love to hack and slash, others like to roleplay) which is always difficult for a DM to balance. I felt that enthusiasm has been waning for a little while now, and I’ve tried to salvage the campaign using different methods but when the most recent player dropped out I initiated a discussion about whether or not we should continue playing. We won’t – at least not as we have been. As Paul said, it seems we’ve been playing just to keep the momentum going after having invested so much into the story and characters…not because we were actually looking forward to the game itself. So the end result is that we’ve decided to take a couple weeks hiatus and decide if we want to run some other kind of campaign or even a whole different game altogether for a month or two. And if not, that’s okay too. But I have been daydreaming about Dragon Fist/Oriental Adventures in between my Mutants & Masterminds and Spaceship Zero schemes.