December 2006 Archives

The teaser trailer for the first Fantastic Four movie was really awful, but the movie really wasn't that bad, in a kind of fun geeky sci-fi way. Like clockwork, a teaser trailer for the sequel has shown up six months out.

Yay! The wedding! Of course. I'll guaran-effin-tee that Stan Lee is somewhere in that shot.

But I never would have guessed Brian Posehn.

I thought I recall some rumors suggesting the Thing suit would be changed up for the sequel, to make it beefier and more appropriately monstrous. Guess that money was sent over to the mo-cap people instead.

See, what happens here is that the Surfer shows up to streak Manhatten during the wedding and Reed sends Johnny off to chase it through some old Spider-Man movie shots.

When did the Silver Surfer gain the ability to intangibly travel through solid stuff with a weird liquid effect? Eh.

It's even stranger: here he skids down a building doing obvious damage. Neat shot though.

Creepy cool! I like the whole alien vibe here.

All the advances in CG technology, and here's a guy who's little more than Your First Poser Experiment in Reflective Surfaces.

Effects layering is a hair off here. The people in the front of the bus are reacting to a Surfer fly-by that hasn't gotten to them yet.

Oh yeah, Torch is still here. He had a line or two that is in his usual young-Bill-Murray style, but for much of the trailer, he's just getting bounced off of walls.

Surfer stops and turns around...

...and grabs Johnny by the neck! Again, nicely alien. Not even bound by our usual physical laws of flying men.

Even CG actors have stunt doubles, apparently.

I'm absolutely tickled that they went with the Silver Surfer for this one, because it is such an only-in-comics concept. You have to remember the hairy, hippie 1960s scene - as permutated by Stan and Jack - to even begin to understand how such a creation could come about. Comics fans today have been long accustomed to the guy, but to spring him on the mass audience (the first FF film cleared $150 million) just makes me giddy.

They could have easily gone with the Mole Man, Namor, or even just a properly done Doom-as-Latverian-Monarch... but they went balls-out alien. I'm sure the Surfer's appearance will be tied to the spaceflight of the first movie somehow.

The only question is, does Galactus show up now, or in Part Three?

And beyond that, what are the chances of an all-star Infinity Gauntlet movie now?

If you think this is all you're going to hear about this race, you're quite mistaken. Gumby's Road Race adventure was bizarre enough that they probably could have done the whole alphabet just from that episode alone. Maybe even without resorting to this whole "dying in space and recalling better times" shtick.

"Except that the game was hockey, you horse's ass."

I'm sure this moved Native American causes up at least a million years.

Also note that we're looking at a shot of creepy short-head proto-Gumby. He will get even creepier and short-headier in just a few more letters.

So don't even doubt these guys' masculinity. They once captured a gorilla and the experience was so incredible that they can think about it simultaneously without saying a word. These two are bonded like twins.

Next time: Pissing off Gumby's mom!

After years of the LEGO games being pretty much edutainment garbage and the Star Wars games showing up with far more misses than hits, somehow a combination of the two became the year's sleeper hit. The power of positive buzz.

This game hits on a lot of important notes: simple controls, great chibi look, easy drop-in/drop-out multiplayer, and a fantastic use of license (TWO licenses, incredibly). This is the kind of thing I'll fall for every time, particularly when it comes to co-op games, which are blindingly rare. You have to hope that LEGO Star Wars' sales opened the doors for other clever and accessible multiplayer titles... you know, where it isn't just frag this and explode that. Great little game.

The flip side is that LEGO Star Wars has some serious flaws, all of which were overlooked by critics. If the game had not delivered such an overall fun and silly experience, it would have been slammed facefirst in somebody's empty cement in-ground pool for the floaty camera and confusing multiplayer glitches.

Memory Score: Best use of the Prequel Trilogy ever

Terribly overrated.

What it does, it does well: Intense, fast combat with impressive waning-PS2-era graphics. But it aspires to nothing greater, even if it continually receives credit for such.

The story is barely there and depressingly predictable. The character designs are like something scribbled on an art school dropout's notebook. The "deep" combat relies on button combos that you'll never bother to master. There's only three boss fights and a rather small list of enemy characters.

There's this terribly childish feel to the entire package... the buckets of blood, the nearly-naked women, the tribal tattoos and spiked armor. It's the game that you would have made in 10th grade study hall, if only you had a sweet development deal with Sony of America. And when you watch the DVD-style behind-the-scenes extras on the disk, you'll find that you are indeed seeing a bunch of guys who never mentally made it out of high school.

God of War's chief addition to the gaming universe is producer David Jaffe, who, prior to doing God of War, made the first few Twisted Metal games. (Makes sense. That was cars + gore, and this is public domain IP + gore.) And nothing else. Jaffe has since been lifted up as a gaming demigod, despite his paltry spike-laden resume, where his every drunken ramble is lauded by Sony as a message from the future. Jaffe is classically unprepared for his godhood; he lacks the media savvy of a Fils-Aimes, the geeky exuberance of a Miyamoto, or even the earnest chutzpah of a Major Nelson. He's self-hating, paranoid and conflicted, disgusted by his profession and burned out after a mere handful of games. And I think he knows it... so when he does red-faced interviews from the Playboy Mansion grotto, and whines on his weblog about what he hates about the industry, he knows he's in over his head and has just stopped caring. But Sony was desperate for a superstar of their own, preferably American and ugly, so Jaffe was pushed out over the cliff.

A certain section of the audience goes for that... seeing Jaffe as this troubled auteur, willing to dis the evil master for his art. Unfortunately, Jaffe's art has yet to be seen. His vision, as yet revealed, amounts to the KISS costume closet. God of War is sturdy and sparkly, but it is all surface.

Memory Score: Not interested in the sequel at all

This was pretty quick to call out a follow-up to 2004's critical darling, Katamari Damacy, but we'll friggin' take it.

There was a real danger that Namco would bone this and deliver a sequel that felt lifeless. After all, the ending of the first game made it pretty clear that there wasn't much you could do to top it. But WLK delivered, matching (and besting, in most cases) the amazing soundtrack and offering some much-needed goal variety to the levels, while still maintaining the ridiculous worldview and bizarre pop-Japan imagery.

The game's story is sublimely meta-textual... creator Keita Takahashi did not want to make another Katamari game, but was pressured by Namco to take the lead. So WLK becomes a game about how much better the first one was, even as it itself adds to the legend.

You can definitely place this one on the Gotta Have It list for the PS2.

And even though Takahashi has since officially walked away from Katamari (the lackluster PSP edition was made without his involvement), I hope like hell that Namco brings this game into the new generation. We need more games like this, even if it's just more Katamari games.

Memory Score: No eternal levels!?!?!!?

Next time: two completely different games from the same guy show up in the same month, both from franchises I adore... and I finally jump into Big Boss's shoes.

Did you ever look at something and just get it totally wrong? It's as if something in your brain sends the image information down an incorrect path.

Tonight I was clicking through the latest Looney Labs weblog update and ended up looking at their collection of weirdo Christmas trees. In 1993, they did one with Magic cards, which immediately brought me back to when the game was good. And this year's tree is covered with, essentially, NASA trash.

But I'm looking at the one for 1996, which they say was decorated in "space cones." And they provide a picture of the cones, but I just can't see the cone shape. I see these crystalline silver things. They look thin, metal. The text blurb notes that they really had no idea what the widgets were for, and I can't imagine a use for them as well. They're space cones, no doubt intended for some wild astronaut experiment.

I scroll around the page - for some reason I chose to read the tree stories in no particular order - and when my eyes come back to the cones tree, it hits me that I was looking at the negative space between the orange cones. Maybe I was tired, and the geometric-ness of the little image was confusing my vision... the room was dark, except for the computer screen, and I'm finding more and more that I have trouble adapting to changes in light. So that could have contributed to it, I guess. (I've poked Clark in the face plenty of times when I've had to go into his room at night because he's up and crying... my eyes just do not adjust to total darkness with any speed. Often I sneak in to get him back to sleep and never actually see him, except in a very dim shadow as I'm leaving the room.)

I photoshopped up a little blurred version, so you might understand what I saw. Let all the orange blend into one solid shape, and you're left with these oddly shaped pointy bits of gray and black. I even considered that the orange was the packaging that kept the space cones from breaking in transit.

Strange how the brain works. Or doesn't work, in this case.

Don't look half bad on the Wii!

The Wii web browser seems nicely serviceable. After the initial WiFi bootup, it's surprisingly fast - faster than my Sidekick's browser, anyway. Looks to me like anything wider than 700 pixels will enable horizontal scrolling, which I find annoying. That aside, I did not run into too many sites that looked like they needed a Wii-specific re-design. It renders sites fast and clean. The zoom feature is slick for smaller sets (wish it had multiple levels of zoom, though) and there's even a bare-bones rendering button that instantly reduces any page into mostly text for easy reading.

I have no idea what it's remembering from usage to usage, in terms of recent sites, cookies and caching, etc. But it does seem to keep user/pass for BB sites, which is nice. Not that you'd be doing a whole lot of typing with it. Seems to me that the key stuff is that Flash games work, YouTube videos work, and in general pages display as expected.

It will not show PDFs or play MP3s (unless you happen to find such things embedded inside some kind of Flash player). Loading your Favorites page is terribly slow for some reason. Maybe the final release will address that.

Like I said before, this bloody little thing could become that fabled Internet Appliance that nobody could give away ten years ago. The Wii could adequately replace most peoples's Windows PCs: web browser, photo sharing, email, games. And with no popups, Microsoft security holes, or spam mail... it'd be a step up for most. All it needs is IM support.

As ridiculous as it sounds, there's something a little cooler about seeing your website on a big ol' television, rather than the usual windowed computer screen.

While we're talking about web stuff, I discovered Board Game Geek.com's new widget that displays a few random games from my personal collection. So it's living lower left now. Since I tend to like most of my games, it's sort of like a nice plug for good gaming. It probably needs to include a rating system, so the random list would show what I think of them. DOOMTOWN 10! KILLER BUNNIES 2!

Since I was HTMLing, I dropped the ad for my Animal Crossing Wild World Open Gate Night. ACWW is pretty much dead. Even in the message board world, where Animal Crossing GameCube lived for literal years, Wild World has slowed down considerably. Learn your lesson, Nintendo: include meaningful holidays and genuine multiplayer minigames next time.

I'm sure I'll open the gate every now and then, but I won't bother with a regular schedule. Adamsvil is open by appointment!

The PS2 never travelled much. Maybe twice it left home.* The GameCube, on the other hand, went everywhere. I have this great backpack for it, custom-fitted for the Cube by a company that no longer exists. So, figuring that the Wii will end up doing its own goodwill tours, I have already been checking out the official bags on sale... but the nice ones - the big ones - go for at least $40 and they aren't even that big.

Then I remembered that I have a solution stashed in the basement's yard sale pile:

If you have kids, you probably already have one of these. You get them for free from the hospital, provided you're on the Enfamil mailing list. Hell, we have two of them, and we didn't even give birth. These bags are pretty much the ugliest diaper bags in the world, but they come with some free Welcome Your New Baby! samples and coupons.

And, they're fabulous beginner-Wii transporters.

Our two bags are slightly different (this one has a cover flap, the other does not), but both contain two velcro pouches in the front, perfect for a pair of Nunchuks. Your bag will not come with a picture of Baby Clark, but you could always print one out.

And on either side is a pocket for bottles or sippy cups... or two Wii Remotes.

Like I said, this is for beginners. Once you graduate to four Remotes and thirty games, this isn't going to cut it.

Let's peek inside.

The bag is deep enough to hold everything plus a fistful of game boxes. here's my stack, which you'll note displays one first-party purchase compared to two third-party titles, thankyouverymuch.

Under that is the AC adapter and stock RCA cables. You know, I'd like to go component, but my TV doesn't have component inputs. Someday.

And further down is the sensor bar and the vertical stand (with the clear stabilizer disk). I like how the sensor bar fits inside the stand. To my reckoning, this puts the Enfamil Diaper Bag head and shoulders above the retail offerings, because I don't believe the "real" bags yet provide a safe compartment for the oddball shaped stand. I guess they either expect you to just toss it inside and hope it does not get cracked in transit, or they don't expect you to cart that around at all. Here, you get to tuck one half of the stabilizer under the interior pouch. It seems tailor-made.

Did I say "interior pouch"? I did! This zippered, cushy, insulated pocket is perfectly sized to hold and protect the Wii. I guess the Wii is roughly the same size as breastmilk sacks, or whatever the hell is supposed to sit here. Sweet.

So put that $40 right back in your wallet. A very nice Wii bag is waiting for you at your local hospital birth ward. Just register with Enfamil first or be prepared to do some fast talking at the nurses' counter.

And don't forget: this Sunday will likely be your last chance to find a Wii before Christmas if you don't already have one. So get down to Toys R Us early and stake out your place in line.

*In all candor, this is largely because everybody in the world already owned a PS2.

Yeah, I ordered four replacement Wii straps.

First of all, yes, I do think it is possible that some straps went out the door a little tauter, a little weaker than most. A bad run of twine that day. That's just the reality of mass production. So I don't think it's impossible that some people playing entirely normally may have had a strap break. But I do think that total legitimate faulty straps is going to be a very, very, very small number. And anybody affected by a genuine factory flaw probably wouldn't have thought much about it... if they didn't hear on the evening news that "Nintendo has to recall Wii straps" and see all the internet hype from drunken college students who smashed their hands into light bulbs.

The vast majority of people complaining about their straps breaking or their black eyes or their bloody fists were playing Wii Sports and went out of control. Done. There's three ways to play Wii Sports Tennis, for example. You can do little, truncated hand gestures all based around quick wrist flicks. You can do wide, sweeping arm movements that feel like actual tennis movements. Or you can do totally flip out and swing your arm as hard as you possibly can, because you're an immortal internet superstar.

Me, I play on the middle level.

Little kids will get crazy and toss it no matter what's going on with the wrist strap (interestingly, Clark is still at this feral huntsman level, where he grips the thing so tightly that you can't pry the thing out of his young fist). Drunken college kids will be throwing them at walls and TVs because that's what drunken college kids do. You can't stop that. People with small living rooms will accidentally crack somebody else in the head. Accidents happen, but there's no way that this is Nintendo's fault because they didn't include a steel-laced tether on the remote.

If start actually hitting the TV glass when I'm playing Wii Sports Boxing, can I initiate a class-action lawsuit as well?

Nintendo made a good PR move to offer a free New Strap By Mail Order plan. Not a "recall" as you probably heard on the news. Just enter your Wii serial number and they'll send you one to four new-style straps. Nintendo is good about things like this, and it pays off for them. They have a good customer service perception. Sony and Microsoft, famously, do not. Dead pixels on your DS? Here's your replacement. Post Office eat your Nintendo Power? Here's a new one. Nintendo once sent out free gloves when the first Mario Party was burning holes in peoples' palms.

Nintendo could very easily have continued to brush this off with more antiseptic warnings and mass email press releases, but they chose to take the classy route, lump the cost, and offer free replacement straps. But they had no obligation to do so.

And anyway, I doubt it will take long before some Intarnets choad finds a way to snap one of the new handstraps.

Moving on. Went in search of a second Nunchuk over the weekend. Toys R Us was sold out of them on Saturday, but then the Sunday Nintendo Shipment arrived, replete with new gear. Nintendo has steadfastly delivered Wiis and Wii accessories every Sunday since launch, while Sony has done a Shelob and crawled back into the crags of the mountain, bubbling in their misery. When I walked into TRU Sunday morning, around 3pm, I was directly behind a trio of white trash homeys - unwashed hair, dirty t-shirts, on the edge of beer flab - who thought they could stomp into the store and stomp out with a PS3. They gathered at the glass case like crows on carrion, vowing to find an employee to sell them the (empty) display box. What kind of simpleton thinks you can just waltz on into any store whenever you want and pick up a brand new PS3?

But I got my Nunchuk. In case minor mold variations interest you, I'll note that my new one does not have the Nintendo logo on the plug top. Old on left, new on right.

It's on the reverse, under the plastic hook that is intended to hook your strap cord. I also think the indenting on the C and Z isn't as deep as my Day One Wii Nunchuk. Neat, eh? No?

Toys R Us also recently saw the light on their Wii Points card pricing and decided to stop ripping people off by selling the $20 card for $25.

So if you bought one a couple weeks ago, maybe you can go get pissy with the manager about it.

Although it's been slow going, Nintendo is doing the right thing by introducing rare and acclaimed titles into the Virtual Console... rather than junking it up with Donkey Kong Jr Math and Clu-Clu Land. I bought Gunstar Heroes and Alien Crush last week. Having never played Gunstar Heroes but well aware of the cult status of it, I thought that a good option. And Alien Crush is a well-done pinball game with a strange H. R. Giger look to it.

Good stuff, but Nintendo is going to have trouble maintaining the VC's momentum unless they start popping in some NEW games, some BIGGER games, or some UPDATED FOR INTERNET PLAY games in short order. If they just keep to NES "classics" and the occasional rare game, XBLA is going to win the mindshare war.

The Forecast Channel launched today. Not the copyrighted Weather Channel, as I see lots of people naturally call it. Although I bet they both get their weather data from the same source. It's cute. It defaults to your local temps and lets you zoom out and spin a globe to find the weather at hundreds of other locations across the planet. Hardly a mammoth inclusion, but a nice little gimme.

It's pretty obnoxious that the globe screen has to carry an "image copyright NASA" message, though. Could NASA be bigger dicks about that? Geez. It's Earth. You don't own it.

Internet Channel shows up in a free beta this Friday, which will be super-cool. I'm looking forward to seeing how fourhman.com looks and acts inside of it. The final web browser is expected in the spring, and it will remain a free download until the summer, when it will be tagged at $5. Which is pretty much free anyway, really.

Finally, here's how we decided to store the Wii Remotes in an awesome way:

We put two removable hooks on the interior of the entertainment center. When I get to four remotes - and I have no doubt that will happen - they will either go on the other side, or staggered with these two.

Still not sure what to do with the Nunchuks. They're just tossed in the supply drawer along with all the GameCube/PS2 stuff.

The Flash #6
This storyline has been a complete amateur night embarrassment and I eagerly anticipate the current writing team (Bilson & Demeo) leaving the book.

Remember when Impulse was a fun, silly character? I think the mandate on Bart Allen's new attitude was: make him boring. The six parter was intended to set up Bart as the new Flash and explain why the DCU has been red-suit-Flash-less for a year. Of course, the only way to do that was to have Bart's cocky One Year Later-flotsam best friend become a super-villain. Plus a STAR Labs girlfriend. Not an ounce of this reads well, from "the Griffin"'s constant hackneyed use of "bro," to Bart's constant hand-wringing about how he isn't good enough to inherit the lightning. Terrible.

And then the the whole Infinite Crisis dangler - what happened to the Fastest Men Alive when they raced Superboy-Prime into the Speed Force - is tossed aside in a sepia-toned page-and-a-half at the very end! Gawd, so that's all that happened? The other guys essentially give up and Bart volunteers to do the deathrace back to Earth-1? Lame.

What is it with writers who think we want these tortured, self-absorbed, depressed characters? This is the DCU, not Marvel. We want heroes who have fun using their powers. That Spider-Man bullshit went out in the '60s. Let's all pretend that Bart crashed back from Infinite Crisis with a really interesting story to tell and that he is nervous but excited to be the new Flash. Jesus.

JSA Classified #19
Now this I like. This is the start of an arc spotlighting Dr. Mid-Nite, one of my JSA favorites. Particularly in this incarnation as a stoic, smart, actual-doctor.

The hook here is that old urban legend about illegal organ harvesting... where you get knocked out and wake up in a bathtub with your kidneys missing. Except in this version, somebody is knocking out mutated heroes and removing things like wings. Cool as hell. And it makes fun of the leftover losers from Bloodlines!

Best line: Doc barges in on a smoking Roulette and says "As a doctor, my oath compels me to warn you of the risks of smoking." It's great because he's serious when he says it.

In the same panel, he also describes Batman as an "urban myth" which is probably the coolest ongoing story nugget that DC had since COIE, and they have since worked diligently to ignore it. This is the first time I've seen it mentioned in years, which makes me hope it has been re-retconned back into being.

Although we do briefly drop down into that old Super Hero Fight Club garbage. Can somebody do a story where that gets shut down once and for all? It is patently ridiculous to think that the super-villains regularly all gather in one place to watch C-Grade heroes battle, and nobody ever does anything about it.

Superman/Batman #30
Another winner. This is a definite uptick after all that fan-service Joker/Mxy crap from a couple issues ago.

The plot confronts the idea that Superman is an alien, and may have been physically altered to blend into the human Earth race. Of course, we know that will prove out to be crap, but it's a tantalizing idea in a universe full of innumerable non-human alien races. And it will be fun to see who's behind the mystery and impersonating or mind-controlling other famous alien characters like Kilowog and Starfire.

Lots of great lines in this one, but the best one comes from Lex Luthor: "...if you were able to ask the dinosaurs where real danger lies... They would point to the stars." Superb. It fits with Lex's xenophobic persona, it's a compelling notion, and it's just nice dramatic writing no matter what medium.

Green Lantern #15
Things I have no interest in: Hal's entire military career, his new supporting cast of OYL Top Gun rejects.

Things I do have an interest in: hints about "the 52", the geopolitical borders and treaties of super-heroics, and the first peek at the Sinestro Corps.

Things I'm undecided on: Abin Sur's long-lost son (*sigh*), the reappearance of Star Sapphire.

There's a lot going on in GL right now, which means we've got a good writer (comics superstar Geoff Johns) setting up a lot of stuff down the road. I'm hoping this is the cornerstone issue where the good stuff takes the fore and the weak stuff starts to recede.

Civil War #5
Such wonderful art. Lots of nice surprise elements. But a tottering storyline that is inching on at a snail's pace. How many times can we see Group A fighting Group B, or heroes getting carted off into the Negative Zone prison complex?

And once again, nobody really important dies.

It's good to see Reed finally thinking about the issues though. She-Hulk does have a great response though, probably the first time I've seen the pro-registration argument brought up in such a way that you actually start to believe they're in the right: "People were sick of sixteen-year-old kids blowing up buildings, Reed. You guys gave us all a future."

Civil War: Front Line #8
Pretty sad how fast this series is out-pacing the core title, eh? I hope that nobody out there is reading Civil War and NOT reading this one. The "Accused" storyline is really good, the "Embedded" one may just be better, and "Sleeper Cell" is leading up to some big Namor reveal which should be cool.

I just wish they would kill the pretentious Horrors of War Poetry section.

Justice Society of America #1
Get onboard now.

I was about to wonder aloud why we had to reboot this title, but of course the answer is to attract attention. An unfortunate side-effect of today's disposable audience is that everybody is afraid of buying a book that's already at #50 or higher.

That said, this is a good "introductory" issue to characters that have been around for sixty years. Nice art, too. We've got plenty of mysteries set up, a few intriguing new characters (remember when Stargirl was the giddy Britney Spears character?) and a few long-forgotten names return.

I did find the touchy-feely Hourman/Liberty Belle couple a little weird, though.

Jonah Hex #14
Continuing the origin story. The artist (Jordi Bernet) is doing kind of a Joe Kubert + John Severin thing, which is pretty amazing to watch. I expected this title to disappear within a year, and I am super-glad it is still kickin'. It's nice to get a good, hard Western every month.

52 #29-31
This is how I knew it had been three weeks since I last picked up my books.

I'll tell you, DC just announced a second weekly series once 52 finishes and I couldn't be happier. 52 continues to deliver an all-encompassing, tightly-woven storyline. Have I said already that 52 is as if Robert Altman did comics? I may have, but it strikes me every single week. I am looking forward to reading all 52 issues in one big glorious Sunday afternoon someday.

I do have to admit that, for all my love of the DCU, I'm a pretty stupid reader of 52. I never put any thought to the secret identity of Supernova, so reading on Seven Hells that it could be Ray Palmer was like getting slapped in the face, in a good way.

I think I'd be annoyed by this if it wasn't so endearingly clumsy:

On the great scale of product placement in video games, it's just a tad worse than Pikmin, perhaps a little better than those Honda Elements in SSX Tricky, and quite a bit more palatable than finding Powerade ads inside that Matrix game.

Also: the game does a really crappy job of explaining how to use the Edit Mode. I unlocked several item sets but had no idea how to get them to appear when editing. Turns out you have to assign those sets to the level you're building, before you start building it. It's the screen where you pick your level... those three slots by the thumbnails are for allocating item sets. Skip that step and you'll be clicking through the editor with naught but Elebits to place.

I still can't get deleting to work, so my glorious first stab at level editing has a couple piles of objects that I'd like to remove. Fun idea though... I just spent about an hour setting up an awesome kids' bedroom. Big bed covered with comics, the Mac-iest computer in the corner, a closet full of toy robots, about fifteen Wiis and twenty Remotes, and a stack of heavy stuff over the closet so you have to work a bit before you can open it.

And, of course, the EPSON Stylus Photo printer, for the highest standards in in-home photo printing.

Elebits shipped, like, a week early.

I got the automated girl robot call from EB on Tuesday night and was pleasantly surprised. I stopped by EB over lunch the next day and the manager was even more surprised when I expectantly said "I have an Elebits pre-order." She blinked at me. Their shipping catalog still had Elebits listed as dropping 12/19. But - because she's the awesome manager and not just a shlub kid who would have picked his nose and said "That's not in. Book says twelve nineteen." - she goes and looks it up. Turns out, yes, it was on the morning shipment that they had not even opened yet. I sort of imagine the box arriving warm, fresh from Konami's factory volcano.

I also received my random Elebits plush, which, as predicted, was the ugly blue common one. Interestingly, the game itself insists on calling it the green one.

This is the first Wii game that I was really excited about, since it's an all-new kind of game. I mean, Trauma Center is just a prettier DS game with adjustable difficulty so you might actually finish it and feel good about yourself. And I can take or leave Zelda, honestly. I know it's going to be a solid, lengthy, fun experience, which is why I dig it. But it's not a franchise that I fawn over.

Elebits, however, is brand new IP with Wii-specific controls and unique gameplay. It's getting favorably compared to Katamari, but only because they're both games that nobody can easily generalize in terms of other games, as reviewers are wont to do. Elebits is just about nothing like Katamari, except in the vaguest sense that you have to build up your power in order to affect items that you couldn't touch earlier in the level. The basic premise is that you're searching your house for the little electric goobers, using the remote as a zapper gun. The Elebits are known to hide in stuff, so the gun also lets you pick up items in the house in your search... which very naturally leads you to shaking things, tossing stuff around the room, and making a huge mess of everything. It's hilarious.

But I'm playing it last night and feeling like the controls suck. Specifically, every time I move the Remote off-screen, the cursor blips and jumps somewhere else. It's supposed to be an FPS, more or less. Your pointer is your mouse-look and the nunchuk controls walking... so I'm thinking, "Wow, this blows. I can't evenly pan around the room without the cursor glitching." What I had to do was just not get the cursor off-screen, which felt really stiff and limiting.

Then this morning, I read this story on Kotaku about how Christmas tree lights can screw with the remote. Which I thought was complete bullshit until I read some of the comments and considered my unappealling first night hunting Elebits.

And that's exactly what was happening. When I moved the remote off the TV screen, it was catching the tree positioned in the corner and the lights were freaking out the sensor. Tonight I turned off the tree and the game sang like a pretty bird on Free Worm Day.

So I feel a lot better about Elebits now.

Another Wii story, but this time with Twilight Princess spoilers, so back away now if you don't want to read about the reekfish. This isn't a suspense-killer though, just a story of me overlooking the obvious solution to a puzzle.

Everybody in the Zora village is talking about how the missing young Prince used to loooove fishing for reekfish, right? And they sure do wish he would return. Just so happens I know where the Prince is, but since I'm mute, I don't bother to tell them. Instead, I take that as a clue to talk to him, so I warp to Kakariko and look him up. He's at his mother's grave, but my presence inspires him to forge his strength and return to the Zoras. He gives me a special fishhook I can use to catch reekfish.

So I go fishing in the bottom of the pool where I'm told reekfish are plentiful. I catch one. The game gets all excited, it's a 27-incher and it smells bad. Blah blah. But I can't keep the fish. As soon as the text screen is done reminding me how the fish reeks, I drop the fish and it bounces along the dirt for a short time until it lands back in the water. It's leaving a visible cloud trail, which is, of course, the stink.

I try attacking the fish as it flops. I try clicking the A button. I try swinging an Empty Bottle (TM) in the air to catch the scent. I try to hit it with bombs, arrows, whatever silly crap is in my inventory. But every time it just leaps back into the water. I catch many reekfish, but it's the same story every time.

So I figure I must need some kind of fish-carrying item. A fish box. I head to the special lure fishing supply hut, but the girl there has nothing unusual to say. I talk to the Prince again, but he just repeats his final hint about where to find the fish. I ask Midna, but the game's pathetic built-in hinting system only provides "Gee, Link, maybe we should look at the reekfish for a clue!" Is there a Look button?!

Now, I really don't want to have to resort to looking this up online. I have not had to cheat yet in Twilight Princess and my goal is to beat the game on my own. So I go do some random exploring, figuring I'll run into the fish-box vendor sooner or later.

If you don't know the game, I should point out that Link, for some reason that I don't think has been explained yet, can turn into a wolf. I don't especially like being the wolf, but you have to briefly jump to wolf form to warp across the map. Usually, I wolf-warp someplace and then transform back to "human" right away. (Link is human, is he? Seems like a very non-fantastical word to use.) After a couple nights of screwing around and not finding the fish-box, I warp back to the Zora pond, but because I'm fed up with things, I don't morph back into Link mode right away.

And as I'm swimming through the lake as a wolf, it hits me: the wolf tracks scents.

I've already had to track about a half dozen other scents in the game. It's one of this game's big gameplay gimmicks. You, the wolf, must sniff the stink cloud then go into Magic Wolf Senses mode where you can track the scent like Wolverine did in the awful game he starred in when X2 came out.

So that makes me really stupid.

OK, a fine start. Almost makes you think that the pals are going to spin that old yarn of how they met.

And that is a ridiculous screenshot. It's Gumby's ass pasted onto a prop book. This is the sort of thing the animators never expected anybody to see, because the pause was not invented yet.

"And I considered making him my sidekick until he cheated me out of all my cash and I had to cap him! That's Vegas for you!"

Whoa, you tools fought off a Space Dinosaur and you don't think to mention it until just now? Is this book a sequel or something?

Gumby, will you freaking focus here? I get the impression that Pokey wants to keep the conversation more steered towards getting the hell back off of this asteroid, but Gumby's getting loopy from that hole in his spacesuit.

Next time: Four more panels of things they remember.

As Nintendo leaps over Sony's amazingly bankrupt launch - here's my Wiish Liist for the future of the Wii.

DS Channel
The Wii needs to solve the limitations of the DS by acting as a unified online gateway. Fire up the DS Channel and jump into a live chatroom with Wii Friends... then the Wii attaches itself to your DS and makes the connection to your pal's DS for WiFi play. No more interminable waiting for your DS to match up with people you don't know! No more wondering if a specific DS Friend is even connected! No more DS Friend Codes at all!

The DS Channel should also offer a game store... both emulated classics and all new exclusive DS stuff. Buy a new game, keep it on the Wii, and transmit it to the DS when you want to play it. Then transmit it back to the Wii to retain high scores and saved games. This gets around the DS's lack of onboard memory.

And come on guys, DS demos! We were promised DS demos!

SD Soundtracks
Early on, the Xbox made a big deal about storing your own MP3s on the HD for use as custom soundtracks in various games. And then nobody ever did it, because who wants to take up precious hard drive space with your awful music collection?

Excite Truck and the Photo Channel have the right idea: pull music from whatever happens to be inside the SD slot. If more games go that route (and the Wii remains invisible on home networks), we can all have our favorite tunes living on a cheap SD card that can come and go as we please. Or several, depending on the mix.

Fun lanyard straps
Cell phone charms and straps are huge in Japan. We want them for our Wii Remotes, and not just the simple colored bands found in those overpriced controller glove packs. ($25 for three gloves + lanyards?!?) Little figures of Mario and Pokemon. WiFi-sensitive lights that glow according to your in-game health bar. This is a license to print money, Nintendo. People will buy these like water once they're provided outside of the silly glove bundles.

Games I need to see
The new Sam and Max game needs a Wii port immediately. Ditto for ClubHouse Games. Fatal Frame and Pokemon Snap - both games centered around cameras - could be great with the Remote. I'd like to see a bigscreen, high-fidelity iteration of Elite Beat Agents on the Wii. And Katamari Damacy, with a point-and-roll control Nunchuk scheme.

Organize your mail
The Message Center needs some organizational tools. I received 14 Wii-mails one Saturday and it is a mess to navigate. They haven't quite achieved Apple Simplicity (TM) yet. The "Today's Accomplishments" mail should be tied into a central stat system so you can view the overall data. There should be an easy place to find/save your Photos, rather than just having them all live hidden inside mails. No limit on message length. Email photos to non-Wii addresses. Attach multiple photos. Attach movies. Integrate the Photo Channel entirely inside the Message Center (or vice versa.)

This thing could replace your computer email program very easily with a few upgrades... like all those "Internet Appliances" failed to do back in the late '90s.

Network it
The Wii needs to show up on my home network. It should be able to find MP3s on my iMac and play them. It should be able to send save files over to the computer for backup. It should be able to share pictures and movie files.

I totally want Nintendo to rip off Microsoft's Xbox weblogging/stats recording feature. It's a great example of a company asking the right question ("How can we make our customers more loyal, in the face of most gamers owning more than one system?") and coming up with the right answer (the gamerscore and achievements and auto-blog system). It's not often that Microsoft gets that kind of thing right.

Virtual Console Advance
We need rare games in there. Japan-only titles like Sin & Punishment or Doshin the Giant. Weird exclusives like that N64 Indiana Jones game you could only rent/buy at Blockbuster. How about some classic Game Boy games? I know it's not fashionable to laud the ugly little monster that kept Nintendo in the green all those years, but there's an untapped mine of great games there that Nintendo could sell for a couple bucks apiece. $2 for Cosmotank, Gargoyle's Quest, Balloon Kid, or the Super Mario Land series? Yes.

We need real games in there. Not the bloody Genesis version of Golden Axe, which completely sucked... we need the real coin-op original. Not the crappy NES version of Donkey Kong... we need the real coin-op original. I understand the cachet of the home console name brands, but those home versions were almost always vastly inferior to the arcade source. Coming soon: Atari Pac-Man?

We need brand new games in there. Where's the Wii equivalent to Geometry Wars or fl0w? Nintendo ought to be out there proving that they still have that simple magic of twenty years ago. Seriously, I'm considering paying $8 for Columns, just to have a decent puzzle game at instant access. Columns! Columns!!!

And how about demos for Wii games as well?

A Warning
I better see something damned impressive about Mario Party 8 if it's not going to have online play.

Wii Camera
Yeah, we've already seen some marginally fun EyeToy stuff, not to mention video chat over Xbox Live... but let me lay this on you: Combine the camera with the world famous Pokemon trading card game and take it online. I know, you're thinking of that weird PS3 "Eye of Judgement" game that uses a camera to "see" the cards you play. But we know that game is going to suck. Plus the tech will be dodgy at best.

I'm thinking that you have a camera plug-in that goes in the Wii Remote... you show it your actual cards as you play them, and the Wii sends that info to your opponent. So you get to play with your own decks, not "virtual" cards or pre-built decks, and you get to play in the real-world way you're accustomed to. In addition to providing a live and fluid card game interface between two people across the globe, the Wii also fills in the imagination gap with animations and sound and scorekeeping. (I'd suggest including this in addition to a virtual card mode, so as not to exclude players who don't own thousands of Pokemon cards.)

Nintendo has one of the all-time great trading card games in their back pocket, and they haven't leveraged it back into their core business since two Game Boy Color games (one of which never even made it out of Japan.) Time to rectify that, and at the same time confront head-on the perception that the console Pokemon games are crap.

Custom Remotes
Now that the cables are gone and motion-sensing is in, it's time to re-examine what custom controllers can do for gaming immersion. We've already seen bongos and guitars and dance pads in the previous generation... how about a Harry Potter game with a Remote shaped like a wand? A Pokemon game with a Remote shaped like a Poke Ball (with onboard memory to carry your fighters to other Wiis and a small LCD screen to play it like a Tamagotchi)? A new Power Glove that actually works this time?

And let's invert the idea and see some games that interact with physical props. The new Animal Crossing could come with a little faux-PDA that lights up when it's a holiday, or when you have a message waiting, or when a particular wandering vendor is in town.

Speaking of Animal Crossing...
AC Wii should, in some form, be able to interact with AC DS. And since the Wii has GameCube memory card ports, it could even tap into your AC GC file. The easy prediction is that it won't. But it should.

Early Wii GUI screenshots revealed that Animal Crossing Wii can send messages to your Wii Message Center. Will it be anything useful, or just the typical Tom Nook's Having A Sale crap? I've already devoted substantial webspace to the failings of Animal Crossing: Wild World, so my fingers are crossed that AC Wii will be more than just Nintendo expecting us to have fun collecting the Lovely Series yet again.

I highly doubt Nintendo will let Animal Crossing - or any game - hand out free Wii Points. But at the least, in a nod to the NES games that made AC GC so cool, they could let you buy various consoles from Nook. And if you happen to own any of the Virtual Console games for that console, AC Wii would let you access it from your Animal Crossing house.

To summarize:

Nobody thought you would make the DS work, and you did. Provide different types of games at different levels... don't abandon your new Wii Bowling fans with a lack of easy-access titles, and don't discourage the "remote-is-a-gimmick" crowd by avoiding traditional types of games and controllers. Be all things to all gamers, but don't get hung up on the complaints of the hardcore, because they have done nothing to move the market anyway. Build on the Wii's promise by packing in more tricks and tweaks that prove gaming can be more multi-dimensional, more demographic-broadening, more barrier-breaking than just WWII shooters, Madden and street racing. Keep the price down and the games up, and you can't NOT win.

(Not that I'm advocating a black-and-white Nintendo Wins / Sony Loses paradigm. After all, in terms of pure profits, the GameCube wasn't a failure at all. I'm just guessing you, Nintendo, would enjoy making more money. And, as a fan, I would enjoy continuing to buy your products. So a "win" here should be interpreting as "not failing out of the marketplace entirely.")

Aside: I figure I put in 35-40 hours on the 4AAs that came with my two Remotes before I had to replace them. Is that good? It certainly seems a lot worse than the WaveBirds, but then the Wii Remotes are doing quite a bit more.

kottke is holding a Celebrity Mii Contest with a yet-to-be-announced prize, so how can I not enter? Maybe the reward will be a stainless steel Remote strap.

But what Miis to submit (you're limited to two)? Two months ago, I used that Flash game to make the Wiggles, the Beatles, and the Bigger-Than-Jesus Beatles... but the genuine Mii maker isn't as flexible. In RL, only Greg "The Yellow" Wiggle came out looking nice. Which is actually cool and timely, since he just retired from the group due to health problems.

For my second entry, I went with everybody's favorite 700 year old CG pre-hobbit, Gollum. An outside chance, to be sure.

In other Wii news, I was lucky enough to get one of the limited edition Legend of Zelda replica sets. In truth, my sister snagged it for me after a pleading phone call, when I read about it online on the very morning I knew her to be holiday shopping. Weird: it was apparently a Target Exclusive item and limited to 7,000. Why would Target negotiate something like this? According to my sister, the few in stock were displayed next to a ticking countdown clock that insinuated that you only had a few days to buy them before they would disappear.

The box comes in that awful unopenable plastic shell type of packaging... the type that you have to carefully cut open lest you damage what's inside. The main draw is the metal replica Master Sword and Hylian Shield (plus certificate of authenticity signed (not really) by Miyamoto), but you also get a six track Twilight Princess soundtrack.

At $40, it's awfully expensive for what you get. It's made by Master Replicas, a company known for this sort of thing, so at least it's quantifiably nice. The thing is, this is the kind of crap that Japan gets just for waking up in the morning. And given how much I complain about Japan getting all the neat gaming trinkets, it would be hypocritical for me to snub this unique US offering on the price. I (you, we) want companies to do more of this stuff. So I considered this a vote for future fun toys.

I did note that the shield is quite obviously intended for a left-handed sword-wielder... even though Link is right-handed in Twilight Princess to better integrate with the Remote (and the right-handed majority). Technically, I guess that makes this the shield used in every Zelda game except Twilight Princess. Cynically, it probably just means Master Replicas cast the mold a few years ago.

I'll end on a fun shot from near the end of Trauma Center: Second Opinion.

Spider-Man spends 90% of his time retrieving lost balloons for kids.

Although this was a huge improvement over the previous Spider-Man movie game, it still has some weird angles to it that you can either spin as "unfinished" or "ahead of its time."

The true-to-scale New York City that never you can roam at will, top to bottom, without hitting a loading screen is wild... but it looks like total crap and has too few landmarks to help you navigate. Web-swinging is almost perfect, a zen experience that makes you feel like you're actually the -Man... but street-level brawling is a mess of impossible combo moves against burly no-name thugs who consistently dodge your super-heroic attacks. There's plenty of GTA-esque side missions and item hunts to keep you occupied... but they repeat to infinity, it just looks weird to have Spidey constantly standing on the sidewalk talking to pedestrians, and the boss fights are all terrible. (One of which, the Mysterio battle, is enough to make you swear off video games forever.)

You have to play it for the web-swinging. Seriously.

Memory Score: Just because humankind has invented ragdoll physics does not mean they must be employed every time.

What an odd little thing: this is a utility that allows you to save your extra Pokemon overflow to a GameCube memory card.

You could only get it through Nintendo (online store or NYC store) and it came packaged with a GBA/GameCube Link Cable and a custom original-flavor memory card. Priced to move at $20, which is not bad, considering the cable alone sold for $7 or $8. Probably rather collectible.

Of course, the ability to page through your GBA Pokemon save files and transfer excess characters to the Cube for safekeeping should have been built in to the dull-as-dishwater Pokemon Colosseum. Pokemon Box additionally lets you play Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire on your TV without the need for the Game Boy Player, which is also something that Colosseum could have and should have handled.

If you needed an extra Link Cable and had some pokemon to stash, this was an interesting add-on. Even if it mainly served to remind you how awful Colosseum was.

Memory Score: The collection display mode was horrible and hopefully resulted in somebody getting fired.

The big complaint about the first Pikmin is that the day/night cycle introduced an obnoxious timer to each level that actually inhibited you from exploring the game. Note that: People bitched because they wanted to play the game more. That's a high-class problem.

So one of the sequel's hype points was that you could play without the timer. Which is kind of a lie.

The only time that you're not under the ticking clock is when you explore one of the claustrophobic underground levels... but the game screws you by giving you a finite number of pikmin that can go underground. Let all of them die and you lose your treasures and have to start the dungeon over.

Which is a fine challenge for the advanced player, but it still avoids the issue that you can't take your time and leisurely enjoy Miyamoto's underappreciated masterpiece in the pastoral, relaxing way the game world seems to demand.

This is a great, clever, unique game. I want to play it without some arbitrary difficulty-meter putting my balls in a vice.

In other news, the game's multiplayer modes are surprisingly beefy, and the game proper ends with only half of the buried items discovered... so it has plenty of playing value. This one definitely needs to make the leap to the Wii.

Memory Score: Plus you can kill hours throwing carrots at beasties in the interactive zoo exhibit mode.

Next time: the thousand-year door, the million-Morlock march, and one bad Fred Schneider impersonation

I swear to you that the following is a real book and has not been photoshopped in any way. The author's last name really is "Hyman."

Agreed. Do not let any distractions arise during your reading of this book. It is so fucking batshit nuts that you'll need your full concentration. When reading the book, why not try using the letters found in the prose to cause your mouth to form words, and also consider saying those words to create sentences.

In today's fast-paced internet world, your children need to learn both upper- and lower-case letters, because I am sick of getting IMs from twelve-year-olds that look like they're shouting.

Aside: This book, published in 1986, marks the final time that anybody used the word "youngsters" in print in a non-ironic fashion.

See? Already Gumby is in fucking space. That's a goddamn adventure, and it's only page one.

Hey, I don't want to give overdue credit, but if you're in space and wearing astronaut suits, I'm willing to call you an astronaut. Pro tip: Your famous bump is about to asphyxiate.

But did you guys really come all the way to the moon just to mope and tell stories? Best Office Bonding Ritual Ever.

Next Letter: Bb

One of the best features of LEGO Star Wars is the ability to re-play levels with the characters of your choice. This leads to lots of non-canon silliness. Probably some spoilers near the end.

Han Solo and his best pal Greedo steal a Rebel ice cream truck. Maybe this is what led to their famous falling out.

Darth Maul and Jango Fett investigate Echo Base and find it full of zombies! Or as we like to call them, Prequel Fans.

Grand Moff Tarkin supervises as a skeleton rides a tractor on Dagobah. He didn't take shrapnel in the destruction of the first Death Star just to have some damn kid screw up his lawn!

Boba Fett and Bossk cavort in the Mos Eisley money fountain. In case you're wondering how you're ever going to afford that 30 million cost for the 10x money multiplier power-up, this is how.

Here's our final 100% clock: over 37 hours. All accomplished without cheat codes of any stripe. (We did look up the location of some of the sleazier Minikits, however. In some levels, that Minikit Finder is shit worthless.) Note the multiplier in effect, x3840. That's more than you can imagine!*

I did the Vehicle Challenges mostly by myself, as having a second player actually makes them impossible. And note to anyone afraid of the Super Story modes... you do not need to finish in under one hour to get the gold brick! Seriously.

And I loved the Bounty Hunter Missions, even if they were pathetically short by design. Organizing a parade of little Boba Fett, Greedo, Bossk, Dengar, 4-LOM and IG-88 was hilarious. But what about Zuckuss?

LEGO Star Wars 2 is the worst best game we've ever played. If they make another one, they better damned well fix the awful co-op camera, the floaty controls, and the utter uselessness of light sabers.

*I don't know, I can imagine quite a bit.

He'll play it, but he's not quite doing 1:1 punches yet.

The screenplay is as follows:

JOE: "Keep shaking! Shake 'em! Shake, Clark!"

JOE: "Keep shakin', buddy!"

JOE: "Shake, shake, shake.... You paused it."

JOE: "Keep shaking."

JOE: "Heh, shake, shake 'em buddy!"

CLARK: "Yaaaaaaaaay."
JOE (NERVOUS): "No need to clap with them. Just shake."

CAT SNEAKS LICKS OFF OF CLARK'S PLATE

CLARK: "Bang!"
JOE: "Keep doing that! Keep shaking 'em"

JOE: "Shake 'em, Clark!" CONDESCENDING LAUGHTER

JOE: "Oh, you took your handstrap off, buddy. Now you're in infringement of Nintendo's policy."

CLARK: "Uh. Unh. Uh."
JOE: "Good idea. Put it back on."

CLARK LOSES JUDGES' DECISION

JOE: "Boo, Martin. Boo."

EXEUNT

I just finished reading the novelization of Infinite Crisis. Which probably makes me the only person within 500 miles to have done so.

This was an impossible task... write a novel that literally translates at least sixteen recent comic books, in a storyline that is a direct sequel to a 12-issue series from twenty years ago, containing allusions to seven decades of comic book history, starring hundreds of characters. It's nuts. It could not be done. It wasn't done.

What happened was this novel pretty much describes every panel from the original Infinite Crisis miniseries. It's like reading a comic to a blind person.

What probably should have happened is that the saga was broken up into several novels, to afford the room for the backstory and drama that longtime fans such as myself natively insert into contemporary comics as we read them. I mean, who exactly is intended to read this novel? A comics fan already owns the IC comics, and, judging from the online buzz, is about 50/50 on liking it anyway. A non-comics fan is not going to understand a damn bit of it, will be confused senseless on all the hundreds of names that are thrown out in mindless deference to the source, and will be left with a ton of questions concerning holes and threads that you'd need to read another year's worth of books to resolve. This was a crazy, unreasonable project.

Marvel's Civil War, because of the less-complicated concept and lower character count, will probably make a pretty cool novel. Infinite Crisis The Novel is a valiant mess.

Mark Waid does a fine introduction to the novel, although it's mostly about the original comics event. And he includes this summary, after noting how DC's iconic characters have changed from the 1940s through the 1980s to today:

"[Infinite Crisis is] what happens the day Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman all realize how lost in darkness they've become - and how, if they don't find their balance fast, that darkness will consume the world."

He's right. That does happen within the original series. The major beat is that today's heroes have become somehow sullied, darker, no longer pure. Which is an interesting take, because it cuts to the heart of the issues that currently divide comics fans. But it's only barely touched on in this novel. Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman are not even given enough physical pages to "live" as real literary creations. You get a retelling of their word balloons, and some appropriate staging and descriptors, but you do not get a deep inspection of what has happened to the trio. Their fractured friendship is as important as the origin of the new Blue Beetle, the destruction of the Rock of Eternity, or the metaphysical adventure of Donna Troy's outer space team of finger exploders. There is too much else going on, taking up all the page count.

Not that those events and others aren't important... just that there's so much chaos here that any section devoted to chartacter developed is lost. There are no separate tones here; it's all static. It's not just the Big Three who get the half-assed soap opera treatment... it's everybody. And there is a LOT of everybody. After page upon page of word-for-word dialogue from character after character, peppered with little expository asides, it just all runs together. One paragraph explaining that Kyle Rayner is fighting alongside his most recent ex-girlfriend (Jade) with another ex close by (Donna) is not doing a damn thing to add to the drama of the scene, because this is pretty much the first and only time we're going to see these characters in a scene. I could not believe that the novel mentions Kyle's transformation into Ion. Doomsday shows up as the big tipping point of the villain battle scene and is dispatched in under one page. Why bother? Why waste our time with faux layers of emotion and too-quick panels-cum-paragraphs? Like a reader fresh off the street is supposed to care about freaking Air Wave biting it? It's pedantic, is what it is. As a novel reader, my time should be spent inside the minds of the main characters... of which Infinite Crisis The Novel unfortunately has none.

You cannot recreate a fantastical story of this scale inside one thick novel. Not without sucking, anyway. It's exactly the kind of thing that comics simply do better than other books. Either give me a gigantic multi-book epic with the characterization that a good novel series should have, or streamline the whole thing down to something much more digestible.

I should find a non-comics fan to read this and report back to me after every chapter.

I can't hate the author too much - he really has no other option, given that he has to do this in one Borders-friendly paperback and somebody somewhere decreed that it had to be tediously comics-accurate. Plus, according to his website, Greg Cox only lives about an hour and a half away from me. He's apparently the go-to guy for comics and sci-fi novel adaptations, but he was sure hung out to dry on this one. The scenes that are fun to read are not good because of his efforts, but because they were undeniably good in the first place.

There is a noticeably weird overuse of the words "gorget" (whenever Batman is getting strangled, which happens more often than you'd think) "chitinous" (describing Blue Beetle) and "ceramic" (every single bloody time an OMAC shows up). I'm always surprised when I read an author hanging onto specific unusual words like that. Maybe it's just me, but that drives me up the wall. Like Robert Jordan using the word "rictus" about a million times in the first few Wheel of Time books.

Amusingly, IC has only 51 chapters. You mean to tell me they couldn't have done it in 52?