Reminder: this Saturday is Free Comic Book Day. This isn't a scam free-gift-with-a-timeshare-speech thing, this is a genuine day where you get actual free comics for totally no money.

Now, this isn't grab any book you want day. That's shoplifting. No, what happens here is a ton of comics publishers provide special edition books, usually all tagged FREE. Although some publishers do provide free stacks of unwanted older books they overprinted, which is always funny and sad at the same time.

The general idea is one free book per customer, no purchase necessary. Last year, my shop (Comic Store West! Woot!) did a cool thing: they allowed you to grab as many different free books as you wanted, with the caveat of a minimal donation to a local library for every book beyond the first. Something like 25 cents. That's great for folks like me who can't pick just one book.

We've been rampaging through multiple DVD sets lately, which I greatly prefer to actual TV. As do all good Americans.

Wonderfalls. This series was quickly cancelled, and I was surprised to see it show up as a DVD set. Only 4 episodes ran on FOX; the set has 13 total. I was bracing myself for the ugly shock that the remaining 9 shows would have half-finished effects or no CG effects at all... but nope, the shows are all complete and ready for the broadcast that never happened. And you know, this show got nothing but better, so it's even more obnoxious that it wasn't given a shot at continuing in prime time. Ah well, this is why it's so rare that I'll even bother with network TV. The Wonderfalls set is pretty sparse, as far as design. The menu screens have no music, and the cover seems to purposefully hide the face of lead actress Caroline Dhavernas. Extras are good, considering how quickly the show disappeared: some random commentaries, behind the scenes featurettes and a music video.

Star Wars has a beleaguered history of video games. There's been good, there's been bad... but the general consensus is that, like most movie-based games, any new Star Wars games will be mediocre. Sure, something like KOTOR may surprise everyone once in a while, but these days the default option is "this game better prove its worth before I'll buy it."

LEGO Star Wars is an anomaly. On the surface, it sounds and looks like it should be a kids' title, perhaps positioned somewhere between the hundred LEGO creativity workshop type series and the pre-teen-skewed Bionicle games. The surprise - a surprise for anyone accustomed to what's on the racks over in the kids edutainment section - is that LEGO Star Wars is a fun two-player action game with elegantly simplified controls, plenty of replay value and the whole chibi-cute angle going on. The further surprise is that the two-player mode commits some of the most egregious programming errors ever found in 2P co-op and yet it still remains fun.

Today we got the call we've been waiting for: we have been matched with a baby boy. We don't know very much about him yet. We'll meet with our social worker later this week and go over his file and info... and most importantly, receive our first picture of our son.

He was born March 2nd. Judging from my weblog entries around that time, I was playing Ratchet & Clank 3. If all goes according to schedule, we'll likely be travelling to Korea in September, maybe August. Maybe October. He should be home well in time to enjoy the November release of Animal Crossing DS. We started the adoption process in April of last year (during Puzzle Pirates, Pokemon Colosseum and Crystal Chronicles), so it's been a long time coming. And considering what all we went through in the years before that (going back to around the original Game Boy Advance launch, I estimate), it's no wonder we're ready for this.

"5 months until Infinite Crisis!" is emblazoned across the top of Villains United #1, proving that if DC itself doesn't act excited over the upcoming mega-event, no one will.

So after going through this book and Day of Vengeance this week, yeah, I'm interested to see what happens. The last big event, Identity Crisis, had a hook: who killed Sue Dibny? This event also has a hook, albeit a more mechanical one: which of the four special miniseries (Villains, Vengeance, Rann-Thanagar War, OMAC Project) will contain the event that breaks open the DCU and directly causes the INFINITE CRISIS. And which three will, uh, fizzle out and not lead to anything, I guess.

I've been waiting for years for a smart, licensed super hero game. After X-Men: Legends, I'm still waiting. It's not a terrible game - it's one of the better super-hero titles out there, plus cops a classic Gauntlet feel for multiplayer - but it's not a particularly great game either.

What is it about the super hero genre that remains so utterly elusive to game designers? I believe it has everything to do with the characters themselves. Almost by definition, super heroes contain infinite potential. Their powers are so varied and so incredible that they refuse to be dumbed down to the constraints of a video game, where everything needs to be controlled by a handful of button presses. And as soon as your favorite character can't do something that happens every other page in the comics, you feel let down and the representation doesn't ring true.

Naturally, it's all due from concessions to video games themselves. In Superman: Shadow of Apokolips, there are a couple levels that pit Superman against a time limit. I've read enough Superman stories where he runs up against a time limit, and yeah, sometimes he fails... but most of the time, it's not even an issue. He's Superman. Moving fast is but one of his many powers. When you're that familiar with the character and the game artificially weakens his abilities just to slap together a level... well, that's exactly why nobody thinks super hero games are any good. At least Shadow of Apokolips didn't go the route of Superman 64 and coat every level in a flaw-obscuring, power-crippling "Kryptonite Fog."

So, Xbox 360. I don't know. These guys haven't done much for me yet, and it doesn't look like much more will happen. I didn't see it, but all accounts I've read called the Xbox/MTV launch show a complete embarrassment, less to do with gamers and more to do with posers. And all the Xbox camp wants to do is shout about how big their numbers are... RAM, processor, storage. It's been a long time since I've been excited about a machine's clock speed or how much RAM it has or the number of pixel shader pipelines. It's just... so what? I hate looking at numbers and being expected to drool. Show me the games.

Wireless controllers is a must, so good on them for that. Another point proven by the WaveBird. HD is fine, although most people don't have an HD set anyway. And right away, Nintendo issued a few choice press releases, all gently pointing out that they'll have all of that as well. Sony has already announced their next machine will be "twice as fast" as the Xbox 360. So the pissing match begins, and of course everybody has to choose sides.

I've been watching G4's live E3 coverage this week. Predictably obnoxious and terribly stacked with commercial time. They waste an awful lot of time doing unfunny comedy skits and extra-long lame intros and outros. Adam Sessler really needs a talent coach, because his on-air presence has become amateurishly awful. He always had a problem with tilting his head back and making you stare up his nose, but now he's degraded into a complete spastic... talking so fast that he can't form a coherant sentence.

Planet GameCube has a preview of Animal Crossing DS up, straight from E3. This being such a huge game for me, I thought I'd dupe their article and include my commentary.

In our interview yesterday with Takashi Tezuka and Katsuya Eguchi, we learned several new details and got some clarifications on features for Animal Crossing DS. One of the driving forces behind the development is to encourage communication between players. They feel that the DS's touch pen and wireless features really help to facilitate the next step in Animal Crossing's evolution. The touch screen simplifies the gameplay significantly, allowing you to access menus and type more naturally or even navigate the world by pointing the stylus in the direction you want your character to run or by tapping objects to interact with them.

Caught an evening showing of Revenge of the Sith Monday night. It occurs to me that "Revenge of the Sith" is the first Star Wars subtitle in five years that I haven't been embarassed to speak in public. Unfortunately, the damage is done and the tendency is to simply refer to the movie as "Episode Three" or even just simply "Star Wars" in polite conversation, in effort to avoid accidentally saying "The Phantom Menace" or whatever. Regardless, after watching the film, I have to wonder just who the Sith are revenging against... because they've been pretty much in charge and uncontested through Episodes 1, 2 and 3. The only thing they really have to fight for is screen time.

The first hour more or less sucked. For the exact reasons that I and II sucked. There's an ad running now quoting the New York Times as saying "better than the first Star Wars!" which just proves to me that newspapers are a dying media and will be the first ones with their backs against the wall when the revolution comes.

I briefly hung out with Mike this weekend. Played some Doomtown, played some Fatal Frame, played some Resident Evil 4 (unlocked 2 new characters in Mercenaries mode!), a little bit of Mario Tennis, WarioWare, a game of Gloom. During all of that, Mike managed to build, like, two new Doomtown decks.

I have a deckbuilding problem... my desire to play the game is directly at odds with my compulsion to keep the cards all nicely organized in boxes. It's all very OCD. With Doomtown, especially - having five digits worth of cards - it is a logistical nightmare. Because I have so many extra common cards, I pulled those out early on. I kept up to five of each card in the main 3000 count box (which grew to two) and put any amount over five in the extra 5000 count box (which also grew to two.) Sounds reasonable. I mean, there are some commons of which I have almost a hundred copies.