April 2005 Archives

After approximately five months of work and lots of playtesting (particularly from folks at the office; thanks guys!), Fatal Frame: the Card Game is online and ready for your perusal.

I probably would have had it all up sooner - in fact, I've had the website fully built for over a month now - but I spent far too much time working on the damn PDF files and tweaking rules and cards at the last minute. When you do something like this, creating a game from scratch, the internal idea is always that somebody else is going to play it. I could make games all day that only me and my select group of friends would understand, full of absurdities and in-jokes and complicated rules that would all but require my presence to explain (which reminds me of that awful Killer Bunnies card game, actually)... but part of the fun is releasing the game into the wild and seeing how it survives.

In this case, it turns out the wild was coming to me. I finalized the website late last night: 1:15am according to the modification date on the last file I uploaded. I planned on a soft launch, more or less. Get the site up and running for a few days and then send word out to Beyond the Camera's Lens this weekend that I finally got the game finished. Well, before I even decompressed from an average workday, I had some appreciative emails waiting in my inbox. Less than 12 hours after the site went live, the Fatal Frame faithful had sniffed it out, spread the word to BCL, and commenced to downloading! It is gratifying to make something that people actually want. There's a big Fatal Frame fanbase out there (bigger than I have experienced with TaleSpin, to that game's chagrin) and that's who I made the game for. I'll be lurking in the BCL forums ready to discuss the game with anyone who has a question!

Which just reminds me how vital it is to make something that doesn't suck. One of the delays to getting the game online was all the time spent making sure the PDFs worked and the rules made sense. I like to test my websites on the crappiest Windows machine I can find, so I used my office PC to see if it could view and print the PDF files. It's a slug of a box running Windows 2000, and if I could install a font and print a fairly large PDF from it, I'm confident almost anyone could do the same.

As to whether the rules make sense, well, I hope that they do. I try to take a third party approach when I pen the "official" rules for a card game... because I know how frustrating it is to want to play a game but have to suffer through a crappy rulebook. I'll be awaiting feedback to see if I have succeeded in making sense.

As far as the cards go, I made changes right up until this very week. One late (and major) change involved how you play cards... originally, you would draw 1 and play 1. I thought this was making the game slow, so I tried draw 2 / play 2 for a while. That was crazy fast, plus a little non-intuitive... how many card games have you ever played where you drew 2 cards and played 2 cards? (Although I did like the whole twin angle to that.) So the compromise became draw 1 card, play 1 card... but if you play a Ghost you can play another card. This makes the Ghosts a free play, thus encouraging players to drop Ghosts on the table since they won't suck your entire turn to do so.

The card base had some ups and downs as well. The first playtest deck was 80 cards... then it ballooned up to 100... then ruthlessly cut back down to 85. I can thank my pal Mike for that one. We had a truly evil night where we eliminated entire card concepts, re-allocated artwork, and completely reworked all the weaker cards into much stronger ones. In a game like this, where all the players draw from the same deck, it's all about your card ratios. Are there enough Spirit Orbs in the deck? Does everyone have a good chance of getting a decent Film card? Are there plenty of Ghosts - that's the whole premise, after all - without feeling like there's too many Ghosts? Does it work just as well with four players as it does with two? Balance is a tricky thing, and at some point after a hundred playtest games you just go "Yep, I guess" and call it done.

So I have called it done. I may return to it to clarify rules (especially if I get a lot of WTF? comments), but on the whole, it's a done deal. Visit the site and see for yourself. It would be interesting to create another edition, based on the first Fatal Frame game... although that seems unlikely since there just isn't as many art resources out there for it as I found for FF2. Plus, it's been longer since I played through FF1, so it's not as fresh in my mind as Crimson Butterfly. (Although I do still verbally quote that one priest who would moan "Kirie, poor girl... why did she have to become so attached to this world?" I loved that guy.) And, of course, I'm eagerly anticipating the third game in the series, which could inspire me in the future.

I guess that's really what the whole project was about. I was inspired by these games, to the point that I wanted to find a way to re-experience them without having to fire up the PS2 again. (Not that that's a bad thing!) It's why people write fan-fics, or why they cosplay or do their own artwork. It's why we hope the movie doesn't stink. My venue preference just happens to be card games. As fans, we're motivated to share that spark with others, whether they have the same feeling or not. If they do, hey presto, you've got a community. If they don't, maybe they'll sense the passion behind it. Every time I play this card game, I'm reminded of what I loved about the video game... the characters, the themes, the storyline, the tension. If you're a Fatal Frame fan, I hope my design and presentation do the same for you.

And if you've never heard of Fatal Frame, that's okay too. Of course you should... third-person survival horror with a cool first-person gimmick, one of the darkest psychological storylines ever seen in interactive media etc etc. But the card game will make sense to you unto itself, perhaps you'll just miss the intricacies of the backstory.

Enough high-falutin' pontificating. There's a new fourhman.com card game out there, and the only cost of admission is a lot of printing, a lot of cutting and a lot of sleeving.

OK, I like the PSP. I don't like the price and I don't like the overall fragile feel and I'm not all into the games for it yet... which is why I don't have one. But I like it, in pure theoretical terms. However, I don't get the commercial.

First of all, I bet that no one is more surprised than Sony that the two PSP launch ads ("POV" and "Blender") are still running. According to this article, the ads were only scheduled to go until mid-April, covering just under a month in which Sony no doubt fully expected the PSP to sell out across the country. The big sell out didn't happen; every retailer I visit has piles of them still available, and I still have $250 in my wallet. So the ads are still running.

The POV ad is great. It presents a PSP's life story across multiple owners, from birth in Japan to its inevitable death getting scratched to all hell by some choad using it as an MP3 player in his backpack. Be careful with that zipper, you idiot! It's a well done spot - especially with the Kooky Funster playing from the grocery store cart - it's the second ad that mystifies me.

The "hip young consumer" rounds the street corner, clearly engrossed in his PSP. Seems fine so far. The music rocks.

Then he quickly morphs into a stylin' singer... which I'm told is to represent one of the many multimedia functions of the PSP. This one being "music." "Movies" is up next.

Sort of an odd choice for "movies" though: a B&W cowboy with the glow of a film projector behind him. Before I read the Sony press release about this ad, I figured they were just showing off the potential for a Wild West PSP game here. Which sounded good to me... but no, it's just showing you that the PSP plays movies. Although I would place good money on the supposition that you will never, ever be able to buy a silent film Western on UMD.

The cowboy morphs into a basketball player. Fine. Sports games. Got it. But now things are about to get weird, for the b-ball star jumps for the hoop and lands on the ground...

...as a rock star with dinosaur legs. Whuh? Now, this may not be immediately apparant, but the cowboy's projector lights return for the dinosaur legs. Through the benefit of discussion, we can divine that this character is showing off two PSP features at once: music and movies. But is that concept hitting home when the ad is playing live and all of a sudden you're getting Risky Business-era Tom Cruise with a dinosaur's ass?

Because now it gets even screwier. I'm just guessing here, but I see a blonde gangster (tommy gun in his left hand) with the legs of a Chorus Line dancer. This might be the most disturbing of all the amalgams, just because the entire body bounces suggestively as he shoots the tommy gun. Plus - and again, you really don't notice this when you watch the spot in real time - his right arm is now B&W. The movie cowboy again? Whose arm is that? LIQUID!

That bizarre figure then turns into a complete Sweet Tooth from Twisted Metal. But when the clown turns to face the camera, he develops Terminator robot legs and is holding a baseball bat.

And then he changes again, now to a hockey player with the bottom half of a woman wearing latex and high heels. He takes the big slapshot and transforms back into the hip young consumer...

...who breakdances his way onto the bus stop bench. That guy staring at the hip young consumer is actually me, trying to figure out just what the hell happened.

I know what the press release says, that this Blender spot is intended to visually display all the myriad possibilities the PSP brings to portable gaming. But is all the confusing body switching really necessary? I would bet that most people don't make the conceptual leap to identify "music, movies and games" among all the CG figures. It just reads to them as "Boy, I guess you can get a lot of different games for that." Unless you're going to tell the uneducated masses that you can store music on the thing (if you buy a decent-sized memory card) and you can watch movies on the thing (if you buy your movies on Sony's special UMD format), most will just assume it plays games. And therefore, all the characters in the commercial must relate to a game of some sort.

Actually, since most of the figures seem to be split into top and bottom halves (admit it: you didn't notice that B&W arm!), I first interpreted that as some kind of ill-conceived jab at the dual screens of the Nintendo DS.

It's hip, that's for sure. One big mess of hip.

I pretty much hate that ad.

Mark Evanier (whose weblog I regularly visit and enjoy) has requested an apology from everyone who lives in Pennsylvania...

I feel like everyone who lives in the state of Pennsylvania owes the rest of the country an apology for making Rick Santorum a Senator. And don't write and tell me you didn't vote for him. You should have tried harder to keep this guy from getting into office. This is the man who compared consensual homosexual sex to someone having sex with a dog. This is the man who is taking outright bribes from Wal-Mart to push legislation favorable to a company that already thinks it's above the law. This is the man who tried to gut medical malpractice awards even though his wife recently won a large one. His latest gambit is that he wants to block the U.S. Weather Service from making its weather data available for free on the Internet. This is the weather data that is paid for by our tax money. Santorum has introduced a bill -- and apparently, a vague and sloppily worded one, at that -- that would stop that because it cuts into the profits of private services like AccuWeather and The Weather Channel. Do I even have to explain what a rotten, unfair-to-us idea this is? Hope he got paid well for this one.

I do apologize. He is an ass. I think I may even have helped his campaign (in terms of sticking those obnoxious lawn signs in people's yards) back when he first entered politics and I was an easily-influenced Young Republican. Of course, now I vote against him every chance available, but that has yet to pay off.

Unfortunately, here in Pennsylvania, we don't elect politicians. We elect names and Rick Santorum turned himself into a name. Especially here in the rural sections (IE, everything that isn't Philly), where the average political discussion consists of a magnetic car ribbon off-tilted so you can read the text horizontally. Visit any parking lot out here and it looks like there's a cult in town. And there is.

But, Santorum is young and comparatively handsome when he's standing beside Arlen Spector, plus he's been obnoxiously vocal against homosexuality. (As some say around here, particularly near York Fair time, bag the fags but keep the sheep.) That's going to make him popular in PA no matter how many other bribe-influenced shadow deals he cuts.

I have seen the future. Or at least, the first new episode of Family Guy since the whole cancelled-DVD release-Adult Swim-unprecedented success-uncancelled thing.

I won't say anything specific about it, for fear of jeopardizing any trade secrets, but I will say that I laughed. I wouldn't worry about the Family Guy crew having lost the touch or about all that hair mousse, earrings and contact lens going to Seth MacFarlane's head, because it felt just like any old Family Guy episode... as if nothing happened over the long break, and the long break really wasn't all that long.

The only thing I noticed was that it seemed weird to see the characters reffing something recent (say, Passion of the Christ), since we're so used to watching five year old reruns where they bust on old forgotten stuff like Ben Affleck.

I never watched Family Guy during its initial run on FOX. Actually, I saw the first episode, gave it a Meh, and walked away from it. I'm an Adult Swim convert, and I'm sure that the [AS] hipster cachet did more to sell me on the show than the show itself did. Regardless, I'm along for the ride now. And since Adult Swim will be running the new Family Guy episodes just a week or so after they premiere on FOX, it is ensured that I still won't bother to catch them on FOX. Television from 8 to 11 is not convenient for me. Television from 11 to 2 is.

There's something encouraging about Family Guy returning to production. Even if it was a decision solely based on future DVD money. Even if it gives those chump fans of Enterprise hope for their cause. Even if we'll probably just get another season of it out of FOX before it dies off again. Even if it means we also have to embrace MacFarlane's upcoming Family Guy carbon copy show, American Dad.

So there's a perk for you. Over two weeks to go before the show premieres and I've already seen it. Cool.

Lorne Lanning is leaving the gaming industry and taking Oddworld with him. And you know what? Good.

I remember an early Oddworld magazine article, circa the release of the first game, where Lanning was described as some kind of storytelling genius. The story - which may be apocryphal and just a marketing bullet point - went that Lanning had this vision... the years-in-the-making, years-in-the-telling story of the saga of Oddworld. And he excitedly told his story to someone (wife? business partner? both? I forget) and the two of them were up until dawn drafting the overall plot, the delicate character interactions, the subtext and the literary themes.

At a time when the average video game storyline was "save the princess," Oddworld was likened to the second coming of Pong. The Oddworld series was going to a five game epic, the gaming equivalent of a serialized novel.

And then the first game came out and it sucked.

Here's my problem with Oddworld - Abe's Oddysee way back on the PS1: it was obnoxious. The basic gameplay had its moments, but it was ridiculously hard and required complete perfection. Miss a jump or trip an alarm? Start over. You could blow hours just trying to compute the proper angle for throwing a damn rock. And then not realize one of those stupid yappy dogs was on the next screen and have to start over. Again.

Then there was that glorious, glorious storyline, the one that was so deep and layered that it was going to take a decade to unfold. I'll summarize: Soylent Green is made from people.

Gamers must never read books. Or even watch movies. Because when games like Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee and Beyond Good and Evil get praised up and down for amazing, involving plotlines... well, I just don't get it.

So okay, I ended up not particularly impressed by Abe's Oddysee. I was willing to walk away semi-satisfied. The game did put itself out there, the puzzle elements were challenging... just not my thing. And I wasn't buying the preachy Save the Trees story that was better told in any of a thousand high school-quality sci-fi short stories. But I lived in Oddworld for a short time and gave it a shot. Had it all ended there, I would have remembered Oddworld as being okay but frustrating.

Then, over the next few years, Lanning turns up the media heat and starts being an ass.

First, we find out that the next Oddworld game wasn't even going to be part of the core quintology. No, now he wants to do a sidestory... probably because the shareholders want more of Abe so they can turn the ugly little Mudoken into a franchise-selling mascot. So we get Oddworld - Abe's Exoddus. Not an Oddysee, which, going forward, is the stupidly spelled non-word by which we're intended to identify a genuine chapter of the epic.

Then, before the Xbox launch, Lanning goes on the PR circuit to declare that the Xbox will be the exclusive home of his Oddworld games because only the Xbox is powerful enough to handle his vision. His vision being an item-collecting mascot platformer. Oh yeah, no other system could possibly handle something as complex as that. (Memorably parodied by Penny Arcade.) The game, Oddworld - Munch's Oddysee, is touted as one of the major players in the Xbox's original lineup, but no one buys it. Oddworld is effectively DOA.

But last year, we started hearing rumors about a new Oddworld game. Surprise of surprises, this one is going to be a first person shooter!11!!!11!! So Lanning's incredible vision seems to be susceptible to the influence of current popular gaming genres. BUT, this is an FPS with a difference: the heretofore never-before-seen and completely innovative invention totally unique to this game... your character in the game will recycle enemies in the environment as the ammo for his gun. Innovative to anyone who hasn't played a Kirby or Klonoa game, I guess.

And it doesn't take too long before somebody leaks that this new game, usually referred to as Oddworld - Stranger by this point, is also in the works for a PS2 release. D'oh!

As it happens, Stranger's Wrath (final title) looks like it isn't going to get a PS2 version... which is one of the many reasons why Lanning is exiting video games so he can go tell his heavy handed morality plays somewhere else. He also cites rising costs, lack of advertising by his former company, and a general creative malaise in the industry. I guess we won't have poor old Lorne Lanning to kick around anymore.

I guess I respect what he attempted, at least in the beginning. And I'm sure he has been jerked around by shareholders and CEOs and marketing mistakes. I definitely respect his stance on creator's rights and controlling intellectual property. But I don't have the time to entertain jerks who think game designers ought to act like/be treated like rock stars. Or asshats who play directly to the fanboy aggression mill by openly dumping on the competition's systems. I'll back the classy, I'll back the eccentric, but I won't back the jerkweed, especially when the claim is as dubious as "those other consoles just aren't powerful enough."

The real question is, will anyone notice that he's gone? Oddworld isn't even a blip on the radar, even with Stranger's Wrath still relatively fresh on store shelves. It's just another PS1 series that has finally breathed its last. At the least, Lanning has the good sense to pull the plug (and retain ownership) before his stuff goes the way of Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon, Tomb Raider, Twisted Metal, or Resident Evil prior to RE4.

LEGO Star Wars for PS2 is adorable. It cannot go unsaid.

I read the reviews. It's too short, they said. It's too easy, they said. I'm sure they're right, but at the moment those are not even my concerns. Two-player co-op, check. Lots to unlock, check. Faithful reproduction of beloved franchise filtered through LEGO worldview, check.

This is a game you should budget. Any competent gaming pair could blow through it in a night, endangering your purchase value. It's like playing mini-golf. Adults take their time and enjoy the foibles and whims of each green, while kids whack the ball as fast as they can so they can get to the next putt. LEGO Star Wars requires a tempered pace.

The game covers Episodes I, II and III... spoilers! We got up to the Mos Espa podrace. That covers a couple levels playing as Jedis Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan and a couple more as Amidala and Captain Panaka. The pod race itself lets one player race as Baby Anakin Blue and the other as Baby Anakin Green. I suppose they could have saddled P2 with Ben Quadinaros or some other slapstick Ep. I alien-as-comic-relief throwaway, but, no, you get the Anatwins. In the world of LEGO Star Wars, however, that doesn't matter much.

It actually handles two-player, single-screen simultaneous pod racing rather well. Since you're not racing each other - the point of each lap segment is to beat Sebulba - the game can keep both players more or less together, almost as if it's only one vehicle. Rhonda and I crashed and burned multiple times, but it never became a chore to re-play a lap. Largely because the whole damn thing is so endearingly silly. The only flaw in the entire pod racing level is that one or two sections have a cutscene embedded in them, so if you die during that segment, you have to watch the brief movie again.

Throughout the game, you collect money... or in the LEGO parlance of our times, studs. Studs are used to buy additional characters and goofy options. I bought a Gonk Droid playable character before we played the first level, I was that enamored of it. After winning the pod race, Rhonda walked into Dexter's store (Dexter Jettster's Diner is the hub world, and you can't imagine how annoyed I am at having to type "Dexter Jettster") and she immediately spent almost all of our collected studs on a moustache cheat. It went something like:

Me: "Oh god, don't buy that mousta..."
Her: Click.

So now all the characters have moustaches.

Continuing the discussion search string of "cute AND video games," these are great great great. They're magnets done in a classic 8-bit Mario pixel style, available only in Japan. I ordered mine through J-List/J-Box and love them. You can get little dioramas showing various SMB scenes for the magnetized characters to cavort upon, or just order the magnets themselves. I picked up the entire series 1 a couple months back (7 dioramas and 9 extra magnets) and series 2 just appeared. I haven't picked up the series 2 dioramas, but I did order the series 2 magnets as well as another set of the series 1 magnets. They are powerful little guys, almost to the point of feeling glued to our fridge. Keep them away from sensitive media.

In Japan, these are blind-boxed collectibles, so you'd never know what you're getting until you buy it. Happily, J-List offers complete sets... including the rare chase pieces. And when you order from J-List, they use genuine Japanese newspapers as packing material, which is crazy awesome. One time I got some kind of bizarre old calendar page with the birthdays of American metal rockers listed. This time I got a big flyer for a local pachinko parlor (I assume). J-List also has a regular New Products email that always kicks off with interesting tidbits of life in Japan from an American's perspective, which I always enjoy reading.

The guy who writes it - and runs the company - has been living in Japan for years and is quite well immersed. He covers both the good and bad, from fascinating customs to bureaucratic quagmires. I quite look forward to reading them three times a week, which is pretty high praise for something that is effectively junk mail advertising his website.

Fatal Frame: the Card Game is getting dangerously close to completion. The game is currently being tested with a 90-card deck, which is up from the initial mix. I'm wondering if it won't hit an even 100 before I feel it's ready to debut.

It's had some interesting developments; new rules have been added, old ones removed... some new rules have already been tossed out. The toughest goal to attain is to keep the game balanced. Since all players draw from the same deck, there's always the risk that Player A gets lucky enough to draw all the "good" cards while Player B continually gets shafted with crappy cards. One solution to that is to have lots and lots of good cards, or at least self-balancing cards, but that's easier said than done. TaleSpin has self-balancing cards in the form of the randomized die roll effect on the character cards. Fatal Frame at the moment is leaning towards lots of middle- to high-level cards... cards that are almost always useful. Or at least situationally useful. There are no weenie cards that allow minimal effects - say, Draw 1 Card - because cards like that are just waste. FF's action cards are pretty much all really good stuff.

Die rolls are also big in Fatal Frame, which is another self-balancing feature. sometimes you roll well, sometimes you don't. Many cards assist in those rolls, therefore many other cards have to be included to remove those cards. I'm not sure I have enough of those yet. Much of that work falls to the Ghosts (for example, you might have to trash one of your Spirit Orbs because you rolled an even number), but that often isn't a direct approach. That might be the final frontier that I need to cover to polish off the game.

Out of the rules that disappeared during playtesting, many of them were proven to be completely arbitrary creations on my part. Usually because I'm such a slave to maintaining the theme of the source material. For example, I originally mandated that you had to travel through the Houses left to right. No moving backwards, no leaving the House until you get to the end of your dealt path. This was meant to simulate the video game's tension when you're stuck inside someplace running from unseen enemies. In card game form, it locked players into turns of doing nothing, often missing opportunities to boot. So now you can walk in either direction inside a House, even bailing out on your first turn inside if you don't like the looks of what lies ahead. In this case, I'm sacrificing the theming in favor of a design that keeps the players feeling like they're in charge.

The biggest guiding force in the development of Fatal Frame: the Card Game has been simplicity. As proud as I am of TaleSpin, TaleSpin's biggest barrier to entry is a pretty high complexity level; there's a lot of game actions that don't spawn from cards, lots of cards you play when it isn't your turn. Both of those facets lead to problems. I want Fatal Frame to be easier. Not easier as in weaker, or dumber... easier as in more straight forward, easier to learn.

I'm sure I could talk more about this, but if I go any longer it's just going to make even less sense since you likely haven't seen the game yet. So watch this space; it's coming soon. I can't hold on to it too much longer, because Tecmo recently announced Fatal Frame 3 for PS2 (maybe even this calendar year!) and my FF2 card game will be unceremoniously obsolesced when that happens.

I've been wanting to start regularly discussing about my weekly comics load, but have never found the time. I think it started way back in that issue of Fantastic Four where they go to meet God and God turns out to be Jack Kirby and he fixes Reed's melted face and it was so stupid and annoying. I really intended to write up how much I hated that issue. How they cleaned up an ongoing plot crisis (Reed's face) with the ultimate deus ex machina but cloaked it in a nice homage to the King so you couldn't wholly hate it. I did anyway.

I had three weeks of books waiting for me at the store, about $50 worth. I have an informal rule on comics pickup: if the amount goes over $30, I don't pick up any extra Pokemon boosters. Usually I don't run up against this restriction, but three weeks is kind of a long time to not pick up my books. In contrast, our latest grocery run was a full cart totalling $80 after coupons. Gives you an idea how things get budgeted around fourhman.home.

Superman #214. I tell you, I am so lost on this one. I think this is part 11 of a 12 part story, which is an absurdly long time to expect me to pay attention to it, especially when it's not that compelling. The truth is, I haven't cared much about the Superman books since they split up the triangle system.

See, at one point there was four Superman titles in regularly monthly publication... that's one title each week (plus they briefly had quarterlies and annuals to fill in the random fifth weeks of some months): Adventures of Superman, Superman, Action Comics Starring Superman and Superman: Man of Steel. Even though that was four separate comics, they all followed one central storyline. Each book had a triangle number on it, so you knew what order to read the books if you missed a week. So you had exactly one Superman plot that developed every week of the year.

I'm sure that was a pain to manage: four different books with four different creative teams. So they split them all up and now each title (down to three, Man of Steel was cancelled) has its own storyline. Which means I'm never really sure what damn Superman story I'm reading until I'm three pages into it. "Oh, this is the one where 50% of the world's population mysteriously vanished and Superman has been confiding to a priest who has cancer."

I really miss the triangle system. The weekly storyline made the Superman books feel more epic, they had more room to be consistent with characters, plus it was naturally easier to follow. If I remember correctly, they cited sales reasons as the chief factor to split the books up, but I believe it was just that they got tired of orchestrating the whole affair. Ironically, I've been thinking lately that I really don't need to get any of the Superbooks anymore, but that's a decision I should have made years ago when the triangles were dropped.

So this storyline with the missing people and the priest? It would have been over in three months back during the triangle days. Now it's been a year and I'm completely uninvested in it.

Flash #220. I hate Howard Porter's art. He was awful on JLA for years and he is still awful on Flash. He's one of those artists that just can't draw more than one female figure and one male figure. It's a good thing that there's plenty of distinctive costuming, because without that you couldn't tell any of his characters apart.

The writing has been on an upswing though. Linda is back. This issue starts a storyline I'm looking forward to, a war between two factions of the Rogue's Gallery. They've done a great job with the Rogues lately, solidly laying out what makes them different from other villain groups. And we're getting the new Captain Boomerang in action since the events of Identity Crisis. (One of my favorite bits in Identity Crisis was when Batman goes after Flash, insinuating that he isn't controlling his villains well enough.)

JLA #112. I hate the Syndicate. It was a mistake to resurrect the concept of an alternate universe of evil characters, even if it was for a special hardcover edition. But now they've leaked into the monthly storyline and it's another ho-hum worlds-in-peril dealie. When I think back over the most memorable moments in comics, it's always character pieces that I come back to, not the high-octane action junk that you get week after week after week. It won't be including any JLA issue in recent memory.

JSA #71. On the other hand, JSA does a much better job with characterization. And they do action as well. Maybe it's the characters' fault; maybe it's more difficult to do thoughtful, dialogue-driven stories with a team of icons... while in JSA most of the characters are comparative unknowns. For crying out loud, this issue's cover has the Golden Age Atom punching out Atom Smasher. Who vs. who? Back when JSA started, I kind of started getting it out of respect, and I fully anticipated it would end up a pale shadow of the bigger book, JLA. Not the case at all.

This issue continues a storyline where certain members of the contemporary JSA have to go back in time and confront their namesake counterparts. One of those go-to-the-past to save-the-future bits. Especially interesting is the modern Mr. Terrific - a black man, and as an atheist, one of my favorite characters in comics these days - having to travel to the racist 1950's to meet up with the original Mr. Terrific, a white man. Admit it, you had no idea they still did comics featuring guys named "Mr. Terrific."

Fantastic Four #524. 'Ringo is leaving, and that means the art is going to take a dive. Mike Wieringo is one of the best artists is comics today and his vision of the FF is the new standard as far as I'm concerned. That awful God bit aside, the 'Ringo/Mark Waid run has been great. They just finished a great storyline where Johnny was turned into Galactus's herald... and actually that was one concept I wish they would have stretched out for a couple more issues. I can't keep track of a boring Superman story for a year, but I felt cheated when they turned Galactus into a normal human for only one issue. See, this medium is driven by content.

Great issue, #524, albeit not as good as the last few months. Nice character squabbling, iconic cover, plus a visual farewell to the creative team at the end.

Countdown to Infinite Crisis #1. This is the big one. A major DC epic spanning the usual multi-hero, multi-book scope. I feel like we just got donw with Identity Crisis (which had an unfulfilling ending) and now we're already on to the next one. This book was hyped so cleverly they didn't even reveal the book's real title until the last minute... it was advertised as "DC Countdown" so as not to blow the reference to Crisis on Infinite Earths. In a text piece inside, they're calling this a sequel to COIE... but wasn't Zero Hour the sequel to Crisis? DC is really farming the word "crisis" these days.

Anyway, wow. Surprise, it's CHARACTER-DRIVEN; this whole issue is centered around an internal narrative from Blue Beetle. So you know it's good.

I'm not going to spoil it, except to say that this book takes a giant dump on the Giffen Justice League years. I'm not exactly thrilled with that, since the Giffen years are my favorite Justice League era. However, I do recognize a good story, and what would comics be if they didn't tell good stories? Well, it would be a lot like the entire run of the current JLA series, actually. I hope Infinite Crisis - and the myriad spin-offs, tie-ins, cross-overs and miniseries that encompass it - lives up to the stage set by this first issue.