I've been playing Peggle for much of the past week and it's all josienutter's fault.

Actually, now that I think about it, this is probably the first video game I've purchased since I bought a Shenmue 2 for the Dreamcast.


And on that thought, Josie's awesome to hang out with, still. Even if we both drank a bit too much.

She's also awesome to put up with me and show off Mass Effect while I waited until I was ready to drive. Plus, the kitties sure are cute.


I hope I didn't say anything too embarassing. I know I get both talkative and blatantly honest when buzzed.


My comics buying hasn't ceased. Local store had a sale on Wednesday of 50% off all HCs and TPBs... so I bought a bunch of hardcovers for the first time.

Initial thought is they're very -nice- to read. If I felt that paying an extra $5-$10 was worth the increase in the reading pleasure, I might switch for good.

I also got the complete edition of Grant Morrison's New X-Men run. Did so just in time. After I grabbed the copy off the shelf, another four people entered the store who wanted it. I found out today that about another half-dozen did so after I left, as well.

Hey, $50 for the best run of X-Men comics ever? Hot shit.

Also Got X-Factor volume 4, JSA volume 1, Brave and the Bold vol 1, and the Black Dossier. Have read the first three, and all are great.


Was nice seeing the family and such over Christmas, but given the size of my grandparents' place, it felt a bit cramped at times. Things have eased up now, which is nice.


Oh, yeah. The end of One Day More? Worst fucking ret-con in the history of comics. The art sucked, plotting atrocious, ending absolutely crap and the dialogue was only marginally better. I could not help while scanning through it that Mephisto is nothing more than Joe Quesada's avatar in the Marvel U.

Oh, and a nice final fuck you to the fans? The end of the book reprints the wedding.


This is pretty interesting. I think for myself I've got a bit of 3 and 5, have had a some instances of 4, and probably touch 2 in an inverted manner.

Reading the latest issue of Justice League of American (#15), I was struck by how dissonant it seemed.

On one hand, we've got Dwayne McDuffie's script, which is another step in moving the comic from the completely forgettable Meltzer run to something that's palatable. The story isn't great. This is a light issue, without much in the way of plot details (in fact, it very specifically dovetails into two other titles at the end, without resolution), but it's got some kinda fun rock-em, sock-em action going on.

It's also got moments of The Sexy going on. The girls are doing the cool shits, and whooping baddies all around. Not so much for the damsels in distress, here. We've got proactive heroines doing the right thing.

Sexy.

On the other hand, we've got Ed Benes' art, which has taken another step in moving the book towards an ass-shot in every panel (and, depending on how limber he makes the portrayed character, tits as well). In this issue, the art is almost overwhelmingly, objectifyingly sexist, to the point that about halfway through (and this is just a 22-page story, mind), I began to feel a bit numb from the whole thing.

Hop over to my shiny-ish, new-ish blog for the play by play. I use the word "ass" a lot, without meaning "Donkey" or "Idiot". Also, spoilers, but no Spoiler.

Annihilation - Hot damn, this was awesome. It sorta cements in my mind the strength of the "meta series". There's very little that's messed up here and it's considerably more satisfying than Civil War was. Can't wait for Conquest.

Interestingly, the last really great miniseries I enjoyed was Seven Soldiers, which had a similar layout.

She-Hulk - Ah, so we come to the end of Dan Slott's amazing run. I've heard some complaints about how this fits into the rest of the Marvel U, but I really don't care. The combination of humor and action along with some really clever plots (The Gamma Defense! Awesome!) made it a book I always looked forward to.

Here's hoping Peter David (?) can keep up the good work. Of course, if Young Justice is any indication, he can.

Bomb Queen vol 2. - After I finished, I pondered that boundry of satire. It's interesting here because Robinson doesn't cross the line of offensiveness twice. There's a LOT of T&A in Bomb Queen, but it's satire, and rather good at that. (It took me a bit to get the pants.)

I'm interesting in seeing more of his work that isn't in the superhero mold.

Powers: Cosmic - Woo! Powers. Please, Bendis, stop writing Avengers so we can get more Powers.

Scott Pilgrim - Awesome!

Hack/Slash,: Friday the 31st - I love Hack/Slash. I don't care for horror movies of any sort, much less slasher films, but I love it. Perhaps it's because it plays a reverse of the concept that I like it, but it helps that it plays the reversal quite well. Plus, the little bits of humor are excellent.

"The sex" indeed.

Ex Machina: Power Down - I was a little underwhelmed by Smoke Smoke, but Power Down put things back on track. I really like that Vaughan has a definite end in mind (issue 50 or so), so very little of Ex Machina feels like treading water.

Space Pinchy - It's really weird. It's got so much T&A but because it's so weird, I don't find it titillating.

In truth, it was more interesting when I scanned it a bit in Japanese years ago.

Gravity - Mostly I picked it up to see (more) of how Sean McKeever handles kids. He does okay.

Utawarerumono - My viewing of this is a bit disjointed. I watched the first seventeen or so episodes with Chris on fansub ages ago. And now over the past few days I've watched eps 15-26 on DVD.

Um.

My initial reaction to the show was a bit eh. The plethora of unexplained animal-people (I think the main girls are fox-girls, but don't quote me), had me wondering, but it actually got interesting in a political fantasy kind of way in short order. So Chris and I stuck around.

A common theme of the series is that the enemies are violence crazy. Crazy for the sake of crazy. This probably would have ruined it for me, except one of the first of these had the absolutely BRILLIANT idea of attacking people on his own side for... well, suffice to say the event had me laughing for, well, months, now.

Plus there's one character who carries a sword so heavy that nobody else can lift it. She does it one-handed, cleaving through such things as God did not meant to have clove.

Now that I've finished it, I can say that for the first nineteen episodes, the series is fine. Then it totally comes off its rails as a series of unexplained plot twists, unbelievable plot reveals and a whole heap of elements stolen almost verbatim from EVA (but possibly NOT the ones you'd think) make the last seven episodes nearly a complete write-off.

Oh, well. At least Karula's cool.

I've been reading a lot of comics. This seems to happen after several months when I'm able to come back to Washington to visit and pick up whatever Chris has been getting for me or for himself.

I'm not actually sure I could list everything I've read in the past week and a half, but it's an insane load, and I've got a load more on top of it.

In any case, capsule reviews:

( DC )

Bloody hell that was long. I'll get to the other stuff later. I didn't review Supergirl and the Legion becuase I'm apparently missing a volume.

I apparently lost an LJ post when I shut my computer down (an upshot of using a dashboard widget to do my LJ posting) so I'll need to redo it.. shortened.

Company by Max Barry -
Despte my love for Barry's previous novels, I don't really have much to recommend here. He's strayed from his usual method of doing an anecdote-free impression of Neal Stephenson to, instead, have a novel that has a bunch of amusing anecdotes and a neat concept, but a very poor plot.

To sum it up, the big reveal happens a third of the way in. It's all downhill from there. The climax was a piffle in comparison.

So I'll have to make sure to avoid that in my own writing.

Guitar Hero III -
The Good: It's still Guitar Hero, so it's got the strong core that made the first 2.5 games great.

The Bad: Nearly everything new is pretty weak. The art took a turn for the worse, the new modes are unfun, and the characters don't have the standout personality they had before. The lack of co-op quickplay or the ability to play the co-op only songs in quickplay anywhere is a huge waste and makes the game feel much smaller than it should.

The Ugly: The game shows that it wasn't made by Harmonix. Nearly all the changes are gamer oriented, not music-fun oriented. The song list isn't as inspired as previous versions, and they're more technical than before.

Overall: It survives on the Guitar Hero merits, but I can't help but think that Harmonix delivered a completely phoned-in effort (80's Edition) that ultimately is more enjoyable than Neversoft's foray. Waiting on Rock Band and hopign that Guitar Hero IV is a step back towards the positive.

Portal -
Phenomenal. Seriously.

I can't stand FPSes and I loved it. It's enjoyable, well-scripted, funny, creepy, and addictive. I'm both gladdened and saddened that it's so short.

I had a thought for a sequel that's multi-player co-operative puzzle solving, which would be all kinds of win. Go to it, Valve.

And drop the fucking price. It's brilliant, but $20 is too much. (The rest of the Orange Box can blow me.)

Phase-
I'm trying to remember the last time I bought a game. It's been a very long time, and given the price point, it's money well spent.

The game bears a fair bit of similarity to Frequency and Amplitude, although a bit simplified (it's just one track.) For what it is, there's a lot of fun to be had.

This isn't to say it's perfect. The iPod control scheme isn't great and caused some aches in my arm after a while, but that's a limitation of the hardware. Also, the track generation doesn't always quite mesh with the song, but it's usually close enough to get the point across.

$5 for a game with a soundtrack as big as my iTunes library is very awesome.


Amtrak-
Well, the train was two hours late picking me up. It only got further delayed from there. All told, I ended up about six hours late.

It wasn't all bad, given the room and relatively comfort compared to other methods of travel, but the speed leaves quite a bit to be desired.

I kinda doubt this is indicative of rail-travel in general, but is just a facet of how bad long-distance rail is in the US. Pity. It's conceptually awesome.


And with that thought I need to take a shower and crash. Need to drive up to Seattle to get my climbing shoes from my brother tomorrow. Er. Today.